It was the rank-and-file themselves who called her Mother, and she thought of them as her sons and daughters. From the late 19 th century until the 1920s, she was indeed an enraged mother, defending her brood, organizing workers, men and women, black and white, native-born and immigrant. She was everywhere, this old woman in her Victorian dress, giving electric speeches, raising money and telling her followers to “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” So famine, plague and fire left her bereft. She spent the next 25 years mostly in Chicago, and reached her sixties as the 19 th century ended, an elderly, widowed, working-class, immigrant woman, almost as dispossessed as an American could be.Īnd then she became Mother Jones. In the years after the fire, she watched workers struggle to imagine better lives for themselves. She paid attention as big new corporations exploited employees. Passionate young labor leaders inspired her she found her voice and started making speeches. She channeled all of the pain and loss of her early life into creating a better world for workers like herself, and Chicago was the crucible of her faith. In October 1871, the Great Chicago Fire took everything she had.

In 1867, yellow fever struck Memphis, carrying away George and all four children. Mary Jones helped nurse survivors, then moved back to Chicago. She had taught school as a young woman, but now being around children was too painful. She put her dress-making skills to work and started a small business downtown. Hers’ was the classic American story of humble beginnings. The Harris family came to North America from County Cork, impoverished refugees from the Irish Potato Famine. In just a few years beginning in 1845, a million Irish died of hunger and disease, and another million, like Mary Harris’s people, fled. Her path took her to Toronto Monroe, Michigan Chicago and finally Memphis, where she met and married a union iron-molder named George Jones. They had four children together.

Mother Jones by Elliott J. Gorn