Quote

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones
Age: 100 †
Born: 1830
Born: May 1
Died: 1930
Died: November 30
Human Rights Activist
Politician
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Union Organizer
Corcaigh
Mother Jones
Mary Harris
States
Stealing
Theft
Would
Prison
Senator
Men
Shoes
Senators
Asked
Pair
Crime
Thieves
Thievery
Told
Stolen
Railroad
Happened
Prisoner
Organizer
United
Pairs
Railroads

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Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living
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Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent.
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I preferred sewing to bossing little children.
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Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.
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The militant not the meek shall inherit the earth!
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In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?
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Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands.
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You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand
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Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men
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Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads
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I believe that no man who holds a leader's position should ever accept favors from either side. He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone.
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My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.
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I was born in revolution.
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My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.
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a TEN-YEAR-OLD lad in Indianapolis who was arrested for picking up coal along the side of railroad tracks is now in jail. If the boy had known enough to steal the whole railroad he would be heralded as a Napoleon of finance.
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Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives
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You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
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The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.
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I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression.
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I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists - the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.
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