Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Iron Road in the Prairie State
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/cordery.php * http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/CORDERY%20cv%202016.pdf * https://archive.las.iastate.edu/2016/05/24/simon-cordery-named-history-chair/ * http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807798
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2002115025
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2002115025
HEADING: Cordery, Simon, 1960-
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670 __ |a Cordery, Simon. British friendly societies, 1750-1914, 2003: |b CIP t.p. (Simon Cordery) data sheet (b. July 8, 1960)
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PERSONAL
Born July 8, 1960.
EDUCATION:Northern Illinois University, B.A. (cum laude), 1982; University of York, M.A., 1984; University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 1995.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL, Department of History, 1994-2012, became professor, chair, 2008-12; Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, Department of History, professor and chair, 2012-16; Iowa State University, Ames, IA, Department of History, professor and chair, 2016—. Has also taught at Louisburg College, Louisburg, NC, 1993-94; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, 1994; Carl Sandburg College, Galesburg, IL, 1998; and Knox College, Galesburg, IL, 2001. ACM Central European Studies Program, Olomouc, Czech Republic, director, 2006. Has worked as editorial assistant at American Historical Association and writer/editor for Consortium of Social Science Associations.
AWARDS:Faculty Development Grants, Monmouth College, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2008; Fellow, Midwest Faculty Seminar, University of Chicago, 1997; NEH Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1998; Newberry Library Research Grants, Associated Colleges of the Midwest, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006; Mellon Faculty Grant, Mellon Foundation/Associated Colleges of the Midwest, 2005; Mother Jones Festival Travel Award, Mother Jones Festival Organizing Committee, 2013; John H. White, Jr., Research Fellowship, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, 2015-16.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Social Security Mutualism: The Comparative History of Mutual Benefit Societies, and journals, including Labour History Review, Journal of British Studies, and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Simon Cordery has written on a variety of subjects, including mutual benefit societies, labor activism, and railroads. “As something of a generalist I look for patterns and themes cutting across time and place,” he wrote on the Iowa State University history department Web site. Cordery became chair of the department in 2016, after having taught at other colleges and universities in the Midwest and Southeast.
British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914
British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 began as Cordery’s dissertation and covers the voluntary associations in which members of the working class banded together to provide insurance to cover the costs of illness and disability, and a source of income in old age. The concept of such associations came to the United Kingdom from French Huguenot refugees, Cordery writes, and the friendly societies also relied somewhat on the long-established model of craft guilds. The societies were attractive to British workers at a time when neither the government nor employers offered health insurance or pensions. Additionally, they provided a sense of community and respectability, with rituals, rules, and social events, and allowed workers to take pride in helping one another rather than relying on outside aid. Still, the UK government often sought to regulate the societies, citing a need for oversight of investments and payouts, or arguing that responsibility for insurance and pensions lay properly with the government. These were progressive ideas, but friendly society members were often suspicious of intervention by the government or middle-class reformers, and they stood by the model of voluntarism. Eventually, after the United Kingdom experienced economic downturns in the late nineteenth century, the arguments for government to assume much of the friendly societies’ function won out.
Several critics found British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 an informative study of a topic that had attracted little scholarly attention; the last book devoted to the subject had appeared in 1961. It provides “a long-overdue look into the origins, operations, social significance, and ultimately, decline and demise of one of the most significant contributions to nineteenth century economic, social development in liberal and industrial Great Britain,” observed Nancy LoPatin-Lummis in the Journal of Social History. Cordery’s book, she continued, goes “far deeper into the operation and expectation of the friendly societies than existing narrative histories,” with emphasis on the social and cultural aspects of the societies as well as the financial ones. Timothy Alborn, writing in Victorian Studies, noted that Cordery “combines a synthesis of a generation’s worth of scholarship with substantial original research” that included probing the archives of some societies. Cordery’s work “will help guide the way for future research on this important topic,” Alborn related. Business History contributor Gordon Phillips thought the book somewhat lacking. Cordery, he remarked, has not completely met the challenge of providing “a historical summation of the activities of 10,000 or so different organisations, varying significantly in structure, scale and objectives, and undergoing marked character changes over the period in question.” Phillips explained: “His approach has something of a pick-and-mix quality: matters like recruitment, composition, ritual, benefits and rules are all dealt with, yet not in any particularly systematic fashion.” He did allow that British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 “will make a useful addition to student bibliographies.” LoPatin-Lummis, though, praised the book with less reservation, calling it “thorough, well researched and provocative … an excellent contribution to the literature on nineteenth century working-class social and economic development.”
Mother Jones
Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness is a biography of Mary Harris Jones, an Irish immigrant who became a famed U.S. labor activist in the late nineteenth century and remains an inspiration to liberals, although some modern-day Americans know her primarily as the namesake of a magazine. A refugee from the potato famine, she left Ireland in the 1850s at age fifteen, joined her father and brother in Canada, then after a few years came to the United States. She married George Jones, a union ironworker, settled in Memphis, and gave birth to four children. Shortly after the Civil War, her husband and children all died in a yellow fever epidemic. She attempted to rebuild her life by going to work as a seamstress in Chicago, but her business was destroyed by the great fire of 1871. There is little record of her life over the next two decades, but in the 1890s she became known as a passionate socialist and one of the nation’s leading advocates for the rights of workers. Cordery draws on Jones’s own accounts of her life, but points out the areas where her version conflicts with the facts found in other primary sources. He also views her life and work in the context of the social and political developments of her time.
“Cordery succinctly provides a great deal of information about the turns and twists in American labor and political currents, as well as in a remarkable woman’s life,” remarked Susan Schoch on the Story Circle Book Reviews Web site. She thought, however, that his emphasis on the inaccuracies in Jones’s autobiographical writings “detracts from the narrative” to some extent. A Publishers Weekly critic maintained similarly that Cordery’s “reportorial rigor takes a lot of steam out of the proceedings,” although the reviewer did find the book an “exhaustive biography.” Schoch, on the whole, offered a positive assessment, concluding that while Jones “might enjoy arguing the fine points, she would certainly be honored by Simon Cordery’s able recognition of her life’s work.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Business History, April, 2004, GordonPhillips, review of British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914, p. 286.
