The next problem was how to get the telegram to Washington. The poor people at whose home she was “detained” were friendly to her and her cause, although this was not known to the authorities. Early during her incarceration she had thought it possible that she might be in need of communication with the outside world and with the aid of the head of the house a part of the flooring had been cut, and an empty bottle was suspended by a wire into the cellar. It was the understanding that at the sound of a bell with which she had been furnished the man should go to the cellar, where he would find a communication in the bottle. Into this bottle she stuffed the telegram with a note of instructions to deliver it to an operator who was friendly some distance away with the message from her to “get it to Washington if it is the last thing you do in life.” Some time later the messenger returned with the message from the operator--“Tell Mother Jones that telegram will be in Washington before you get back.” And it was. That telegram was instantly given to the press and flashed over the country. It created consternation in Charlestown. It threw open the prison doors to the venerable woman. One of the military men at Pratt was instructed from the state house by phone to conduct Mother Jones to the capital by the first train. Reaching Charlestown she was taken before the governor and treated with exceptional courtesy. She was permitted to spend the night in the hotel in Charlestown where she was accustomed to stopping. Immediately afterward at a miners’ convention in the city she was instructed by John P. White, president of the United Mine Workers, to go to Washington and give all possible aid to Kern in his fight. And thus she went, without having been formally set at liberty and without knowing what the sentence of the military tribunal had been. Reaching Washington she went into conference immediately with Kern, and the following day found her, loaded down with letters to senators from Secretary of Labor Wilson, trudging the interminable marble corridors of the senate office building, informing senators individually and at length of the conditions in West Virginia. At times her eighty-odd years bore heavily upon her and worn and weary she would return to Kern’s office, sink exhausted into a chair for a rest of a few minutes--then on her way again. The most impressive and effective lobbyist that ever trod the stones of the capital was this old woman. IX Senator Kern in opening the debate on the “Kern resolution” on May 9th asked that “this investigation proceed that the full light may be let in on this foul spot and that all the facts bearing on these questions may be brought out to the end that wrongs, if they exist, may be righted, and that any men who are unjustly accused may be vindicated.”