Labor Day is a time to honor not only all who labor but also one of the most tireless activists for the rights of laborers—Mary Harris Jones.

LABOR DAY HEROINE BEGINNINGS

Jones (née Harris) was born in Cork Ireland, circa August 1837. At age five her family moved to Canada to escape the potato famine. She taught in a Michigan Catholic school, then moved to Chicago as a seamstress. Later, she relocated to Memphis for a teaching job.

LABOR DAY HEROINE LOSES ALL

In Memphis, she married George Jones a member of the Iron Molder’s union. However, she lost her husband and four children to yellow fever in 1867. Returning to Chicago, she opened a shop frequented by numerous wealthy women. Of that experience, she said, “I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lakefront. The tropical contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care.”

Bad worsened when The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 wiped out her dress shop and belongings.

LABOR DAY HEROINE GOES TO BATTLE

Jones began her involvement with the labor movement in earnest by attending the Knights of Labor meetings in 1877, taking up the cause of the rising number of working poor. Soon she was crisscrossing the nation to spread her message.

In June 1897, she addressed the railway union convention, where she was referred to as “Mother”. Because of the fearlessness of this self-proclaimed hell-raiser, a U.S. Attorney once labeled her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

According to the AFL-CIO:

She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. In 1912, she was even charged with a capital offense by a military tribunal in West Virginia and held under house arrest for weeks until popular outrage and national attention forced the governor to release her.

Details of her participation in the 1913 Colorado mine strike illustrate her charisma and determination. The miners felt trapped. The companies controlled every aspect of their lives. They provided housing but deducted rent and utilities from their pay. The companies sold food, supplies, and clothing at a huge markup, firing anyone who didn’t shop at their stores. Additionally, gunmen and detectives kept tabs on the employees and drove out any efforts to unionize.

Harris appeared, delivering fiery speeches. She reminded the miners that their labor enabled the mine owners’ wives to pay $1,000 for dresses while their wives were in rags. She vitalized them to call for a strike in September to force three companies to negotiate on several points, including union recognition. Ironically many of the demands were already state law.

Fighting back, the companies evicted some 11,000 striking miners—a mixture of immigrants and ethnic groups 80% of whom spoke English as a second language— from their company homes.

Meanwhile, Jones was twice arrested and detained; the companies believed her speeches agitated the workers.  Despite imprisonment, she inspired the miners and their families, stating that she slept in her clothes and fought great sewer rats with a beer bottle.

By April 1914, the governor called out the state militia that surrounded the biggest strikers’ tent colony, Ludlow. Who fired first was not determined but one soldier, five miners, and a boy were killed. However, the militia set the tents on fire, leaving two women and eleven children burned to death.

Jones responded that the miners had only the constitution while the other side had bayonets and, in the end, bayonets always won.

While the strike was unsuccessful, it shined a spotlight on company abuse of power.

Mother Jones passed away in 1930, having participated in her last rally in 1924.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE LABOR DAY HEROINE

How a woman could rise to prominence in a man’s world after having been dealt such a poor hand in life is amazing. We need more inspirational souls like Mother Jones to lead us to develop a kinder and gentler nation.

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