JAILING OF MOTHER JONES (1919)

Location: Homestead, PA 15120

Mary Harris Jones is perhaps the best-known· hero of the American working class. Ferocious opponent of child labor, brilliant stump orator, she was the “miners’ angel” bringing aid when union miners were in a fight or mourning those killed or dismembered in an explosion or cave-in. In her eighties she played an important role in the Great Steel Strike of 1919. The Mon Valley was an armed camp in that summer and fall. Meetings and street gatherings were forbidden. Mother Jones was arrested in Duquesne trying to hold a meeting. The mayor asserted that Jesus Christ could not hold a meeting for the union in his town. Mother Jones replied, “I have no doubt of that while you are mayor. You may remember, however, that He drove such men as you out of the temple.”

Jailing of Mother Jones marker, 9th and Amity Sts.

On August 20, Mother Jones came to Homestead and addressed a crowd of several thousand from an open car at 8th Avenue and McClure. She told how workers had been slaughtered in Europe to make the world “safe for democracy” but were then denied its blessings in Pennsylvania. She was arrested and jailed in the Borough Building but counseled the crowd to refrain from violence. At her trial, she was charged with speaking in the street without a permit. According to her famous autobiography, she told the old judge:  “I had a permit.” “Who issued it?” he growled. “Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams! Said I.”