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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who

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Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff, your weekly podcast that usually is about

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Speaker 1: a cool person who did cool stuff. But sometimes I

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Speaker 1: start writing a script and then I find out halfway

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Speaker 1: that I feel differently than I did when I started.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Giljoy, and with me today is

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Speaker 1: my guest Lori Penny. Hi, Laurie, how are you?

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Speaker 2: I'm all right. Thanks. You've got a huge storm here

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Speaker 2: in DC where I'm recording, but now I'm great. It's

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Speaker 2: really really nice to be back on the show.

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Speaker 1: I'm about to have a very similar storm, probably the

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Speaker 1: same storm. I'm really confused by this. I know that

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Speaker 1: weather is definitely what people listen to the show to

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Speaker 1: hear about, because normally weather here goes from West Virginia

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Speaker 1: towards DC and not the other way. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what's happening. Everything's wild. This is the

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Speaker 1: most important thing that's happening this week. But also important

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Speaker 1: is our producer Ian Hi.

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Speaker 3: Ian Hey, Margaret, Hey, Laurie. How are you guys today?

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Speaker 1: Good? We're good. People usually get to say hi to

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Speaker 1: you when you're the audio engineer, but you're not the

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Speaker 1: audio engineer today. The producer. Our audio engineer is Rory.

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Speaker 2: No good, I'm not the audio engineer. Oh my god,

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Speaker 2: am I Yeah?

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Speaker 1: No, yeah, Laurie is going to be in charge of audio.

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Speaker 2: Oh dear, this is going to be rapidly, rapidly descending chaos.

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Speaker 1: That's just good.

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Speaker 2: Mean, it's in Los Angeles where there is no weather

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Speaker 2: at all.

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Speaker 4: Ever, Oh, it's actually quite warm right now. I'm not

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Speaker 4: a fan, but you know, we make do.

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Speaker 2: I was told when I lived there that there were

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Speaker 2: four seasons hot, real, hot, on fire, and lakers.

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Speaker 4: That's hilarious and accurate. That's really good. Okay, I'm stealing that.

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Speaker 3: That's good. That's good.

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Speaker 1: But our audio engineer is Rory, and everyone's sahat to

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Speaker 1: Rory because I'm weird about this.

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Speaker 3: Hi, Rory, Rory, Rory.

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Speaker 1: And our theme music was written for us by n Woman.

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Speaker 1: Everyone comes to this show for the hard hitting journalism

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Speaker 1: on the topics of today. So I'm here to tell

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Speaker 1: you the hottest take about a woman who was born

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Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty seven and died almost one hundred years ago.

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Speaker 1: But it's going to be a pure killjoy episode. You

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Speaker 1: ever heard of Mother Jones?

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Speaker 2: I have, well, I've thought. I know that there was

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Speaker 2: a person who inspired the magazine. Yep, a union organizer. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's about all I know.

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Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Ian, you heard anything about Mother Jones very vaguely.

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Speaker 4: I know there's like a political YouTube channel I follow

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Speaker 4: that is named Mother Jones. I'm assuming there's some relation there,

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Speaker 4: but maybe not.

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: They're probably related to the magazine.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, who that makes more sense.

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Speaker 1: I don't think we'll have legal trouble with what I'm

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Speaker 1: about to say.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way to start.

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Speaker 1: Mother Jones the person. I am not going to opine

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Speaker 1: one or the other about the magazine at any point

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Speaker 1: this week. Mother Jones the person was kind of a fraud.

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Speaker 2: Huh.

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Speaker 1: Okay. So there's a version of Mother Jones that you

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Speaker 1: can tell, you can say Mother Jones was an elderly

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Speaker 1: Irish peasant woman who wore black morning gowns that she

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Speaker 1: made herself. She tramped all throughout coal country with a

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Speaker 1: pistol in her dress. She could out drink and out

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Speaker 1: cuss the miners, and she led strike after strike. She

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Speaker 1: was a woman who organized black workers alongside white ones.

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Speaker 1: She involved women directly in labor struggle. She helped make

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Speaker 1: the union. She was part of some of the most

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Speaker 1: popular unions in the country, and she even helped found

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Speaker 1: that pod favorite the Industrial Workers of the World. You

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Speaker 1: could tell the story all of those things I said

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Speaker 1: are technically true her. I'd also be lying. But Mother

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Speaker 1: Jones can't complain if I lie, because Mother Jones lied

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Speaker 1: constantly about everything.

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Speaker 3: And she's also dead.

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Speaker 1: So that's true. Well, she says as much. I don't

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Speaker 1: trust her, trust but verify. Yeah, exactly exactly. So we'll

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Speaker 1: be at the end of this, we'll be going to

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Speaker 1: I think Illinois where she's buried, just to make sure

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Speaker 1: she's down there.

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Speaker 2: Could it be Minnesota or one of the other states

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Speaker 2: that begins with them, I don't really know American geography.

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Speaker 1: No it's Illinois. Yeah, no, which is near a Minnesota.

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Speaker 1: There's more than one labor cemetery in Illinois, so near

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Speaker 1: a Minnesota.

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Speaker 2: I did not know there was a North and South Minnesota, not.

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Speaker 1: A one, right, fair enough? Wait, no, we should I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to get into the habit of the spirit of

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Speaker 1: Mother Jones. Oh no, there's totally two Minnesota's, and I'm

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Speaker 1: from which everyone.

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Speaker 2: Is more radical West Minnesota.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Yes, exactly.

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Speaker 2: And an enclave of revolutionary fervor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And I've been there forever. I am a

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Speaker 1: thousand years old, just like Mother Jones. It is kind

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Speaker 1: of funny because I do constantly refer to West Virginia

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Speaker 1: as the better Virginia.

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Speaker 3: I always call it good Virginia.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, excellent. Yeah, the one that didn't fight for

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Speaker 1: slavery in exists because they didn't want to. Yeah exactly.

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Speaker 2: You know I didn't know that.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, though, West Virginia split off from Virginia

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Speaker 1: because they were like, well, we could fight and die

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Speaker 1: over owning people, but we don't want to. And I'd

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Speaker 1: like to say it's because all the white people here

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Speaker 1: were like anti racist. It's because they were all poor

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Speaker 1: and they didn't own enough people to be worth dying over.

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Speaker 2: Also in its own way, fairness.

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Speaker 1: I know, sometimes what you lack in other moral qualities

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Speaker 1: you make up for by being.

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Speaker 2: Poor anyway, sea.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean honestly, I was gonna say, that's

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Speaker 1: like kind of Mother Jones's thing too. So she lied

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Speaker 1: so much much that it's almost impossible to sort out

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Speaker 1: fact from fiction in her biography. But historians have done

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Speaker 1: their best and This is why I know she lied

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Speaker 1: so much, is because even historians who are trying to

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Speaker 1: like her are like, and then she said this, that

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Speaker 1: is an exaggeration, or this is not technically possible to

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Speaker 1: be true.

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Speaker 2: You're gonna tell me that her name wasn't really mother?

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Speaker 1: Okay. I think her name probably was actually Jones, but

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Speaker 1: I'm not certain. And there was another Mother Jones before her,

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Speaker 1: and she stole the name.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 1: But I'll get to that, like no, like all the

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Speaker 1: way down. She also was probably a mother at some point.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll get to it, Okay. There is

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Speaker 1: no reason to offer the benefit of the doubt about

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Speaker 1: anything we can't prove about her because she lied constantly.

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Speaker 1: And I probably don't talk about this much on the show.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I hate liars just reflexively. You can't

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Speaker 1: trust anything they say. If they lie about one thing,

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Speaker 1: they're lying about lots of other things. Mother Jones is

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Speaker 1: a messy figure by pretty much any realistic account. I

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Speaker 1: spent all week looking for anyone calling her out. No

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Speaker 1: one's willing to. That's why I'm here with the hard

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Speaker 1: hitting journalism. Wow. Okay, By any realistic account, she is

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Speaker 1: a fraud she lied about who she was, She yanked

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Speaker 1: another woman's name, and she was probably grifting and did

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Speaker 1: not keep track of the money she fundraised. She has

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Speaker 1: been heroized and canonized sometimes kind of like literally like

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Speaker 1: all of her stuff was very religious, even though she

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Speaker 1: was personally agnostic. But she used very religious iconography and

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Speaker 1: was quite excited when people used it to refer to her.

