Mary Jones (fam. “Mother Jones”)

Life
1830-1930 [née Mary Harris, known as ‘Mother Jones’]; b. Cork; emig. and ed. Canada; moved to Memphis, Tennessee, as teacher; m. ironworker called Jones; lost husband and 4 children from yellow fever; returned to Chicago; possessions destroyed in Great Fire, 1871; joined Knights of Labor; took up cause of justice in Pittsburgh labour [Railway] riots, 1877; Haymarkert Strike, Chicago, 1886; Birmingham railroad strike, 1894; W. Virginia and Colorado coal strikes, 1903 [and] 1913; New York street-car strike, 1915-16; organised ‘woman’s army’ to drive off scabs;

called ‘most dangerous woman in America at whose arrival 20,000 contented men lay down their tools and walked out’ and sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy to commit murder by a West Virginia judge, but released after Congressional investigation at which she said, ‘whe[re]ver a fight is on against wrong, I am always there’; led march of Philadephia mill-workers to the home of President Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, Long Island; presented a deformed 14-yr old boy to an Economics class in Harvard as ‘lesson in Economics’;

she called Roosevelt’s presidency a presidency of the capitalist not the poor and contested his position in relation to labour; d. 30 Nov., Silver Spring, Maryland; m. George E. Jones, d. 1867

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