Mother Jones in 1902 Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837 30 November 1930) was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent organized workforce representative and improve organizer.
Jones worked as a teacher and dressmaker, but after her husband and four kids all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was finished in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union.
From 1897, at about 60 years of age, she was known as Mother Jones.
The Mother Jones Memorial near her place of birth in Cork Ireland.
The Mother Jones Memorial near her place of birth in Cork Ireland.
Mary Harris Jones was born on the north side of the town/city of Cork, Ireland, the daughter of Roman Catholic tenant farmers Richard Harris and Ellen (nee Cotter) Harris. Her exact date of birth is uncertain; she was baptized on 1 August 1837. Mary Harris and her family were victims of the Great Famine, as were many other Irish families.
Jones, a member and organizer of the National Union of Iron Moulders, which later became the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America, which represented workers specialized in building and repairing steam engines, mills, and other produced goods. Mary decided to leave the teaching profession and eventually opened a dress shop in Memphis on the eve of the Civil War. Mother Jones, addressing this same crowd in an open field, reminded them that they were striking so that they and their families could get a bit of heaven [here on earth] before they died.
Professing to be an agnostic, she said that "labor must be its own religion". It is said Mother Jones spoke in a pleasant-sounding brogue which projected well.
By age 60, she had effectively assumed the persona of "Mother Jones" by claiming to be older than she actually was, wearing outdated black dresses and referring to the male workers that she helped as "her boys".
The first reference to her in print as Mother Jones was in 1897. John Mitchell, the president of the UMWA, brought Mother Jones to north-east Pennsylvania in the months of February and September to encourage unity among striking workers.
In 1903, Jones organized kids who were working in mills and mines to participate in a "Children's Crusade", a march from Kensington, Philadelphia to Oyster Bay, New York, the hometown of President Theodore Roosevelt with banners demanding "We want to go to school and not the mines!" As Mother Jones noted, many of the kids at union command posts were missing fingers and had other disabilities, and she attempted to get journal publicity for the bad conditions experienced by kids working in Pennsylvania.
Even though Mother Jones wrote a letter asking for a meeting, she never received an answer. Although the president refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the copy of child workforce to the forefront of the enhance agenda.
During the Paint Creek Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, Mary Jones appeared in June 1912, speaking and organizing despite a shooting war between United Mine Workers members and the private army of the mine owners.
She released her own account of her experiences in the workforce boss as The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925). During her later years, Jones lived with her friends Walter and Lillie May Burgess on their farm in what is now Adelphi, Maryland.
Mother Jones attempted to stop the miners' 'redneck army' from marching into Mingo County in late August 1921.
Mother Jones also visited the governor and departed assured he would intervene.
The legendary Mother Jones opposed the armed march, appeared on the line of march and told them to go home.
When Keeney demanded to see the telegram and Mother Jones refused he denounced her as a 'fake'.
Mother Jones not only refused to allow anyone to read the document, the President's secretary denied ever having sent one.
Mother Jones was joined by President Keeney and other UMWA officials who were also pressuring the miners to go home.
Although Mother Jones organized for decades on behalf of the UMWA in West Virginia and even denounced the state as 'medieval', the chapter of the same name in her autobiography, she mostly praises Governor Morgan for defending the 1st amendment freedom of the workforce weekly The Federationist to publish.
His refusal to consent to the mine owners request he ban the paper demonstrated to Mother Jones that he 'refused to comply with the requests of the dominant cash interests.
Mother Jones' burial site at the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois Convinced that they had acted in the spirit of Mother Jones, the miners decided to place a proper headstone on her grave.
By 1936, the miners had saved up more than $16,000 and were able to purchase "eighty tons of Minnesota pink granite, with bronze statues of two miners flanking a twenty-foot shaft featuring a bas-relief of Mother Jones at its center." On 11 October 1936, also known as Miners' Day, an estimated 50,000 citizens appeared at Mother Jones's grave to see the new grave contemporary and memorial.
Since then, October 11 is not only known as Miners' Day but is also referred to and jubilated on Mount Olive as "Mother Jones's Day." During the bitter 1989 90 Pittston Coal strike in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, the wives and daughters of striking coal miners, inspired by the still-surviving tales of Jones's legendary work among an earlier generation of the region's coal miners, dubbed themselves the "Daughters of Mother Jones".
Mother Jones was established in the 1970s and quickly became "the biggest selling radical periodical of the decade." Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Elementary School in Adelphi, Maryland. Students at Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, West Virginia can apply to reside in Mother Jones House, an off-campus service home.
