Quotes By Mary Harris Jones

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone.

Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent.

Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives.

You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand.

What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.

I am Mother Jones. The Government can't take my life and you can't take my arm, but you can take my suitcase.

I want to hold a series of meetings all over the country and get the facts before the American people.

I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

I will tell the truth wherever I please.

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.

I would fight God Almighty Himself if He didn't play square with me.

I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.

Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination.

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.

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.

I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people.

I am not an anti to anything which will bring freedom to my class.

I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.

Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.

My address is like my shoes. It travels with me.

You must stand for free speech in the streets.

I have always advised men to read.

The strike of the miners in Arizona was one of the most remarkable strikes in the history of the American labor movement. Its peaceful character, its successful outcome, were due to that most remarkable character, Governor Hunt.

I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists - the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.

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.

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'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser.

Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.

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?