Wishing Chair And Kara Barnard: Dishpan Brigade

Old Mary Harris was five feet tall
Grey hair, eyes an Irish blue
She'd buried her husband and four little ones
Now the Union was all she knew
She'd stand up to any company gun
Where there was a fight she was home
And the breaker boys and the silk mill girls
Called her Mother Jones

J.P. Morgan owned the Drip Mouth Mine
He paid a $1.35 a day
12-14 hours, 6 days a week
Oh that was the company way
Now anthracite coal is a hard, hard coal
It burns so clean and true
It burns off the dreams of a miner's soul
And the blood of the UMW

Oh Mother cried out shame, shame, shame
We've nothing to lose but our chains
Many a miner's life's been saved
By a dishpan brigade

The strikers held out for 4 long months
Hard bread and coffee everyday
Between the scabs and the guns
And the Pinkertons
Their courage was slipping away
So the Union called in Mother Jones
She said,"Will you be slaves or be men?"
Then she told all the women to meet up at dawn,
And we'll go to the lion's den.

So the women marched to that Drip Mouth Mine
With their dishpans mops and brooms
And the sheriff said, "Now you go back home
I'm afraid you'll upset the mules."
But an angry woman knocked the sheriff down
She said "to hell with the mules and with you"
Then they chased those scabs all the way back to town
And that strike was almost through

Oh Mother cried out shame, shame, shame
We've nothing to lose but our chains
Many a miner's life's been saved
By a dishpan brigade

The women kept watch every night
With their babies in their arms
And the Union won the Arnot strike
And not a soul was harmed
Oh Mother traveled another thirty years
Where there was a fight she was home
And the breaker boys and the silk mill girls
Called her Mother Jones