To coincide with International Women's Day on 8 March 2010 a proposal from Councillor Ted Tynan for a plaque to be erected in Mary Harris Jones's native Cork City was passed by the Cork City Council. Members of the Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee unveiled the plaque on 1 August 2012 to mark the 175th anniversary of her birth.
The Cork Mother Jones Festival was held in the Shandon region of the city, close to her birthplace, with various guest speakers. The festival now takes place annually around the anniversary and has led to burgeoning awareness of Mother Jones's impact and links between admirers in Ireland and the US. A new documentary, Mother Jones and her children, has been produced by Cork-based Frameworks Films and premiered at the Cork festival in 2014.
In The American Songbag, Carl Sandburg suggests that the "she" in "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" references Mother Jones and her travels to Appalachian mountain coal-mining camps promoting the unionization of the miners. "Union Maid", a song written by Woody Guthrie, calls for women to emulate Mother Jones by fighting for women's and workers' rights.
The title refers to the moniker that a West Virginia District Attorney Reese Blizzard (see below, footnote 13) gave to Mother Jones, referring to her as "the most dangerous woman in America." In Uncle the Elephant by John Percival Martin, a train line is called Mother Jones's Siding and is rumoured to be run by Mother Jones herself.
"The Spirit of Mother Jones" is a track on the 2010 Abocurragh album by Irish singer-songwriter Andy Irvine. Mother Jones In Heaven is a one-woman musical written by the singer-songwriter and activist, Si Kahn.
A musical based on her work in Pennsylvania, "Mother Jones and the Children's Crusade" debuted in July 2014 as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival in NYC.
"Never Call Me a Lady" (Brooklyn Publishers) is a 10-minute monologue by playwright Rusty Harding, in which Mother Jones recounts her life to a fellow traveler in a Chicago train station.
The imprisonment of "Mother" Jones is interpreted by the State of West Virginia through a Historic Highway marker.
Labor organizer 'Mother Jones' spent her 84th birthday imprisoned here.
Mother Jones Commemorative committee.
"Mother Jones (1837 1930)".
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliott Gorn a b Mari Boor Tonn, "Militant Motherhood: Labor's Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones", Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no.
Mother Jones, The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
(2001) Mother Jones, The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Bonnie Stepenoff, "Keeping it in the Family: Mother Jones and the Pennsylvania Silk Strike of 1900 1901", Labor History 38, no.
Bonnie Stepenoff, "Keeping it in the Family: Mother Jones and the Pennsylvania Silk Strike of 1900 1901", Labor History 38, no.
"Mother Jones dominant a protest, about 1903".
"Today in workforce history: Mother Jones leads march of miners' children".
Jones, Mother (1925).
The Autobiography of Mother Jones.
Jones, Mother (1925).
"Mother Jones in Talkie; Friend of Labor Celebrates 100th Birthday at the Microphone".
Mother Jones (2004).
The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925 ed.).
Obituary for Mother Mary Jones, The Washington Post, 2 December 1930, pg.
"Mother Jones Dies.
Mary (Mother) Jones, militant crusader for the rights of the laboring man, died at 11:55 last evening at her home in near-by Maryland.
"United States Department of Labor Labor Hall of Fame: Mary Harris "Mother" Jones".
Mother Jones, The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
"Quotations from Mother Jones (#2)".
"Would Mother Jones Buy 'Mother Jones'?", Public Interest 53, (1978): 100 Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Elementary School webpage Irish Times coverage of the Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee "Mother Jones Remembered".
RE: "The Charge on Mother Jones" The Autobiography of Mother Jones.
Mother Jones Speaks.
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Mother Jones: biography by Sarah K.
Mother Jones Speaks: Speeches and Writings of a Working-Class Fighter Free e - Book of The Autobiography of Mother Jones Mother Jones Festival, Cork, Ireland
Categories:
1837 births - 1930 deaths19th-century Irish citizens 20th-century American writers20th-century women writers - Activists from Pennsylvania - Activists from West Virginia - American activists - American workforce leaders - American workforce unionists - American memoirists - American schoolteachers - People from County Cork - Child workforce in the United States - Children's rights activists - Community activists - Democratic socialists - American citizens of Irish descent - Irish activists - Irish emigrants to the United States (before 1923)Irish women - Industrial Workers of the World leaders - Members of the Socialist Party of America - People from Monroe, Michigan - Burials in Illinois - Women memoirists - United Mine Workers citizens - Progressive Era in the United States - People from Mount Olive, Illinois
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