Autumn Guillotte wrote and led a walking tour on July 22 & 23, 2017, celebrating Mother Jones as a part of Chicago’s labor history. On July 23, ‘Mother Jones’ in the person of Brigid Duffy Gerace joined Ms. Guillotte on the tour.

The tour began in Grant Park at the Seated Lincoln, “the immortal Lincoln” who fought for the abolishment of chattel slavery. Mother Jones wished to abolish another crime, that of wage slavery. The tour continued to the shore of Lake Michigan where Mother Jones, working as a seamstress in the warm homes of the wealthy, looked through the plate glass window “at the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking along the frozen lake front.” “My employers,” she said, “seemed neither to notice nor to care.” The tour ended at the Auditorium Theater where Mother spoke to the largest assembly of the Socialists of Chicago in 1903. (See tour handout.)

In her later years Mother Jones started a new way of agitating, bringing the entire family into the fight and rallying entire communities to support the workers. Her key message was for the women. She advised them to organize independently. 

“You will never solve the problem until you let in the women. No nation is greater than its women.” “When I call a union meeting, I make sure the women come. When they do, for the first time they hear and understand. Instead of returning to work, the women take up the fight, they continue the struggle and eventually the company must give in. . . .Women are fighters.”