Choice, June, 2016, M.W. Quirk, review of The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading, p. 1530.
Journal of Social History, winter, 2005, Nancy LoPatin-Lummis, review of British Friendly Societies, p. 591.
Publishers Weekly, March 1, 2010, review of Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness.
Victorian Studies, autumn, 2004, Timothy Alborn, review of British Friendly Societies, p. 104.
ONLINE
Iowa State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences News Archive, https://archive.las.iastate.edu/ (May 24, 2016), “Simon Cordery Named History Chair.”
Iowa State University Department of History Web site, https://history.iastate.edu/ (June 3, 2017), brief biography.
Story Circle Book Reviews, http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/ (September 9, 2010), Susan Schoch, review of Mother Jones.
Western Illinois University Web site, http://www.wiu.edu/ (June 3, 2017), brief biography and curriculum vitae.*
Dr. Simon Cordery
Department Chair and Professor
email | vita | news items
Dr Cordery
Dr. Simon Cordery (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin, 1995) joined the WIU Department of History in Summer 2012 as Chair of the Department and Professor of Modern British History, Comparative Labor History, and Railroad History. In addition to courses in these areas, Dr. Cordery offers courses on the history of sport and supervises graduate students in sports history and the history of railroads.
Prior to coming to WIU in the summer of 2012, Prof. Cordery taught in the History Department at Monmouth College from 1994 to 2012, serving as chair for five years and leading a major overhaul of the departmental curriculum. He also served as director for the College’s study-abroad program in Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Prof. Cordery’s research agenda reflects his interest in the interlocking history of railroads and labor. His first book, British Friendly Societies 1750-1914 (published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2003), is a study of the largest group of voluntary organizations in nineteenth-century Britain. His second book, Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (University of New Mexico Press, 2010), is a biography of the Irish-American labor leader dubbed “the most dangerous woman in America” who played a key role in bringing women union organizers to prominence. His most recent book, The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading, was published by Indiana University Press in January 2016. He is the author of numerous articles and book reviews, and chairs the nominations committee of the National Railroad Hall of Fame.
After completing his BA at Northern Illinois University, Dr. Cordery earned the MA at the University of York, UK. He worked with Dr. Edward Royle, writing a thesis on the radical publisher Joshua Hobson. He worked for three years as an editorial assistant at the American Historical Association and as writer/editor for the Consortium of Social Science Associations in Washington, DC, before reentering graduate school. While writing his dissertation on railway friendly societies in Victorian Britain at the University of Texas, he taught at Louisburg College in North Carolina.
Simon Cordery named history chair
Dr. Simon Cordery has been named chair of the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University.
Cordery has served as Chair of the Department of History and Professor of Modern British History, Comparative Labor History and Railroad History at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Ill., since 2012. Prior to that, he taught in the History Department at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Ill., from 1994 to 2012, serving as chair for five years and leading an overhaul of department curriculum. He also led the College’s study-abroad program in Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Cordery’s research interests include the history of railroads and labor. In addition to these areas, Cordery has taught courses on the history of sports and supervised graduate students in sports history and the history of railroads.
His books include The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading (Indiana University Press, 2016); Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (University of New Mexico Press, 2010), a biography of the Irish-American labor leader who helped bring women union organizers to prominence; and British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Palgrave-Macmillian, 2003), a study of the largest group of voluntary organizations in nineteenth-century Britain.
Cordery has authored numerous articles and book reviews. Cordery currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Mother Jones Museum and chairs the nominations committee of the National Railroad Hall of Fame Project.
Cordery has a Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Texas at Austin. He has a master’s degree from the University of York (United Kingdom) in Modern British History and completed his bachelor’s degree at Northern Illinois University.
Cordery will start at Iowa State in August.
Quoted in Sidelights: As something of a generalist I look for patterns and themes cutting across time and place.
Simon Cordery
Professor and Chair
Dept: History
Email: scordery@iastate.edu
Office: 603 Ross
Phone: 515-294-7266
As something of a generalist I look for patterns and themes cutting across time and place. My first book, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003), was a study of a surprisingly neglected subject, the voluntary associations by which working people in Victorian Britain protected themselves from financial disaster in times of sickness and death. Following this book was Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), an introduction to the American labor movement through the life of an amazing organizer, written for students in U.S. history surveys. My most recent book is The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), which is the first history of the railroad industry in Illinois and embraces the interlocking histories of technology, business, labor, politics, culture, and urbanization.
I am currently working on two books. Revisiting Pullman: Factory and Town Before the Strike is an analysis of how labor relations changed as Pullman’s Palace Car Company expanded from a single workshop to a nationwide manufacturer of railroad cars, looking specifically at the innovative ways of rewarding and controlling labor developed by the corporation's employees and managers. My other book is a study of transatlantic social relations from the eighteenth century to the present, tentatively titled Mutuality in the Modern World.
My degrees, all in History, are from Northern Illinois University (BA), the University of York (MA), and the University of Texas at Austin (PhD), where I worked with Standish Meacham. For two years I worked as an editorial and research assistant at the American Historical Association headquarters office in Washington, DC, and I previously taught at Louisburg College (NC), East Carolina University, Carl Sandburg College, Knox College, Monmouth College, and Western Illinois University. I have been Chair of the History Department here at ISU since August 2016.
1
Simon Cordery
Department of History
Western Illinois University
Macomb, IL 61455
s-cordery@wiu.edu
EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin May 1995
Major Field: Modern European History
Minor Fields: United States History, Labor History
M.A. University of York (U.K.) September 1984
Field: Modern British History
B.A. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois December 1982
Major: History (Cum Laude)
Minor: International Relations
ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE
Department of History, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois July 2012-present
Professor and Chair
Principal Administrative Responsibilities
Long-range planning, Humanities Division, College of Arts and Sciences.
