Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/178



In the fall of 1912 I went to Eksdale, West Virginia. A strike had been going on in that section of the coal country for some time. A weary lull had come in the strike and I decided to do something to rouse the strikers and the public.

I called six trusty American men to me, told them to go up along the creeks on either side of which mining camps are located, and to notify all the miners that I wanted them in Charleston at one o'clock Tuesday afternoon; they must not bring any clubs or guns with them.

Tuesday afternoon, at a prearranged place, I met the boys in Charleston. The camps had turned out in full. I told the lads to follow me, and they did, through the streets of Charleston with a banner that said, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." "Nero" was the governor who fiddled with the moneyed interests while the the state was going to ruin. Another banner was addressed to a certain gunman whom the workers particularly hated because of his excessive brutality. It said, "If G is not out of town by six o'clock he will be hanging to a telegraph pole!"