A previous article reviewed the life and works of suffragette Rosalie Gardiner Jones. Her niece, Mary Gardiner Jones was nowhere near as flamboyant as Rosalie, but made her own significant mark on American public life.
Born in Manhattan in 1920, Mary was the daughter of Charles, Rosalie’s brother. She was always uncomfortable with her family’s elevated social status and what she characterized as their constant fights over property (which obviously involved Aunt Rosalie).
Jones graduated from Wellesley and worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS and later the CIA) during World War II. After the war she earned her degree from Yale Law School, graduating near the top of her class and earning membership in the prestigious Order of the Coif, restricted to the top 10 percent of each graduating class. Despite her achievement, she interviewed with 50 law firms, several of whom explicitly said they would not hire a female attorney. Jones ultimately found a staff position at Donovan Leisure in Washington, D.C., becoming the firm’s first female lawyer. As an aside, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the firm, ran the OSS and knew Jones from her work there.
In 1953, she took a position with the Justice Department, working in its anti-trust division and ensuring enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. She eventually attracted the attention of the Kennedy a
dministration because of her consistently strong positions against unrestrained business activities. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson appointed her as the first female Federal Trade Commissioner, one of several Johnson appointees that validated his stated commitment to increase the influence of women in national politics. Her appointment came at a perfectly appropriate time, as the public was beginning to focus on consumer issues and had become receptive to the idea of government challenges to heretofore common practices.
The climate was ripe, therefore, for Jones to move the Federal Trade Commission in a different direction. After all, it was Rachel Carson who had published Silent Spring in 1962, warning of environmental damage caused by pesticides. The United States Surgeon General followed suit and published its landmark Smoking and Health report in 1964, providing overwhelming evidence that smoking was dangerous to health. One year later, Ralph Nader published Unsafe At Any Speed, indicting the auto industry for producing cars with no thought for driver and passenger safety. Such a change in landscape led Jones to view her position, as she later wrote, “a bully pulpit—to try to get (the other Commissioners) to take the consumer seriously.”
The Commission had typically supported business interests, but Jones refocused its efforts on consumer education and protection. She had little experience with consumer issues—as she indicated in several interviews—but because she was regularly asked to speak to women’s groups about consumer problems, she was drawn into their concerns and became a champion for several reforms that affect us today. She succeeded in having all cigarette advertising banned from radio and television and enacted rules that required garment manufacturers to add care labels to their products. She brought lawsuits against real estate groups that made it difficult for blacks to find affordable housing, and filed suits against redlining, the then common practice of segregating neighborhoods so that they were unavailable to black homebuyers. Jones also invited consumers to appear as witnesses at commission hearings and invited them to attend general meetings. Throughout her tenure, Jones supported regulations that won praise from consumer advocacy groups.
After nine years as FTC Commissioner, Jones resigned to teach law at the University of Illinois and later became Vice President of Consumer Affairs for Western Union. When asked if she resented being hired for a job earmarked for a woman, she replied, “Hell no. It gives me a foot in the door.” She later founded the Consumer Interest Research Institute, which became an important public policy think tank.
Like her Aunt Rosalie, Jones demonstrated an independent spirit and a willingness to fight without compromise for what she considered right. After retirement, she focused on mental health issues, establishing the D.C. Mental Health Organization in 1998, to assist children and senior citizens with mental health problems. In 2007, she published her very interesting autobiography entitled Tearing Down Walls: A Woman’s Triumph.
Mary Jones died in 2009 and is buried in the Memorial Cemetery of St. John’s Church, located one mile west of the church in Laurel Hollow. Interestingly, she is buried in the family plot of her mother Anna Livingston Short Jones, rather than in the very large Jones plot in the same cemetery. Perhaps in death she wanted to underscore one final time her discomfort with her family’s status.
