Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/248

Rh The street car men struck along in 1916 in New York City.

I spoke to a mass meeting of carmen's wives and we certainly had those women fighting like wildcats. They threatened me with jail and I told the police I could raise as much hell in jail as out. The police said if anyone was killed I should be held responsible and hanged.

"If they want to hang me, let them," I said. "And on the scaffold I will shout 'Freedom for the working class!' And when I meet God Almighty I will tell him to damn my accusers and the accusers of the working class, the people who tend and develop and beautify His world."

The last years of my life have seen fewer and fewer strikes. Both employer and employee have become wiser. Both have learned the value of compromise. Both sides have learned that they gain when they get together and talk things out in reason rather than standing apart, slinging bricks, angry words and bullets. The railway brotherhoods have learned that lesson. Strikes are costly. Fighting them is costly.

All the average human being asks is something he can call home; a family that is fed and warm; and now and then a little happiness; once in a long while an extravagance.

"I am not a suffragist nor do I believe in "careers" for women, especially a "career" in factory and mill where most working women have their "careers." A great responsibility