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Speaker 2: I'm a Catholic, Yeah, yeah, right.

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Speaker 1: Very much so, even though she wouldn't identify that way.

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Speaker 1: But she's from a very Catholic background. In all of

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Speaker 1: her way, she talks about things as very Catholic. People

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Speaker 1: tell the partial story. She organized black and white workers.

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Speaker 1: That much is true. She also, to the end of

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Speaker 1: her days, was wildly racist who organized against Asian immigration.

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Speaker 1: Didn't just talked shit on Asians and used racist terms

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Speaker 1: to refer to them, but actively organized against Asian immigration

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Speaker 1: into the country. She complained about Japs and Hindus stealing

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Speaker 1: American jobs and also about them replacing the national character.

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Speaker 3: That sounds oddly familiar.

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Speaker 2: As an Irish person.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, uh huh, who was an immigrant of the country, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: came over when she was fourteen or something. She organized

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Speaker 1: women and got them involved in strikes. She was also

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Speaker 1: opposed to women's suffrage. There were other radical women at

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Speaker 1: the time who were opposed to women's suffrage because they

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Speaker 1: were like voting as a distraction, right yeah, or even

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Speaker 1: people who were like, oh, the suffrage movement isn't class

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Speaker 1: conscious enough. It's a bunch of upper middle class white women,

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Speaker 1: you know whatever.

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Speaker 2: Right, Emma Goldman was pretty agnostic about the whole thing.

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Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, exactly. Emma Goldman didn't refuse to support

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Speaker 1: women's suffrage because she believed that a woman's place was

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Speaker 1: in the home. Mother Jones did. She supported traditional women's roles.

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Speaker 1: Women belonged in the home, raising kids and cleaning and

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Speaker 1: cooking for their hard working men.

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Speaker 2: This was eighteen fifty something.

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Speaker 1: So she's actually doing most of her work around the

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Speaker 1: turn of the century, like nineteen hundred.

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Speaker 2: So I was going to say, how long had this

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Speaker 2: idea even been traditional for I When we think of this,

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Speaker 2: you know, women should stay in the home, cooking and

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Speaker 2: cleaning for the men's as some kind of ancient, ancient tradition,

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Speaker 2: but it was really very much associated with the industrial

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Speaker 2: revolution and that necessity of abiding labor that way. So

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Speaker 2: it's like this traditional natural role, even at the tenth

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Speaker 2: of the century. This was about one hundred years old. Max.

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Speaker 1: That makes some sense. And actually, weirdly, she only started

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Speaker 1: kind of taking that sort of role once she gets

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Speaker 1: married to like an iron molder at some point. Oh right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so okay, and then the other final thing, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean final thing. I'll be talking about her all week.

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Speaker 1: But she wasn't as radical as she makes herself out

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Speaker 1: to be. She was usually on the left side of

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Speaker 1: any given union, although she was in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the road unions and then on the left side of those.

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Speaker 1: It's absolutely fair to say she was a socialist. But

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Speaker 1: she uh before the Battle of Blair Mountain, which is

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Speaker 1: the most militant labor uprising in the United States besides

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Speaker 1: the one that happened in the Civil War, when black

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Speaker 1: people had a general strike that won the Civil War.

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Speaker 1: Before Blair Mountain, Mother Jones lied to the workers to

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Speaker 1: get them to go home. She went to the governor

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Speaker 1: and was like, Hey, I'll get the workers to go

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Speaker 1: home instead of having an armed uprising. Don't worry. And

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Speaker 1: she went to the workers and was like, I got

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Speaker 1: a letter in my pocket, a telegram direct from the President.

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Speaker 1: That says, if you all go home, he'll listen to

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Speaker 1: your demands. And they were like, okay, let's see the telegram.

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Speaker 1: And she was like, no, I don't want to. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to show you goes to a different school.

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Speaker 2: And she was lying, and there was no telegram.

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Speaker 1: No, there was no telegram. So the miners went to war.

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Speaker 1: I really wanted to like Mother Jones. When I started,

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Speaker 1: I was like even kind of like, well, she wasn't

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Speaker 1: really an anarchist, but she's doing all this cool stuff.

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Speaker 1: She's like a goth and she's like running around and

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Speaker 1: cussing and organizing.

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Speaker 2: You know, goths being the most political subculture, as we

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Speaker 2: all know. I'm a goth. I'm a lapsed goth. I

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Speaker 2: know you're a Goth's let's be real. Let's be real.

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Speaker 2: Politics aren't essential to that subculture.

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Speaker 1: No, no, But she wore black morning dresses everywhere and

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Speaker 1: she sewed herself. That's cool, It is cool.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know people who do that now, and not

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Speaker 2: all of them. Not everybody who wears black morning dresses

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Speaker 2: that they sow themselves is also covert or overt racist

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Speaker 2: union organizer. It's not necessary. It's an esthetic first subcult. John,

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Speaker 2: you can stick there if you want, and maybe you should.

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Speaker 1: When I came up into the goth scene, it was

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Speaker 1: like super a political exactly where I was, and so

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Speaker 1: I had that impression about goths forever. And then I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, actually, goths do skew overall like Conna Lefty.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, London and UK goths similar. It's aesthetic sort of

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Speaker 2: politics are an offshoot of a certain kind of culture. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but there are many ways to be polyssicized by the

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Speaker 2: essential feeling of being an outsider, not all of them

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Speaker 2: once we might support.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, fortunately that's true. So Mother Jones more or less

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Speaker 1: everything we know about Mother Jones for the first fifty seven,

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Speaker 1: maybe sixty years of her life come from a source

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Speaker 1: that should be very reliable. Mother Jones. But she is

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Speaker 1: a self made woman, and by that I mean her

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Speaker 1: history has been self made, and there's very little for

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Speaker 1: the first sixty years of her life that historians can confirm.

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Speaker 3: That's nuts.

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Speaker 4: I know, nobody ever like saw her in public or

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Speaker 4: anything and wrote it down.

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Speaker 3: I guess not really.

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Speaker 1: Like she shows up on a couple like census records

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Speaker 1: and shit, right, but she claims that she's like part

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Speaker 1: of everything for years. No, she like comes onto the

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Speaker 1: scene in eighteen ninety four, and so everything from before

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Speaker 1: then she's just making up. Or she was a bit player.

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Speaker 1: We don't know, and there's no reason to give it

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Speaker 1: her the better of the doubt, right, Yeah, And this

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we should write off what she has

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Speaker 1: to say about her past. It's just that we should

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Speaker 1: take it with an entire shaker of salt. She was storytelling,

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Speaker 1: as one of my friends puts it, very much, not

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Speaker 1: one to let the truth get in the way of

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Speaker 1: a good tale. Her autobiography, that she wrote near the

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Speaker 1: end of her life when she was in her late eighties,

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Speaker 1: is a work of fiction. It skims over her early

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Speaker 1: life in just a few pages. She's got no interest

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Speaker 1: in telling the story of Mary Harris as she was born,

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Speaker 1: or Mary Jones as she spent her early adult life.

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Speaker 1: She wants to tell you the story about Mother Jones,

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Speaker 1: a persona that she became. She claims she was born

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Speaker 1: in the city of Cork in Ireland in eighteen thirty

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Speaker 1: on May first.

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Speaker 2: My family were in Cork in the eighteen thirty three.

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Speaker 1: And I was actually wondering what part of Ireland your

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Speaker 1: family was from.

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Speaker 2: Here cook a Bear Island, which is not in fact

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Speaker 2: in Ireland. It's a peninsula just outside Cork.

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Speaker 1: So it'll take the Rhode Island of Ireland. Rhode Island

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Speaker 1: isn't an island. I know you don't know America.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I mean there's a lot wrapped up in that

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Speaker 2: statement which I'm going to gloss over. But sure, yeah,

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Speaker 2: Bear Island is just like Rhode Island.

