| Biographical Non-Fiction posted April 26, 2020 |
  |
One of the great humanitarians in American history.
Mother Jones
by HarryT
The elderly woman smoothed her black dress and touched the lace at her throat and wrists. Her snow-white hair was gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck, and a black hat, trimmed with lavender ribbons to lend a touch of color, shaded her finely wrinkled face. She was about five feet tall, but she exuded energy and enthusiasm. As she waited to speak, her bright blue eyes scanned the people grouped beyond the platform. Her kindly expression never altered as her voice broke over the audience: "I'm not a humanitarian," she exclaimed. "I'm a hell-raiser."
President Theodore Roosevelt called her, "The Most Dangerous Woman in America." When denounced by U.S. Senate as the "Grandmother of all Agitators," she replied, "Tell them I hoped to be the great grandmother of agitators." (source: https://americansall.org/legacy-story-individual/mary-jones-0)
She was born Mary Harris in Cork City, Ireland probably August 1, 1837. Later she changed her birth date to May 4 to coincide with the Haymarket Square Riot. Although, she was prone to build up myths about her activities; she, nevertheless, had a strong impact on the labor movement and truly helped workers to gain better working conditions and wages.
Mary Harris came from line of agitators. Her grandfather was an Irish freedom fighter and was hanged. She watched British soldiers march through streets with heads of Irishmen stuck on their bayonets. The "Black and Tans" destroyed the Harris cabin and proceeded to knock over the chimney looking for her father.
The family, starving during the potato famine and fearing British reprisals the fled first to America and then to Canada in 1835. During her growing years, Mary went to public schools and graduated from normal school (teachers' college) at age 20. She taught for eight months at a convent school in Michigan, but quickly got bored and moved to Chicago where she worked as a dressmaker. she once told a friend, "I preferred sewing to bossing little children."
(Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
In 1861, she married George Jones, member of the Iron Molders Union and moved to Memphis, Tennessee where she continued to work part-time as a dressmaker. Unfortunately, in 1867 tragedy struck her happy home and she lost her husband and all four of her children ages three months to five years in a Yellow Fever epidemic that ravaged the Memphis area. No longer able to live in the area where her family was lost, she moved back to Chicago where she opened a successful dress shop. Misfortune was not stranger to Mary, in 1871 she lost her shop, home and belongings in the Chicago Fire.
Mary was compassionate and empathetic; she once said, "Often while sewing for the lords and barons on Lake Shore Drive. I would look out of the windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry...The contrast of their condition with the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful ...My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
As the economy began to shift from agrarian to an industrial economy, Mary became aware of the starvation wages and nightmarish conditions endured by immigrants who dug coal, built railroads and forged steel because they were forced labor 14 to 18 hour per day in mines and factories
Her interest was raised by a labor organization called the "Knights of Labor." When she learned of their ideals and sense of fraternity, she whole-hardheartedly empathized with their mission. She joined the Knights because they afforded her an opportunity to help the down-trodden working man. By mid-1880's Mary lent her gumption to the fight for the eight-hour day and focused her talent on the plight of miners. Her fighting spirit earned her the nickname of "The Miners' Angel." She learned that within these men smoldered the sparks of class conflict which she, as Mother Jones would fan for 50 years. To these workers, she was an anchor to the past and an arrow toward a better future.
This feisty, driven lady was not a one-trick pony, she also lent her advocacy to dressmakers, railroad laborers, steel and textile worker and most notably protecting the welfare of young children. Mary was often at odds with Union leaders who were reticent to take action. She also displayed invaluable skill when dealing with ownership. However, perhaps her greatest ability was to tend to men's spirits, to buoy them, and goad them to fight even though the battle seemed hopeless.
In an impassioned speech to West Virginia miners in 1901 as reported in the Boston Herald by Linda Atkinson. Mary, speaking as Mother Jones, called upon the miners to awaken their minds so that they might live another life. She challenged the miners by saying, "I know what you suffer. As a boy you enter dripping caves often so low you must crawl and lie on your back to work, bent over so much that you cannot straighten your back. I know how sulfur-water eats through shoes and blister your feet and how hands crack and your nails are broken to the quick...and the thought of empty stomachs, barefoot children, a sick wife make going home all to dreary...You pity yourselves, but you do not pity your brothers, or you would stand together to help one another." When she ceased speaking, men and women looked at each other with shamed faces, and almost everyone was weeping.
