The day book. [volume], October 08, 1913, Image 2

About The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
street or Fifth avenue. Even In her plain .dress she is a striking figure.
Strong, with firm but supple muscles, fearless, ready to die for ax cause, tfiis
woman is the kind all red-blooded men could take their hats off to.
A militia officer said to me at Calumet: "If McNaughton could only
buy Big Annie he could Treak this strike."
I suppose Annie Clemenc knows what It is to go hungry, but I don't
believe all the millions of dividends ever taken out of the Calumet & Hecla
mine could buy her.
The day when the soldiers rode down the flag Annie Clemenc stood
holding the staff of that big flag in front of her, horizontally. She faced
cavalrymen with drawn sabers, infantrymen, with bayonetted guns. They
ordered her back- She didn't move an inch. She defied the soldiers. She
was struck on her right wrist with a bayonet, and over the right bosom and
shoulder with a deputy's club.
"Kill me," she said. "Run your bayonets and sabers through this flag
and kill me, but I wont go back. If this flag will not! protect me, then I
will die with It."
And she didn't go back. Miners rushed up, took the flag and got her
back for fear she might be killed.
After the parade one morning Annie Clemenc came up to the curb
where President Moyer was .standing. I was there. '
Looking up at him she said:
"It's hard to keep one's hands off the scabs."
I asked her if the big flag wasn't heavy. "I get used to it," she said.
"I carried it ten miles -one morning. The men wduldn't let me carry it
back. I love to carry it"
One Sunday afternoon I followed the parade on the long walk from
Red Jacket to the Palestra Rink at Laurium. Annie Clemenc was dressed
in a plain white gown. There wereno fancy frills 'on it just a'touch of
colored ribbon. She wore no hat, and Iter dark h&lr' waved with the breeze.
From the top of the big flag staff she carried a sfreamer ran to either side,
the ends held by neatly-dressed little girls who .proudly marched at Annie's
side.
I imagine the white dresses of the little girls were made by their
mothers. The faces of the little girls were beautiful. Their features were
clean-cut. There were pretty ribbons In their hair. But the spirit! You
don't see it in the cities.
I walked iully two miles admiring those beautiful children, daughters
of striking miners inthe copper country; and I felt like keeping my hat
off in reverence to all those women and children; I found use for my hand
kerchief. Something got 'the matter with my eyes as I thought how glor
ious humanity is at what we in our blindness' think is its worst.
I was: told up at Calumet that some of the miners"have twelve chil
dren and that large families are common. I knew that families run small
in the mansions of our cities.
I marveled at the wisdom of .Nature's laws. I had a new light on the
law of the survival of the fittest. I thought what glorious men and women
America would produce 'if there ..were millions of mothers like Annie
Clemenc. I thought how much the future of the race would owe to the
'act that the families of the rich die out while the workers multiply and re
jleliish the earth. '
I thought of James McNaughton; general manager of the Calumet &
Hecla Company, and his salary of $40,000 a year as general manager,
(25,000 a year" as second vice-president.and.,$20,Q00 a year as director, to
iMlU-l&ti-4& A.
sSsijz ijlLtagfessiii. . ,