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Speaker 1: Okay, great, can't wait to go to Providence, Ireland.

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Speaker 2: There's a box factory mixed boxes for other factories.

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Speaker 1: Well, if you if your family was in Cork in

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Speaker 1: eighteen thirty, you could make up stuff and it would

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Speaker 1: be just as likely to be true, maybe more likely

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Speaker 1: to be true. Then what Mother Jones has to say

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Speaker 1: about I think.

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Speaker 2: My No, my great grandfather was Mother Jones. Let's go

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Speaker 2: with that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, you can't disprove this. No, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: Mother Jones is a trans woman. No, I don't want her.

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Speaker 1: I don't want her.

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Speaker 2: Oh.

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Speaker 1: No, she was not born in eighteen thirty on May first.

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Speaker 1: She was born in eighteen thirty seven, and we have

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Speaker 1: no idea what day she was born. She was probably

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Speaker 1: not born on May Day. She didn't start telling people

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Speaker 1: she was born on May Day until she was in

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Speaker 1: her sixties, and May Day was a labor holiday. She

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Speaker 1: was most likely born in the city of Cork in

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Speaker 1: County Cork in Southern Ireland, to parents who spent some

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Speaker 1: of their time in the city and some of their

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Speaker 1: time in a town of like twelve buildings outside the

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Speaker 1: city that her mother's from. She was baptized as Mary

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Speaker 1: Harris on August first, nineteen thirty seven. Her mother likely

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Speaker 1: grew up in a mud wall, dirt floored hut that

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Speaker 1: her family built themselves but still had to pay rent

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Speaker 1: on because colonial Ireland sucks and that's what every Catholic

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Speaker 1: family there at the time had to do. Mary herself

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Speaker 1: probably grew up in the Catholic sums slums of the city,

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Speaker 1: choked with animal shit from nearby markets. Her parents weren't literate,

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Speaker 1: but she was probably from a young age. The nuns

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Speaker 1: at a nearby convent who offered free education to poor girls,

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Speaker 1: was like a few blocks away from where she probably lived.

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Speaker 2: I believe at the time that there was a big

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Speaker 2: push to educate the children, even of the working class,

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Speaker 2: specifically in reading and writing in English.

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Speaker 1: Okay, oh shit, yep, it's still bad education for you, but.

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Speaker 2: In order to make the kids and the upcoming generations

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Speaker 2: fluent in English. First, Yeah, this is one of the

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Speaker 2: reasons that free education is pushed quite a lot. Citation needed,

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Speaker 2: but the over that between education in English and the

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Speaker 2: systematic eraser of Irish language. Yeah, it's important at that time.

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Speaker 1: No, that makes sense. That was actually one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons why I was. I knew your family's fairly Irish.

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Speaker 1: Why had you? Honestly, I guess Mother Jones would like

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Speaker 1: to play up how politically turbulent the area was when

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Speaker 1: she grew up, talking about seeing radicals hanging from scaffolds everywhere.

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Speaker 1: This is not true. It was a tense time and place.

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Speaker 1: People were rioting and early Irish labor union stuff we've

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Speaker 1: covered a couple times on this show. It tended less

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Speaker 1: towards like let's form a union and more like let's

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Speaker 1: cross dress and kill our landlords through secret societies like

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Speaker 1: the Molly Maguires and the Ribbon Men and the funnelly

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Speaker 1: named White Boys. She claimed that her grandfather was hanged

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Speaker 1: fighting for Irish freedom. This is not true. There's no

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Speaker 1: When I first wrote this script, right, I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: it seems like that might not be true. Like, no,

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Speaker 1: it's just she's fucking lying about everything. It is possible

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Speaker 1: people did a lot of work, found some records. That

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Speaker 1: is possible that she had a great uncle or something

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Speaker 1: who was shipped off for Australia for doing secret society work.

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Speaker 1: Like it is possible that her family had some connections

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Speaker 1: to this stuff. She tells a story about how her

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Speaker 1: father escaped to America at a fishing vessel as troops

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Speaker 1: looked for him, combing the city of Cork with Irish

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Speaker 1: heads on the bayonets of their rifles.

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Speaker 2: Hang on, they went through the whole city with heads

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Speaker 2: on the top of a rifle. That seems both ludicrous and.

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Speaker 1: Inefficient physically arduous.

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Speaker 2: It's a thing we said we'd do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The British are like, this is our workout system.

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Speaker 2: Everyone's a cost now. It's not political.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And what really frustrates me about this is that

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Speaker 1: you can tell the truth about colonial oppression in Ireland

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties, there's about to be a genocide.

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Speaker 1: Right ten years later she lives through that genocide. That

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Speaker 1: genocide is why her father fled. It wasn't political persecution.

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Speaker 1: It was the persecution of all of the Irish people.

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Speaker 1: There was no evidence of soldiers with heads on their

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Speaker 1: bayonets marching through the city, and there's no evidence that

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Speaker 1: her father was special. It is nearly certain that mother

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Speaker 1: Jones's father went to America for the same reason. Two

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Speaker 1: million other Irish folks left the island at the time

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Speaker 1: that he did, which was eighteen forty seven. The Potato famine,

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Speaker 1: when English starved Ireland by forcing them to try and

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Speaker 1: subsist off of only potatoes in the middle of a

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Speaker 1: blight and started kicking everyone out of their houses and shit.

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Speaker 1: A million people starved to death and two million people left.

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Speaker 2: Which is not a piece of history that is taught

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Speaker 2: in British schools.

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Speaker 1: Oh really, Like, what do they say about the Irish Famine?

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Speaker 1: What'd you grow?

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Speaker 2: They don't. No. I learned this all from a fantastic

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Speaker 2: book called The Blood Never Dried, A people's history of

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Speaker 2: the British Empire.

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Speaker 1: That was a fucking good name.

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Speaker 2: I read about ten years but no. Most history education

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Speaker 2: in the UK, of which Ireland is not part. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: most history education in the UK there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: focus on the Tudors. We go almost up to the

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Speaker 2: English Civil War, and then there's a sort of Russia,

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Speaker 2: and then we sort of pick up again around World

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Speaker 2: War One. Seriously, like it is very it's not only common,

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Speaker 2: it's usual for British kids to study history even up

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Speaker 2: to the age of eighteen and not learn a line

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Speaker 2: of imperial history.

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Speaker 1: That's fucking wild. Because as much as the American educational

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Speaker 1: system did not teach me a proper history education, I

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Speaker 1: did learn about, like some of the great evils of America,

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Speaker 1: Like I learned a fair amount about slavery, you know,

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Speaker 1: and some of it was even true.

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Speaker 2: The impression I got was that in terms of post

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Speaker 2: settler history, well, there's not as much to hell, so

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Speaker 2: if you skip over certain bits, you're skipping over quite

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Speaker 2: a lot of it. But the impression I got was

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Speaker 2: that people might be taught different versions of what happened,

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Speaker 2: but it's still mentioned. Like don't some people call it

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Speaker 2: the War of Northern Aggression?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's when I heard. Recently, we just don't learn

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Speaker 2: about the colonization of Ireland at all.

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Speaker 1: But did you learn in school about how important saving

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Speaker 1: money through deals and advertisements is?

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Speaker 2: No? I don't know what they taught us because no

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Speaker 2: I didn't.

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Speaker 1: Oh, well, we're here to educate you as and the

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Speaker 1: next the next AD is for Latin classes. The show

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Speaker 1: is brought to you by sumus esta sunt aram aras

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Speaker 1: arrant aramas aratus arrun.

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Speaker 2: Iran ran.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I fucking yeah, thanks, I can conjugate

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Speaker 1: one word in Latin. Wrong, here's ads.

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Speaker 2: And we're back.

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Speaker 1: The Irish saying goes according to the history book I

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Speaker 1: just read. I mean it was passed down to me

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Speaker 1: by my grandmother mother Gentz. Yeah, my grandmother, your uncle,

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Speaker 1: Oh that okay, huh, your great great grandfather, your great

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Speaker 1: great grandfather always said God created the potato plate, but

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Speaker 1: the English made the famine. So when Mary was like

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Speaker 1: ten years old or so, her dad and her older

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Speaker 1: brother left for Canada to work on the railroads. And

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Speaker 1: this meant her older brother off to go work the railroads.

