Power (43 page)

As dawn was breaking, we began to see the end of that first day of organization. I checked off the last union book in the dining room, facing one of our men who dozed and mumbled as he tried to make up his totals. The lobby was full of recumbent forms, people asleep on the couch, the chairs, and sprawled out on the carpet, while the defeated manager slept with his head on the hotel desk.

I went out into the crisp, clean morning air, time frozen in that moment when the edge of the sun sends its first shaft of light over the black lip of a mountain. Ben stood on the veranda, his legs spread, his face dark with beard, a cigar clenched between his teeth. “Hello, Al,” he said to me, and reached into his jacket pocket to offer me a cigar.

“Why do you keep pushing those rotten weeds at me?” I asked him morosely. “My stomach's sour enough. I feel like hell.”

“I feel great,” he said, drawing his lungs full of air. “I feel wonderful—by God, to see something like this happen! What did you think when we came down here, Al? What were you expecting?”

“Anything. To be beat up, shot, mauled a little—maybe thrown in the can.”

“Not this.”

“No, not this.”

“You know, Al, I feel it, but I don't understand it. So help me God, I don't. I will bet my last dollar that it's happening everywhere—because that's the kind of a feeling I have. Something has happened to this whole country.” He turned to me suddenly. “You know, Al, we're going to come out of this with one hell of a union. We never had a union before. We never knew what a union was—only a bunch of piss-catting locals, whining about their autonomy and trying to get two cents more than the diggers in the next county. But that's gone. That's over. We had to be shamed. We had to sit bare-ass on the bottom and start it clean, but by God Almighty, we are going to have a union—a union like this country never saw before!”

 

19

I went down to Kentucky with six organizers, while Ben worked out of Clinton, fanning out through the coal counties of West Virginia. It wasn't easy in Kentucky, and when I returned to Clinton three weeks later, the memberships were rolling in by the thousands. We remained in Clinton a few more days after that, and by the time we left, we had negotiated contracts with eleven operators, Fulton Oswick among them. That was a moment of historical and particular pleasure for me, even more, I think, than for Ben.

Macintosh, Ben, and I met with Oswick in his beautiful home near Charleston, a fine Georgian house that stood among thirty acres of rolling lawn, gardens, and broad shade trees. He greeted us himself, politely if unenthusiastically, and led us into his study, where his lawyer and his general manager were waiting. As the discussions began, Ben automatically took out a cigar and started to light it. Before the match reached its mark, Oswick was offering Ben his own humidor.

“Try one of mine,” he begged Ben.

Ben looked at the humidor coldly and said, “I knew an operator once, Mr. Oswick, who claimed he could buy a union man with a fifty-cent cigar.”

“These are dollar cigars,” Oswick replied hastily. “I'm sure you'll enjoy smoking it, Mr. Holt. They're put up for me in Havana. Try one.”

“Evidently, you didn't hear me,” Ben said, striking another match and lighting his own.

That story has been told a good deal and blown up out of size, but it happened.

When we left West Virginia, we left a union behind us, a powerful union of men tempered by such years of poverty and struggle as few knew ever existed in these United States. Kentucky was more difficult, but the organization was set up, and in Tennessee and Alabama, Gus Empek was fantastically successful.

We met in Pittsburgh with Mark and Lena and Jack Mullen, who had come in from Pomax to join us. It was snowing as Ben and I entered the union's offices there, snowing and late at night, but every window in the building blazed with light and the rooms and corridors teemed with office workers, miners, organizers, and volunteers. We felt like provincials as we were greeted by big, burly Dan Gratinski, the district president, and ushered into his office where the others were waiting for us. They had known that we would not have time to eat. A table was spread with a cloth, and on it a tray piled with succulent roast-beef and corned-beef sandwiches, bottles of beer, a pot of coffee, and in a decanter, a magnum of champagne. After the greetings were over, Gratinski explained that it was in the way of a little celebration. He began to open the champagne as Mark told us,

“And I think we have something to celebrate. Lena learned to use an adding machine, so we have some tabulations. Like they say at election time, not all the returns are in, but we estimate that we have at least 80 per cent of what the final total out of this drive will be.” Almost apologetically, he added, “I could have told you that on the telephone the other day, Ben, but I wanted to save it until you were here. You don't mind?”

