THOSE MULES WON’T SCAB TODAY
Lattimer was an eye-sore to the miners. It seemed as if no one could
break into it. Twenty-six organizers and union men had been killed in
that coal camp in previous strikes. Some of them had been shot in the
back. The blood of union men watered the highways. No one dared go in.
I said nothing about it but made up my mind that I was going there some
night. After the raid of the women in Coaldale in the Panther 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 the Panther Creek I had a leader bring a
group of strikers to a junction of the road that leads into Lattimer.
There I met them with my army of women again.
As I was leaving the hotel the clerk said, “Mother, the reporters told
me to ring their bell if I saw you go out.”
“Well, don’t see me go out. Watch the front door carefully and I will
go out the back door.”
We marched through the night, reaching Lattimer just before dawn. The
strikers hid themselves in the mines. The women took up their position
on the door steps of the miners’ shacks. When a miner stepped out of
his house to go to work, the women started mopping the step, shouting,
“No work today!”
Everybody came running out into the dirt streets. “God, it is the old
mother and her army,” they were all 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 had three thousand
miners down below ground waiting for them and the mules.
“Those mules won’t scab today,” I said to the general manager who was
cursing everybody. “They know it is going to be a holiday.”
“Take those mules down!” shouted the general manager.
Mules and drivers and miners disappeared down into the earth. I kept
the women singing patriotic songs so as to drown the noise of the men
down in the 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 didn’t go up were sent up. Those that insisted on working
and thus defeating their brothers were grabbed by the women and carried
to their wives.
An old Irish woman had two sons who were scabs. The women threw one
of them over the fence to his mother. He lay there still. His mother
thought he was dead and she ran into the house for a bottle of holy
water and shook it over Mike.
“Oh for God’s sake, come back to life,” she hollered. “Come back and
join the union.”
He opened his eyes and saw our women standing around him.
“Shure, I’ll go to hell before I’ll scab again,” says he.
The general manager called the sheriff who asked me to take the women
away. I said, “Sheriff, no one is going to get hurt, no property is
going to be destroyed but there are to be no more killings of innocent
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. The deputies kept inside the
office; the general manager also. Our men stayed up at the mines to
attend to the scabs and the women did the rest. As a matter of fact the
majority of the men, those with any spirit left in them after years of
cowardice, wanted to strike but had not dared. But when a hand was
held out to them, they took hold and marched along with their brothers.
The bosses telephoned to John Mitchell that he should take me and
my army of women out of Lattimer. That was the first knowledge that
Mitchell had of 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 the 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 said,
“Weren’t you afraid to go in there?”
“No,” I said, “I am not afraid to face any thing if facing it may bring
relief to the class that I belong to.”
The victory of Lattimer gave new life to the whole anthracite district.
It gave courage to the organization. Those brave women I shall never
forget who caused those stone walls to fall by 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 so much to
purchase a $10,000 house for John Mitchell. The document happened to
come into my hands at the convention which was called to call off the
victorious strike. I arose and I said:
“If John Mitchell can’t buy a house to suit him for his wife and for
his family out of his salary, then I would suggest that he get a job
that will give him a salary to buy a $10,000 house. Most of you do not
own a shingle on the roof that covers you. Every decent man buys a
house for his own wife first before he buys a house for another man’s
wife.”
I was holding the petition as I spoke and I tore it up and threw the
bits on the floor. “’Tis you men and your women who won the strike,”
I said, “with your sacrifice and your patience and your forbearance
through all these past weary months. ’Tis the sacrifice of your
brothers in other trades who sent the strike benefits week in and week
out that enabled you to make the fight to the end.”
From then on Mitchell was not friendly to me. He took my attitude as
one of personal enmity. And he saw that he could not control me. He had
tasted power and this finally destroyed him. I believe that no man who
holds a leader’s position should ever accept favors from either side.
He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone.