Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/163

154 In Eksdale a sympathetic merchant let me stay in his house until the meeting began.

When I got off the train, two or three miners met me.

"Mother," they said, "did you know there is a detective along with you. He's behind you now . . . the fellow with the red necktie.

I looked around. I went up to him.

"Isn't your name Corcoran?" said I.

"Why, yes," said he, surprised.

"Aren't you the Corcoran who followed me up New River in the strike of 1902? You were working for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and the coal company then."

"Why, yes," said he, "but you know people change!"

"Not sewer rats," said I. "A sewer rat never changes!"

That night we held a meeting. When I got up to speak I saw the militia that the national organizer had had the governor send. The board member was there. He had made arrangements with the local chairman to introduce him. He began speaking to the men about being good and patient and trusting to the justice of their cause.

I rose. "Stop that silly trash," said I. I motioned him to a chair. The men hollered, "sit down! sit down!"

He sat. Then I spoke.

"You men have come over the mountains,"