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Speaker 1: He's twelve. They went aboard one of the infamous Coffin

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Speaker 1: ships alongside twenty thousand other refugees, not on the same ship,

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Speaker 1: but the Coffin ships had about two hundred thousand other

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Speaker 1: refugees in eighteen forty seven. It's called Black forty seven.

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Speaker 1: Typhus raged on the ships. The travel is five weeks long.

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Speaker 1: Of those who left County Cork, one in ten died

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Speaker 1: in the passage that year. Thirty percent of the survivors

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Speaker 1: in Toronto died within the next year, so it is

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Speaker 1: not good times coming to Canada. Dad survived, so does brother.

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Speaker 1: They make their way to Burlington, Vermont, where he and

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Speaker 1: his son appear on census records, so we know it happened.

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Speaker 1: Mother Jones was, in her odd way, a patriot and

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Speaker 1: insisted that her father was a US citizen and not Canadian.

438
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:33,320
Speaker 1: There is no reason to believe her about anything. Ever,

439
00:23:35,720 --> 00:23:38,360
Speaker 1: within a few years, her father and her brother, who

440
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:40,640
Speaker 1: was twelve when he left, they had saved up enough

441
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,640
Speaker 1: money to get the rest of the family over and

442
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:46,600
Speaker 1: they settled in Toronto. She probably went to Catholic school

443
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 1: and then lied and said she went to public school.

444
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,040
Speaker 1: Her whole vibe is so fucking Catholic, and she constantly

445
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:54,400
Speaker 1: refers to things in religious terms, but she hates the church,

446
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,560
Speaker 1: which is relatable, and she downplays this part of her history.

447
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,359
Speaker 1: She lived with her family and a few like bonus kids,

448
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: like poor kids. The family was taken care of in

449
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:07,199
Speaker 1: a tiny house and they had a tiny yard with

450
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:09,600
Speaker 1: five cows, so they were actually like doing better than

451
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 1: the average Irish family over the Catholic Irish family at

452
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: the time. There was a whole bunch of Protestant Irish

453
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: immigrants in Toronto at the time who outnumbered them and

454
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:21,159
Speaker 1: would get into like little ethnic wars in Toronto and

455
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: go run and kill Catholics and parade around with their heads. No,

456
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:28,120
Speaker 1: you don't have to do whatever. Anyway, young Mary probably

457
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: learned dressmaking, and when she was twenty she started getting

458
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,960
Speaker 1: a teaching certificate at the Toronto Normal School, which was

459
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:38,399
Speaker 1: a state run school. Yeah, totally. It's a very normal thing.

460
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:40,399
Speaker 2: The ones where they don't teach macket.

461
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:44,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the antiog warts.

462
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 3: I know.

463
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: That's why she didn't last.

464
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:49,920
Speaker 2: Door to the Xavier Academy.

465
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't last because it wasn't the Xavier Academy

466
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,160
Speaker 1: and it was a state run school to teach teachers,

467
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: and it was free and students got their tuition paid

468
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 1: for plus books a stipend. So it's actually a pretty

469
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: cool system that they set up. But she was the

470
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: only Catholic woman's student in the entire school, and she

471
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 1: didn't last. There's only one other Irish Catholic period, and

472
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: I think people probably made fun of her, and shit,

473
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: I don't know. At twenty three, she left home for

474
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 1: Michigan to take a teaching job at a convent. She

475
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: doesn't talk about this much. And now she's off to

476
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 1: live in a third country, the one that she eventually

477
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: becomes Mother Jones in America. And for this next huge

478
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 1: chunk of her life, we have only her own story

479
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: to go on, which means I don't believe it, but whatever,

480
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: I'll tell it because it's the story of Mother Jones,

481
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 1: and I'll just be really cynical the whole time. And

482
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: this is basically a behind the Bastards episode that I got.

483
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: I started recording, and I like the middle of Tuesday,

484
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: I was like, shit, I'm locked into this subject.

485
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've gone so far, we can't go back now.

486
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:56,919
Speaker 1: Yeah.

487
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 2: I understand that the behind cool people who did cool

488
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 2: stuff is that these people are so good and possibly

489
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:09,919
Speaker 2: even nice, but like being this much of a fabulous there,

490
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:11,880
Speaker 2: there's some there's kind of a flex there.

491
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. I honestly I was ready to

492
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: have her. I made up my whole backstory be okay

493
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:21,879
Speaker 1: when she was a super radical who like did all

494
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: this like anti racist organizing and like you know, uh,

495
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:30,399
Speaker 1: like led workers into militant struggle. Finding out she also

496
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:35,440
Speaker 1: like was an anti immigration racist and oh was she yeah?

497
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: Or yeah she lied about that. No, I think that's

498
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:41,400
Speaker 1: the one thing I can trust her about. And also

499
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,120
Speaker 1: that like two hundred pages into a biography of her,

500
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,440
Speaker 1: I find out she's probably pocketing all the money she found.

501
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 3: Racists did just keep on coming.

502
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: And at that point I'm like, nah, you're a fraud.

503
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: But but she also does interesting stuff. She is interesting.

504
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: She's an interesting self made mythological figure in American history.

505
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: It's like if Paul Bunyan was a guy who made himself.

506
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 2: Up as a trounding guy.

507
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she winds up in Michigan. She's a secular teacher.

508
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: She gets paid eight dollars a month. That is all

509
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,119
Speaker 1: of three hundred and three dollars a month today people

510
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: are not getting paid well. In the eighteen fifties, she

511
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: lasts less than a year before she went off to

512
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,680
Speaker 1: Chicago to become a dressmaker and then wanderlust is still honor.

513
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 1: So she went off to Memphis, Tennessee to teach again.

514
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: Where she married a white man named George Jones in

515
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty. He was a union man, an iron molder,

516
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 1: and this is one of the better paid skilled labor

517
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 1: jobs available to the urban working class. Tennessee is an

518
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:47,119
Speaker 1: interesting place to move to in eighteen sixty because although

519
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 1: you probably learn more about the American Civil War than

520
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: you did about the Irish Famine in your public schools, Yeah, because.

521
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 2: The American Civil War is covered in its own small

522
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:01,400
Speaker 2: way by the chipmunks. Do America no, for real? That's

523
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 2: how I learned about things like the Pilgrims.

524
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: I would assume that it would be like they just

525
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: teach you about it because y'all got rid of slavery

526
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: decades before us, and so you could just like flex

527
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: on us.

528
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 2: Did do that. I actually did some reathing into that recently,

529
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 2: just like primed for Like, wait, I'm sure we didn't

530
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 2: do this. I'm having read a lot of other history.

531
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: But no, No, America was a uniquely slave empire.

532
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:25,880
Speaker 2: There were some people who were really genuinely driven simply

533
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:29,400
Speaker 2: by morality, including a lot of working class people who

534
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 2: just really didn't have much contact with the reality of

535
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:32,919
Speaker 2: empire whatsoever.

536
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, anyway, that's no, no, it's okay.

537
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 2: It's suppression, not the heroes in almost any of the stories,

538
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 2: as is writ and proper.

539
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 3: Ah.

540
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: But what's really funny is when compared to America around slavery,

541
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 1: they usually show up as they good guys. We've done

542
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: a couple where the British show up in like armed

543
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: slaver vaults and shit. But Tennessee is in the South

544
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: and eighteen sixty is the year before the Chipmunks kick

545
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: off the Civil War.

546
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it's amazing how long they lasted after

547
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 2: the original founding fathers Alvin Simon and theater right, yeah,

548
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 2: these were the sons of those chips right exactly.