Manage curriculum review processes and new course creation.
Manage Appropriated and Foundation budgets.
Initiate hiring requests and supervise hiring process.
Formulate and administer faculty travel policy.
Manage assessment of student learning.
Appoint and oversee Department committees.
Supervise Director of History Graduate Program.
Formulate and implement Department recruitment plan.
Formulate Department goals in cooperation with faculty.
Set agenda for and chair Department meetings.
Manage Department scholarships and awards.
Manage summer-school and graduate-teaching rotations.
Supervise office staff.
Evaluate and mentor faculty.
Liaise with offices of the Dean of the College of Arts and Science, Provost,
Admissions, Centennial Honors College, and Study Abroad.
Liaise with WIU Quad Cities faculty and administrators.
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Department of History, Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois August 1994-May 2012
Lecturer to Full Professor
Principal Administrative Responsibilities
Chair, Department of History, 2008-2012.
Chair, Department of History Curriculum Review Task Force, 2007-2102.
Acting Chair, Department of History, 2004-2006.
Advising Day Coordinator, Department of History, 2001, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2010.
History Department Search Committees, 2000-2001, 2004-2005 (Chair),
2008-2010 (Chair), 2009-2010, 2010-2011 (Chair).
Co-Coordinator, Midwest Initiative, 2009-2012.
Faculty Advisor, Midwest Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2009-2012.
College Personnel Committee, 2008-2010.
Assessment Coordinator, Human Societies Rubric, 2004-2006.
Curriculum Review Task Force, Human Societies Requirement, 2003-2007.
Student Affairs Committee, 2003-2005 (Chair, 2004-2005).
College Assessment Committee, 2003-2005.
Chair, Curriculum Review Task Force, 2002-2004.
Sociology and Anthropology Department Search Committee, 2000-2001.
ACM Central European Studies Program, Olomouc, Czech Republic July-December 2006
Director
Principal Administrative Responsibilities
Coordinate Olomouc arrangements with Palacky University.
Supervise course offerings.
Prepare itineraries for study trips around the Czech Republic and to
Austria, Hungary, and Poland.
Lead students on study trips.
Liaise with Palacky University administration.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois August 2012-present
Courses Taught, History Department
World History, 1500 to the Present:
Western Civilization 1648 to the present
Modern Africa 1800 to the present
Sports and Modern Society
Course Taught, Centennial Honors College:
The Railroad Industry in the United States
Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois August 1994-May 2012
Courses Taught, History Department:
Modern British History, 1707-1945
Scotland in the Modern Era, 1707-Present
Western Civilization, 1848 to the Present
History of Sub-Sahara Africa
History of India and South Asia, 1500 to the Present
History of Sports in the Modern World
Contemporary World History
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United States History, 1750-1901
History of the Transatlantic World (team taught)
Courses Taught, Interdisciplinary Studies:
Global Perspectives: Food
Citizenship: Consumerism and Civic Duty
Theory and Practice in Cultural Studies (team taught)
Course Taught, Political Economy and Commerce:
Industry Analysis: Railroads
Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois Spring Term, 2001
Course Taught, Department of History:
Modern Sub-Sahara Africa, 1800 to the Present
Carl Sandburg College, Galesburg, Illinois Spring Semester, 1998
Courses Taught, Division of Social Sciences:
Introduction to Anthropology
Introduction to Sociology
Louisburg College, Louisburg, North Carolina August 1993-July 1994
Courses Taught, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences:
Western Civilization, 1750 to the Present
United States History to 1865
East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina Spring Semester 1994
Course Taught, Department of History:
United States History to 1865
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
John H. White Jr. Research Fellowship 2015-2016
Railway & Locomotive Historical Society
Mother Jones Festival Travel Award 2013
Mother Jones Festival Organizing Committee, Cork, Ireland
Mellon Faculty Grant 2005
Mellon Foundation/Associated Colleges of the Midwest
Newberry Library Research Grants 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006
Associated Colleges of the Midwest
NEH Summer Stipend 1998
National Endowment for the Humanities
Faculty Development Grants 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000
Monmouth College 2004, 2008
Fellow 1997
Midwest Faculty Seminar, University of Chicago
4
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Advisory Board Member 2014-present
Mother Jones Museum, Mt. Olive, Illinois
ROAD Scholar 2005-2012
Illinois Humanities Council, Chicago, Illinois
Chair, Nominations Committee 2000-present
National Railroad Hall of Fame Project, Galesburg, Illinois
PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2016)
Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 2010)
British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003)
Current Book Project
Revisiting Pullman: Town and Factory Before the Strike
Articles
“Theodore Roosevelt and the Railroads,” Journal of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
(Winter-Spring-Summer 2012), 67-79.
“John Tidd Pratt: The Making of the First Friendly Societies Registrar,”
Friendly Societies Research Group Newsletter, no. 10 (May 2003), 3-4.
“Mutualism, Friendly Societies, and The Genesis of Railway Trade Unions,”
Labour History Review, vol. 67 no. 3 (December 2002), 263-279.
“Friendly Societies and the British Labour Movement Before 1914,” Journal of the
Association of Historians in North Carolina, vol. 3 (Fall 1995), 38-51.
“Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825-1875,”
Journal of British Studies, vol. 34 no. 1 (January 1995), 35-58.
“Joshua Hobson and the Business of Radicalism,” Biography: An Interdisciplinary
Quarterly, vol. 11 no. 2 (Spring 1988), 108-123.
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Book Chapters
“Mutual Benefit Societies in the United States: A Quest for Protection and Identity,”
in Social Security Mutualism: The Comparative History of Mutual Benefit
Societies, Marcel van der Linden, editor (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996), 83-109.
