About Mary Harris Jones: Mary Harris was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She then helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World.
What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.
My address is like my shoes. It travels with me.
I abide where there is a fight against wrong.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.
I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.
I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people.
I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.
I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists - the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.
Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads.
And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone.
I want to hold a series of meetings all over the country and get the facts before the American people.
I was born in revolution.
Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.
I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.
I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.
Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.
You must stand for free speech in the streets.
I will tell the truth wherever I please.
You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand.