The lives of most miners were totally controlled by ownership forcing them to live in company towns as so vividly described by lines made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the song "Sixteen Tons:"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Miners having had enough in Ludlow, Colorado struck on September 13, 1913, protesting low pay and abysmal working conditions in the coalfields of Colorado. Upon striking, the miners and their families were evicted from their company-owned houses. They set up a tent colony on public property. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs.
The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency was brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special. They were joined by the Colorado state militia on April 20, 1914. They ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry (source: https://www.britannica.com/event/ Ludlow-Massacre).
Mary met with John D. Rockefeller in 1915, a meeting for which she was accused of selling out by the bitter miners. However, conditions did improve in the mines after the meeting and even of greater importance the public became more sympathetic to labor as result Mary's efforts.
Mary's other focus child labor began in 1895 after touring a textile factory. She said, "Seeing the little children working, walking up and down rows of spindles and reaching their tiny hands into machinery to fix thread that had snapped loose was the most heart rendering spectacle in all of life. Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did eight and some twelve-hour shifts for ten cents a day. Four-year old children came to the mill to help older brothers and sisters, they received no pay." In 1900, two million children under 16 worked in mills, mines & factories. Twenty-eight states had laws, but they were not enforced. Business simply did as it pleased (source https://www.britannica.com/event/Ludlow-Massacre).
In 1903, Mother Jones lead a march of children who had worked in the mills, many with crushed hands or missing fingers, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, N.Y., with the intention of taking them to President Roosevelt's vacation home to ask that he get a law passed against child labor. She said she wanted resident Roosevelt to hear the wail of the children who never have a chance to go to school but work 11 and 12 hours a day in the textile mills of Pennsylvania. He was not home; she nevertheless considered the march a success because it brought attention to the plight of children in the United States. However, it was not until 1938 when the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed did children gain true protection of the government.
As she said earlier Mary was known as a Hell Raiser. At one trial she was instructed to call the judge "Your Honor." Her response: "Are you referring to the old chap behind the justice counter? Well, I can't call him 'Your Honor' until I know how honorable he is. You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
On February 12, 1913. Mary was arrested and charged with stealing a machine gun, trying to blow up a train, and conspiracy to commit murder. Mother Jones was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released after 85 days in jail shortly after thanks to the intervention of Senator John W. Kern of Indiana.
Finally, in 1924 Mary was recognized for her humanitarian service by President Calvin Coolidge. Following is a partial list of her work:
1890: Organizer for United Mine Workers
1898: Help found the Social Democratic Party
1903: March of the Mill Children to President Teddy Roosevelt's home
1905: Only woman founder of the Industrial Workers of the World
1911: Left Socialist Party
1912: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike; Children's march in Charleston, W.V.
1913: Arrested twice in Colorado (free speech injunctions)
1914: At Ludlow Massacre
1915-16: Garment Workers and Streetcar Strikes
1919: Steel Workers in Pittsburg at age 82.
1922: Left United Mine Workers over disagreement with John L. Lewis -- fail to let miners' strike in sympathy with steel workers
1930: Last public appearance
Mary died November 30, 1930 (some claim she was 100, others 93). She is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive, Illinois. Her grave is near victims of the Virden, Illinois mine riot of 1898. This special cemetery had to be established for the miners who were killed during the strike because the coal company would not allow them to be buried on their property.
Biography of famous people contest entry
The elderly woman smoothed her black dress and touched the lace at her throat and wrists. Her snow-white hair was gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck, and a black hat, trimmed with lavender ribbons to lend a touch of color, shaded her finely wrinkled face. She was about five feet tall, but she exuded energy and enthusiasm. As she waited to speak, her bright blue eyes scanned the people grouped beyond the platform. Her kindly expression never altered as her voice broke over the audience: "I'm not a humanitarian," she exclaimed. "I'm a hell-raiser."
President Theodore Roosevelt called her, "The Most Dangerous Woman in America." When denounced by U.S. Senate as the "Grandmother of all Agitators," she replied, "Tell them I hoped to be the great grandmother of agitators." (source: https://americansall.org/legacy-story-individual/mary-jones-0)
She was born Mary Harris in Cork City, Ireland probably August 1, 1837. Later she changed her birth date to May 4 to coincide with the Haymarket Square Riot. Although, she was prone to build up myths about her activities; she, nevertheless, had a strong impact on the labor movement and truly helped workers to gain better working conditions and wages.
Mary Harris came from line of agitators. Her grandfather was an Irish freedom fighter and was hanged. She watched British soldiers march through streets with heads of Irishmen stuck on their bayonets. The "Black and Tans" destroyed the Harris cabin and proceeded to knock over the chimney looking for her father.
