The loss of her husband and their four children, three girls and a boy (all under the age of five), in 1867, during a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis marked a turning point in her life. Considering that Mary's husband was providing enough income to support the household, she altered her labor to housekeeping. Jones, a member and organizer of the National Union of Iron Moulders, which later became the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America, which represented workers who specialized in building and repairing steam engines, mills, and other manufactured goods. After tiring of her assumed profession, she moved first to Chicago and then to Memphis, where in 1861 she married George E. She was paid eight dollars per month, but the school was described as a 'depressing place'. Mary did not graduate from the Toronto Normal School, but she was able to undergo enough training to occupy a teaching position at a convent in Monroe, Michigan, on Augat the age of 23. Mary received an education in Toronto at the Toronto Normal School, which was tuition-free and even paid a stipend to each student of one dollar per week for every semester completed. In Canada (and later in the United States), the Harris family were victims of discrimination due to their immigrant status as well as their Catholic faith and Irish heritage.

Mary was a teenager when her family immigrated to Canada. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York. In 1902, she was called 'the most dangerous woman in America' for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners.

She helped coordinate major strikes, secure bans on child labor, and co-founded the socialist trade union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).Īfter Jones's husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she became an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American labor organizer, former schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist.

Mary harris jones autobiography