549
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:12,640
Speaker 1: And so in Memphis, Tennessee, the fam and Irish were

550
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: the only workers cheap enough to hire to compete with

551
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: unfree labor, and so the Irish lived in a neighborhood

552
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: called Pinch short for pinch Gut, which was called that

553
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: because everyone's so skinny. They're starving or they're starving so

554
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 1: they're skinny. And it is mostly free black and Irish

555
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: folks living in the Pinch, and spoiler alert, the Irish

556
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 1: immigrants were some of the most anti black racists in

557
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: US history because the Irish were like the next up

558
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: up the racial hierarchy. They were above black folks, so

559
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: they had something to prove. And I promised up top

560
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: that mother Jones was racist. But to make it clear,

561
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: she is in one hundred percent pro black and tried

562
00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: very hard to fight against anti black racism. She was

563
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: racist against Asian people. Her husband, George Jones. First of all, okay,

564
00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that thinks he was never

565
00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: even fucking married. I don't know, Like.

566
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 3: George Jones sounds pretty fake. I'm not gonna it does.

567
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 2: So does marriage.

568
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 1: And then but it's really intense about it. Well, I'll

569
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: get to what's intense about it in a minute, but

570
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: just sit with the fact that I have no idea

571
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: if this man's real. It probably is. There's probably even

572
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: a census thing on it. I didn't find the like

573
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: no historian I was reading specifically, It was like, here's

574
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: the census records on George S. Jones. But George Jones,

575
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: the totally real man, was in the International Iron Molders Union,

576
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: which is at the time the strongest union in Civil

577
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 1: War America. War caused inflation, which caused the rich to

578
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:34,640
Speaker 1: get richer. So have skilled laborers who built the engines

579
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: of war fought for their rights. But I regularly on

580
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:40,959
Speaker 1: the show end up talking about the fact that nineteenth

581
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: century and unionism in the US was it is more

582
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 1: accurate to call them white supremacist organizations and labor organizations,

583
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: and the iron Molders were no different or better. One

584
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: of the earliest strikes by the iron workers was in Richmond,

585
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: Virginia in eighteen forty seven when white workers refused to

586
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: train black workers, and so they went on drake in

587
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:06,040
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty Yeah, because they refuse to train black people.

588
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: They were like, you're trying to make me train black people.

589
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 1: I won't do it.

590
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:10,959
Speaker 2: This is in bad Virginia.

591
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, bad Virginia, which is actually at the time all Virginia,

592
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: because it has the split hasn't happened, but it is

593
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,719
Speaker 1: still in Richmond, Virginia's in bad Virginia. In eighteen sixty

594
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: Iron Molders called for all workers in the US to

595
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 1: support the preservation of the union and the status quo

596
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: and to fight explicitly against abolition because the slaves will

597
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: steal all our jobs if we freedom. This sucks and

598
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 1: this is credit where it's due a break between the

599
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:46,959
Speaker 1: American labor movement and the labor movement of Europe. The

600
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: rest of the world, at least Europe looks at the

601
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: US and is like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, like,

602
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: where for the emancipation of the working class that includes

603
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: the black people who don't get paid because the US

604
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: labor movement has always been built a little different. But okay,

605
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: also credit words due. After the war, the Iron Molders

606
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: looked at the situation and decided to organize across racial lines,

607
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: and therefore were maybe one of the first unions in

608
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 1: the US to do so. Many of them were themselves racist,

609
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: but when they formed the National Labor Union, they insisted

610
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 1: that black people, women, and immigrants be allowed to join

611
00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: so they wouldn't compete for jobs, which is the actual

612
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: right way to handle that.

613
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 4: What is it?

614
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 2: Persila Lagwin says, I don't know if you've ever read

615
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 2: The Telling.

616
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: I haven't.

617
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 2: It's Oh my goodness, it's my favorite book in the

618
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: Hainish cycle. And the characters in this book talk about heroism,

619
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 2: and it turns out in the language that is being

620
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 2: translated from the story of the Telling on this planet

621
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 2: there's no concept of heroism. The closest word they can

622
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 2: get to means somebody who has made amends for a

623
00:32:57,000 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 2: great role.

624
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 1: That's cool. I always loved the Gwin's so good. I

625
00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: should just do her as an episode. When do I

626
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: find something bad? Oh no, I'd be crushed.

627
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 2: No you can't, you can't. I think that.

628
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: I know. I know. It's like when you have like

629
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: a rash or something that's never happens to me. I

630
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: don't get rashes. I'm not gross. But you have someone

631
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: else google it so that you don't like think you

632
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: have cancer.

633
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I have done this speed.

634
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true.

635
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 2: You understand that this is the thing that's happened.

636
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so maybe yeah, maybe I'll have to check

637
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: things out. Yeah there's some like sketchy stuff around her dad,

638
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: but I don't want to get into that. It's a

639
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 1: total tangent. He's an anthropologist who kept a guy from

640
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: another race as a like look at this guy like

641
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: it was like from a tribe that hadn't had contact

642
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: with Western civilization or whatever. Anyway, that's not like Gwen's fault.

643
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: So and nor is this about LeGuin is about Mother

644
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: Jones and we don't know what mother Jones is doing

645
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: during the war. I know what she said was that

646
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: her and her husband were quietly pro union and anti slavery,

647
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: but it wasn't exactly a safe thing to be vocal

648
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:18,479
Speaker 1: about because Memphis was like in the fighting, right, Like.

649
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 2: There were people running down the streets of Memphis with

650
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:23,399
Speaker 2: heads on the ends of their bank.

651
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: But this is more likely to be true in this case,

652
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: but still probably not. Yeah, exactly, So she's like, oh,

653
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: you know, we were quietly pro union, but I don't know.

654
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 1: I actually probably believe her about this, but she has

655
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: earned zero benefit of the doubt. Her husband wasn't a

656
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: white supremacist organization, although you know, again they did mend

657
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,320
Speaker 1: their ways. The other thing I know about Memphis and

658
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,799
Speaker 1: the Irish in Memphis is that shortly after Civil War,

659
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:56,640
Speaker 1: on May first, eighteen sixty six, her birth Yeah, on

660
00:34:56,680 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: her birthday, the Irish went on a fucking racist rampag

661
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: led by the Irish cops and firefighters at the front

662
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:06,240
Speaker 1: of the mob. They killed forty six black people, committed

663
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 1: lots of sexual violence, and burned houses and churches and schools.

664
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: And it was a Memphis guy who went on to

665
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: start the fucking KKK. So right, Irish Memphis, good on

666
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: you if you stood out against that.

667
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 2: But anyway, I've been reading recently about the political history

668
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,799
Speaker 2: of Irish Catholics in America over the last century. And

669
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 2: actually it was an essay about Joe Biden and about

670
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 2: how Biden and the Kennedys, by identifying strongly as Irish Catholics,

671
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,720
Speaker 2: this was a way of positioning themselves as not those

672
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,359
Speaker 2: kind of white people, right, they have a sort of

673
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 2: inheritance of oppression. The Irish Catholics in America are sort

674
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 2: of positioned in the national story at that time as

675
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 2: the bridge between sort of more trad white racism and

676
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,319
Speaker 2: the African American experience. And this is flying in the

677
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 2: face of all of that.

678
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I you know, I've covered a lot of

679
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:10,320
Speaker 1: like nineteenth century Irish Americans on this show, and usually

680
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:15,919
Speaker 1: they're kind of overall. Ireland didn't send their best and

681
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: specifically because of the way that race was constructed in

682
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 1: the United States and the like offer of whiteness was

683
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 1: made available, and because it's true that the Irish weren't white,

684
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: they were not black, there was a racial hierarchy that

685
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:32,200
Speaker 1: Irish were kind of in the middle of on the

686
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: Lowish end, and it was both their Irishness and their

687
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: Catholicism actually distinctly Catholicism was like, oh, you're loyal to

688
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:43,320
Speaker 1: the Pope instead of us. Is like the big threat

689
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: of them. And then the fact that they were I

690
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: think we covered this in a recent episode of this show,

691
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: the fact that they were Celtic. In the nineteenth century

692
00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: race science version of the world put them lower on

693
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: the wrung than the Germans who were Teutonic, and the

694
00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 1: Teutonic are closer to the real good white people, the

695
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxons, so who were.

696
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 2: Largely wiped out by this point, actual Saxons.

