Samuel Milton "Golden Rule" Jones (1846–1904) was a Progressive-Era Mayor of Toledo, Ohio from 1897 until his death in 1904.

[2] 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.

[3] Owing to the family's poverty, Jones was forced to work from a very young age and he received little formal education.

[4] The next year, the Panic of 1893 erupted, with the United States into a depression and millions of individuals thrown into the grips of poverty.

[4] Jones turned his talents to mechanical invention, obtaining a patent in 1894 for a new variety of iron pumping rod for deep well drilling.

[4] This marked a new career turn for Jones, from that of a mineral rights speculator and oil drilling operator to that of an employer of wage labor in a factory setting.

[4] Jones implemented the 8-hour day for his workers and offered them paid vacation, revenue-sharing, and subsidized meals in a company cafeteria.

[9][10] 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.

What is called Socialism is not a visionary plan for remodeling society; it is a present fact, which is not yet recognized in the distribution of wealth.Brand Whitlock wrote an extended, admiring discussion of Jones in his 1914 autobiography, Forty Years of It, stating:[15][16] There is no monument to Golden Rule Jones in Toledo; and since St. Gaudens is gone I know of no one who could conceive him in marble or in bronze.

[18] 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.

Jones remarried Helen Beach, daughter of a prominent Toledo family, in 1892, and relocated to her hometown from Lima, Ohio shortly thereafter.