“La Mutualité aux Etats-Unis, Bref Historique des Loges Fraternelles,” in Mutualité de
Tous Les Pays: Un Passe Riche d'Avenir, Michel Dreyfus and Bernard Gibaud,
editors (Paris: Mutualités Français, 1995), 153-164.
Book Reviews
American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, by Robert E.
Gallamore and John R. Meyer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014),
in Journal of Transport History (forthcoming, 2017).
Chicago: America’s Railroad Capital: The Illustrated History, 1836 to Today, by
Michael Blaszak et al. (Minneapolis: Voyageur Press, 2014), in Journal
of Illinois History (forthcoming, 2016).
Rock Island Requiem: The Collapse of a Mighty Fine Line, by Gregory L. Schneider
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013), in Enterprise & Society
(March 2016).
The Iowa Route: A History of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, & Northern Railway, by Don L.
Hofsommer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), in The Annals of Iowa
(Fall 2015).
Pioneers of the Street Railway in the USA, Street Tramways in the UK…and Elsewhere, by
John R. Stevens and Alan W. Brotchie (Catrine, Ayrshire, UK: Stenlake Publishing,
2014), in Railroad History (Spring-Summer 2015).
Farewell To Trains. A Lifetime’s Journey Along Britain’s Changing Railways, by David St John
Thomas (London: Frances Lincoln, 2013), in Railroad History (Fall-Winter 2014).
Claiming the Streets: Processions and Urban Culture in South Wales, c.1830-1880,
by Paul O’Leary, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), in Victorian Studies
(Summer 2014).
The First Great Train Robbery, by David C. Hanrahan (London: Robert Hale, 2012), in
Railroad History (Spring-Summer 2013).
The Pennsylvania Railroad. Volume I: Building An Empire, 1846-1917, by Albert J. Churella
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), in Journal of Illinois History
(Summer 2012).
6
The Keelmen of Tyneside: Labour Organisation and Conflict in the North-East Coal Industry,
1600-1830, by Joseph M. Fewster (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2011), in
American Historical Review (June 2012).
Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society 1800-1914 by Timothy Alborn
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), in Canadian Journal of History/
Annales Canadiennes D'Histoire (Winter 2011).
American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935 by Jon R. Huibregtse
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida), in NRHS Bulletin (Winter 2011)
The Oddfellows 1810-2010: Two Hundred Years of Making Friends and Helping People,
by Daniel Weinbren (Lancaster, UK: Carnegie Publishing, 2010), in Journal for
Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism (Autumn 2010).
Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917, by Paul Michel Taillon
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), in The Register of the Kentucky
Historical Society (Summer 2009).
Engines of Change: The Railroads that Made India, by Ian J. Kerr (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2007), in History: Reviews of Books (January 2008).
The Iron Horse and the Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago, by David M. Young
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), in Journal of Illinois History
(Winter 2005).
The Politics of the Poor: The East End of London 1885-1914, by Marc Brodie (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), in History: Reviews of Books (January 2005).
The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939, by John Benson (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003),
in American Communist History (2005).
Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945, by
Beth Tompkins Bates (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000),
in Railroad History (Spring 2002).
Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889-1966, by Quentin Outram
and Roy Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), in Journal of
Social History (Spring 2000).
Power at Odds: The 1922 National Railroad Shopmen’s Strike, by Colin J. Davis
(University of Illinois Press, 1997), in Railroad History (Autumn 1998).
The Railway Empire, by Anthony Burton (Edinburgh: John Murray, 1994) in
Railroad History (Spring 1997).
The Duty of Discontent: Essays for Dorothy Thompson, Owen Ashton et al., eds.
(Mansell, 1995) on H-Albion (September 1996); accessible at
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=11810862319232
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Law and English Railway Capitalism, 1825-1875, by R. W. Kostal (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994), in Railroad History (Autumn 1996).
SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS
“Researching Railroad History: The Case of Illinois,” Lexington Group in Transportation
History, St. Louis, MO (October 2014).
“Mother Jones: Sinner AND Saint,” Keynote Address, Second Annual Mother Jones Festival,
Cork, Ireland (August 2013).
“Taming the Railroads, Taking the Train: Theodore Roosevelt’s Ambivalent Attitude
Toward the Iron Road,” Theodore Roosevelt Symposium, Dickinson State
University, Dickinson, ND (October 2011).
“Treading The Quiet Surface of Routine: Critics of Conflict in the Progressive Era,”
Monmouth College Faculty Colloquium Series, Monmouth, IL (November 2010).
“Mother Jones, Labor’s Advocate and the Workers’ Champion,” Third Annual Labor Day
Lecture, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL (August 2010).
“Organizing Labor: Mother Jones and the Creation of a Workers’ Movement in
the United States,” May Day Conference, DePaul University, Chicago, IL
(May 2010).
“Will the Real Mother Jones Please Stand Up? What Historians Do When Documents Lie,”
Monmouth College Faculty Colloquium, Monmouth, IL (April 2009).
“Transcending the Parish: Friendly Society Patrons and the Ironic Effects of Resisting
Centralization,” American Historical Association, Washington, DC
(January 2008).
“Forming Habits: Friendly Society Patrons and the Bureaucratization of Welfare,”
Midwest Conference on British Studies, Dayton, OH (September 2007).
“Mutual Labour Relations in the British and American Railroad Industries, 1860-1890,”
Newberry Library Labor History Seminar, Chicago, IL (March 2006).
“Ways of Seeing/Ways of Knowing: Fraternalism and British Workers in the Victorian
Era, ” Dukakis Lecture, American College of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki,
Greece (March 2005).
“Containing Conflict: The Politics of Freemasons and Friendly Societies,” The ‘We Band
of Brothers’: Freemasonry in Radical and Social Movements 1700-2000
Conference, Centre for the Study of Freemasonry, University of Sheffield,
UK (November 2004).
