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.
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 sheriff and the corporation
hirelings heard of our plans and were on hand. The day came and the
women came with the mops and brooms and pails of water.
I decided not to go up to the Drip Mouth myself, for I knew they would
arrest me and that might rout the army. I selected as leader an Irish
woman who had a most picturesque appearance. She had slept late and her
husband had told her to hurry up and get into the army. She had grabbed
a red petticoat and slipped it over a thick cotton night gown. She wore
a black stocking and a white one. She had tied a little red fringed
shawl over her wild red hair. Her face was red and her eyes were mad.
I looked at her and felt that she could raise a rumpus.
I said, “You lead the army up to the Drip Mouth. Take that tin dishpan
you have with you and your hammer, and when the scabs and the mules
come up, begin to hammer and howl. Then all of you hammer and howl and
be ready to chase the scabs with your mops and brooms. Don’t be afraid
of anyone.”
Up the mountain side, yelling and hollering, she led the women, and
when the mules came up with the scabs and the coal, she began beating
on the dishpan and hollering and all the army joined in with her. The
sheriff tapped her on the shoulder.
“My dear lady,” said he, “remember the mules. Don’t frighten them.”
She took the old tin pan and she hit him with it and she hollered, “To
hell with you and the mules!”
He fell over and dropped into the creek. Then the mules began to rebel
against scabbing. They bucked and kicked the scab drivers and started
off for the barn. The scabs started running down hill, followed by the
army of women with their mops and pails and brooms.
A poll parrot in a near by shack screamed at the superintendent, “Got
hell, did you? Got hell?”
There was a great big doctor in the crowd, a company lap dog. He had
a little satchel in his hand and he said to me, impudent like, “Mrs.
Jones, I have a warrant for you.”
“All right,” said I. “Keep it in your pill bag until I come for it. I
am going to hold a meeting now.”
From that day on the women kept continual watch of the mines to see
that the company did not bring in scabs. Every day women with brooms
or mops in one hand and babies in the other arm wrapped in little
blankets, went to the mines and watched that no one went in. And all
night long they kept watch. They were heroic women. In the long years
to come the nation will pay them high tribute for they were fighting
for the advancement of a great country.
I held meetings throughout the surrounding country. The company was
spending money among the farmers, urging them not to do anything for
the miners. I went out with an old wagon and a union mule that had gone
on strike, and a miner’s little boy for a driver. I held meetings among
the farmers and won them to the side of the strikers.
Sometimes it was twelve or one o’clock in the morning when I would
get home, the little boy asleep on my arm and I driving the mule.
Sometimes it was several degrees below zero. The winds whistled down
the mountains and drove the snow and sleet in our faces. My hands and
feet were often numb. We were all living on dry bread and black coffee.
I slept in a room that never had a fire in it, and I often woke up in
the morning to find snow covering the outside covers of the bed.
There was a place near Arnot called Sweedy Town, and the company’s
agents went there to get the Swedes to break the strike. I was holding
a meeting among the farmers when I heard of the company’s efforts. I
got the young farmers to get on their horses and go over to Sweedy Town
and see that no Swede left town. They took clotheslines for lassos and
any Swede seen moving in the direction of Arnot was brought back quick
enough.
After months of terrible hardships the strike was about won. The mines
were not working. The spirit of the men was splendid. President Wilson
had come home from the western part of the state. I was staying at his
home. The family had gone to bed. We sat up late talking over matters
when there came a knock at the door. A very cautious knock.
“Come in,” said Mr. Wilson.
Three men entered. They looked at me uneasily and Mr. Wilson asked me
to step in an adjoining room. They talked the strike over and called
President Wilson’s attention to the fact that there were mortgages on
his little home, held by the bank which was owned by the coal company,
and they said, “We will take the mortgage off your home and give you
$25,000 in cash if you will just leave and let the strike die out.”
I shall never forget his reply:
“Gentlemen, if you come to visit my family, the hospitality of the
whole house is yours. But if you come to bribe me with dollars to
betray my manhood and my brothers who trust me, I want you to leave
this door and never come here again.”
The strike lasted a few weeks longer. Meantime President Wilson, when
strikers were evicted, cleaned out his barn and took care of the
evicted miners until homes could be provided. One by one he killed his
chickens and his hogs. Everything that he had he shared. He ate dry
bread and drank chicory. He knew every hardship that the rank and file
of the organization knew. We do not have such leaders now.
The last of February the company put up a notice that all demands were
conceded.
“Did you get the use of the hall for us to hold meetings?” said the
women.
“No, we didn’t ask for that.”
“Then the strike is on again,” said they.
They got the hall, and when the President, Mr. Wilson, returned from
the convention in Cincinnati he shed tears of joy and gratitude.
I was going to leave for the central fields, and before I left, the
union held a victory meeting in Bloosburg. The women came for miles in
a raging snow storm for that meeting, little children trailing on their
skirts, and babies under their shawls. Many of the miners had walked
miles. It was one night of real joy and a great celebration. I bade
them all good bye. A little boy called out, “Don’t leave us, Mother.
Don’t leave us!” The dear little children kissed my hands. We spent the
whole night in Bloosburg rejoicing. The men opened a few of the freight
cars out on a siding and helped themselves to boxes of beer. Old and
young talked and sang all night long and to the credit of the company
no one was interfered with.
Those were the days before the extensive use of gun men, of military,
of jails, of police clubs. There had been no bloodshed. There had been
no riots. And the victory was due to the army of women with their mops
and brooms.
A year afterward they celebrated the anniversary of the victory. They
presented me with a gold watch but I declined to accept it, for I felt
it was the price of the bread of the little children. I have not been
in Arnot since but in my travels over the country I often meet the men
and boys who carried through the strike so heroically.