The family, starving during the potato famine and fearing British reprisals the fled first to America and then to Canada in 1835. During her growing years, Mary went to public schools and graduated from normal school (teachers' college) at age 20. She taught for eight months at a convent school in Michigan, but quickly got bored and moved to Chicago where she worked as a dressmaker. she once told a friend, "I preferred sewing to bossing little children."
(Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
In 1861, she married George Jones, member of the Iron Molders Union and moved to Memphis, Tennessee where she continued to work part-time as a dressmaker. Unfortunately, in 1867 tragedy struck her happy home and she lost her husband and all four of her children ages three months to five years in a Yellow Fever epidemic that ravaged the Memphis area. No longer able to live in the area where her family was lost, she moved back to Chicago where she opened a successful dress shop. Misfortune was not stranger to Mary, in 1871 she lost her shop, home and belongings in the Chicago Fire.
Mary was compassionate and empathetic; she once said, "Often while sewing for the lords and barons on Lake Shore Drive. I would look out of the windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry...The contrast of their condition with the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful ...My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
As the economy began to shift from agrarian to an industrial economy, Mary became aware of the starvation wages and nightmarish conditions endured by immigrants who dug coal, built railroads and forged steel because they were forced labor 14 to 18 hour per day in mines and factories
Her interest was raised by a labor organization called the "Knights of Labor." When she learned of their ideals and sense of fraternity, she whole-hardheartedly empathized with their mission. She joined the Knights because they afforded her an opportunity to help the down-trodden working man. By mid-1880's Mary lent her gumption to the fight for the eight-hour day and focused her talent on the plight of miners. Her fighting spirit earned her the nickname of "The Miners' Angel." She learned that within these men smoldered the sparks of class conflict which she, as Mother Jones would fan for 50 years. To these workers, she was an anchor to the past and an arrow toward a better future.
This feisty, driven lady was not a one-trick pony, she also lent her advocacy to dressmakers, railroad laborers, steel and textile worker and most notably protecting the welfare of young children. Mary was often at odds with Union leaders who were reticent to take action. She also displayed invaluable skill when dealing with ownership. However, perhaps her greatest ability was to tend to men's spirits, to buoy them, and goad them to fight even though the battle seemed hopeless.
In an impassioned speech to West Virginia miners in 1901 as reported in the Boston Herald by Linda Atkinson. Mary, speaking as Mother Jones, called upon the miners to awaken their minds so that they might live another life. She challenged the miners by saying, "I know what you suffer. As a boy you enter dripping caves often so low you must crawl and lie on your back to work, bent over so much that you cannot straighten your back. I know how sulfur-water eats through shoes and blister your feet and how hands crack and your nails are broken to the quick...and the thought of empty stomachs, barefoot children, a sick wife make going home all to dreary...You pity yourselves, but you do not pity your brothers, or you would stand together to help one another." When she ceased speaking, men and women looked at each other with shamed faces, and almost everyone was weeping.
The lives of most miners were totally controlled by ownership forcing them to live in company towns as so vividly described by lines made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the song "Sixteen Tons:"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Miners having had enough in Ludlow, Colorado struck on September 13, 1913, protesting low pay and abysmal working conditions in the coalfields of Colorado. Upon striking, the miners and their families were evicted from their company-owned houses. They set up a tent colony on public property. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs.
The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency was brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special. They were joined by the Colorado state militia on April 20, 1914. They ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry (source: https://www.britannica.com/event/ Ludlow-Massacre).
Mary met with John D. Rockefeller in 1915, a meeting for which she was accused of selling out by the bitter miners. However, conditions did improve in the mines after the meeting and even of greater importance the public became more sympathetic to labor as result Mary's efforts.
Mary's other focus child labor began in 1895 after touring a textile factory. She said, "Seeing the little children working, walking up and down rows of spindles and reaching their tiny hands into machinery to fix thread that had snapped loose was the most heart rendering spectacle in all of life. Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did eight and some twelve-hour shifts for ten cents a day. Four-year old children came to the mill to help older brothers and sisters, they received no pay." In 1900, two million children under 16 worked in mills, mines & factories. Twenty-eight states had laws, but they were not enforced. Business simply did as it pleased (source https://www.britannica.com/event/Ludlow-Massacre).
