Irish Thought for October 4...

Irish-American Heroes

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

The woman who would become a driving force in the American labor movement was an immigrant from County Cork.  In the U.S. she worked as a seamstress and started a family, but her husband and four children died in a yellow fever epidemic in 1867 before her home and shop were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.  Jones, whose social conscience was rooted in her compassion for the poor and afflicted, campaigned for the United Mine Workers Union, confounded the Social Democratic Party, helped establish the Industrial Workers of the World, and fought to abolish child labor.  The progressive magazine Mother Jones is named for her.