Jones worked as a teacher and dressmaker , but after her husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 , she became an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union . From 1897 onwards , she was known as Mother Jones . 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
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
Mary Harris Jones