Matriarch

Some strikers were milling aimlessly about a West Virginia mining camp. They lacked a leader. Down beside the creek, the road was guarded by State machine-gunners.

Along the road came a little old bespectacled woman in black dress and bonnet. The sentries called: "We've orders to sweep the roads." On trudged the old woman, her eyes flashing, her face set. In a voice amazingly big for one so old and small she cried:

"Oh, ye have? Do ye own th' roads?

"Orders is orders. The roads are to be cleared."

Retorted the little old woman: "Ye've no orders t'keep the creek clear." And up to her waist in water she waded into camp to rally the strikers, to lead them.

That, 40 years ago, was Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones, famed organizer of strikes and unions, Irish-born, matriarch of the new and struggling United Mine Workers of America. Aged almost 60 at her first strike, she led violent mobs, faced bullets, bayonets, stumptalked despite police for many a year. Her tongue lashed the "tyrants" opposing union labor, her wit roused the drooping morale of many a waning revolt. The climax of her career as a labor agitator came at the mine "massacre" at Ludlow, Col., in 1914.

May Day, great marching and demonstration day for radical labor everywhere. was Mother Jones's birthday. This year she was 100. Many a U. S. Laborite last week planned to celebrate May Day by marching to a plain white two-story frame house just off the road at Silver Spring, Md. (Washington suburb) where "Mother" Jones lay bedridden, boisterous. Among her pillows in the friendly home of Walter Burgess, she was ready for Death. She had arranged for her high requiem mass at St. Gabriel's Church in Washington, her interment at Mt. Olive, Ill. Still matriarchal, still organ-voiced, she said as her great anniversary approached: "A five-day week and a six-hour day would mean work for everybody. . . . I've had a lot of chance to think lately and the more I think, the more radical I get."

About the house where Mother Jones lay was much bustle. The local Bakers Union was preparing a 100-candle cake. Pilgrims were to be received, apparatus installed for a radio broadcast of a May Day message by the "Grand Old Woman of Labor" to her oldtime followers.

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