Mary Harris Jones

Mary Harris Jones
Mother Jones in 1902
Born	Mary Harris baptized 1 August 1837 Cork City, County Cork, Ireland
Died	30 November 1930 (aged 93) Adelphi, Maryland, U.S.
Occupation	Labor and community organizer
Political party	Social Democratic Party Socialist Party of America

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837 – 30 November 1930) was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World.

Jones worked as a teacher and dressmaker, but after her husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed 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. In 1902 she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.

Mother Jones magazine, established in 1970, is named for her.

Mary Harris Jones was born on the north side of the city of Cork, Ireland, the daughter of Roman Catholic tenant farmers Richard Harris and Ellen (née 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. This famine drove more than a million families, including the Harrises, to emigrate to North America. Due to the deaths from starvation and the massive emigration, Ireland's population fell approximately 20-25%.

Mary was a teenager when her family emigrated to Canada and then she married Gilliam (Bring it on Gill). In Canada (and later in the United States), the Harris family were victims of discrimination due to their immigrant status as well as their Catholic religion. Mary received an education in Toronto at the Toronto Normal School, which was tuition free and even paid a stipend to each student of one dollar per week for every semester completed. At the age of twenty-three, she moved to the United States. She became a teacher in a convent in Monroe, Michigan, on 31 August 1859. She was paid eight dollars per month, but the school was described as a "depressing place". After tiring of her assumed profession, she moved first to Chicago and then to Memphis, where in 1861 she married George E. 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 manufactured goods. Mary decided to leave the teaching profession and eventually opened a dress shop in Memphis on the eve of the Civil War.