“Global Media and Sports,” The Sociology of Globalization, Bradley University,
Peoria, IL (February 2003).
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“Nineteenth-Century Railway Workers’ Friendly Societies in Britain and the United States,”
Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL (November 2001).
“The Emergence of Mutualism and the End of Paternalism,” Mutuality, Survival Strategies
and the Friendly Society Conference, Friendly Societies Research Group,
Milton Keynes, UK (November 2000).
“Rethinking Railway Labour Relations: Paternalism, Mutualism and the Railway Friendly
Societies, 1838-1870,” Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK (November 1999).
“Dividing Loyalties: The Struggle for National Insurance in the British Railway
Industry,” Economic History Society Annual Conference, Leeds, UK
(April 1998).
“Mutual Relations: Republicanism at Work?” The Republic in Britain Conference,
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK (May 1997).
“Railway Friendly Societies,” British History Association, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, IL (November 1996).
“Freedom From Free Trade: Workers’ Control of Insurance in the British Coal and
Railway Industries,” Southern Labor Studies Conference, Austin, TX
(October 1995).
“Mutual Benefit Societies in the United States: A Quest for Protection and Identity,”
International Colloquium on the History of Mutual Benefit Societies,
Paris, France (December 1992).
“Urban Friendly Societies and the Problem of Respectability in Britain, 1825-1875,”
Urban History Seminar, Urban Studies Centre, University of Leicester,
Leicester, UK (June 1991).
In addition to these scholarly presentations, I have given more than sixty public lectures across
the state of Illinois, primarily on the topic of railroad history in the state, and been
interviewed by three radio stations (WBEZ, Chicago; WIUM, Macomb; and KALW,
San Francisco), for the syndicated radio show “Let’s Talk Trains,” and appeared on
two WIU television programs.
Cordery, Simon. The iron road in the Prairie State: the story
of Illinois railroading
M.W. Quirk
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.10 (June 2016): p1530.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Cordery, Simon. The iron road in the Prairie State: the story of Illinois railroading. Indiana, 2016. 216p bibl Index afp ISBN 9780253019066
cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780253019127 ebook, $59.99
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Accomplished scholar and rail enthusiast Cordery (Western Illinois Univ.) has produced a work of interest to both constituencies, and guaranteed
to have an audience among the legions of Illinois rail enthusiasts. This is not unexpected, given the encyclopedic nature of this examination of the
many different railroads in Illinois and the inclusion of exciting events. Even non-rail enthusiasts will be struck by Cordery's knowledge,
storytelling ability, and the dazzling collection of photos. What makes this work a true rarity is the author's inclusion of larger scholarly themes,
such as corporate consolidation and US cultural trends. As a result, the story of one state's railroads becomes a narrative on the larger history of
railroads in the US from the 19th to 20th centuries. A significant contribution to the study of rail transportation in Illinois and the US. Summing
Up: *** Highly recommended. All levels/ libraries.--M. W. Quirk, Rock Valley College
Quirk, M.W.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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Quirk, M.W. "Cordery, Simon. The iron road in the Prairie State: the story of Illinois railroading." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries, June 2016, p. 1530. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942935&it=r&asid=c8a93de4db417d73af0e2e8a2908a2ac. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942935
---
Quoted in Sidelights: a long-overdue look into the origins, operations, social significance, and ultimately,
decline and demise of one of the most significant contributions to nineteenth century economic, social development in liberal and industrial Great
Britain.
far deeper into the operation and expectation of the friendly societies than existing narrative histories,
Thorough, well researched and provocative an excellent contribution to the literature on nineteenth century working-class
social and economic development.
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British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914
Nancy LoPatin-Lummis
Journal of Social History.
39.2 (Winter 2005): p591.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Oxford University Press
Full Text:
British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914. By Simon Cordery (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. xiii plus 230 pp.).
Simon Cordery's examination of British friendly societies is a long-overdue look into the origins, operations, social significance, and ultimately,
decline and demise of one of the most significant contributions to nineteenth century economic, social development in liberal and industrial Great
Britain. Delving far deeper into the operation and expectation of the friendly societies than existing narrative histories, Cordery contends that
financial security, though the most widely recognized achievement of the organizations, was only one objective. Friendly societies were also
voluntary organizations which provided conviviality and, correspondingly, the development of an identity or political consciousness that allowed
working men and women to engage in economic, social, and political organization while maintaining the respectability and even social
conservatism that was so valued in Victorian culture. 'Self-help' could be achieved through membership, and that earned the societies their
reputation for respectability. That reputation, Cordery argues, allowed friendly societies to stave off--for a while at least--the most dreaded fear of
its members: interference in their economic matters by the middle class.
Cordery begins his study with the development of the friendly societies, tracing their roots to the mutual benefit societies brought to London by
Huguenot refugees from France in the 1680s at a time "when poverty was gaining a high profile ... [and] rural displacement, middle-class political
self-consciousness, and evangelical concern with early salvation combined to construct poverty as a national social problem." (p.22) As a new
eighteenth century commercial economy gave way to greater levels of individual competition and industrialization, providing 'sickness insurance'
in the tradition of the old guild order filled the developing void, both in economic terms and in a development of a social identity and
connectedness that the declining 'moral economy' had offered. Membership in a friendly society linked people as part of a new group, gave them
a new identity, and would provide a benefit for members as they approached old age, disability, or some other threat to their income. It gave
members a greater sense of security in a rapidly changing world. While copying guild models, friendly societies also adopted elements of the
secret freemasonry movement, specifically rites, rituals and codes of conduct. Together, friendly societies established themselves as a unique
group, from which the shared experience of members set them apart and cultivated a particular identity, reviving something rapidly in decline in
the new, modern economy.
