By Joseph E. Gannon

In 1913, when "Mother" Jones was 83 years old, the fight in West Virginia was still being waged. When a mine company guard was killed during an altercation, Jones and several other union organizers were arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. It was at this point that a West Virginia prosecutor called her "the most dangerous woman in America," and indeed she probably was, but only to the mine owners of America.

(Above-right: Library of Congress - "Mother" Jones with "Silent" Cal Coolidge. By the end of her life, even presidents could no longer ignore her.)

While Jones was in jail, Fremont Older did a series of reports on her fight for miners' rights in Collier's magazine. The U.S. Senate took notice. Soon she was pardoned by West Virginia's governor and was called to testify before a Senate committee hearing on the plight of the miners of West Virginia. Thanks to those hearings, the mine owners were eventually forced to give their employees the right to join unions and other abuses were also corrected. Jones and her "boys" had won.

Jones was 83, and not yet finished. Once released, she involved herself with a coal miners strike in Colorado that came to be known as the "Coal Field War." Governor E. M. Ammons,

Denver Public Library The ruins of the miners tent-city at Ludlow, Colorado, where 20 were killed.

responding to the demands of the mine owners, called out the state militia. Soon the militia became nothing more than the mine owners' private army. This culminated in one of the most tragic incidents in U.S. labor history.

On April 20, 1914, the militia surrounded and attacked the tent-city in Ludlow, where striking miners and their families had been living since being thrown out of their mine-owned housing. Twenty people were killed. Two women and eleven children who had taken shelter in trench dug beneath a tent died when the militia set fire to the camp. The event has become known as the "Ludlow Massacre."

Suddenly, the whole country awoke to the plight of the miners. "Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front-page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not," Jones said.

Jones went on to help the garment workers in job actions in 1915 and streetcar workers in 1916, both in New York, and steel workers in Pittsburgh, at the age of 89. In the U.S. Senate, she was once called "the grandmother of all agitators." She replied that it was her desire to one day be the "great-grandmother of all agitators." It was an ambition she achieved.

It is a measure of Jones' integrity that even those she opposed came to respect her for that dedication. On her 100th birthday, she received a telegram from John D. Rockefeller Jr., once one of her staunchest opponents, a man whose family owned many of the mines Jones helped to unionize. It read: "Your loyalty to your ideals, your fearless adherence to your duty as you have seen it is an inspiration to all who have known you. May you have continued health and happiness as long as life lasts."

Two months later she returned the favor, sending a 91st birthday greeting to Rockefeller's father. In discussing their two lives, his coming to an end amid all the trapping of great wealth, and hers coming to end with little or nothing of material wealth to show for her 100 years, she said, "I wouldn't trade what I've done, for what he's done." This pride in fighting for what she believed in sums up this dynamo's life.

Illinois Labor History Society A bas relief of "Mother" Jones at her gravesite in the Union Miners Cemetery.

Jones died November 30, 1930, and was laid to rest in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. She had asked to be buried there, saying, "I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys." On her stone was carved: "She gave her life to the world of labor, her blessed soul to heaven. God's finger touches her, and now she sleeps."

Many of history's heroes are soldiers who performed brave deeds in war. Jones was a soldier, too; she was a soldier for justice and human rights. In a time when men "did" and women stayed at home, she was leading men in a fight against a ruthless and powerful opponent, and she never blinked nor took a single step backwards.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones is a true American hero, one of the most admirable of "The Wild Geese." So join us in raising a glass to this fearless fighter for America's working men and woman:

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was born 172 years ago this month. Ar dheis De go raibh sí. (May she sit at the right hand of God.)

She "fought like hell for the living" to help win basic human rights for America's working poor and never took a step backward, no matter how rich or powerful the opponent. She was one of the strongest female figures in US history, and now you can read her entire incredible story in Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliott J Gorn. (A portion of your purchase price will help support "The Wild Geese Today.")

Buy a hat, shirt, mug or other great "WGT" item at Show the world you are one of "The Wild Geese"