In 1903, Mother Jones lead a march of children who had worked in the mills, many with crushed hands or missing fingers, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, N.Y., with the intention of taking them to President Roosevelt's vacation home to ask that he get a law passed against child labor. She said she wanted resident Roosevelt to hear the wail of the children who never have a chance to go to school but work 11 and 12 hours a day in the textile mills of Pennsylvania. He was not home; she nevertheless considered the march a success because it brought attention to the plight of children in the United States. However, it was not until 1938 when the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed did children gain true protection of the government.
As she said earlier Mary was known as a Hell Raiser. At one trial she was instructed to call the judge "Your Honor." Her response: "Are you referring to the old chap behind the justice counter? Well, I can't call him 'Your Honor' until I know how honorable he is. You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
On February 12, 1913. Mary was arrested and charged with stealing a machine gun, trying to blow up a train, and conspiracy to commit murder. Mother Jones was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released after 85 days in jail shortly after thanks to the intervention of Senator John W. Kern of Indiana.
Finally, in 1924 Mary was recognized for her humanitarian service by President Calvin Coolidge. Following is a partial list of her work:
1890: Organizer for United Mine Workers
1898: Help found the Social Democratic Party
1903: March of the Mill Children to President Teddy Roosevelt's home
1905: Only woman founder of the Industrial Workers of the World
1911: Left Socialist Party
1912: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike; Children's march in Charleston, W.V.
1913: Arrested twice in Colorado (free speech injunctions)
1914: At Ludlow Massacre
1915-16: Garment Workers and Streetcar Strikes
1919: Steel Workers in Pittsburg at age 82.
1922: Left United Mine Workers over disagreement with John L. Lewis -- fail to let miners' strike in sympathy with steel workers
1930: Last public appearance
Mary died November 30, 1930 (some claim she was 100, others 93). She is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive, Illinois. Her grave is near victims of the Virden, Illinois mine riot of 1898. This special cemetery had to be established for the miners who were killed during the strike because the coal company would not allow them to be buried on their property.
President Theodore Roosevelt called her, "The Most Dangerous Woman in America." When denounced by U.S. Senate as the "Grandmother of all Agitators," she replied, "Tell them I hoped to be the great grandmother of agitators." (source: https://americansall.org/legacy-story-individual/mary-jones-0)
She was born Mary Harris in Cork City, Ireland probably August 1, 1837. Later she changed her birth date to May 4 to coincide with the Haymarket Square Riot. Although, she was prone to build up myths about her activities; she, nevertheless, had a strong impact on the labor movement and truly helped workers to gain better working conditions and wages.
Mary Harris came from line of agitators. Her grandfather was an Irish freedom fighter and was hanged. She watched British soldiers march through streets with heads of Irishmen stuck on their bayonets. The "Black and Tans" destroyed the Harris cabin and proceeded to knock over the chimney looking for her father.
The family, starving during the potato famine and fearing British reprisals the fled first to America and then to Canada in 1835. During her growing years, Mary went to public schools and graduated from normal school (teachers' college) at age 20. She taught for eight months at a convent school in Michigan, but quickly got bored and moved to Chicago where she worked as a dressmaker. she once told a friend, "I preferred sewing to bossing little children."
(Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
In 1861, she married George Jones, member of the Iron Molders Union and moved to Memphis, Tennessee where she continued to work part-time as a dressmaker. Unfortunately, in 1867 tragedy struck her happy home and she lost her husband and all four of her children ages three months to five years in a Yellow Fever epidemic that ravaged the Memphis area. No longer able to live in the area where her family was lost, she moved back to Chicago where she opened a successful dress shop. Misfortune was not stranger to Mary, in 1871 she lost her shop, home and belongings in the Chicago Fire.
Mary was compassionate and empathetic; she once said, "Often while sewing for the lords and barons on Lake Shore Drive. I would look out of the windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry...The contrast of their condition with the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful ...My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
As the economy began to shift from agrarian to an industrial economy, Mary became aware of the starvation wages and nightmarish conditions endured by immigrants who dug coal, built railroads and forged steel because they were forced labor 14 to 18 hour per day in mines and factories
Her interest was raised by a labor organization called the "Knights of Labor." When she learned of their ideals and sense of fraternity, she whole-hardheartedly empathized with their mission. She joined the Knights because they afforded her an opportunity to help the down-trodden working man. By mid-1880's Mary lent her gumption to the fight for the eight-hour day and focused her talent on the plight of miners. Her fighting spirit earned her the nickname of "The Miners' Angel." She learned that within these men smoldered the sparks of class conflict which she, as Mother Jones would fan for 50 years. To these workers, she was an anchor to the past and an arrow toward a better future.
