The Autobiography of Mother Jones | Page 6

In Arnot, Pennsylvania, a strike had been going on four or five months.
The men were becoming discouraged. The coal company sent the
doctors, the school teachers, the preachers and their wives to the homes
of the miners to get them to sign a document that they would go back to
work.

The president of the district, Mr. Wilson, and an organizer, Tom
Haggerty, got despondent. The signatures were overwhelmingly in
favor of returning on Monday.
Haggerty suggested that they send for me. Saturday morning they
telephoned to Barnesboro, where I was organizing, for me to come at
once or they would lose the strike.
"Oh Mother," Haggerty said, "Come over quick and help us! The boys
are that despondent! They are going back Monday."
I told him that I was holding a meeting that night but that I would leave
early Sunday morning.
I started at daybreak. At Roaring Branch, the nearest train connection
with Arnot, the secretary of the Arnot Union, a young boy, William
Bouncer, met me with a horse and buggy. We drove sixteen miles over
rough mountain roads. It was biting cold. We got into Arnot Sunday
noon and I was placed in the coal company's hotel, the only hotel in
town. I made some objections but Bouncer said, "Mother, we have
engaged this room for you and if it is not occupied, they will never rent
us another."
Sunday afternoon I held a meeting. It was not as large a gathering as
those we had later but I stirred up the poor wretches that did come.
"You've got to take the pledge," I said. "Rise and pledge to stick to your
brothers and the union till the strike's won!"
The men shuffled their feet but the women rose, their babies in their
arms, and pledged themselves to see that no one went to work in the
morning.
"The meeting stands adjourned till ten o'clock tomorrow morning," I
said." Everyone come and see that the slaves that think to go back to
their masters come along with you."
I returned to my room at the hotel. I wasn't called down to supper but

after the general manager of the mines and all of the other guests had
gone to church, the housekeeper stole up to my room and asked me to
come down and get a cup of tea.
At eleven o'clock that night the housekeeper again knocked at my door
and told me that I had to give up my room; that she was told it
belonged to a teacher. "It's a shame, mother," she whispered, as she
helped me into my coat.
I found little Bouncer sitting on guard down in the lobby. He took me
up the mountain to a miner's house. A cold wind almost blew the
bonnet from my head. At the miner's shack I knocked.
A man's voice shouted, "Who is there!"
"Mother Jones," said I.
A light came in the tiny window. The door opened.
"And did they put you out, Mother!"
"They did that."
"I told Mary they might do that," said the miner. He held the oil lamp
with the thumb and his little finger and I could see that the others were
off. His face was young but his body was bent over.
He insisted on my sleeping in the only bed, with his wife. He slept with
his head on his arms on the kitchen table. Early in the morning his wife
rose to keep the children quiet, so that I might sleep a little later as I
was very tired.
At eight o'clock she came into my room, crying.
"Mother, are you awake!"
"Yes, I am awake."
"Well, you must get up. The sheriff is here to put us out for keeping

you. This house belongs to the Company."
The family gathered up all their earthly belongings, which weren't
much, took down all the holy pictures, and put them in a wagon, and
they with all their neighbors went to the meeting. The sight of that
wagon with the sticks of furniture and the holy pictures and the
children, with the father and mother and myself walking along through
the streets turned the tide. It made the men so angry that they decided
not to go back that morning to the mines. Instead they came to the
meeting where they determined not to give up the strike until they had
won the victory.
Then the company tried to bring in scabs. I told the men to stay home
with the children for a change and let the women attend to the scabs. I
organized an army of women housekeepers. On a given day they were
to bring their mops and brooms and "the army" would charge the scabs
up at the mines. The general manager, the