Once established, friendly societies faced threats from within and without. Questions as to their legality were not entirely resolved with Rose's
Act of 1793, which declared them legal, but which defined them as social organizations which, only occasionally, raised revenue through
voluntary contributions. Their abilities to raise funds and distribute them were as questionable as trade unions' rights to organize around the issue
of labor actions. The repeal of the Combination Acts of 1824 provided an opportunity for tradesmen to organize friendly societies, and by the
1830s, numerous societies formed and were directly involved in labor reform and popular politics. But, Cordery argues, the collapse of Chartism
as a national political movement was a turning point in the development of friendly societies. The tenuous connection which had developed in the
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age of reform between these nascent organizations and radical politics gave way to "the political quiescence and economic expansion of the midVictorian
years." (p. 64)
It is at this point that Cordery's study becomes the most compelling. By mid-nineteenth century, friendly societies were so popular and their
monetary holdings so large, that the government sought to oversee their administration, dispensing advice, rules and financial oversight. In
examining what he calls, "regulatory voluntarism", Cordery traces the growing collision between friendly societies, on the one hand, and the
liberal Victorian governments, on the other. The former whole-heartedly adopted the desirable philosophy of self-help and did everything possible
to evade government regulation, while the latter became convinced that amateurism and no oversight would guarantee an economic crisis for the
nation when the societies failed to produce the necessary money at payout times for an aging population. The simultaneous paths of the
government adopting the more radical approach to pension schemes and socio-economic security for the working classes while the predominantly
working class friendly societies were resisting all attempts to make insurance and poor relief anything other than voluntary actions handled by
private, member-controlled secretive societies, is one of the great ironies of Victorian history. Particularly useful in this section of the book is the
chapter on the 'respectability' of politics among friendly society members. Cordery shows that friendly societies rejected the notions of charity
and other principles at odds with self-help strategies, both because they truly believed in the latter, and because by emphasizing this and the
societies' social orientation, they could continue avoiding government regulation. It is here that commitment to those original goals and principles
of what the friendly societies intended to do in the first place was continually tested, but was preserved.
However, the later-Victorian economic slumps and loss of confidence, Cordery demonstrates, were disastrous for the friendly societies. The
psychological impact of the crisis, not to mention the financial, allowed the insurance industries to push the issue of standardized government
regulation. At the same time, the reform movement won the argument concerning potential friendly society insolvency and the need for
government oversight and security. Economic troubles could not be overcome by their secret rituals or other demonstrations of identity and
consciousness. Within two decades of the new century, the government passed the Pensions Act and the National Health Insurance Act. Friendly
societies accepted new regulatory practices, while rituals and other restrictions on general membership were eliminated to help bolster financial
security and greater numbers. The defeat of voluntarism and a decline in conviviality allowed for the creation of bodies like the National Deposit
Friendly Society--a very different kind of organization from its ancestors.
Thorough, well researched and provocative in the depth to which Cordery examines the connectedness between friendly societies and the very
cultural and social values from which they sprang, this book is an excellent contribution to the literature on nineteenth century working-class
social and economic development. The societies' history shows us how surprisingly connected to principle, as well as people, institutions can be.
That human connection is one of the elements that makes this fine piece of scholarship even more powerful history.
Nancy LoPatin-Lummis
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
LoPatin-Lummis, Nancy
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
LoPatin-Lummis, Nancy. "British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914." Journal of Social History, vol. 39, no. 2, 2005, p. 591+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA141086003&it=r&asid=727ae737ed2f345a2803364835b087c5. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A141086003
---
Quoted in Sidelights: combines a synthesis of a generation's worth of scholarship with substantial original research.
will help guide the way for future
research on this important topic.
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British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914
Timothy Alborn
Victorian Studies.
47.1 (Autumn 2004): p104.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Indiana University Press
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu
Full Text:
British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914, by Simon Cordery; pp. xiii + 230. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, [pounds
sterling]45.00, $65.00.
Throughout the nineteenth century in Britain and most of its settled colonies, friendly societies provided a mixture of recreation, ritual, fraternity,
and insurance against sickness and old age for fully half of the male working-class population. Initially restricted to small local sick clubs, often
patronized by local clergymen or schoolmasters, these eminently Victorian institutions soon evolved into a bewildering array of forms. Best
known, both at the time and to subsequent historians, were the huge federated orders like the Foresters and Oddfellows, each of which boasted
over half a million members by 1900. These organizations provided an especially public face for the movement as a whole, with annual feasts and
parades, widely circulating journals, and a potent presence in Parliament. By the 1880s, though, the friendly society umbrella also encompassed
temperance lodges, burial clubs, deposit or "Holloway" societies (which combined sick pay with savings accounts), centralized societies (which
offered sick pay without the ritual), and collecting societies (large mutual burial insurance offices). Additionally, most trade unions provided
services that closely approximated those of friendly societies, and many employers set up shop clubs to maintain a loyal workforce.
Simon Cordery provides an overview of this multifaceted movement in British Friendly Societies, which the author accurately describes as a
"small book ... designed to bridge a large gap" (1). This first book-length monograph on the subject since P. H. J. H. Gosden's The Friendly
Societies in England (1961) combines a synthesis of a generation's worth of scholarship with substantial original research. While adding nuance
to Gosden's largely legislative history, Cordery builds on more recent views of friendly societies as important institutional embodiments of
working-class sociability, "respectability," and masculinity. He also does a good job illustrating some of the tensions between these attributes of
friendly societies and their ability to provide insurance against sickness and old age. Finally, although in an inevitably limited fashion, he hints at
the incredible diversity of Victorian friendly societies, while writing them into the mainstream of British political history.
Cordery organizes his book along a series of themes which run in rough chronological order from the late eighteenth century to 1914. Successive
chapters examine the roles of gender and ritual in early friendly societies; tensions within early Victorian societies between middle-class patrons
and (often radical) working-class members; ambivalent efforts by mid-Victorian politicians and civil servants to regulate the movement;
concurrent efforts by club members to define themselves as "respectable"; the actuarial problem of remaining solvent against the backdrop of
longer-lived members; and finally the state's extension (after 1900) of old age pensions and sick pay to workers who had been underserved by
friendly societies. This organizing strategy makes for some repetition, but allows for a series of revealing cross-sectional peeks into such a
complex world.
