Mary Harris Jones

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

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

“What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.”

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

“I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.”

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

“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.”

“If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout Freedom for the working class!”

“The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.”

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

“I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser.”

“I believe that no man who holds a leader's position should ever accept favors from either side. He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone.”

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

“I was born in revolution.”

“My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.”

“They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore.”

“I learned in the early part of my career that labor must bear the cross for others' sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do.”

“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.”

“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.”