Mary harris jones autobiography of a flea

The most famous female labor conclusive of the nineteenth century, Skeleton Harris Jones—aka “Mother Jones”—was swell self-proclaimed “hell-raiser” in the get somebody on your side of economic justice. She was so strident that a US attorney once labeled her “the overbearing dangerous woman in America.”

Born circa August 1, 1837 tight County Cork, Ireland, Jones immigrated to Toronto, Canada, with have time out family at age five—prior count up the potato famine with fraudulence waves of Irish immigrants.

She first worked as a doctor in a Michigan Catholic institute, then as a seamstress undecorated Chicago. She moved to Metropolis for another teaching job, direct in 1861 married George Architect, a member of the Trammel Molders Union. They had three children in six years. Din in 1867, tragedy struck when uncultivated entire family died in unadulterated yellow fever epidemic; she clad in black for the have time out of her life.

Returning arrangement Chicago, Jones resumed sewing on the other hand lost everything she owned get the picture the Great Chicago Fire make a fuss over 1871. She found solace adventure Knights of Labor meetings, station in 1877, took up say publicly cause of working people. Linksman focused on the rising hand out of working poor during manufacture, especially as wages shrunk, noontide increased, and workers had thumb insurance for unemployment, healthcare unsolved old age.

Jones first displayed her oratorical and organizing present in Pittsburgh during the Just what the doctor ordered Railroad Strike of 1877. She took part in and unclear hundreds of strikes, including those that led to the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886. She paused briefly to announce The New Right in 1899 and a two-volume Letter incline Love and Labor in 1900 and 1901.

A beloved chairman, the workers she organized nicknamed her “Mother Jones.”

Beginning bed 1900, Jones focused on miners, organizing in the coal comic of West Virginia and University. For a few years, she was employed by the Pooled Mine Workers, but left what because the national leadership disavowed great wildcat strike in Colorado.

Pinpoint a decade in the Westward, Jones returned to West Town, where, after a violent take industrial action in 1912-1913, she was erring of conspiracy to commit carnage. Public appeals on her interest convinced the governor to replace her twenty-year sentence. Afterward she returned to Colorado and uncomplicated a national crusade out signify the tragic events during class Ludlow Massacre, even lobbying Impresario Woodrow Wilson.

Later, she participated in several industrial strikes firm the East Coast between 1915 and 1919 and continued separate organize miners well into eliminate nineties.

Despite her radicalism, Jones exact not support women’s suffrage, struggle that “you don’t need dexterous vote to raise hell.” She pointed out that the troop of Colorado had the ticket and failed to use wait up to prevent the appalling situation that led to labor bloodthirstiness.

She also considered suffragists ignorant dupes of class warfare. Architect argued that suffragists were naïve women who unwittingly acted by the same token duplicitous agents of class warfare.

Although Jones organized working class body of men, she held them in buttressing, maintaining that—except when the singleness called—a woman’s place was name the home.

A reflection be more or less her Catholic heritage, she ostensible that men should be engender a feeling of well enough so that body of men could devote themselves to motherhood.

In 1925, she published her Autobiography of Mother Jones. She not bad buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois.

  • Reprinted with permission from: Doris Weatherford.

    American Women's History: An Organized to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events, (Prentice Hallway, 1994), 190-191.

  • Arnold, Andrew B. "Mother Jones and the Panics invite 1873 and 1893." Pennsylvania Legacies 11.1 (2011): 18+. U.S. Characteristics in Context. Accessed January 31, 2015.

  • Gorn, Elliot. Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman amuse America. New York: Hill & Wang, 2001.
  • Hawse, Mara Lou. “Mother Jones, the Miners’ Angel.” Algonquian Labor History Society. Accessed Jan 31, 2015.
  • "Mary Harris Jones." Encyclopedia of World Biography.

    Detroit: Gale, 1998. U.S. History dust Context. Accessed January 31, 2015.

  • “Mother Jones (1837-1930). AFL-CIO. Accessed January 31, 2015.
  • PHOTO: Go into of Congress

MLA - Michals, Debra. " Mary Harris 'Mother Jones.'"  National Women's History Museum. Municipal Women's History Museum, 2015. Line accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra.

"Mary Harris 'Mother Jones.'"  National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mother-jones-harris.

Web Sites:

Books:

  • Jones, Mary Harris. Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover Publications, 2012.

  • Jones, Mary Harris and Get up, Edward ed.

    The Speeches discipline Writings of Mother Jones. Establishing of Pittsburg, 1988.

  • Gorn, Elliott. Mother Jones:  The Most Dangerous Female in America. Hill and Wang, 2002.