The Mother Who Disowned Her Son for Crossing the Picket Line

The fight had been on for a week. Practically all the workmen had walked out when the strike was called, but the company was making a desperate effort to keep the plant running. A hundred men had been smuggled in, and Joe Benson, a young fellow, had been made foreman. After dark on the evening of the seventh day, Joe Benson slipped out of the gate and was stopped by a crowd of strikers. The president of the union appealed to Benson to stick by the strikers, but he refused defiantly.

Suddenly, an old woman with a shawl over her head pushed through the crowd. 'Joe,' she said. She held out a roll of bills. 'Here's the $50 you sent me, Joe. I don't want it. It's blood money.' As he stood motionless, she threw the money at his feet. 'Joe, be a man. Stick by the rest of us. Remember your father. If you don't come home with me now, Joe, and stay at home, you're a scab, and I never want you to come inside my house again.'

Later, at home, she explained her actions. Her husband, Benson, had been a member of the union for twenty years. When he took the fever, the union paid sick benefits. When he was injured by a busted steam pipe and left blind, the union paid disability benefits for eight months. When he died, the union buried him and paid for the monument over his grave. 'Joe didn't remember about it, that's all,' she said.