Fight Like Hell for the Living

Black and white photograph of a woman on a white background with red text above and white text below

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1837 – 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World. 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. 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. The slogan on this button refers to Jones uttering the words still invoked by union supporters more than a century later: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”