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Cordery is on his surest footing in those sections which touch on relations between friendly societies and the governing classes, either in the guise
of the state or of employers. A nice vignette, for instance, details an assault by friendly society leaders on the Railway Benevolent Institution,
established by transport barons in 1858 to provide pensions to widows of "deserving" railwaymen. This incident reveals clearly that a primary
meaning of self-help for the Victorian working man was the correlation between savings and desert, with no outside meddling from middle-class
do-gooders. The same holds for his discussion of state-appointed philanthropic bureaucrats like John Tidd Pratt, whose unpopularity grew with
each of the four decades he served as the official guardian over friendly society solvency and sobriety. Cordery is less thorough in exploring
contacts between friendly societies and other contemporary expressions of self-help--like savings banks, cooperatives, and building societies--that
generated friction in relation to one another at different points during this period. On the more general question of friendly societies' "political"
status in the nineteenth century, he takes the line that they were far more potent as a pressure group than people at the time realized. This seems
true enough, though it comes at the expense of any serious exploration of how Victorian political sensibilities entered into the governance of the
societies themselves.
Besides politics, the other central tension explored in British Friendly Societies concerns the shifting stakes of sociability and solvency faced by
friendly societies as they entered the twentieth century. In Cordery's telling, those societies that specialized in secret ritual and sick pay retained
their autonomy by "keeping the secrets secret" (123), and by casting lower-class burial societies as an unrespectable Other in need of strict
government supervision. Both of these points are very well taken, although the latter suffers from a more or less uncritical acceptance of
contemporary caricatures of burial societies. They are complemented by a keen awareness of the tragic consequences that came from maintaining
early-modern forms of solidarity into the late Victorian era. Building on James Riley's excellent Sick, Not Dead (1997), Cordery rightly suggests
that the problem had less to do with improvidence than with demography: as working men lived longer, they collected more benefits from their
rapidly diminishing club funds. The clubs' deep-seated hostility towards any actuary who might condescendingly inform them of this state of
affairs only postponed the inevitable waning of voluntarism; this was hastened in 1908 by the advent of state-subsidized Old Age Pensions and in
1911 by the establishment of state-assisted health and unemployment insurance.
Cordery is quick to acknowledge that his conclusions, though more plausible and considerably more in tune with present-day concerns than those
of Gosden's older history, will remain tentative as long as the vast majority of surviving friendly society archives remain untapped by historians.
Aspects of the story that remain mostly unaddressed include the workings of huge collecting societies like the Royal Liver, the unique governance
patterns set afoot by the affiliated orders, and an examination of friendly society regulation that delves beyond published blue books. Cordery's
own archival work on some of the smaller local societies, and his able synthesis of other historians' efforts, will help guide the way for future
research on this important topic.
TIMOTHY ALBORN
Lehman College, City University of New York
Alborn, Timothy
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Alborn, Timothy. "British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914." Victorian Studies, vol. 47, no. 1, 2004, p. 104+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA132055098&it=r&asid=092997b9ac4ba2f9b84e9cfe9acae6b8. Accessed 14 May
2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A132055098
---
Quoted in Sidelights: a historical summation of the activities of 10,000 or so different organisations, varying significantly in structure, scale and
objectives, and undergoing marked character changes over the period in question.
his approach has something of a pick-and-mix quality: matters like recruitment, composition, ritual, benefits and rules are all dealt
with, yet not in any particularly systematic fashion
will make a useful addition to student bibliographies
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Simon Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914
Gordon Phillips
Business History.
46.2 (Apr. 2004): p286.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Frank Cass & Company Ltd.
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0007-6791&linktype=1
Full Text:
SIMON CORDERY, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Pp. 248. H/back ISBN 0 3339 90315, 45.00 [pound
sterling]).
It is over 40 years since P.H.J.H. Gosden published the last comprehensive study of friendly societies. Not many historical subjects of similar
scope can have been neglected for so long. Simon Cordery has now revisited these institutions, carrying the story somewhat further than Gosden
(who halted in 1875), and incorporating some of the local and collateral research findings of the intervening years. The result is a study which
will make a useful addition to student bibliographies; but one which gives some indication of why this topic has received slight attention. It is not
easy to provide a historical summation of the activities of 10,000 or so different organisations, varying significantly in structure, scale and
objectives, and undergoing marked character changes over the period in question.
The author has not really solved this methodological problem. He has certainly touched on many aspects of the inner and outer life of friendly
societies. But his approach has something of a pick-and-mix quality: matters like recruitment, composition, ritual, benefits and rules are all dealt
with, yet not in any particularly systematic fashion, and with the help of illustrations which seem to have been chosen with no obvious principle
of selection in mind. There is, in truth, not very much here about the eighteenth-century phase of the story. And your reviewer felt the need both
for a more thorough attempt at statistical analysis, and for more detailed individual case studies. There are, moreover, some rather disquieting
misstatements in Professor Cordery's text: William Booth appears as the author of Life and Labour of the People of London; Joseph Chamberlain
as a Liberal politician with a project for old age pensions; Arnold Toynbee as another Liberal politician enunciating collectivist opinions some 25
years after his death.
Cordery does try to keep our minds on some consistent themes. He is keen to stress the importance of ritual and ceremony as integral to the
societies' self-perception, and to trace its decline along with the recession of the practices of conviviality. He is also anxious to offer an argument
about gender, although he is rather less than precise about what the membership of friendly societies added to the mental universe of the average
sensual working-class man. Above all, Cordery seeks to rescue the political dimension, claiming that 'The breadth and depth of friendly society
political activism were far greater than historians have hit her to recognised'. He justifies this statement in part by demonstrating the societies'
efforts to influence the various legislative measures which regulated their affairs; and he does something (though he might have done more) to
record the changing content of their voluntarist ideology. It seems paradoxical, therefore, that the societies so "conspicuously failed to punch their
weight in the negotiations which attended the introduction of national insurance in 1911. There was certainly room here for a closer examination
of their part in the political infighting which brought such gains to the medical profession and to the commercial insurance companies.
