V
The following evening “Mother” Jones went to Hansford to see what arrangements had been made for the burial of the murdered man and what could be done for the widow and orphans. The miners there, expecting a visit from the train later, had taken precautions to prepare. There was some excitement. Later that evening “Mother” Jones went to Charlestown. Meanwhile troops had been sent into the mining section, martial law had been declared, and miners were being arrested in numbers. Hearing of the intense excitement at a mining camp known as Bloomer, where the majority of the miners were Italians, “Mother” Jones called a meeting there with the view to preventing them from taking extreme measures. The excitement was so intense that she adjourned the meeting until the next morning at Long Acre, a few miles distant. Having impressed them with the thought that lawlessness would be a play into the hands of the enemy, she had them select a committee to call upon the governor with a request for the release of their fellow workers. She paid their fares to Charlestown. When she reached Charlestown she was taken into custody by local officers, taken to a justice of the peace court where a warrant was sworn out against her, conveyed across the river to a C. & O. train, carried twenty-two miles into the martial law zone, and turned over to the military authorities. There this venerable woman was placed in a room in the house of a poor miner where the only furniture in the room was a small lounge, on which she slept, a small table and two rocking chairs, with no wash bowl. For eight weeks, day and night, two or three militiamen marched around the house keeping guard. No one was permitted to see her. Newspaper men were especially taboo.
And she was to be tried before a drumhead courtmartial, with all the civil courts open, on a charge of murder! Others were included in the charge. The miners who had fled from Holly Grove to Hansford after the attack, had set out to capture a machine gun near Mucklow, and in the pitched battle the bookkeeper of a coal company was killed. There was no concern over the murder of Estep. The killing of the bookkeeper was followed by the arrest of more than a hundred miners—and “Mother” Jones.