Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

1830-1930

• PRINT

Formerly a teacher and seamstress, "Mother" Jones set out on a new career as a labor organizer at the age of 50. Primarily concerned with the plight of children working in the textile mills in the East and coal miners in the West, she spent the last 50 years of her life in a crusade to organize the workers, support strike efforts, and bring public attention to their cause. She traveled constantly, often living without a permanent home or income, moving from one industrial area to the next, wherever she was needed. She is most famous for leading miners' wives armed only with brooms and mops to chase off strikebreakers in Colorado, and for organizing a march of Pennsylvania child mill workers all the way to President Roosevelt's home on Long Island in an effort to dramatize the evils of child labor.

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