That night several of the organizers and myself were taken to Parkersburg, a distance of eighty-four miles. Five deputy marshals went with the men, and a nephew of the United States marshal, a nice lad, took charge of me. On the train I got the lad very sympathetic to the cause of the miners. When we got off the train, the boys and the five marshals started off in one direction and we in the other.
“My boy,” I said to my guard, “look, we are going in the wrong direction.”
“No, mother,” he said.
“Then they are going in the wrong direction, lad.”
“No, mother. You are going to a hotel. They are going to jail.”
“Lad,” said I, stopping where we were, “am I under arrest?”
“You are, mother.”
“Then I am going to jail with my boys.” I turned square around. “Did you ever hear of Mother Jones going to a hotel while her boys were in jail?”
I quickly followed the boys and went to jail with them. But the jailer and his wife would not put me in a regular cell. “Mother,” they said, “you’re our guest.” And they treated me as a member of the family, getting out the best of everything and “plumping me” as they called feeding me. I got a real good rest while I was with them.
We were taken to the Federal court for trial. We had violated something they called an injunction. Whatever the bosses did not want the miners to do they got out an injunction against doing it. The company put a woman on the stand. She testified that I had told the miners to go into the mines and throw out the scabs. She was a poor skinny woman with scared eyes and she wore her best dress, as if she were in church. I looked at the miserable slave of the coal company and I felt sorry for her: sorry that there was a creature so low who would perjure herself for a handful of coppers.