Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/66

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Roosevelt Sent for John Mitchell
61

"For more than twenty years the anthracite miners have groaned under most intolerable and inhuman conditions. In a brotherhood of labor they seek to remedy their wrongs."

Never shall I forget the words of President Baer, speaking for the operators:

"The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected not by the labor agitator but by the Christian men and women to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country."

Never shall I forget the words of labor's great pleader, Clarence Darrow:

"These agents of the Almighty have seen men killed daily; have seen men crippled, blinded and maimed and turned out to alms-houses and on the roadsides with no compensation. They have seen the anthracite region dotted with silk mills because the wages of the miner makes it necessary for him to send his little girls to work twelve hours a day, a night, in the factory . . . at a child's wage. President Baer sheds tears because boys are taken into the union but he has no tears because they are taken into the breakers."

Never, never shall I forget his closing words, words which I shall hear when my own life draws to its close:

"This contest is one of the important contests that have marked the progress of human liberty since the world began. Every advantage that