697
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's like when the Nazis called themselves

698
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 1: arian or whatever the fuck, you know, Like, race science

699
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: is not science, it's some fucking storytelling.

700
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody in the South of England is kind of Norman,

701
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 2: let's be anyway.

702
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: So overall, the Irish were anti black in America, I

703
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 1: think that that is a fair overall thing to say.

704
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 1: They were very heavily involved in the Democratic Party, which

705
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: was the more racist party in the nineteenth century around

706
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 1: the Civil War, and one of the reasons they were

707
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: involved in it is that the Republican Party was super

708
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 1: Protestant and super anti Catholic, and so they were like,

709
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: if we care about the working class white people, were

710
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: going to be Democrats. But that means we're also going

711
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 1: to be part of the more racist party. And you

712
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: do have a difference where like the Northern Democrats were like,

713
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 1: whereas the Southern Democrats were like, we are the fucking slavers, right,

714
00:37:58,000 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: The Northern Democrats were like a little bit blurri or

715
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 1: about all of it. It's fascinating stuff. And there also

716
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: is a ton of like Irish Republicanism that like, you know,

717
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: did most of the Free of Ireland, the almost Free

718
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: of Ireland that happened, A lot of them had lived

719
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: in America, Like a lot of them came to America

720
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 1: for a while, and then we're like, all right, we

721
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: raised some money here, let's go back and you know,

722
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: shoot the British people until they go away. It's just

723
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: it's messy. And there's also a ton of like there

724
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 1: are also a ton of Irish folks who are doing

725
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: really amazing work in nineteenth century America. But it is, yeah,

726
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: it's this story, you're right, Sorry, I'm going on this

727
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: long ass tangent about it. But like it's this story

728
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, the bidens is like the anti

729
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 1: Catholic in anti Irish stuff was real. That is an

730
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: impression that people faced in America, And I wish more

731
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: Irish Americans of previous generations had been like and therefore

732
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: we should throw down with other oppressed people, right.

733
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:56,839
Speaker 2: It's what we're I guess the whole of this story

734
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,800
Speaker 2: about mother Jones is kind of about the politic coutility

735
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 2: of narrative. I guess, yeah, totally that way. And she's

736
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:06,760
Speaker 2: like one of the stories we tell.

737
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: Worth Yeah, and she does good with this story, Like

738
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: there's really good stuff that she's going to do in

739
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: her life and career. But to finish your narrative of

740
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: living in Memphis, she had four kids there? Or did she?

741
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: I God, if this would be the darkest part of

742
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: the story if this is not true, and it's probably true,

743
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: she had four children, Catherine, Elizabeth, Terrence, and Mary while

744
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: living in Memphis. After the war, owners went on the

745
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:38,399
Speaker 1: attack against the unions. Wages were rolled back, founderies shut down,

746
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 1: three quarters of the Iron Molders were unemployed, and membership

747
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:44,720
Speaker 1: in the union fell and then a real tragedy struck,

748
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:48,920
Speaker 1: which was that ADS came and interrupted the story and

749
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: just were like, ah, look at me, take Latin classes

750
00:39:53,200 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 1: because we're sponsored by big Latin Magnus Latinous. I clearly

751
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: had a teacher who let me cheat. That's how I

752
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:08,280
Speaker 1: passed Latin, never learned anything.

753
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 2: I would be happy if they taught me to read

754
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 2: a room.

755
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:24,240
Speaker 1: And here's ads and we're back. So then tragedy after tragedy.

756
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: Not only did the ADS come in the middle of it,

757
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 1: and not only the real tragedy actually, according to my dog,

758
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: is that I'm not currently taking him outside, but that

759
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,760
Speaker 1: is just something he's going to have to deal with. Also,

760
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixty seven yellow fever hit Old timey disease

761
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: hit Memphis hard in eighteen sixty seven. The Pinch, in particular,

762
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 1: was in a swampy area and mosquitoes with yellow fever

763
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: came and just fucked people up. The rich people got

764
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: the fuck out of town, and the poor people died,

765
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:56,280
Speaker 1: especially immigrants and Northerners died actually because they hadn't developed

766
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: any immunity to yellow fever, and so it was called

767
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,319
Speaker 1: the strangers disease because it was blamed on immigrants, and

768
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: it mostly hit immigrants.

769
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,360
Speaker 2: I'm understanding that people didn't know it came about because.

770
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: Right, it was the early nineteenth century before they figured

771
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: out it was mosquitoes, and yeah, if you get yellow fever,

772
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: you puke up black bile and then die, I mean

773
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: sometimes die, but it's not good. They actually tried to

774
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 1: assume it was airborne, and so they all wore masks

775
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: and shit, because they're smarter than modern anyway.

776
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 2: My asthma theory, yeah.

777
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: Which sometimes, Yeah, if people were treating COVID that way,

778
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: we'd be in a better position. They would burn the

779
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 1: bedclothes of the dead. They also burned barrels of tar

780
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:43,759
Speaker 1: in the streets to clean the air, to like disinfect

781
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 1: the air, and eventually they figured out a mosquito borne

782
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: but that's decades and decades later. And then one by one,

783
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 1: her kids and then her husband died of yellow fever

784
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 1: all in eighteen sixty seven. Oh god, And so she

785
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: escaped famine cork and then watched everyone die in Memphis.

786
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: And she's like been through a war. She's now thirty

787
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: years old and a widow, and all of her children

788
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: are dead before her, and she would never have any more.

789
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: There's like a version of her story where she just

790
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 1: like changes the way she interacts with reality based on

791
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: the level of grief that she's experienced. You know, I

792
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: was going.

793
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 2: To say I would I'd kind of want them to

794
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 2: be a better story. Was that I'd wanted to not

795
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 2: end there and to have meaning I could instrumentalize somehow. Yeah,

796
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 2: people reacting all kinds of very strange ways to that

797
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 2: kind of sisting.

798
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, don't worry. Something else really bad's about to happen. First,

799
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: the Union paid for her husband's funeral. Once her family

800
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:51,279
Speaker 1: was gone, she went and nursed those still suffering with

801
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: the disease, and then she packed up and moved back

802
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: to Chicago. She got back into dressmaking, and she opened

803
00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: a shop alongside a business partner who's never named, and

804
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: her acients were the rich of the Gilded Age. I

805
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,279
Speaker 1: find this very convenient. She stood at the intersection of

806
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: the rich in their fancy houses and the poor who

807
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:09,800
Speaker 1: lived without homes, and she, like the poorest half of

808
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:11,399
Speaker 1: the city, had less than one percent of its wealth

809
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 1: at that time in Chicago. But Mother Jones was not

810
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:17,719
Speaker 1: born for an easy life. And one thing we absolutely

811
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 1: know did happen is that on October eighth, eighteen seventy one,

812
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: four years after she lost her entire family, the entire

813
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 1: city of Chicago burned to the ground.

814
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:27,879
Speaker 2: Yeah.

815
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Great Chicago Fire.

816
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 4: I just learned this the other day. Apparently it's called

817
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 4: the second city because of the fire. Oh shit, rebuild

818
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 4: the entire city.

819
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 2: It's not the second city in America. It's the second

820
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 2: time they built Chicago.

821
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:42,959
Speaker 4: Yeah. See, I always thought it was because it wasn't

822
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 4: New York. I was like, oh, well, New York must

823
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 4: be the first city like Chicago's. Yes, it's because they

824
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 4: had to rebuild the whole thing after the fire.

825
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: Jesus.

826
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:52,720
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

827
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 1: Chicago had been a boomtown. It was hastily constructed out

828
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: of wood, and then it went up in flames. Seventeen

829
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:01,360
Speaker 1: thousand buildings were destroyed. It did two hundred million dollars

830
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: in property damages. I was like when I first read that,

831
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's got to be adjusted to

832
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 1: modern No, no, it's not adjusted to modern. Adjusted it

833
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: as seven point five billion dollars roughly right. Only about

834
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:21,400
Speaker 1: three hundred people died, which is honestly one hundred thousand

835
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: people lost their homes and only three hundred people died

836
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: is the best case scenario.

