Why Chicago Deserves a Statue of Mother Jones
On Monday, March 29, the League of Women Voters of Chicago hosted “Why Chicago Deserves a Statue of Mother Jones” in collaboration with the Mother Jones Museum and Working Women’s History Project. The event was recorded—you can view it now.
Jane Ruby, Vice President of LWV Chicago, introduced the League and the two co-sponsoring organizations, Elliott Gorn, the first speaker, and hosted the Q&A chat.
Listeners heard four speakers. It was the final speaker that answered the title question.
Meet Mother Jones
First to speak was Elliott Gorn, the Joseph Gagliano Professor of American Urban History at Loyola University and the author of 5 major books including Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (2001). He spoke of the remarkable transformation of Mary Harris, a poor Irish girl who, age 10, left Ireland with her family during the Great Famine for Canada and who 50 years later became “Mother Jones,” a woman whose power to move workers to defy their bosses caused her to be called the most dangerous woman in America.
Mary encountered unbelievable tragedies early in life. In 1867, a Yellow Fever epidemic in Memphis killed her husband, George Jones, and all four of their children. Mary Jones relocated to Chicago and set up a dressmaking shop only to have the Great Chicago Fire destroy home and shop four years later. She was 34.
What followed was a long period of exploration, at the end of which she understood her mission was to fight for workers and support unions who defended them. She emerged as Mother Jones at age 60, the mother of all poor working men and women, who dressed like a grandmother, but who was a fearless and unapologetic fighter. She organized miners, mill workers, and garment workers: men and women of all races and ethnic backgrounds, and supported and encouraged them in their strikes.
She was an indefatigable opponent of child labor. Beyond her ability to speak to all workers, she was also friends with intellectuals like Carl Sandburg and Upton Sinclair, and she wrote her autobiography. This remarkable woman, who was frequently in the news in the early 20th century, has so completely disappeared from view that today many people do not know who she is. Gorn wishes it were otherwise.
Hear Mother Jones
Brigid Duffy’s performance of March of the Mill Children allowed the audience to hear Mother Jones in her own words. Duffy graduated from Mundelein and did graduate work at the Goodman School of Drama. She taught in the Chicago Public Schools for 35 years and won the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has performed extensively in several Chicago theaters as well as in TV shows, and, in fact, was unable to attend the event live because she was working on a TV show!
The audience heard Mother Jones inquire of reporters in Pennsylvania why they did not publish facts about the horrors of child labor in the textile mills. When they told her mill owners who have stock in the newspapers don’t allow it, Mother Jones immediately understood that her job was to get publicity for the issue of child labor. “I have stock in little children,” she said.
We hear her describe the groups of children she organized to carry banners asking to be in school rather than in the factory as she marched with them to the Courthouse. Her speeches denouncing those who profited from the labor of children drew large crowds, and she used maimed children to illustrate the horrors of child labor. The press covered the event.
When that publicity died down, she took a group of children on a march from Philadelphia to President Roosevelt’s summer home on Oyster Bay, speaking to groups along the way. Her petitions to Roosevelt to initiate legislation to protect children were ignored, nor did the president meet with them, but the publicity was sufficient that the Pennsylvania legislature raised the minimum work age for children from 12 to 14.
Statues of Historical Figures in Chicago
Another speaker, Helen Ramirez-Odell, Vice President of Working Women’s History Project (WWHP) and the author of Working Without Uniforms: School Nursing in Chicago, 1951-2001, detailed nine statues of female figures in Chicago. The audience snickered as she mentioned the first, Dorothy of Oz. Others included figures with vines and plants around their bodies, giant hands representing Jane Addams, or mythical figures. When she finished her list, it was clear there were only two statues of real women in Chicago.
A Statue of Mother Jones for Chicago
The final speaker, Rosemary Feurer, Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University, directs the Mother Jones Heritage Project and the Mother Jones Statue Campaign. She also created a short award-winning documentary, Mother Jones: America’s Most Dangerous Woman.
Feuer emphasized Mother Jones’ capacity to inspire ordinary people to recognize their own power. Mother Jones represented the unsung people of this world: immigrants, labor activists, and others. Her history is a history from below, one that shows that ordinary people can go beyond what life seemed to have ordained for them. The people who built the City of Chicago from the ground up and who in the future will sustain it deserve to have a representation of Mother Jones in their city.
Feurer showed an image of the statue of Mother Jones that 2 sculptors had designed. In her talk and in the Q&A, Feuer invited the audience to visit her website and lend their support to the Mother Jones statue campaign.
Show Your Support for a Mother Jones Statue
The Mother Jones Statue Committee reports at a meeting of the Chicago Monuments Project on Monday, April 12 at 6:30 pm. The Chicago Monument Project will count the number of participants as an indication of community interest. You can join the meeting via Zoom. Register to attend.