_Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907_
“The ‘Grand Old Woman’ of the revolutionary movement” is the appropriate
title given to Mother Jones by Walter Hurt. All who know her—and they
are legion—will at once recognize the fitness of the title.
The career of this unique old agitator reads like romance. There is no
other that can be compared to it. For fifteen years she has been at the
forefront, and never once has she been known to flinch.
From the time of the Pullman strike in 1894, when she first came into
prominence, she has been steadily in the public eye. With no desire to
wear “distinction’s worthless badge,” utterly forgetful of self and
scorning all selfish ambitions, this brave woman has fought the battles
of the oppressed with a heroism more exalted than ever sustained a
soldier upon the field of carnage.
Mother Jones is not one of the “summer soldiers” or “sunshine patriots.”
Her pulses burn with true patriotic fervor, and wherever the battle
waxes hottest there she surely will be found upon the firing line.
For many weary months at a time she has lived amid the most desolate
regions of West Virginia, organizing the half-starved miners, making her
home in their wretched cabins, sharing her meagre substance with their
families, nursing the sick and cheering the disconsolate—a true minister
of mercy.
During the great strike in the anthracite coal district she marched at
the head of the miners; was first to meet the sheriff and the soldiers,
and last to leave the field of battle.
Again and again has this dauntless soul been driven out of some
community by corporation hirelings, enjoined by courts, locked up in
jail, prodded by the bayonets of soldiers, and threatened with
assassination. But never once in all her self-surrendering life has she
shown the white feather; never once given a single sign of weakness or
discouragement. In the Colorado strikes Mother Jones was feared, as was
no other, by the criminal corporations; feared by them as she was loved
by the sturdy miners she led again and again in the face of overwhelming
odds until, like Henry of Navarre, where her snow-white crown was seen,
the despairing slaves took fresh courage and fought again with all their
waning strength against the embattled foe.
Deported at the point of bayonets, she bore herself so true a warrior
that she won even the admiration of the soldiers, whose order it was to
escort her to the boundary lines and guard against her return.
No other soldier in the revolutionary cause has a better right to
recognition in this edition than has Mother Jones.
Her very name expresses the Spirit of the Revolution.
Her striking personality embodies all its principles.
She has won her way into the hearts of the nation’s toilers, and her
name is revered at the altars of their humble firesides and will be
lovingly remembered by their children and their children’s children
forever.