Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/169

160 in their hands, their trousers rolled up, these men took the obligation to the union.

I was very tired. A miner stepped up to me and asked me to come to his cabin and have a dish of tea.

"Your house is on private property," yelled a gunman. "She cannot go."

"I pay rent," he protested.

"Private property, just the same. I'll arrest her for trespassing if she steps out of the creek."

The struggle went on with increasing bitterness. The militia disarmed both gunmen and miners but they were of course, on the side of the grand dukes of the region. They forbade all meetings. They suspended every civil right. They became despotic. They arrested scores of miners, tried them in military court, without jury, sentenced them to ten, fifteen years in the Moundsville prison.

I decided to call the attention of the national government to conditions in West Virginia. I borrowed one hundred dollars and went out and billed meetings in Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and from these cities I came to Washington, D. C. I had already written to Congressman W. B. Wilson, to get up a protest meeting.

The meeting was held in the armory and it was packed: senators, congressmen, secretaries, citizens. It is usual to have star orators at such meetings, who use parlor phrases. Congress-