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Readers of this journal will be especially disappointed that Cordery says relatively little about the friendly societies as business organisations.
There is much talk these days about the mixed economy of welfare, and Paul Johnson among others has shown how many different voluntary,
commercial and statutory bodies were competing for the custom of working-class savers. For a time, friendly societies were more successful than
most; but some were more successful than others, and we do not gain much insight into who came out on top and why. Very little is said in this
study about the investment of funds, though there is rather more comment on the uneasy relationship of the societies with would-be professional
actuaries. Cordery points out that members were paying for social capital, not just for personal insurance. What this might have meant to the
individual adherent could have led to some investigation of working-class autobiographies. As it is, the question remains largely unanswered.
Lancaster University.
GORDON PHILLIPS
Phillips, Gordon
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Phillips, Gordon. "Simon Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914." Business History, vol. 46, no. 2, 2004, p. 286+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA118378715&it=r&asid=bdeb2aff73b796e47cc41083f18f9ea9. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A118378715
Quoted in Sidelights: exhaustive biography
his reportorial rigor takes a lot of steam out of the proceedings,
Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness
Simon Cordery, Author University of New Mexico Press $21.95 (213p) ISBN 978-0-8263-4810-4
A key organizer in the early American union movement of the late 1800s, Mother Jones encouraged many groups of American workers to stand up for their rights in the face of larger-than-life foes like Carnegie and Rockefeller, becoming a powerful symbol in her own time as well as in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and '70s. Author and professor Cordery (British Friendly Societies, 1750-1918) has produced an exhaustive biography of Mary Harris Jones, drawn mostly from her own testimonials and primary source accounts of her work-which the activist-agitator didn't begin until her sixties. Cordery is quick not to take Jones's words at face value-her commitment was to the cause, not to truth-but his reportorial rigor takes a lot of steam out of the proceedings, making for a scandalously dry narrative about a figure central to some very interesting times. 22 b&w illus.
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 03/01/2010
Release date: 03/01/2010
Quoted in Sidelights: Cordery succinctly provides a great deal of information about the turns and twists in American labor and political currents, as well as in a remarkable woman's life
detracts from the narrative
might enjoy arguing the fine points, she would certainly be honored by Simon Cordery's able recognition of her life's work.
Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness
by Simon Cordery
University of New Mexico Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-826-34810-4.
Reviewed by Susan Schoch
Posted on 09/09/2010
Review of the Month, September 2010
Nonfiction: Biography; Nonfiction: History/Current Events; Nonfiction: Active Life
(click on book cover or title to buy from amazon.com)
Born in County Cork in 1837, Mary Harris was just eight years old when her native Ireland was devastated by a potato blight that caused mass starvation, disease, and an enormous exodus. A million people died in seven years, another million left the small country. Passage was dangerous and expensive, and made more difficult by the politics of English control in Ireland. Mary was fifteen before she could make the long journey to meet her father and brother in Canada. By then, she had seen terrible suffering. In his biography of a woman better known as the fiery labor activist "Mother Jones," Simon Cordery writes with feeling about her early history and gives us the background we need to understand the roots of her fierce determination. She knew injustice intimately and early, when English landlords profited while Irish people starved.
Mary Harris Jones wrote her own "unreliable" version of her personal experience, and Cordery, a professor of history, goes to some pains to point out discrepancies. His attention to these inaccuracies sometimes even detracts from the narrative. Cordery's area of expertise is labor history and the transatlantic movement, and his focus is those facts. Sometimes I wished for more of Mary's own voice, or a more personal insight.
Nonetheless, Cordery succinctly provides a great deal of information about the turns and twists in American labor and political currents, as well as in a remarkable woman's life. In Canada, as a young Irish woman, Mary Harris faced enormous social challenges and had few choices. What she did have was courage and ambition. She left her family behind and emigrated to the U.S. in 1859. She taught in Michigan, sewed in Chicago, then settled in Memphis, where she married and had four children. George Jones was an ironworker, and a satisfied member of one of the most powerful unions in the country. Mary saw firsthand the rewards of strong union representation.
They survived the Civil War in that border town, but two years after the war ended, disaster struck. Mary's husband and all four of her children died of yellow fever. Impossibly awful. But she went on, back to Chicago, and built a sewing business, only to see it destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871.
There, at thirty-four, her story goes gray for twenty years or so. There are shady speculations about how she supported herself, and little information about where she went. When she re-emerged in the 1890s, Mary was nearing sixty, speaking her mind as the feisty "Mother" Jones, labor organizer and determined socialist. For the next forty years, this bespectacled and white-haired woman was visible and vocal nationally. She spoke with an Irish brogue and passion on behalf of those who labored, especially miners and children. She pursued the participation of workers and the assistance of presidents. She helped win some battles, notably in the area of child labor. And she never gave up.
Cordery details the complexities of strikes and political movements that were the fuel for her fire, and in doing so reveals her as a tough, intelligent survivor, fully invested in changing the system in favor of those who do its labor. Her struggles are still the struggles of working men and women, and Mother Jones lives on as a symbol of the long battle for economic justice. Though she might enjoy arguing the fine points, she would certainly be honored by Simon Cordery's able recognition of her life's work.
Simon Cordery is associate professor of history at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, with degrees from Northern Illinois University, the University of York, and the University of Texas at Austin. His research fields are modern British social and political history; the transatlantic world after 1830; and American labor history. In addition to Mother Jones, he has published British Friendly Societies 1750-1914, and articles in Biography, the Journal of British Studies, and Labour History Review. See the Monmouth College website for more information.