Mother Jones

OK, so I'm really busy with all my testing coming up and everything, so. . . when I had to do a creative, interactive assignment for AP History. . . I cheaped out. I picked a person in history I could blog about. Her name? Mother Jones.

My assignment was to pick a "reformer" and be them, interacting with other "reformers" of the time (AKA my class mates).

Hello, it is so nice to meet all of you . . . other than you damn industrialists, you scalawaging, child-labor-employing, social gospel-spouting, dogs.



My name is Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, and I am a reformer who “pray[s] for the dead and fight like hell for the living”. I was born in Cork City, Ireland, in 1837 to a tenant farmer, I went to Canada when I was 14, and then became a convent teacher (this was before my infamous sailor-swearing, you see).



When I got bored, I moved to Memphis and married my husband George, a labor leader, and opened a dress shop on the eve of the Civil War. Then, in a flash of yellow scourge, my husband and my 5 kids, not one over the age of 5, all died. I went to Chicago to open a business there, and lost my home in the Chicago Great Fire just four years later. As I once said, “I learned in the early part of my career that labor must bear the cross for others' sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do”.



I began picketing for labor groups, saying “I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser.” I became known as “the most dangerous woman in America” – little old me, not a murderer or an outlaw (though I did swear like one!).



I wasn’t a really big fan of female suffrage, because I knew “You don’t need the vote to raise hell!” I became known as a storyteller and speech giver, with some stunts for effect.



In 1901, silk mill child workers went on strike, demanding adult pay, and I joined the fight. In 1903, I organized kids to join the “Children’s Crusade”, a march to the President’s house, while we yelled, "We want to go to School and not the mines!". I was arrested twice in 1913, and being in the pokey *may * have influenced my language a wee bit.



I wrote my autobiography in 1925, and I died in 1930 at the age of 100. The magazine Mother Jones (OOC: BEST MAGAZINE EVER!!!) became a hit liberal underground magazine just a few years back. Oh, all right, I’ll admit I was only 93 when I died!!! #@$?!