Patti Capel Swartz
The West Virginia Mine Wars 1900-1921:
Mike Harrington

The superintendent kept me standin there, his head bent over his papers.
Finally he said
Harrington I heard you were entertaining agitators in your home.

Agitators sir? says I. I don't know what you mean.

He threw down his pen.

I don't know no agitators says I.

You know Mother Jones.

Mother Jones? Why yes sir, her I know.

Is it not true that you were entertaining her in your house says he.

Why no sir I says. She was thirsty and hungry.
I give her some bread and cheese.
She paid me for it.

Get your pay Harrington he told me.
No man can work in these mines
who entertains agitators in his home.

He went back to his papers.

I was dismissed.

_ _

The author writes:

My uncle had been "laid off" and never called back to work because he worked to bring the union to the mill where he worked (another poem). I had long been fascinated by the work and stories about Mother Jones in West Virginia and Colorado particularly, so a five year teaching position in Eastern Kentucky, reading Denise Giardina's novels Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth and John Sayle's Matewan only increased that interest. I read everything I could find about Mother Jones, the West Virginia Mine Wars, and Mother Jones' autobiography. The characters and events of this poem are representative of the treatment of miners and their families as coal owners and supervisors worked to keep unions out of the coalfields and maintain their profits at the expense of workers. (A mule had more value than a worker.) Mike Harrington was one person fired because of a connection to Mother Jones. Unfortunately, the inequalities of that time are still with us and these poems are as timely now as they were during Mother Jone's lifetime.

Patti Capel Swartz taught creative writing, literature, and composition at Kent State, Youngstown State, and Morehead State. Her writing has won first place with Kentucky Writers, and has placed in contests and received Honorable Mentions from both Writer’s Digest and the Denny Plattner Awards. She has twice been nominated for the Ohio Governor’s Award for the Arts. She is an alumnus of both the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and the Midwest Writers Conference. She is the receipient of grants from the Ohio Arts Council for plays based on the oral histories of local residents.

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