She was born in Ireland. Mary Harris Jones was born to Freedom Fighters in Cork, Ireland. She would become known as Mother Jones.
Her father, Richard Harris, would immigrate to the USA to work on the railroad. His work took him all the way to Canada where Mary would be raised after being brought to the USA from Ireland.
Her life would not be a simple or easy one. She was educated as a teacher and began her teaching career in Michigan. As time went by she would move to Chicago and work as a seamstress. After traveling a bit to better her lot in life she eventually would marry and have four children.
Through her spouse she was exposed to the labor movement and once stated, "The wife must care for what the husband cares for, if he is to remain resolute."
She would become the lone survivor of her family after Yellow Fever in 1867, That wasn't all of it and in a way she is an example of the lack of compassion of a Plutocratic America. She would return to Chicago and return to a dressmaking business which was burned to the ground during the Chicago Fire of 1871. Again, for the second time in her life she would loss everything except her life.
She returned to dressmaking, but, also to a union movement.
"By 1880," she said in The Autobigraphy of Mother Jones,
"I became wholly engrossed in the labor movement. In all the great industrial centers the working class was in rebellion. The enormous immigration from Europe crowded the slums, forced down wages and threatened to destroy the standard of living fought for by American working men."
She would participate in a violence ridden demonstration of American Labor called "The Haymarket Demonstration," to demand eight hour work days. The demonstration would be marred by criminals hired by Pinkerton. Bombs went off within the crowd, police attending the rally were killed. Eventually some of the demonstrators would be arrested for the deaths and hanged because of it.
Mother Jones would not stop at that and she also went on to participate in organized rallies for the United Mine Workers. It would be there she would find her most frequent place of involvement focusing on the high mortality rate of West Virginia mines in the years 1890 to 1912.
She would become a focus of investigation and was declared a danger to the country after a demonstration when she marched with coal miners children. She was arrested and convicted to conspire to commit murder and sentenced for 20 years. She was 68 years old and in ill health. Governor Henry D. Hatfield would pardon her and order an investigation into the deaths in the coal mines. The Governor would go on to issue settlements in the coal strikes ordering nine hour days and the end of coal miner owernership of every aspect of the laborers lives, allowing them to shop freely for goods wherever they chose.
Mother Jones would die at the age of 83 and be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois.
