Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/249

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
238
Life of Mother Jones

rests upon woman—the training of the children This is her most beautiful task. If men earned money enough, it would not be necessary for women to neglect their homes and their little ones to add to the family's income.

The last years of my life have seen long stretches of industrial peace. Occasionally has come war. I regretted that illness kept me from helping the railway shopmen in their brave fight for recognition a few years ago. And I rejoiced to see the formation of a third political party—a Farmer-Labor Party. Too long has labor been subservient to the old betrayers, politicians and crooked labor leaders.

I had passed my ninety-third milestone when I attended the convention of the Farmer-Labor Party and addressed the assembly. "The producer, not the meek, shall inherit the earth," I told them. "Not today perhaps, nor tomorrow, but over the rim of the years my old eyes can see the coming of another day."

I was ninety-one years old when I attended the Pan-American Federation of labor held in Mexico City in 1921. This convention was called to promote a better understanding between the workers of America, Mexico and Central America. Gompers attended as did a number of the American leaders.

I spoke to the convention. I told them that a convention such as this Pan-American Convention of labor was the beginning of a new