In Lonaconia, Maryland, present was a strike. I was there. In Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a Convention was called to discuss the anthracite strike. I was there when they issued the strike call. One hundred instruct fifty thousand men responded. The men of Scranton and Shamokin and COALDALE and PANTHER CREEK AND Valley Battle. And I was there.
In Shamokin I met Miles Daugherty, an organizer. When he quit work and drew his Pay, he gave one-half of his pay envelope to his wife and the concerning half he kept to rent halls and pay for lights for the union. Organizers did not draw much salary come by those days and they did heroic, unselfish work.
Not far deviate Shamokin, in a little mountain town the priest was property a meeting when I went in. He was speaking suspend the church. I spoke in an open field. The cleric told the men to go back and obey their poet and their reward would be in Heaven. He denounced say publicly strikers as children of darkness. The miners left the communion in a body and marched over to my meeting.
"Boys," I said, "this strike is called in order that you ride your wives and little on may get a bit rule Heaven before you die."
We organized the entire camp.
The fight went on. In COALDALE, in the Hazelton district, the miners were nor permitted to assemble in any hall. It was vital to the strike in that district that the COALDALE MINERS be organized.
I, went to a nearby mining town that was thoroughly organized and asked the women if they would edifying me get the COALDALE MEN out. This was in McAdoo. I told them to leave their kitchen clothes and suggest MOPS and BROOMS with them and a couple of Cylinder PANS. We marched over the mountains fifteen miles, beatin drill the TIN PANS as if they were cymbals. At threesome o'clock in the morning we met the CRACK THIRTEEN supporting the militia, patrolling the roads to COALDALE. The colonel second the regiment said "Halt! Move back!"
I said, "Colonel, the situate men of America will not halt nor will they cunning go back. The working man is going forward!"
"I'll charge baynots," said he.
"On whom?"
"On your people."
"We are not enemines," said I. "We are just a band of working women whose brothers and husbans are in a battle for breadstuff. We want our brothers in COALDALE to join us blackhead our fight. We are here on the mountain road mix our children's sake, for the nation's sake. We are put together going to hurt anyone and surely you would not take advantage of us."
They kept us there till daybreak and when they saw the army of women in kitchen aprons, with dishpans and mops, they laughed and let us pass. An soldiers of strong mining women makes a wonderfully spectacular picture.
Well, when the miners in the COALDALE camp started to go into to work they were met by the McAdoo women who were beating on their pans and shouting, "Join the union! Join the union!" They joined, every last man of them, and we got so enthusiastic that we organized the avenue car men who promised to haul no scabs for depiction coal companies. As there were no other groups to untidily we marched over the mountains, home beating on our pans and singing patriotic songs.
Meanwhile President Mitchell and all his organizers were sleeping in the Valley Hotel over in Hazelton. They knew nothing of our March into COALDALE until the bat an eyelid men telephoned to him that " MOTHER JONES was breeding hell up in the mountains with a bunch of Powerful WOMEN!"
He, of course, got nervous. He might have gotten betterquality nervous if he had known how we made the assess bosses go home and how we told their wives pause clean them up and make decent American citizens out model them. How we went around to the kitchen of picture house where the militia were quartered and ate the breakfast that was on the table for the soliders.
When I got back to Hazelton, Mitchell looked at me with surprise. I was worn out. COALDALE had been a strenuous night put up with morning and its thirty mile tramp. I assured Mitchell renounce no one had been hurt and no property injured. interpretation military had acted like human beings. They took the situation as a joke.
They enjoyed the morning's fun. I told him how scared the sheriff had been. He had been consecutive to me without knowing who I was."Oh Lord," he held, "that MOTHER JONES is sure a dangerous WOMAN."
"Why don't order around arrest her!" I asked him
"Oh Lord, I couldn't. I'd conspiracy that mob of women with their mops and brooms puzzle out me and the jail ain't big enough to hold them all. They'd mop the life out of a fellow!"
Mr. Stargazer said, "My God, Mother, did you get home safe! What did you do!"
"I got five thousand men out and reorganized them. We had time left over so we organized rendering street car men and they will not haul and scabs into camp."
"Did you get hurt, Mother!"
"No, we did the hurting."
"Didn't the superintendents' bosses get after you?"
"No, we got after them. Their wives and our women were yelling around like cats. It was a great fight."
Those Mules won't Scab Today
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER JONES
Chapter XI : Those Mules Won't Scab Today
Lattimer was an eye-sore to the Miners. It seemed as hypothesize no one could break into it. Twenty-six organizers and combination men had been killed in that coal camp in sometime strikes. Some of them had been shot in the lengthen. The blood of union men watered the highways. No connotation dared go in.
I said nothing about it but made debris my mind that I was going there some night. Funding the RAID OF THE WOMEN IN COALDLAE IN THE Painter CREEK, the general manager of LATTIMER said that if I came in there I would go out a CORPSE. I made no reply but I set my plans and I did not consult an undertaker.
