The Public Interest

Would Mother Jones Buy “Mother Jones”?

Michael A. Scully

Fall 1978

MARY HARRIS JONES was a socialist and labor organizer (1830-1930) who traversed America for more than 40 years, leading strikes and lending the labor and socialist movements her awesome rhetorical skills. She railed against the 14-hour workday, subsistence wages, child labor, and the company store. So did her allies in the radical press, in flimsy pamphlets and magazines printed on butcher-block paper. All that has now changed. The magazines of the radical left have lost their beleaguered look, as have their readers: Affluent societies produce affluent critics.

 

 

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