45 Powerful Quotes By Mary Harris Jones
Mary Harris Jones was an Irish-born American school teacher and dressmaker who was also a labor and community organizer. She played an important role in the establishment of Industrial Workers of the World, which was a blend of both socialist and anarchist movement. Jones also founded the Social Democratic Party in the United States. She earned the tag of being “one of the most dangerous women in America” after successfully leading a revolt against the mine owners. Jones was also instrumental in protest against lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills. Critically remarked as “the largest selling radical magazine of the decade”, the Mother Jones magazine was aptly named after her to commemorate her contribution in American society. Mary Jones also finds her place in various folklores and hymns namely "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", "Union Maid" and "The Spirit of Mother Jones". Her thoughts and sayings centered on the issues of equality, individualism, unification, strength, motivation, hope, hard work, positivity and freedom. Read through these uplifting quotes from Mary Harris Jones.
I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser.
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.
My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.
No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.
A lady is the last thing on earth I want to be. Capitalists sidetrack the women into clubs and make ladies of them.
I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.
I will tell the truth wherever I please.
I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.
No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike!
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men.
I am not an anti to anything which will bring freedom to my class.
My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.
What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.
I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.
I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.
Out of labor's struggle in Arizona came better conditions for the workers, who must everywhere, at all times, under advantage and disadvantage work out their own salvation.
You must stand for free speech in the streets.
I would fight God Almighty Himself if He didn't play square with me.
God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives.
And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone.
What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.
Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads.
My address is like my shoes. It travels with me.
![[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike.](https://www.wisdomly.net/images/quotes/mary-harris-jones-36161.jpg)
[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike.
