Mother Jones: Revolutionary Leader of Labor and Social Reform

Mother Jones often identified herself as a socialist, but her politics coincided with revolutionary syndicalism. The duality of Socialism and Syndicalism structured and defined her role as a leader of labor and social reform and her beliefs and attitudes about women, which paralleled her general perceptions of class warfare. Jones has been dismissed as a "hell-raiser" or diminished to a "folksy" or "colorful" old woman who endeared herself to the miners by taking up their cause. Most who wrote about her either chose to diminish or eliminate the historical and political significance of a person who changed the face of labor in this country forever, or they simply did not "do their homework." Although Mother Jones has been all but excluded from the annals of history, she is the most significant and relevant political voice for the working class to ever emerge from within the United States.