[primary source for this web page: Elliott J. Gorn’s definitive biography: Mother Jones. The Most Dangerous Woman in America. Hill and Wang, 2001]

Mary Harris Jones (1837-1930), better known as Mother Jones, overcame great adversity in her own life in order to fight for the rights of the working class. She was an Irish immigrant from Cork who left with her family at age 14 or 15 during the Irish Potato Famine (usually dated 1845-1852). Once in the U.S. her life was not easy. She married a Welsh working man in 1861 only to suffer the tragic loss of him and her four young children in the 1867 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. She then moved to Chicago to earn a living as a dressmaker but lost that job in the Great Fire of 1871. In Chicago she became vividly aware of the tensions and injustices in American economic life.

Her life experiences motivated her to devote the her long life to advocacy for better working conditions for laborers. She was a co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. She railed against child labor everywhere and particularly in the textile mills. She supported the cause of immigrant women in the dress factories. She organized strikes and demonstrations across the country. She advocated for her beloved coal miners – being hired as a labor organizer for the United Mine Workers of America.

Mary Harris’ first significant engagement with the labor cause may have been in 1894 when she raised food and transportation for members of Coxey’s Army and gave rousing speeches (p. 62). Coxey’s Army was thousands of poor, unemployed men led by Jacob Coxey, a small business-owner from Ohio. They marched to Washington, D.C. in 1894 to demand jobs.

At the same time, the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) launched a nationwide strike, followed quickly by the American Railway Union strike against the Pullman Company in Chicago. Mother Jones went to Alabama in support of a coal miners’ strike there and also took a job at a cotton mill so as to undertake an investigation of its working conditions, which she reported in magazine articles and in speeches (pp. 63–64). The tragedy of child labor in the mills rose to the fore in her development.

In 1896 her path intersected James Wayland, who she helped to establish a radical weekly, Appeal to Reason (pp. 67–68).

By the end of the 1890s she was no longer Mrs. Jones but “Mother Jones,” white-haired and in her sixties, a compelling orator and effective labor organizer: “she had embraced the name and embellished the persona. Once she did that—constructed her appearance, her speech, her public demeanor, learned to tailor that persona to the needs and expectations of her audience—her real career was launched” (p. 69).

As Mother Jones she traveled all over the United States to lend her notoriously profane voice to working people. She was described as “the most dangerous woman in America” because of her activist solidarity with laborers.

In particular, Mother Jones became the most recognizable face for the struggles of the nation’s coal miners. She was a thorny presence in the coal mine battles in Colorado, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Yet busy elsewhere, Mother Jones was not present at three dramatic coal mine strikes in Illinois. She was not in Pana in 1898-1899. She was not in Carterville in 1899. Nor was she in Virden in 1898.

Remarkably, then, of all the coal mining dramas she expressed her greatest admiration and affection for the coal miners who fought in the Battle of Virden. She said: “They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America” (p. 289). Virden became a rallying cry and a kind of prosthetic memory for Mother Jones. The lock-out and battle at Virden were so significant in her understanding of labor history and her formation of a bond with coal miners that she determined to be buried alongside the Battle of Virden victims in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive. She attested:

a note about Mother Jones’ request: aside from referring to non-existent hills in Virden, she incorrectly states the date of the Battle of Virden as October 18th, 1897.

Some 40,000 people – most of them miners  – entered Mt. Olive over three days to pay their respects to this extraordinary labor leader. Many sobbed.

Thousands marched in the funeral procession that accompanied her casket to her gravesite. She was indeed buried near “her boys” in 1930. Both her original grave and subsequent grave at the base of the great monument honoring her are near General Bradley’s grave. 

Elliott Gorn argues that she “still nurtured rebellion even after her death” (p. 297). The validity of Gorn’s statement is seen in the monument to Mother Jones that the Progressive Miners of America erected in her honor in 1936 in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive.

SOME FAMOUS QUOTES FROM MOTHER JONES:
“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
“The first thing is to raise hell … when you’re faced with an injustice and you feel powerless. That’s what I do in my fight for the working class.” 
“My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.”
“Our present civilization is one of brute force. We hope to make it a civilization of justice and love.” 

FILMS:
– A feature documentary about Mother Jones: WATCH
– Framework Films (Cork, Ireland) and the Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee has produced a 52-min documentary about Mother Jones, from her birth through becoming “Mother Jones” to her burial place in Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive: WATCH 

OF NOTE:
In Spring 2021 two women from Mt Olive undertook a new commercial enterprise, inspired by Mother Jones and the role of women in the labor movement overall. They created their own coffee roastery, called Kazoo, and they named their delicious featured dark blend “Hellraiser” after Mother Jones. The labels on Hellraiser paper bags carry the likeness of Mother Jones on the front and information about Mother Jones, her monument in the Union Miners Cemetery and a QR code on the back – which also has Mother Jones’ most famous saying: “Pray the the Dead and fight like hell for the Living.” Stop by the roastery at 290 Lakeview Drive, Mount Olive, IL 62069 or order your coffee online. 
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As well, Morton Farm (just south and then west of Mt. Olive on Wolf Road), produces a delicious Mother Jones cookie among its many outstanding baked goods and jams. Proceeds from the sale of this cookie support the Mother Jones Museum in Mt. Olive.

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the other Mother Jones: There is a liberal magazine called MOTHER JONES whose tagline is “Smart, Fearless Journalism”. The magazine’s website has two articles explaining who the historic Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) was and why she inspired the creation of the magazine 44 years after her death and continues to inspire it. Please read the two articles (the first by Elliott J. Gorn, the second by Adam Hochschild) accessible with this link: CLICK