I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists – the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.
I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.
Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor’s strong, rough hands.
All the average human being asks is something he can call a home; a family that is fed and warm; and now and then a little happiness; once in a long while an extravagance.
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don’t need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
You must stand for free speech in the streets.
I preferred sewing to bossing little children.
You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand.
In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?
I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.
Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men.
I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people.
Men’s hearts are cold. They are indifferent.
What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.
I was born in revolution.
I’m not afraid of the press or the Militia.
I will tell the truth wherever I please.
My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.
Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.
What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.
I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.