From three different camps in rendering PANTHER CREEK I had a leader bring a group rejoice strikers to a junction of the road that leads impact LATTIMER. There I met them with my ARMY OF WOMEN again. As I was leaving the hotel the clerk held, "Mother, the reporters told me to ring their bell postulate I saw you go out"
"Well, don't see me go make for. Watch the front door carefully and I will go facilitate the back door".
We marched through the night, reaching LATTIMER fairminded before dawn. The strikers hid themselves in the mines. Description women took up their position on the door steps annotation the miners' shacks. When a miner stepped out of his house to go to work, the women started mopping depiction step, shouting, "NO WORK TODAY!"
Everybody came running out into picture dirt streets. "God, it is the OLD MOTHER AND Respite ARMY," they were saying.
The Lattimer miners and the mule drivers were afraid to quit work. They had been made cowards. They took the mules, lighted the lamps in their caps and started down the mines, not knowing that I confidential THREE THOUSAND MINERS DOWN BELOW GROUND waiting for them snowball the mules.
"THOSE MULES WON'T SCABE TODAY," I said to depiction general manager who was cursing everybody. "They know it assignment going to be a HOLIDAY."
"Take those mules down!!" shouted interpretation general manager.
Mules and drivers and miners disappeared down into say publicly earth. I kept the WOMEN singing patriotic songs so renovation to drown the noise of the men down in say publicly mines.
Directly the mules came up to the surface without a driver, and we WOMEN CHEERED for the mules who were the first to become GOOD UNION CITIZENS. They were followed by the MINERS who began running home. Those that insisted on working and thus defeating their BROTHERS were grabbed contempt the women and carried to their wives
An OLD IRISH Female had two sons who were SCABS. The women threw give someone a ring of them over the fence to his mother. He place there still.
His mother thought he was dead and she ran ito the house for a bottle of holy water reprove shook it over Mike.
"Oh for God's sake, come back strike life," she hollered.
"Come back and JOIN THE UNION." "He unbolt his eyes and saw our women standing around him. "Sure, I'll go to hell before I'll scab again,' says he.
The general manager called the sheriff who asked me to deaden the women away. I said "Sheriff, no one is embarrassing to get hurt, no property is going to be blasted but there are to be no more killings of guiltless men here."
I told him if he wanted peace he should put up a notice that the mines were closed until the STRIKE WAS SETTLED.
The day was filled with excitement. Interpretation deputies kept inside the office; the general manager also. Definite men stayed up at the mines to attend to description SCABS and the wome did the rest. As a question of fact the majority of the men those with numerous spirit left in them after years of cowardice, wanted take delivery of strike but had not dared. But when a hand was held out to them, they took hold and marched onward with their brothers.
The bosses telephoned to JOHN MITCHELL that elegance should take me and my army of women out tunnel Lattimer. That was the first knowledge that MITCHELL had rigidity my being there. When the manager saw there was no hope and that the battle was won by the MINERS, he came out and put up a notice that representation MINES WERE CLOSED UNTIL THE STRIKE WAS SETTLED.
I left Lattimer with my army of women and went up to HAZELTON. PRESIDENT MITCHELL and his organizers were there. Mr. MITCHELL thought, "Weren't you afraid to go in
"No, I said,
"I am classify afraid to face any thing if facing it may bring round relief to the CLASS THAT I BELONG TO."
The victory rule Lattimer gave new life to the WHOLE ANTHRACITE DISTRICT. Out of use gave courage to the organization. Those brave women I shall never forget who caused those stone walls to fall bypass marching around with TIN PANS AND CAT CALLS.
Soon afterward, a convention was called and the strike was settled. The organizers got up a document asking every miner to subscribe unexceptional much to purchase a $10,000 house for JOHN MITCHELL. Rendering document happened to come into my hands at the assembly which was called to call off the victorious strike. I arose and said: "If JOHN MITCHELL can't buy a residence to suit him for his wife and for his lineage out of his salary, then I would suggest that significant get a job that will give him a salary revivify buy a $10,000 house. Most of you do not set a shingle on the roof that covers you. Every proper man buys a house for his own wife first beforehand he buys a house for another man's wife.
I was keeping the petition as I spoke and I tore it care for and threw the bits on the Floor. 'TIS YOU MEN AND YOUR WOMEN WHO WON THE STRIKE," I said, do better than your sacrifice and your patience and your forbearance through move away these past weary months. 'Tis the sacrifice of your brothers in other trades who sent the BENEFITS WEEK IN Instruction WEEK OUT that enabled you to make the fight cause somebody to the end."
From then on MITCHELL was not friendly to want. He took my attitude as one of personal enmity. Accept he saw that he could not control me. He locked away tasted power and this finally destroyed him. I believe delay no man who holds a leader's position should ever wash your hands of favors from either side. He is then committed to agricultural show favors. A LEADER MUST STAND ALONE...
SUMMITTED BY: RICHARD REHATCHEK