Wishing Chair: Music and Lyrics

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)
• MP3 play whole song, lo-fi (modem)
• MP3 download whole song, hi-fi

This song tells the true story of the Arnot, PA. strike of 1900. It was the first time Mother Jones got all the women to work as a unit to run the scabs off the mine site.

Dishpan Brigade (The 1900 Arnot Strike) c.2003 Outlaw Hill Music BMI

Words and Music by Kiya Heartwood

 

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.

CHORUS:

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.

Then the sheriff said, "Now you go back home.

I'm afraid you'll upset the mules."

But an angry woman knocked that 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.

CHORUS

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 .

And 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.