Abstract
In the first years of the twentieth century, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones stood out as the only woman attending national conventions of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). During strikes in 1900 and 1902, UMWA president John Mitchell asked her to come to northeastern Pennsylvania to help keep anthracite (hard coal) miners in the union. Mitchell and Jones had dramatically different public images, rooted in gender roles as much as in their individual personalities. Whereas Mitchell maintained a fatherly dignity, Jones nagged and scolded in a grandmotherly way. In these two charismatic figures, miners saw reflections of men and women they recognized and trusted. Their gendered organizing styles buoyed Pennsylvania hard coal miners through two militant seasons, but ultimately compromised worker solidarity by reinforcing stereotypes and linking males to a patriarchal power structure.
Right here I tell you
I’m not a scabby fellow,
I’m a good union citizen,
I’m a Johnny Mitchell man.
Lyric by Con Carbon, 19021
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Victor Greene, The Slavic Community on Strike: Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).
Craig Phelan, Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 178–179.
Perry K. Blatz, Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Lndustry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 55.
See Bonnie Stepenoff, Their Fathers’ Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880–1960 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1999).
George Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch: Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), 228–229.
Robert H. Wiebe, “The Anthracite Strike of 1902: A Record of Confusion.” Missouri Valley Historical Review 48 (September 1961): 235–236.
Mother Jones’s birth date is often given as 1830, although records in County Cork, Ireland, indicate that she was born in 1837. See Elliott J. Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 9.
Dale Fetherling, Mother Jones, The Miners’ Angel (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), 3.
Ibid., 2–6.
Francis H. Nichols, “Children of the Coal Shadow,” McClure’s Magazine 20 (February, 1903): 441–442.
Ibid., 442.
Ibid., 442–444.
Mother Jones, The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones, ed. Edward M. Steel (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 5.
C.K. McFarland, “Crusade for Child Laborers: Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children,” Pennsylvania History 38 (1971): 283–296.
William J. Walsh, The United Mine Workers of America as an Economic and Social Force in the Anthracite Territory (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1931), 105.
Priscilla Long, Mother Jones, Woman Organizer, and Her Relations with Miners’ Wives, Working Women, and the Suffrage Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1976), 33; Gorn, Mother Jones, 232.
See Bonnie Stepenoff, “Keeping It in the Family: Mother Jones and the Pennsylvania Silk Strike of 1900–1901,” Labor History 38 (Fall 1997): 432–449.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Jaclyn J. Gier and Laurie Mercier
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stepenoff, B. (2006). “I’m a Johnny Mitchell Man”: Gender and Labor Protest in the Pennsylvania Hard Coal Uprising, 1900–1902. In: Gier, J.J., Mercier, L. (eds) Mining Women. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73399-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73399-6_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-62104-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-73399-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection