Jones, Mary Harris, 1830–1930, American labor agitator, called Mother Jones, b. Ireland. Interested in the labor movement for many years, she became active in it after the death of her husband and four children (1867) from yellow fever. She won fame as an effective speaker and by 1880 was a prominent figure in the movement. One of the founders of the Social Democratic party (1898) and the Industrial Workers of the World Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), revolutionary industrial union organized in Chicago in 1905 by delegates from the Western Federation of Mines, which formed the nucleus of the IWW, and 42 other labor organizations.
..... Click the link for more information. (1905), she was active in organizing miners, garment workers, and streetcar workers. In 1913, her organizing activities were blamed for violence in West Virginia coal fields and she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. The sentence was commuted, and in 1914 her graphic description of the massacre of 20 people by machine-gun fire during a Ludlow, Colo., miner's strike convinced President Wilson to try to mediate the dispute. A long-time champion of laws to end child labor, she continued as a union organizer and agitator into her nineties. She wrote an autobiography in 1925, which contains some factual inaccuracies.

Bibliography

See biographies by D. Fetherling (1974) and E. J. Gorn (2001).

Jones, Mary Harris

orig. Mary Harris known as Mother Jones

(born May 1, 1830, Cork, Ire.—died Nov. 30, 1930, Silver Spring, Md., U.S.) Irish-born U.S. labour organizer. She was brought to the U.S. as a child in 1835. In 1867 she lost her children and husband (an ironworker) in a yellow-fever epidemic in Memphis, Tenn.; four years later she lost all her possessions in the great Chicago fire. She turned for assistance to the Knights of Labor, which led to her becoming a highly visible figure in the U.S. labour movement. She traveled across the country, organizing for the United Mine Workers and supporting strikes wherever they were being held. At 93 she was still working among striking coal miners in West Virginia. She actively supported legislation to prohibit child labour. She was a founder of the Social Democratic Party (1898) and the Industrial Workers of the World (1905). Her autobiography was published in 1925. She died at the age of 100 and was buried in the Union Miners' Cemetery in Mount Olive, Ill.