“Mind? I ought to break your arm,” Ben said.

The champagne popped and poured over onto the floor as Gratinski filled tumblers for us. Mark's voice thickened. He was very moved, keyed up emotionally. Ben was in a good mood, swelling with anticipation and pleasure.

Mark cleared his throat and said quietly, “The total membership, dues-paying, of the International Miners Union at this moment is three hundred and seventy-six thousand, eight hundred and nineteen. We have negotiated one hundred and five contracts, begun negotiations on twice that number, and paid off all our debts. At this time, the International's bank balance stands at exactly two hundred and twelve thousand, six hundred and twenty-two dollars and eighteen cents.” He paused and nodded. “That's it, Ben—that's just it.” Then he sat down, shaking his head and wiping his eyes, and Ben whispered,

“Mark.” He repeated it louder, “Mark!”

Golden got up, stood uncertainly for a moment, and then walked over to Ben. He appeared small, shriveled, insignificant against Ben's great bulk, and I thought his ribs would crack as Ben embraced him in a bear hug. Then Lena began to cry.

“Jesus God,” Mullen burst out, “what is this—a lousy wake? Here I am with a glass of champagne in my hand for the first time in forty lean years I've lived and I'm boxed in with tears!”

 

20

In January, at the Union Building in Pomax, I was sitting in Ben's office, going over some statistics with him, when Lena told us that Milton Humber, the mayor of Pomax, was outside and asking to see Ben. Ben looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded and said to send him in. Humber was a pudgy, carefully dressed man in his fifties who had served three terms as mayor of Pomax and who itched with the frustration of a dead-end job in an insignificant coal town and nursed ambitions to be the party's candidate for Congress.

He entered pompously and asked—trying to make a poor joke out of it—why Ben didn't come to see him any more. When Ben did not invite him to sit down, or to remove his coat, he took a chair of his own accord, sitting there in his heavy overcoat, with his hat on his knees. The room was warm, and we were both in our shirt sleeves.

“I didn't know I was in the habit of coming to see you,” Ben replied, reading a paper on his desk and not raising his eyes.

“Well, Ben—you know what I mean. You used to drop in every once in a while. There used to be something now and then that City Hall could do for you.”

“City Hall?”

“You know. The administration.”

“Election's coming up next year, Milton—isn't that right.”

“That's not why I'm here, Ben. You know me better than that.”

“Do I? I don't think I know you one damn bit, Milton. We sort of lost touch with each other while the union was on its uppers.” He glanced up, then went back to his reading, and said, “So don't come sucking around now.”

“That's a hell of a way to talk, Ben.”

“I talk as I please. You should know that by now.”

“What's eating you, Ben?”

Ben pushed the papers aside and stared at the mayor. “You know what's eating me, Milton.”

“That Cofferman business—the kid Andy sent to jail? That's old hat, Ben. That's over and forgotten.”

“You didn't forget it, Milton. I didn't forget it. As a matter of fact, I forget very little. You'd like to go to Congress—always wanted that, didn't you? Out of this district? A fat chance, Milton.”

The mayor was sweating in his overcoat. He found a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow. “O.K.,” he said, “O.K.—let's stop beating about the bush. What do you want me to do?”

“Not one blessed thing,” Ben said. “Next year, there'll be another mayor.”

“Sure. Enjoy yourself. Have your fun. I can sit here and ask you what you want. You can at least give me a fair answer.”

Ben thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Two things. Fire Andy Lust and get the Cofferman kid out of jail.”

“Oh no. No, Ben. You know I can't do that. Andy's been here a long time. By God, if it wasn't for the way he cooperated during that Arrowhead scandal, there would have been plain hell to pay. Andy always did right by your crowd. You know that. And how can I get the kid out of jail?”

