He went home and when he opened the door, his sick daughter said, “Father, you have lost your job.” She started to sob. That brought on a coughing fit from which she fell back on the pillow exhausted—dead.
That afternoon he was ordered to leave his house as it was owned by the company. They buried the girl and moved to an old barn.
Mike was later made an organizer for the United Mine Workers and he made one of the most faithful workers I have ever known.
In February of 1903, I went to Stanford Mountain where the men were on strike. The court had issued an injunction forbidding the miners from going near the mines. A group of miners walked along the public road nowhere near the mines. The next morning they held a meeting in their own hall which they themselves had built. A United States deputy marshal came into the meeting with warrants for thirty members for violating the injunction.
The men said, “We did not break any law. We did not go near the mines and you know it. We were on the public road.”
“Well,” said the deputy, “we are going to arrest you anyway.”
They defied him to arrest them, insisting they had not violated the law. They gave him twenty-five minutes to leave town. They sent for his brother, who was the company doctor, and told him to take him out.
That night I went to hold a meeting with them. They told me what had happened.
I said, “Boys, it would have been better if you had surrendered, especially as you had the truth on your side and you had not been near the mines.”
After the meeting I went to a nearby camp—Montgomery—where there was a little hotel and the railway station. Before leaving, the boys, who came to the edge of the town with me said, “You will be coming back soon, Mother?”