Mine Workers, and offered to assist him to the best of his ability. Naturally, the organizer was glad and happy to avail himself of such a generous, unexpected offer, and quite naturally, too, the spy
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 175
was the organizer's right hand in arranging and preparing for secret meetings and in secretly inviting miners to be present.
Once or twice the organizers attempted to rent halls at Rock Springs, but as the company, through No. 15, knew hours in advance what the next move was to be, the union leaders would find that the owners of the different halls strangely refused to let them out. Several times meetings were arranged to take place after midnight; but, scarcely would the meeting be opened, when either the superintendent or some of the foremen of the mines would put in an appearance, and the poor, timid miners, on beholding their employers and foremen, would fly from the gathering as though from a pestilence. Perhaps two dozen such secret meetings were thus invaded and broken up by Superintendent Black or some of his lieutenants, to the utter consternation, confusion and bewilderment of the organizers, who wrathfuUy declared to the operative that never in their careers had they met with such misfortune in organizing a coal camp.
The operative was also highly indignant at their lack of success, and told the organizers he did not believe, from the apparent look of things, that Rock Springs could be unionized. It certainly did appear to the veteran agents of John Mitchell that the officials of the Union Pacific Coal Company had a stand-in with the devil; otherwise they could not understand how their well-laid, secret plans were so speedily and effectually checkmated by the company. Of course, had they known, or even suspected the real identity of "BROTHER THOMAS J. WILLIAMS," the mystery would have been quickly solved.