Remembering. . .
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1830-1930)

A government official once called Mary Jones "The most dangerous woman in America." She was dangerous to the established order because she was fearless in her defense of the oppressed working class. For 60 years she went into mining towns where men often feared to go, organizing unions. The miners called her "Mother" Jones.

Government militia imprisoned her in jails, tents, and sewers. She was sent out of town by train, but she came back. To keep owners from breaking strikes with scab labor, she organized miner's wives into brigades armed with brooms, mops and buckets. "I live in the United States," she once told a Congressman, "but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression. My address is like my shoes - it travels with me."

In her 73rd year, Mary Jones began a march from Philadelphia to New York City. She was at the head of her army, several hundred textile workers, half of whom were under 16 years of age. They were on the march to see President Theodore Roosevelt, to plead for his support in ending the abominable work life of tens of thousands of Philadelphia's children. They marched in their tattered rags, many with fingers missing from a moment's carelessness at the loom. Sixty hours a week, week in and week out with no future. The grandmother of all agitators was on the move to fix that, for them and the almost 2,000,000 other children working in mills, mines and factories throughout the country.

She looked like such a sweet old lady, about five feet tall, with silver white hair and simple dress. But behind her plain wire spectacles were eyes that knew pain. Her husband was dead, her four children all dead of yellow fever. These exploited young ones were her children and grandchildren now, and she meant to do whatever it took to get decent child labor laws. If that meant marching across New Jersey and calling out Teddy Roosevelt, well then, that's what it would be. To those who doubted her fire, she exclaimed "I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

They made it to the Roosevelt mansion, but were turned away with the shrug that there was nothing the President could do. But the hundred mile march and the hell-raising speeches of Mother Jones had already done the job. Public outcry from the flurry of ongoing newspaper reports caused state after state to pass child protection laws or enforce the ones they had.

When she was 83 Mother Jones was thrown in jail, this time for the miners, whom she rallied to stand up for their rights. "Tell it, mamma. I can't", called back the immigrant laborers and displaced farmers struggling to eke out a subsistence living. So she did. From Colorado to the Virginias she roused the miners, then rounded up their wives and children to confront the authorities and strike-breaking workers with pots and pans.

She compared the labor movement with the flight of the Jews from Egypt. "The labor movement, my friends, was a command from God Almighty. He commanded the prophet to redeem the Israelites that were in bondage. He organized the men into a union." Some denounced her as "the most dangerous woman in America.", but to her "boys" she would always be the "Miner's Angel." She stayed with their cause until seven months after her 100th birthday. Then she was laid to rest in the place she earlier requested, next to miners who had died in the Virden, Illinois mine riot of 1898. "I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys."

(Part excerpted from Mother Jones: The Miners' Angel by Mara Lou Hawse and part by Robert Lentz)