Mother Jones died at the Burgess farm in Maryland at 11.55pm on November 30th 1930.

Mother Jones and Lillie Burgess on Sept 16th 1930, just before Mother Jones died. 

Her funeral was attended by tens of thousands of union workers. Father William Sweeney celebrated mass for the repose of her soul at St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in Washington on Wednesday, 3rd December 1930.

The casket was then placed on the Baltimore and Ohio train and was transported by rail following the route taken by the train bearing the remains of Abraham Lincoln to Springfield in 1866. From St Louis’s Union Station, the casket bearing Mother Jones was placed on the Wabash train to Mount Olive. It was taken to the Odd Fellows Hall in the town where it lay in state for a further three days. Thousands of miners and their families called to pay their respects. 

Media reports state that up to 40,000 trade unionists and working people swamped the town over the three days in what was probably the largest gathering for a funeral of a woman trade unionist in history. Women could not ascend the formal male career ladder of trade unionism at the time and so Mother Jones remained a front line union organiser especially in the early 1900s.

Yet her leadership of miners, her fearless approach to union organising and her moral authority among working class people remained without parallel. Her fearlessness and courage had made her a legend, and so almost a decade after she took a back seat from union activity, when she was over 80 years old, her funeral provoked a massive response from workers everywhere. 

They remembered, we remember too after ninety five years.

The reponse is probably best summed up by Fr. John Maguire     

Father Maguire, a labour activist, spoke in his oration at the funeral of Mother Jones.

“Sometimes, she used language that a polite family journal could not print, sometimes she used methods that made the righteous grieve……But let it be remembered that she was, after all, human. Her faults were the excesses of her courage, her love of justice, the love in her mother’s heart. Today in gorgeous mahogany furnished and carefully guarded offices in distant capitals, wealthy mine owners and capitalists are breathing sighs of relief. Today among the plains of Illinois, the hillsides and valleys of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, In California, Colorado and British Columbia, strong men and toil worn women are weeping tears of bitter grief. The reason for this contrasting relief and sorrow is the same.

Mother Jones is dead!”

Author, Edward M. Steel editor “The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones (1988 University of Pittsburg Press) in his afterword described the final public “birthday” appearance of Mother Jones on 1st May 1930. 

“Although she had been confined to bed for weeks, on 1st May she summoned up the energy to move from her upstairs bedroom to a rocking chair under the apple tree in the yard (of the Burgess farm), where all day long she opened telegrams and letters, received visitors, reminisced with old friends, bantered with reporters, and presided over the cutting of the five-tiered  birthday cake supplied by the bakers’ union.

Many labour leaders in their Washington HQ had conspired to make the day a success and Paramount sent a crew to film the festivities. When she spoke into their microphones, she probably addressed more people than she had in years of street gatherings and public addresses.”

The New York Times report the next day contains the longest quotation from her fiery birthday remarks: 

Out on the lawn she faced the talking picture cameras, took a deep breath and a drink of water, and began an impromptu speech which brought loud applause and sent the nearby circling crows wheeling back to the woods. A dog enjoying a nap in the May sunshine jumped to his feet as the white-haired labor leader said in a ringing voice:

“America was not founded on dollars but on the blood of men who gave their lives for your benefit. Power lies in the hands of labor to retain American liberty, but labor has not yet learned how to use that power. A wonderful power is in the hands of women, too but they don’t know how to use it. Capitalists sidetrack the women into clubs and make ladies of them. Nobody wants a lady, they want women. Ladies are parlour parasites.” 

Later on in the day in a TV recording which still exists, she said in her singsong accent which betrayed her Cork roots:

“You know I am considered a Bolshevik, a Red and an IWW and a Radical.
And I admit to being all they’ve charged me. I’m anything that would change moneyed civilization to a higher and grander civilization for the ages to come.
 And I long to see the day when Labour will have the destination of the nation in her own hands and she will stand as a united force and show the world what the workers can do.”

Mother Jones

In an earlier letter from Mother Jones dated November 12th 1928, she had made a special request to the miners of Mt. Olive.

“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that i get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden Illinois, on the morning of October 12th 1898. For their heroic sacrifice for their fellow men they are responsible for Illinois being one of the best organised labor states in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away, to feel that I sleep under the clay with those brave boys.”

This Union Miners Cemetery was founded in Mt. Olive in 1898. As well as the Virden dead, many activists of the Progressive Miners’ of America (P.M.A) lie buried in this unique resting place. Among those who have been buried there recently include singer songwriter, and union activist, Anne Feeney, who performed in a concert at the 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival in Shandon, Cork. In 1936, members of the Progressive Miners’ of America erected a large monument with two bronze statues and a 20 foot pillar over the grave of Mother Jones at its center. It was unveiled on the 11th October 1936 and more then 50,000 people attended the ceremony.

To see her extract, please watch

Watch Mother Jones