John Simons was the co-founder of the Young Australia League (1905) and a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly (he won the seat of East Perth for Labor in 1921), as well as secretary of the Western Australian National Football League (from 1905 to 1914) and secretary of the Western Australian State School Teachers' Union. From 1914 he edited the journal the Boomerang. His other roles included State president of the Australian Natives' Association (1910-1911), Rotarian, life member of the Western Australian Trotting Association (secretary, 1913-1914) and local chairman of the Scottish Insurance Corporation. In 1993 John Joseph Carter, on behalf of the Clare Regional History Group, published The Clare I Remember: Reminiscences of Clare in the 1880's and 1890's, based on articles published by Simons in the Northern Argus from 1944 to 1945.
E. Morris Miller, in Australian Literature from Its Beginnings to 1935 (1940), lists the work A Selection from the Writings of J. J. Simons, the Founder of the Young Australia League (1926). This has not been traced.