837
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:30,879
Speaker 2: I wonder how that happened. I bet they've made a TV. Yeah,

838
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:32,719
Speaker 2: there's I can find. I can find it out the

839
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 2: way I find out all American history from the tennis chipmunks.

840
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: So one of the chip marks.

841
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 2: And Darkwing Duck helped.

842
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:43,319
Speaker 1: There was a barn inside the city. This is like

843
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: the whatever, at least is what in the book I

844
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: most recently read about this. I actually don't remember what

845
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,320
Speaker 1: other people have said. The cow kicked over a lantern.

846
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: And this is a kind of a way to blame

847
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: the Irish right because it's like an Irish lady with

848
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: a barn, you know, and yeah, burned out Chicago. I

849
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: think that if your entire city can be burned down

850
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: because a cow kicks over a lantern, it's not the

851
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: cow's fault or the lantern owner's fault.

852
00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 2: If you make people work past the hours of darkness

853
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 2: in a pre electric age, you're going to get a

854
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 2: lot more fires in working class areas.

855
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: That's true.

856
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 2: That's why most of the big fires I think start

857
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 2: that way. Citation needed that the Second Great Fire of

858
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: London started around spittlefields and a baker's.

859
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: I didn't know about the first grade fire of London.

860
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 1: I didn't learn any UK London's burnt down loads. Okay,

861
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It's been around a lot longer than

862
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: most American cities. Mary Jones loses her home and shop,

863
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 1: and she stood like everyone else on the shoreline as

864
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: everything she owned burned. And then she joined the labor movement.

865
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:54,399
Speaker 1: Except she's lying again, so we don't know. She wants

866
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,720
Speaker 1: you to know that she immediately joined the Knights of Labor.

867
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: The Knights of Labor didn't organize in Chicago until several

868
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: years later, and didn't let women in at all until

869
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty, so she is exaggerating her entry into it

870
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,919
Speaker 1: by about nine years at least, probably more like fifteen years.

871
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: This is a fid Yes, she joined the Knights of

872
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: Labor in the mid eighteen eighties, and she recalls her

873
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:18,279
Speaker 1: time with them as the glory days. She wrote, those

874
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: were the days of sacrifice for the cause of labor.

875
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:22,279
Speaker 1: Those were the days where we had no hauls, where

876
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:24,840
Speaker 1: there was no high salaried officers, no feasting with the

877
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 1: enemies of labor. Those were the days of martyrs and

878
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: the Saints. I would like her so much if she

879
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: was telling the truth about anything. This is why I'm

880
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 1: so mad. Like she is a kid, she's a fucking

881
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 1: goth Irish Catholic who wants to throw it down hard

882
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:41,959
Speaker 1: for labor and keeps wishing she was dead.

883
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 2: But what you just said could be the lyrics of

884
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:45,280
Speaker 2: exfrent residence.

885
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally yeah yeah, and uh, you know, she

886
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: writes herself into the history of the railroad strike of

887
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven and the Haymarket affair of eighteen eighty six,

888
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: and she like bases her cred when she enters the

889
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: movement on these things. Right, there's no she's lying.

890
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:05,480
Speaker 2: You're saying that this was just entiny.

891
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 1: There's no reason to believe it's true. I'll tell you that, right.

892
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: Shit was really bad for the working class in the

893
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,279
Speaker 1: US in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. It's kind

894
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,799
Speaker 1: of always is. There was a depression in eighteen seventy three.

895
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: Unionism fell from three hundred thousand to fifty thousand members

896
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,160
Speaker 1: because workers were desperate for work and weren't willing to

897
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: gamble their jobs on strikes and shit like that. But

898
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: people still have their breaking point. There's a certain amount

899
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 1: that they can't be pushed past. In July eighteen seventy seven,

900
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: when railroads cut wages by ten percent, the folks in Martinsburg,

901
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: Better Virginia, was like fuck all this and walked off

902
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: the job. President Hayes sent federal troops to put down

903
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,800
Speaker 1: the insurrection. Okay, there's this thing that happens when I

904
00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:50,959
Speaker 1: talk about labor history that people don't want to talk about.

905
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 2: Right.

906
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,760
Speaker 1: People are like, well, why the cops come and shoot

907
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 1: the workers. That's like, fucked up. They're just not working,

908
00:47:57,760 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 1: And there's a little bit of shooting people for not working.

909
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: Part of striking is preventing scabs from working. Part of

910
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: striking it is not legal to beat someone up for scabbing.

911
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: It is part of union work, and it has always

912
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: been part of union work, and no one wants to

913
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: talk about it. It doesn't justify bringing in federal troops

914
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,799
Speaker 1: to shoot people, but like, to go on strike is

915
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: sometimes a violent affair. You were defending your class and

916
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: your own job by preventing someone to come in and

917
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:28,279
Speaker 1: taking it, and it doesn't work within them whatever. I

918
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:30,680
Speaker 1: read like way too much about the philosophy of like

919
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: looking at society through a capitalist lens or from a

920
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 1: like producer's lens and whatever beside the points lens. Yeah, totally.

921
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: The Knights of Labor were like more interesting than I thought.

922
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: I usually see them as this very like moderate, kind

923
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: of boring union with a name that they don't deserve

924
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:46,359
Speaker 1: because it's a kind of cool name, although most people

925
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:48,760
Speaker 1: say it sounds kind of sketchy, but whatever. I like Knights,

926
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: and even though they historically just do bad things, but

927
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:55,919
Speaker 1: they were like into this like concept of the producers

928
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:58,839
Speaker 1: deserve the products of their labor. You know. They were

929
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:02,400
Speaker 1: like an older form of socialists essentially versus the like

930
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 1: later nineteenth century more Marxist style of socialists that are

931
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:10,879
Speaker 1: going to come up more anyway. In Pittsburgh, people threw

932
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: down hard on July nineteenth, Folk shut down the train yards,

933
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: and twenty protesters were killed by the bayonets and bullets

934
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: of cops. The way it was phrased is that like

935
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 1: people didn't like being threat with bayonets, so they threw

936
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: rocks at cops, so then the cops shot them. But

937
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 1: the crowd routed the soldiers and then tore up track

938
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: and set fire to trains and cars, and then it

939
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 1: spread across. When I say the entire country, I mean

940
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh to Chicago, because that was the entire country.

941
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,839
Speaker 1: Mother Jones said, quote, I showed up in Pittsburgh, they

942
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: told me to come. That might have been a paraphrase.

943
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: I can't remember, because, like, if she said it, she

944
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: probably was like, the boys told me to come, right,

945
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:49,440
Speaker 1: because she's always talking about her boys. You know, she

946
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 1: did not go to Pittsburgh. Her account about the whole

947
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: thing is very impersonal. She's like just basically saying what

948
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: was in the newspapers. And also the railroads were shut down,

949
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: so it it's hard to travel.

950
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 3: Ah, good point. Yeah, yeah, it's a very good point.

951
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: She probably saw what happened in Chicago where thirty more

952
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: people were gunned down. It's like, you don't have to

953
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:16,839
Speaker 1: lie you were in a city where thirty people were

954
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:18,799
Speaker 1: shot for striking. You don't even have to have been

955
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: at the strikes for that to affect you. You know.

956
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 2: It's like I thought of this the first time. You said,

957
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 2: you don't have to lie. The oddest thing on the

958
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 2: cheap airline that gets you through Iceland. They advertised, like

959
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:36,240
Speaker 2: did you know that ninety percent of Icelandic people believe

960
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 2: in fairies like that, and you look into it and

961
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 2: you ask people because it's important in Iceland, and it's

962
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 2: like it's actually in about thirty percent, which is enough.

963
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:44,879
Speaker 1: To be cool.

964
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,360
Speaker 2: That's a lot of people to believe that fairies and

965
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 2: elves are real.

966
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a lot of people.

967
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the significant things like, oh, it's only thirty percent. Yeah,

968
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 2: you're still telling me you're a spooky witch Paton.