“Don't plead for Andy,” Ben said with disgust. “Get him out. Fire him—frame him—but get him out. I want him out—do you understand?”

Humber nodded slowly.

“And now. I'll give you thirty days and you give us a new chief of police. I don't care who. Anyone. But get rid of Lust!”

“All right, Ben. But I can't get the kid out of jail.”

“You can,” Ben said, softly and dangerously. “You can, or you're washed up in this county. And when I say washed up, I mean permanently.”

“How? Just tell me how.”

“There are ways. See the parole board. See the governor. Have him pardoned. What in hell do you belong to a party for? Let the party do something for a change. Just do it. Now, I'm busy.” When the mayor left, Ben said, “Pompous little son of a bitch!”

“Still, he had the guts to come here, Ben.”

“You're right. I suppose it took something to come here.”

Two weeks later, Pomax had a new chief of police, and the following month, Sam Cofferman's sentence was suspended and he was released on probation.

 

21

“How does it feel?” people would ask me, and I would tell them that it felt good. Why shouldn't it feel good? We had gone through the hard years, the long, dirty dry years, the years of starvation and retreat and defeat, and here it was 1934, and our membership passed the four-hundred-thousand mark, and the newspapers and magazines were full of the “Miracle of the Miners Union,” and Benjamin Renwell Holt was the most important, respected, and feared leader in a hundred years of American labor history. You couldn't pick up a newspaper without reading his name, or go into a movie house and watch the Pathé News without hearing Ben's voice or seeing his face.

I no longer had to face the reporters, but could delegate the job. I had a staff now. My assistant was a young fellow out of the Columbia School of Journalism, dedicated to the labor movement and burning to erase inequity, and my personal secretary was a plain-faced girl with dark hair, a Miss Claire Schwartz. Suzic and Mullen were both annoyed at my choice. They considered her to be without sex appeal or charm, and they felt that to have someone like her working in the same building was a shameful waste of space and opportunity. But they had the solace of their own staffs. We were possessed of a treasury now.

The Union Building on Lincoln Street underwent a face lifting. Although Ben was fretting to deed it over to the local and to establish national headquarters in Washington, D.C., it had to serve for the time being, and there was no question but that its condition required improvement. We had the brickwork washed, the trim painted, and the inside modestly redecorated. We even took an old front storeroom, cleaned it out, furnished it, called it the press room, and established my new assistant, Richard Henty, there.

In February, Ben was invited to meet with the executive board of the National Confederation of Labor at the Carmine Plaza Hotel in Miami, Florida. He had been holding back, playing dead, so to speak—but looking forward to an invitation. Since the completion and success of the organizing drive, he had been so full of a new idea that had taken hold of him that he could talk of nothing else, and the invitation to Florida appeared to be the ideal opportunity to present it. He decided that Mark and I should go with him, and the day after the invitation came, we were on a plane for Miami.

The quick transition from winter to summer was a new experience for us, and we walked into the Carmine Plaza, carrying our heavy overcoats on our arms. The hotel was an enormous, sprawling affair, covered with pink stucco, adorned with Moorish columns and mosaic floors, and possessed of its own private beach and an oversized swimming pool for any contingency that might cause the ocean to run dry. When Ben discovered that a two-room suite would cost us forty-five dollars a day without meals, he was ready to explode, drop the whole thing, and return to Pomax. Mark calmed him, and we went up to our rooms, where Mark said to him, pointedly,

“As far as we're concerned, Ben, there is no moral issue involved here. I know exactly what you are thinking, but we are here for a purpose, and if we had to carry out that purpose in a Turkish bath or a cathouse, the end result would remain.”

“I know, I know,” Ben muttered. “I just hate this stinking place. I hate the whole notion of trade-union officials coming down to a place like this and lying around in the sun on their fat asses and ordering the run of three drinks and a twelve-dollar meal to follow, and all of it out of the union funds. Do you know where that money comes from? Do you know how long a miner works to pay out a dollar in dues?”