The Mother of all Protestors In the United States today, there are many laws in place to protect American workers from being treated unfairly. Minimum wage guarantees a fair salary, limits on the number of hours worked per week keep bosses from requiring unreasonable work hours, and certain safety standards for work environments are legally required. In the 1800s, though, workers were still fighting for these rights, led by passionate individuals. Even though industry was a man's world, one of the staunchest supporters of workers' rights was a woman named Mary Harris Jones, later known as "Mother Jones."

Mary Harris was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1830 into a rebellious family: her grandfather was an Irish freedom fighter. When he was arrested, her father was forced to flee Ireland with his young family. They immigrated to Canada in 1835 and settled in Toronto, where Mary grew up. She graduated at the age of 17 and began teaching school in Michigan. After only eight months, she moved to Chicago to become a dressmaker instead, saying that she "preferred sewing to bossing little children."

Eventually, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to once again teach school and met George Jones, an iron molder who belonged to a labor union. They married in 1861 and had four children. All was well for their family until 1867, when a yellow fever epidemic struck. George and all four of their children died within one week, and a grief–stricken Mary moved back to Chicago to work again as a dressmaker.

In 1871, tragedy struck again, and Mary lost everything she owned in the Great Chicago Fire. It was about this time that she started to notice the inequities between the average person and the wealthy people for whom she sewed. "Often while sewing for the lords and barons who lived in magnificent houses on the Lake Shore Drive," she would say, "I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front... The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care." This angered her, and she became involved in the labor movement, having learned a lot about the workers' feelings and thoughts from her husband.

Mary Harris Jones began traveling the country, organizing and helping workers, especially coal miners. Miners were often forced to work 18–hour days for just pennies each day. If they dared to protest, they were fired or, in some of the worst cases, killed outright. Because she had no family, the workers she aligned herself with became her family and started calling her "Mother Jones, the Miners' Angel." In fact, she was instrumental in organizing the United Mine Workers. This organization fought for mineworkers to earn a fair wage and to work fewer hours per day underground. During her travels, she would live with the workers in tent colonies and shantytowns. Despite her small size and grandmotherly appearance, she was known for being a very passionate and intense speaker. Her ability to turn a phrase made her a formidable and outspoken opponent of unfair labor practices. "The workers asked only for bread and a shortening of the long hours of toil. The agitators gave them visions. The police gave them clubs," she said in one speech. She also said in another speech, "On their side the workers had only the Constitution. The other side had bayonets."

Mother Jones also became active in politics, helping to found the Social Democratic Party in 1898. At the founding of Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, Mother Jones was the only woman of 27 people who signed a manifesto calling for the workers to band together.

Wherever there was a strike or labor dispute, Mother Jones was there fighting for the workers. She was even arrested during a protest in 1913 at the age of 83. She continued to speak about workers' rights as her health permitted until she was 96, when she was no longer able to continue her work. Her last known public appearance was at her 100th birthday party, when she was as fiery as ever. She passed away in 1930, seven months after her 100th birthday. Mother Jones was buried near the victims of an 1889 mine riot in southern Illinois.

Mary Harris Jones spent most of her life striving for the fair treatment of laborers. Despite her personal tragedies and several arrests, she never gave up. This hard work caused one political activist to assess her as "the greatest woman agitator of our time."
The following question has two parts. First, answer part A. Then, answer part B.

Part A:

Which statement BEST summarizes the central idea of the text?
A
Workers' rights were terrible until they joined together and fought against their oppressive bosses.