969
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you're fine. It's cool. Like because also when

970
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: you get to like ninety percent, you start being like,

971
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: how do they exist in the modern world, where when

972
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: it's like thirty percent, you're like, oh, yeah, they probably

973
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: like get some shit done, you know.

974
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's enough people to run those yah.

975
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So in total, in the eighteen seventy seven strike,

976
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: over the course of two weeks, one hundred thousand people struck.

977
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: One hundred people were killed by the state and by

978
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: right wing militias. It was a big deal and Mary

979
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 1: Mother Jones turned forty that year. And we've covered this

980
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 1: before on the show, but basically mainstream unions responded to

981
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: this eighteen seventy seven strike by becoming more liberal and

982
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: non confrontational. They were like, WHOA, wasn't that crazy? Don't

983
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:47,360
Speaker 1: we all want to like just like not strike but

984
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 1: just instead like use reform. The working class overall had

985
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 1: the exact opposite idea, and so when anarchists came to

986
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: the forefront of the American labor movement at this point,

987
00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:00,839
Speaker 1: it was spurred on by immigrant labors, especially Germans, and

988
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: there was a whole kerfuffle called the Haymarket Affair that

989
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: we covered on the very first episode of this show,

990
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: where there was a massive general strike in eighteen eighty

991
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,520
Speaker 1: six to fight for the eight hour workday. The cops

992
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: fired into a crowd in Chicago, so anarchists called for

993
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:16,880
Speaker 1: a rally the next day, so the cops showed up

994
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:19,399
Speaker 1: to bust heads. So a German anarchists threw a bomb

995
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: at the cops, So cops shot into the crowd and

996
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 1: also shot each other in an awful lot. The forensic reports

997
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: on that are like pretty much like yeah, they would

998
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 1: pretty much go by friendly fire, which like, don't get

999
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:31,399
Speaker 1: me wrong, the anarchists shot, the cops were shooting them.

1000
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: I completely full support either way. Eight anarchists were put

1001
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:38,560
Speaker 1: on trial for not throwing the bomb, but just for

1002
00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:41,719
Speaker 1: being anarchists, and four of them were hanged, one took

1003
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 1: his own life. Three were later pardoned by a progressive governor.

1004
00:52:45,200 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 1: And this is the story of why May Day is

1005
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:51,880
Speaker 1: celebrated and how Mary ended up being born that day. Retroactively,

1006
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: Mother Jones says that she was there. She was in

1007
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: all meetings, right, you know, she's everywhere. She disagreed with

1008
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:02,279
Speaker 1: the anarchist methods but liked their spirit, which is that's

1009
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: probably true. That is almost certainly how other Jodes feels

1010
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: about the anarchists. She will consistently defend anarchists when they're

1011
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: being attacked by the state, and she will consistently talk

1012
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:14,720
Speaker 1: shit on anarchists when they are not, and that is fair,

1013
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,399
Speaker 1: you know, talking shit on anarchists, but stealing her valor

1014
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: is a popular socialist past time though, because she's like, oh,

1015
00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 1: I was totally there, you know, and May first became

1016
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 1: the international working holiday across the world. The Haymarket of

1017
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: Fair had a huge backlash against the anarchists. This is

1018
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: the first sort of red scare in America, and it

1019
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:35,880
Speaker 1: fucked up labor organizing in the US. The Knights of

1020
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,960
Speaker 1: Labor had a million members in eighteen sixty six, but

1021
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:42,560
Speaker 1: by eighteen ninety they had less than ten percent of that. Wow,

1022
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:46,360
Speaker 1: and all of this, and I'm like, but I'm like,

1023
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:47,840
Speaker 1: but that's just the Knights of Labor because it's like

1024
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:49,319
Speaker 1: presented and the thing I read is being like, oh,

1025
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: I was just fucked up, right, But the Knights of

1026
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:53,799
Speaker 1: Labor are like kind of the more old fashioned big union, right,

1027
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 1: there's such just one group. Yeah, And I actually whatever

1028
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: the history of nineteens hentry unionism as I'm slowly wrapping

1029
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,280
Speaker 1: my head around with this, you know series.

1030
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 2: But.

1031
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:07,399
Speaker 1: Mother Jones is still not really on the scene through

1032
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 1: all of this. She's probably around or she was doing

1033
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 1: something completely different. There's lots of ideas that have been

1034
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:17,960
Speaker 1: written about in newspapers because she's incredibly famous, so she's

1035
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: not the only one making up stories about her.

1036
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 2: But she is famous by this point.

1037
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:23,759
Speaker 1: Not to eighteen ninety four. Now, no one knows who

1038
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:27,120
Speaker 1: she is. She this is all her backstory until the

1039
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. She doesn't exist to the public record. But

1040
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 1: there is one story that would be in character, and

1041
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:39,320
Speaker 1: I don't quite believe it because of geography, but I

1042
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,480
Speaker 1: don't know, which is that she got her start in

1043
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 1: the labor movement as a soapboxer out in San Francisco

1044
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:50,800
Speaker 1: warning workers about the evils of Chinese immigration.

1045
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:54,799
Speaker 2: Nic and I was hoping that sentence would have a

1046
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 2: better end.

1047
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:59,720
Speaker 1: Nope. But instead it's where we're going to end today's episode,

1048
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 1: be where she even fucking exists.

1049
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 2: The one thing we're reasonably sure she maybe might have been.

1050
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like it certainly would have been in character.

1051
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 1: I don't have that specific. We know about her more

1052
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:19,120
Speaker 1: traveling starting in eighteen ninety four, so it's possible that

1053
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 1: this didn't happen she did later in life soapbox about

1054
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: the evils of Chinese immigration, don't get me wrong, But

1055
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 1: we don't know if that's how she got her start

1056
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: or not. She claims she got her start, you know,

1057
00:55:29,560 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 1: back in the eighteen sixties as a union wife, right,

1058
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,880
Speaker 1: but fucking knows.

1059
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 2: But nobody is telling this story at the time when

1060
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:38,760
Speaker 2: it's happening, or allegedly.

1061
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:40,359
Speaker 1: Right, no one is talking about her until the eighteen

1062
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:46,240
Speaker 1: nineties at all. Besides, census records just not a important

1063
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: way to prove that you matter to people. But if

1064
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:53,799
Speaker 1: you want to, I don't know how to segue this

1065
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:55,760
Speaker 1: to you doing plugs? You want to get some plugs?

1066
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:00,600
Speaker 2: Oh me, I want to give some plugs. Yes, well,

1067
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:03,479
Speaker 2: if you are interested in my writing, you can find

1068
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 2: me on my sub steck or on the platform formerly

1069
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:09,279
Speaker 2: known as Twitter. You can also buy my books from

1070
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 2: the Rainforest site or from most independent bookshop sites, and

1071
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:16,440
Speaker 2: my latest one is called Sexual Revolution. I have a

1072
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 2: column book called which I should not have called bitch

1073
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:22,799
Speaker 2: Doctrine because I hate I still hate saying that word

1074
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 2: out loud, because I'm British. It's a much worse word.

1075
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:29,400
Speaker 1: Then we have inversions, because there's a word that you

1076
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:30,880
Speaker 1: all say all the time for about.

1077
00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm not going to say yeah.

1078
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 4: We all know what yah capitalism.

1079
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:41,160
Speaker 1: Americans don't like being critical of that.

1080
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:43,359
Speaker 2: You don't like saying that.

1081
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:46,399
Speaker 1: I have read many of Laurie's books, and the ones

1082
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: I've read are very good and you all should read them.

1083
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 2: Thank you.

1084
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: You are a subsect too, right do you already say

1085
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:52,680
Speaker 1: that I do have.

1086
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 2: A subsect and I write fiction which we can talk about.

1087
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:57,400
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, there'll be more.

1088
00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 2: Plugs, so which does mean I like it?

1089
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: That's true? Best In the end of the episode, We'll

1090
00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:05,200
Speaker 1: see you all on Wednesday.

1091
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:06,320
Speaker 3: Bye.

1092
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1093
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:13,560
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool zone Media,

1094
00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out

1095
00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:20,439
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1096
00:57:20,480 --> 00:57:21,280
Speaker 1: your podcasts.