Mother Jones Quotes
There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
Mary Harris Jones, 1830-1930, (Mother Jones), Co-Founder, Social Democratic Party and IWW, Labor Organizer, Autobiography
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Jefferson was one of the first political and economic thinkers to express concern over the “wage slave” concept of the industrial revolution. This was one of the major reasons that he was not in consonance with Alexander Hamilton in his economic vision for America. While we followed the Hamilton direction, there are still issues of maintaining freedom and independence for an employee in modern nations and economies.
Sinclair had written an expose of the meat packing industry – the Jungle – which used as its setting the Armour meat packing factory. It changed the way the public thought about the industry, the role of government and regulation. President Roosevelt took up the reform role, and got Congress to Regulate the quality and cleanliness of the meat packing industry. Sinclair, however not only wanted that reform, but also wanted the labor wages and conditions reformed. He referred to the Armour plant as the fortress.
This quotation is interesting for two reasons. First it is a good example of the twisted logic of some of the Slavery apologists who claimed that the Negro slave was better off than the free wage earner. The second reason is that it illustrates the norms of the treatment of the working man before the Civil War. The union movement would change the situation for the free laborer over the next century and then holidays and worker rights became normalized in American society. See {641290} for another of his absurd arguments.
Salisbury was a brilliant, effective prime minister, but he was a snob and not a democrat. See {639131}.
Generally, the robbery he was referring to was white color crime, profits from monopolies, profits made by deviating from laws and regulations, and most frequently by methods that most people think should be illegal and certainly are immoral, but the wealthy have persuaded the Congress and Executive to make many of these thinks legal.
Mary G. Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She helped coordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World.
