A group of curious citizenry crowded around the speaker’s platform on a warm spring day in the early 1900’s. Miners and their families, factory workers, farm laborers, university students, and others were waiting to hear the words of the grandmotherly looking woman on the stage.

She was only five feet tall, and slightly plump, wearing a long black dress. Her white halo of hair was tucked loosely into a bun and stuffed under a black bonnet decorated with lavender flowers to soften her austere look. Wire rimmed spectacles framed her bright blue eyes.

An educator from the college stepped forward and introduced the woman as “a great humanitarian.” With a kindly smile on her face, Mary Harris Jones stepped forward. Without benefit of a microphone, she addressed the crowd in her slight Irish brogue.

“Get it right,” she said. “I am not a humanitarian. I am a hellraiser.”

Indeed, she was. Before her speech was finished that day, the crowd would cheer as “Mother Jones” offered her favorite motto:
“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

Why, you might wonder, wasn’t this granny sitting at home knitting like she should have been? Why? Because, there was a whole world to change, and it needed a community organizer. Mary Harris Jones wasn’t afraid to take on the task.

It’s hard for us today to imagine how grim life was for working class people in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Coal miners and their families lived in “shantytowns” owned by the mining company, and payed rent for the privilege. Wages were low, so all of the family, even the toddlers had to work in the mines. They were paid with “scrip” — certificates that were only good at the company store. By the end of the month, the miners often ended up owing the company. If they complained, they were fired, for there was always another poor family to take their place.

Factories, textile mills, farms, mines … everywhere it was the same story. Poor families worked long hours in horrible conditions for very little pay.

Mary Harris Jones traveled across America crying out for change. The stage was set early for her to be a “rabble rouser.” She had been born sometime around 1837 in Cork Ireland to a poor Catholic family. Catholics, at the time, were scorned. They couldn’t vote, hold office, attend mass, or buy land. Mary’s grandfather was hanged as a traitor for protesting British rule. Her father, an Irish freedom fighter, fled with his family first to Canada, and then to the United States.

Mary Harris married George Jones in Tennessee in 1861, and they had four children. All of her family died in an epidemic of yellow fever. Devastated, she moved to Chicago, Illinois and set up shop as a seamstress. Then, in 1871 the Great Chicago Fire left her home and shop in ruins. Working to help her homeless neighbors caused Mary to change from a quiet, unknown seamstress to a radical union organizer.

It came naturally for Mary to protest injustice. Her eloquent speeches for better working conditions rallied workers together. She organized women into what were called “dishpan brigades” to march and protest for change. Mary knew that the only way to get American laborers a decent wage, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions was to organize as a union and go on strike. The owners of the mills, mines and factories had to be hit in the pocketbook before change would come.

Her language was saucy and peppered with profanity, but she didn’t apologize for that — she knew her words got attention. “I haven’t been very discreet in my language,” she said. “You’ve got to talk a language people can understand. The public is the sleepiest damn bunch you ever saw. You’ve got to wake them up! Then, you get action.”

The miners adored Mary Harris Jones. They named her “Mother Jones,” and dubbed her “the miner’s angel.” Her detractors had different names for her. Once a newspaperman called her “the grandmother of all agitators.” Her reply? “And, I hope to live to be the great-grandmother of all agitators!”

A politician once asked her where she resided. She answered, “I reside wherever there is a good fight against wrong. All over the country. Wherever the workers are fighting the robbers, I go there.”

Mother Jones used congressional hearings to bully senators and congressman. She was fearless in the face of presidents and rich industrialists. More than once she was arrested for holding rallies without proper permits, but she knew her age and appearance would get the publicity she needed to make change.

One of her special causes was for the plight of working children. In 1893, an economic panic caused some factories to replace men with children — at a much lower wage. Children were small, and they couldn’t complain. At the turn of the century, more that two million children under the age of 16 were employed in mines, mills, and factories. They worked 12 hour days, six days a week for pitiful wages in hazardous conditions.

In Kensington, PA, when textile workers went on strike, Mother Jones organized a grand parade of children to walk to Sagamore Hills on New York’s Long Island. There she intended to meet with President Teddy Roosevelt at his vacation home and demand that he sponsor a federal law to end child labor. Though the rag-tag bunch didn’t get the chance to meet with the President, reporters flocked to cover the event. Eventually, that publicity helped laws become enacted. Mary went on to her next fight.

All her adult life, Marry Harris Jones spoke, marched, and organized for the good of the downtrodden. She was still giving speeches in her nineties.

When she died on November 30, 1930, newspapers all over the country featured stories. A friend of hers was quoted as saying, “If Mother Jones had stayed in Ireland, she would probably have been hanged … or else, she would have been the President of the Irish Republic.”

Fortunately for American workers, she came to America. And, she fought like hell.

My friend, Damien, at Postcards From The Funny Farm, is having a blog carnival called Amazing Visions. He only seems to write about men with vision…so, of course, I had to tell you about a woman.