She was 65 years old when she marched children with missing fingers and twisted spines 125 miles to the President's mansion - and America finally stopped pretending it didn't see, Their hand-painted banners told the truth no newspaper would print "We want to qo to school, not to the mines." "We ask for justice." "We want time to play.' It was the summer of 1903. The Gilded Age. While Rockefeller and Carnegie built marble palaces, two million American children under fifteen worked twelve-hour shifts in coal mines, textile mills, and factories Some were five vears old. They lost fingers to grinding gears. Went blind from cotton dust. Grew crooked spines hauling loads meant for grown men. Breathed air so thick with lint they coughed themselves to sleep The nation called it progress The economy called it necessary The wealthy called it opportunity But one woman refused to call children 'Cheap labor." Her name was Mary Harris Jones The workers called her Mother Jones She was born in Ireland in 1837 to a family that had fought for freedom for generations. The Great Famine drove them to Canada when Mary was a child She became a teacher. then a dressmaker. She married an ironworker named George. They had four children She built a life she thought would last forever. Then, in 1867, vellow fever swept through Memphis like a demon. In one terrible week, Mary buried her husband and all four children She was thirty years old. She had lost everything. Most people would have shattered Mary turned to stone - and then to fire She moved to Chicago, rebuilt her dressmaking business, started noticing who wore the fine silk gowns she sewed and whose broken hands made them Then came 1871. The Great Chicago Fire consumed her shop and everything she owned. Again, the universe took from her By the 1890s, she'd chosen a new name deliberatelv: Mother Jones.