A large crowd followed Mother Jones to the borough's jail, and as tensions mounted, the bent and aged organizer (she was then in her late 80s) emerged and urged the angry steelworkers to disperse. The next day, in one of the most famous incidents of her storied career, Mother Jones told a judge she did, indeed, have a permit to speak. "Who issued it?" the judge demanded. Mother Jones shot back, "Patrick Henry; Thomas Jefferson; John Adams!"