Samuel M. Jones

Samuel Milton "Golden Rule" Jones (1846–1904) was a Progressive-Era Mayor of Toledo, Ohio from 1897 until his death in 1904. Jones was famous for his outspoken advocacy of the proverbial ethic of reciprocity or "Golden Rule," hence his nickname.

Jones was a well-known eccentric advocate of municipal reform. He oversaw implementation of a series of humane modifications of the city of Toledo's administration during his tenure as mayor. In 1993, a panel of 69 scholars ranked him the fifth best mayor in American history.

Early years Samuel Milton Jones was born on August 3, 1846, at Tŷ-mawr, Nantmor near Beddgelert in Caernarvonshire, Wales. Jones' family was impoverished when Samuel was 3 years old, they immigrated to the United States in search of economic opportunity, winding up in central New York.

Owing to the family's poverty, Jones was forced to work from a very young age and he received little formal education. From age 16 he began working summers aboard a steamship. Instead of a lengthy list of company regulations governing employee behavior, Acme Sucker Rod posted only one rule on the company notice board: "The golden rule: Do unto others as you would do unto yourself."

Mayor of Toledo "Jones and the Gamblers and Saloon-Keepers." Contemporary cartoon from the Toledo Blade. In 1897, Jones received the Republican nomination for mayor of Toledo. Workers liked his golden rule policy and united behind him, and he won the mayoral election. He strove to improve conditions for the working class of his community.

Again based on his belief in the Golden Rule, Jones: opened free kindergartens developed a park system established playgrounds for children established free public baths instituted an eight-hour day for city workers took away truncheons from the police refused to enforce blue laws reformed the city government Police frustration with Jones led the Ohio General Assembly, which Republicans dominated, to enact a statute taking control of the Toledo police department away from the mayor and giving it instead to a commission appointed by the governor. In 1902, however, the Ohio Supreme Court struck the statute down as violative of the Ohio Constitution after Jones mounted a legal challenge. thumb One of a series of photographs Jones produced describing his speaking poses, in this case "Clinching a Point"

Legacy Jones was a Republican in his early life and political career, however, after continuing to espouse ideals more in line with Christian socialism, the party refused to nominate him for his final term in office. Even the Socialist Party of his day "promptly disowned him, and were at one with the capitalists in their hatred and abuse of him", though none of this seemed to bother Jones, who wrote to then-President Theodore Roosevelt just months before his death: "As you are aware, I am a man without a party. It is enough for me to be a patriot without trying at the same time to be both a patriot and a partisan."

He was influenced by Henry George, but argued in his 1899 book:

Brand Whitlock wrote an extended, admiring discussion of Jones in his 1914 autobiography, Forty Years of It, stating:

Portrait of Jones with sons, Percy (right) and Paul (center)According to historian Robert M. Crunden, Jones was "one of the genuine eccentrics in American history" and "a self-made American businessman who for some unknown reason decided that business, politics, and religion were somehow all the same, and spent the last decade of his life trying to convince others." In his will, Jones left a "Golden Rule Trust" to his factory workers for $10,000 .

A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists, and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Jones as the fifth-best American big-city mayor to serve between the years 1820 and 1993.

Personal life Jones married his first wife, Alma B Curtis, and had three children; sons Percy Curtis Jones (born 1878) and Paul Hugh Jones (born 1884), and a daughter, Eva Bell Jones (born 1879). His daughter died in December 1881, at the age of 2, and Alma died Christmas Eve in 1885. Jones remarried Helen Beach, daughter of a prominent Toledo family, in 1892, and relocated to her hometown from Lima, Ohio shortly thereafter. The couple had one child together, Mason Beach Jones (born 1897).

Jones died suddenly during his third term as mayor on July 12, 1904. Citizens of Toledo lined the streets to view his funeral procession.