29 Facts About Mother Jones

Mary G Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones from 1897 onward, was an Irish-born American labor organizer, former schoolteacher, and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist.

Mother Jones helped coordinate major strikes, secure bans on child labor, and co-founded the Labor unionist trade union, the Industrial Workers of the World.

Mother Jones was paid eight dollars per month, but the school was described as a "depressing place".

In 1867, Mother Jones lost her husband and their four children, three girls and a boy all under the age of five, during a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis.

Mother Jones did work for members of Chicago's upper class in the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1871, four years after the death of her family, Mother Jones lost her home, shop, and possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Once the Knights ceased to exist, Mary Mother Jones became involved mainly with the United Mine Workers.

Mother Jones frequently led UMW strikers in picketing and encouraged striking workers to stay on strike when management brought in strike-breakers and militias.

Mother Jones was termed "the most dangerous woman in America" by a West Virginian district attorney, Reese Blizzard, in 1902 at her trial for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking miners.

Mother Jones was ideologically separated from many female activists of her day due to her lack of commitment to the cause of women's suffrage.

Mother Jones was known as a charismatic and effective speaker throughout her career.

Mother Jones reportedly spoke in a pleasant-sounding brogue that projected well.

Mother Jones claimed that the young girls working in the mills were being robbed and demoralized.

Mother Jones felt that the rich were denying these children the right to go to school in order to be able to pay for their own children's college tuitions.

In 1903, Mother Jones organized children who were working in mills and mines to participate in her famous "March of the Mill Children", a 125-mile trek from Kensington, Philadelphia, to the summer house of President Theodore Roosevelt on Long Island.

Mother Jones wrote a letter requesting a meeting, but never received an answer.

Martial law in the area was declared and rescinded twice before Mother Jones was arrested on February 13,1913, and brought before a military court.

Mother Jones was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary.

In 1917, Mother Jones played a role in the Bloomington Streetcar Strike.

Mother Jones attempted to stop miners from marching into Logan County, West Virginia, in late August 1921.

Mother Jones visited the governor and departed assured he would intervene.

When UMW president Frank Keeney demanded to see the telegram, Mother Jones refused and he denounced her as a 'fake'.

Mother Jones was joined by Keeney and other UMWA officials who were pressuring the miners to go home.

Mother Jones remained a union organizer for the UMW into the 1920s and continued to speak on union affairs almost until she died.

Mother Jones released her own account of her experiences in the labor movement as The Autobiography of Mother Jones.

Mother Jones celebrated her self-proclaimed 100th birthday there on May 1,1930, and was filmed making a statement for a newsreel.

Mary Harris Mother Jones died on November 30,1930, at the Burgess farm, then in Silver Spring, Maryland, now part of Adelphi.

Mother Jones is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, alongside miners who died in the 1898 Battle of Virden.

Mother Jones remained a well-known symbol for the American labor movement after her death and remains an important symbol for the power of organized labor among activists and organizers, both in the United States and globally.