The Autobiography of Mother Jones | Page 5

shack and asked his wife for a cup of tea. Often
in these company-owned towns the inn-keepers were afraid to let me
have food. The poor soul was so happy to have me there that she
excused herself to "dress for company." She came out of the bedroom
with a white apron on over her cheap cotton wrapper.
One of the men who was present at Dud's trial followed me up to the
miner's house. At first the miner's wife would not admit him but he said
he wanted to speak privately to Mother Jones. So she let him in.
"Mother," he said, "I am glad you paid that bill so quickly. They
thought you'd appeal the case. Then they were going to lock you both
up and burn you in the coke ovens' at night and then say that you had
both been turned loose in the morning and they didn't know where you
had gone."
Whether they really would have carried out their plans I do not know.
But I do know that there are no limits to which powers of privilege will
not go to keep the workers in slavery.

CHAPTER IV
- WAYLAND'S APPEAL TO REASON
In 1893, J. A. Wayland with a number of others decided to demonstrate
to the workers the advantage of co-operation over competition. A group
of people bought land in Tennessee and founded the Ruskin Colony.
They invited me to join them.
"No," said I, "your colony will not succeed. You have to have religion
to make a colony successful, and labor is not yet a religion with labor."
I visited the colony a year later. I could see in that short time disrupting
elements in the colony. I was glad I had not joined the colony but had
stayed out in the thick of the fight. Labor has a lot of fighting to do
before it can demonstrate. Two years later Wayland left for Kansas
City. He was despondent.
A group of us got together; Wayland, myself, and three men, known as
the "Three P's" -Putnam, a freight agent for the Burlington Railway;
Palmer, a clerk in the Post Office; Page, an advertising agent for a
department store. We decided that the workers needed education. That
they must have a paper devoted to their interests and stating their point
of view. We urged Wayland to start such a paper. Palmer suggested the
name, "Appeal to Reason."
"But we have no subscribers," said Wayland.
"I'll get them," said I. "Get out your first edition and I'll see that it has
subscribers enough to pay for it."
He got out a limited first edition and with it as a sample I went to the
Federal Barracks at Omaha and secured a subscription from almost
every lad there. Soldiers are the sons of working people and need to
know it. I went down to the City Hall and got a lot of subscriptions. In
a short time I had gathered several hundred subscriptions and the paper
was launched. It did a wonderful service under Wayland. Later Fred G.
Warren came to Girard where the paper was published, as editorial

writer. If any place in America could be called my home, his home was
mine. Whenever, after a long, dangerous fight, I was weary and felt the
need of rest, I went to the home of Fred Warren.
Like all other things, "The Appeal to Reason" had its youth of vigor, its
later days of profound wisdom, and then it passed away. Disrupting
influences, quarrels, divergent points of view, theories, finally caused it
to go out of business.
CHAPTER V
- VICTORY AT ARNOT
Before 1899 the coal fields of Pennsylvania were not organized.
Immigrants poured into the country and they worked cheap. There was
always a surplus of immigrant labor, solicited in Europe by the coal
companies, so as to keep wages down to barest living. Hours of work
down under ground were cruelly long. Fourteen hours a day was not
uncommon, thirteen, twelve. The life or limb of the miner was
unprotected by any laws. Families lived in company owned shacks that
were not fit for their pigs. Children died by the hundreds due to the
ignorance and poverty of their parents. Often I have helped lay out for
burial the babies of the miners, and the mothers could scarce conceal
their relief at the little ones' deaths. Another was already on its way,
destined, if a boy, for the breakers; if a girl, for the silk mills where the
other brothers and sisters already worked.
The United Mine Workers decided to organize these fields and work
for human conditions for human beings. Organizers were put to work.
Whenever the spirit of the men in the mines grew strong enough a
strike was called.