Mary Jones

Mary Jones was born on May 1, 1930 near Cork, Ireland. While living in Chicago she became a full-time trade union organizer. She strongly identified with working people who had no protection against low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions. Owners often used blacklists and violence to intimidate workers and prevent unionism. "Mother" Jones, as she came to be called, was neither frightened nor discouraged. She fearlessly began to organize both men and women to fight for their rights.

Specializing in helping miners in their fight for decent wages, improved working conditions and an end to child labor. Her work involved making speeches, recruiting members and organizing soup kitchens and women's auxiliary groups during strikes. After the formation of the United Mine Workers Union in 1890, Jones became one of its officials.
She was a founder of the Social Democratic Party, organized to fight for unionism and other reforms in 1898 after a strike by the American Railway Union, but would leave it later because she distrusted its leaders. She was among the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as the Wobblies, a national group of 43 labor unions. In 1903 she led a children's march from Kensington, Pennsylvania, to New York to protest child labor to President Roosevelt. Even at age 94, she was organizing dressmakers in a strike in Chicago in 1924.

Her most famous efforts were attempts to organize the miners of West Virginia and Colorado. Scorning jail, deportation to other states, and threats on her life, "Mother" Jones became an enemy of the wealthy business owners. Well into her eighties, she continued to agitate and actively assist in the struggle to unionize streetcar, garment, and steel workers. Unique as a woman in the predominately male labor movement, "Mother" Mary Jones became a symbol of labor's insistence on its right to decent treatment and wages. Her life’s work made an incredible impact in paving the way for a just and humane social order.

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