In honor of Labor Day--Meet Mother Jones!

[davsand]

"I'm not a humanitarian,I'm a hell-raiser."

Mary Harris Jones was over fifty years old before she began her career as a labor organizer. She was born in Ireland, but her family was forced to emigrate because they rebelled against British rule. While living in the northeast, she completed school, became a teacher, and married an iron moulder. From her husband, George E. Jones, she learned how workers were struggling against abuses by unscrupulous employers. Two tragic events changed her from a bystander to a fighter for the rights of labor. In 1867 Mary Jones lost her husband and four children in a yellow fever epidemic. And as she was rebuilding her life in Chicago four years later, her successful dressmaking business was destroyed in the famous Chicago fire.

Destitute and alone, Mary Jones strongly identified with working people who had no protection against low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions. Owners often used blacklists and violence to intimidate workers and prevent unionism. "Mother" Jones, as she came to be called, was neither frightened nor discouraged. She fearlessly began to organize both men and women to fight for their rights.

A fiery and electrifying speaker, "Mother" Jones specialized in creating a public outcry over the inhuman treatment of workers. She once put together a caravan of children on a march to dramatize the evils of child labor. Her most famous efforts were attempts to organize the miners of West Virginia and Colorado. Scorning jail, deportation to other states, and threats on her life, "Mother" Jones became an enemy of the wealthy business owners. Well into her eighties, she continued to agitate and actively assist in the struggle to unionize streetcar, garment, and steel workers. Unique as a woman in the predominately male labor movement, "Mother" Mary Harris Jones became a symbol of labor's insistence on its right to decent treatment and wages.

http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=89

A few links about Mother Jones:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjonesM.htm

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_mother_jones.htm

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/majones.htm

Please celebrate her life as well as all the lives of the men and women who died and bled in the effort to establish the right to collective bargaining, workplace safety, and protection of child workers.

I beg you, this weekend, take a second to contemplate WHY the labor movement is so terribly important to us all.

In solidarity with you all, my DU brothers and sisters!


Laura

[davsand]

1. Kick

Kicking it back up one more time!

Laura

[zanana]

2. Mother Jones was a hero...

Like others before and after her, she fought tooth and nail for workers, expecting so little in return. She would turn in her grave if she saw how those hard-fought advances were deteriorating today. It would be nice to really celebrate Labor Day as a day when workers and their sacrifices are celebrated. Funny how we don't hear much about that on Labor Day anymore.