Autobiography of Mother Jones

[Jones, Mary Harris]; Mary Field Parton [Editor]; Clarence Darrow [Introduction]

Edité par Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago, 1925

A propos de cet article

First edition, first printing. 242 pp. Bound in publisher's blue cloth lettered in black. Near Fine with light wear and fading to extremities; binding tight. In a Near Fine dust jacket with light toning, soiling, and edgewear. Shallow clips to corners; price of $1.50 printed on spine panel. Mary Harris Jones was one of the most famous labor leaders in American history. Born in Ireland in 1837, she was taken to the United States as a child and became a dressmaker and teacher, marrying an iron moulder in 1861. Jones lost her husband and four children in a yellow fever epidemic just six years later and then lost her dressmaking business in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Knights of Labor came out to help the fire victims, and from that point onward Mary Jones became more and more absorbed in the nationwide movement to advance the rights of working people. Jones roamed the country for decades, always at the scene of the action. She delivered fiery orations, wrote articles, and organized strikes and marches. She co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and was sentenced to twenty years in prison after a strike turned violent in 1913, though the governor of West Virginia commuted her sentence. Upton Sinclair turned Jones into a character in his novel The Coal War: "She was wrinkled and old, dressed in black, looking like somebody s grandmother; she was, in truth, the grandmother of hundreds of thousands of miners." The grandmotherly appearance was part of the persona that Jones gradually developed under the name "Mother Jones." She was the rare person who pretended to be older than she was, giving her birth year as 1830 instead of 1837, and made public appearances in antique black dresses. In his introduction, Clarence Darrow comments on the theatrical aspect of Jones' activism: "Mother Jones always appeared in time of need. She had a strong sense of drama. She staged every detail of a contest. Her actors were real men and women and children, and she often reached the hearts of employers where all others failed." Mother Jones lives on in the leftist magazine of the same name and in the quote known worldwide: "Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living!".

N° de réf. du vendeur 140947874

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Autobiography of Mother Jones
• Éditeur: Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago
• Date de parution: 1925
• Édition: First Edition.
• État de l'article: Near Fine
• État de la jaquette: Near Fine
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Women Writers
  • Biography
  • Politics
  • Social Movements
  • History