This feisty, driven lady was not a one-trick pony, she also lent her advocacy to dressmakers, railroad laborers, steel and textile worker and most notably protecting the welfare of young children. Mary was often at odds with Union leaders who were reticent to take action. She also displayed invaluable skill when dealing with ownership. However, perhaps her greatest ability was to tend to men's spirits, to buoy them, and goad them to fight even though the battle seemed hopeless.
In an impassioned speech to West Virginia miners in 1901 as reported in the Boston Herald by Linda Atkinson. Mary, speaking as Mother Jones, called upon the miners to awaken their minds so that they might live another life. She challenged the miners by saying, "I know what you suffer. As a boy you enter dripping caves often so low you must crawl and lie on your back to work, bent over so much that you cannot straighten your back. I know how sulfur-water eats through shoes and blister your feet and how hands crack and your nails are broken to the quick...and the thought of empty stomachs, barefoot children, a sick wife make going home all to dreary...You pity yourselves, but you do not pity your brothers, or you would stand together to help one another." When she ceased speaking, men and women looked at each other with shamed faces, and almost everyone was weeping.
The lives of most miners were totally controlled by ownership forcing them to live in company towns as so vividly described by lines made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the song "Sixteen Tons:"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Miners having had enough in Ludlow, Colorado struck on September 13, 1913, protesting low pay and abysmal working conditions in the coalfields of Colorado. Upon striking, the miners and their families were evicted from their company-owned houses. They set up a tent colony on public property. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs.
The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency was brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special. They were joined by the Colorado state militia on April 20, 1914. They ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry (source: https://www.britannica.com/event/ Ludlow-Massacre).
Mary met with John D. Rockefeller in 1915, a meeting for which she was accused of selling out by the bitter miners. However, conditions did improve in the mines after the meeting and even of greater importance the public became more sympathetic to labor as result Mary's efforts.
Mary's other focus child labor began in 1895 after touring a textile factory. She said, "Seeing the little children working, walking up and down rows of spindles and reaching their tiny hands into machinery to fix thread that had snapped loose was the most heart rendering spectacle in all of life. Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did eight and some twelve-hour shifts for ten cents a day. Four-year old children came to the mill to help older brothers and sisters, they received no pay." In 1900, two million children under 16 worked in mills, mines & factories. Twenty-eight states had laws, but they were not enforced. Business simply did as it pleased (source https://www.britannica.com/event/Ludlow-Massacre).
In 1903, Mother Jones lead a march of children who had worked in the mills, many with crushed hands or missing fingers, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, N.Y., with the intention of taking them to President Roosevelt's vacation home to ask that he get a law passed against child labor. She said she wanted resident Roosevelt to hear the wail of the children who never have a chance to go to school but work 11 and 12 hours a day in the textile mills of Pennsylvania. He was not home; she nevertheless considered the march a success because it brought attention to the plight of children in the United States. However, it was not until 1938 when the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed did children gain true protection of the government.
As she said earlier Mary was known as a Hell Raiser. At one trial she was instructed to call the judge "Your Honor." Her response: "Are you referring to the old chap behind the justice counter? Well, I can't call him 'Your Honor' until I know how honorable he is. You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand." (Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones).
On February 12, 1913. Mary was arrested and charged with stealing a machine gun, trying to blow up a train, and conspiracy to commit murder. Mother Jones was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released after 85 days in jail shortly after thanks to the intervention of Senator John W. Kern of Indiana.
Finally, in 1924 Mary was recognized for her humanitarian service by President Calvin Coolidge. Following is a partial list of her work:
1890: Organizer for United Mine Workers
1898: Help found the Social Democratic Party
1903: March of the Mill Children to President Teddy Roosevelt's home
1905: Only woman founder of the Industrial Workers of the World
1911: Left Socialist Party
1912: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike; Children's march in Charleston, W.V.
1913: Arrested twice in Colorado (free speech injunctions)
1914: At Ludlow Massacre
1915-16: Garment Workers and Streetcar Strikes
1919: Steel Workers in Pittsburg at age 82.
1922: Left United Mine Workers over disagreement with John L. Lewis -- fail to let miners' strike in sympathy with steel workers
1930: Last public appearance
Mary died November 30, 1930 (some claim she was 100, others 93). She is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive, Illinois. Her grave is near victims of the Virden, Illinois mine riot of 1898. This special cemetery had to be established for the miners who were killed during the strike because the coal company would not allow them to be buried on their property.
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