Union Conflict Quotes
The mine owners had hired goons as "guards" who had shot some of the protesting mine workers. Unlike most labor leaders, Mother Jones advocated retaliatory violence which was against her female, motherly stereotype. She was one of the very few female labor leaders, and one of the most militant.
“Operators” referred to an Executives of the Coal Mining Companies most of whom were grossly impolite and unconstructive in the mediation sessions. The President was a very fit man who boxed and wrestled several times a week for exercise and could get very physical as well as social and intellectual.
It was fairly common at the time for the management of a company undergoing a strike to hire goons and gunmen to beat up and even murdering strikers to intimidate the strikers. But some state and locall governments supporting private companies began to do that as well. Sometimes they even used the police and the state national guard.
