MOTHER JONES

Ammon Hennacy on Mother Jones

"Like Thoreau, Mother Jones stands in a class all by herself. One reading her life would think that it was too good to be true. I regret not having met Jack London and Mother Jones. There is no one with whom you can compare Mother Jones. She was not circumscribed by any dogma.

When a show of guns was needed in Charleston, WV, she had her 'boys' buy them. Marx never wrote anything about getting a women's brigade with dishpans and hammers to create havoc among the mules, scabs and mine owners. She told off the union officials and the governors. By her wit she confounded the militia; by her unselfish compassion she shamed the police, and their wives fed her mill children. She, more than most of the rebels today, had suffered more from the police, yet she did not call them 'pigs.'

Perhaps her ancestors, like those of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, had, in
County Cork, fought the British, and some of this spirit had to come
out eventually, and it did here in America to help the poor miners and
the mill children. Her bravery has not been surpassed in American
history. Her endurance in fake quarantine was coupled with the
endurance of those miners she sought to help.

Mother Jones puts to shame the union 'pie-cards.' She puts to shame the segregated unions whose increased wages come from not allowing blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to join their unions. She put to shame those today who squabble over radical theory, and who would never stand a tenth of the 'quarantines' that she endured.

She saw the truth about radical communities seventy-five years ago when she said that such groups would succeed only if they had a religious basis. She did not mean a church basis. If the young Hippies today who have their rural colonies will forsake their 'acid' ---mechanical methods of gaining 'interior peace' and will study the life of Mother Jones, of Krishnamurti, and of Gandhi, they might make a success and 'show the world.'

To those who are weak, Mother Jones should give strength. To those who are strong she presents love. To all of us she shows the menace of giving power to others over ourselves. Finally, she shows the power which a truly dedicated life can give to upset tyranny."

THE ONE-MAN REVOLUTION, Ammon Hennacy Publications, 1970