I said to the father, “What is wrong with your girl?”
“Consumption,” said he. “I couldn’t earn enough in the mines and she went to work in a boarding house. They worked her so hard she took sick—consumption.”
Around a fireplace sat a group of dirty children, ragged and neglected-looking. He gave us tea and bread.
A great crowd came up the mountain side that afternoon. The superintendent sent one of his lackeys, a colored fellow. When the miners told me who he was and that he was sent there as a spy, I said to him, “See here, young man, don’t you know that the immortal Lincoln, a white man, gave you freedom from slavery. Why do you now betray your white brothers who are fighting for industrial freedom?”
“Mother,” said he, “I can’t make myself scarce but my hearing and my eyesight ain’t extra today.”
That afternoon, up there on the mountain side, we organized a strong union.
The next day the man who gave me food—his name was Mike Harrington—went to the mines to go to work, but he was told to go to the office and get his pay. No man could work in the mines, the superintendent said, who entertained agitators in his home.
Mike said to him, “I didn’t entertain her. She paid me for the tea and bread.”
“It makes no difference,” said he, “you had Mother Jones in your house and that is sufficient.”