Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/97

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Life of Mother Jones

made the mine bosses go home and how we told their wives to clean them up and make decent American citizens out of them. How we went around to the kitchen of the hotel where the militia were quartered and ate the breakfast that was on the table for the soldiers.

When I got back to Hazelton, Mitchell looked at me with surprise. I was worn out. Coaldale had been a strenous night and morning and its thirty mile tramp. I assured Mitchell that no one had been hurt and no property injured. The military had acted like human beings. They took the matter as a joke. They enjoyed the morning's fun. I told him how scared the sheriff had been. He had been talking to me without knowing who I was.

"Oh Lord," he said, "that Mother Jones is sure a dangerous woman."

"Why don't you arrest her?" I asked him.

"Oh Lord, I couldn't I'd have that mob of women with their mops and brooms after me and the jail ain't big enough to hold them all. They'd mop the life out of a fellow!"

Mr. Mitchell said, "My God, Mother, did you get home safe? What did you do?"

"I got five thousand men out and organized them. We had time left over so we organized the street car men and they will not haul any scabs into camp."

"Did you get hurt, Mother?"

"No, we did the hurting."