Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/139

130 sisters go to school if the children of scabs went.

In many mines I met the trapper boys. Little chaps who open the door for the mule when it comes in for the coal and who close the door after the mule has gone out. Runners and helpers about the mine. Lads who will become miners; who will never know anything of this beautiful world, of the great wide sea, of the clean prairies, of the snow capped mountains of the vast West. Lads born in the coal, reared and buried in the coal. And his one hope, his one protection—the union.

I met a little trapper boy one day. He was so small that his dinner bucket dragged on the ground.

"How old are yon, lad?" I asked him.

"Twelve," he growled as he spat tobacco on the ground.

"Say son," I said, "I'm Mother Jones. You know me, don't you? I know you told the mine foreman you were twelve, but what did you tell the union?"

He looked at me with keen, sage eyes. Life had taught him suspicion and caution.

"Oh, the union's different. I'm ten come Christmas."

"Why don't you go to school?"

"Gee," he said—though it was really something stronger—"I ain't lost no leg!" He looked proudly at his little legs.