The Coal War (10 page)

Hal considered this proposition, and answered, gravely, “I think, Edward, that's the thing for you to do.”

“
What?
”

“Cut me off, and let Old Peter know that you've cut me off. That's the way to avert his anger from you.”

“Damn it!” cried Edward. “I'm not afraid of Old Peter!”

“You aren't? But I thought—”

“Naturally, I don't want to go hunting trouble—”

“Well, that's what I mean—and it's not fair that you should have to. It's not fair for me to use Dad's money to make trouble for his business. Cut me off, let everybody know that I'm acting on my own. That will settle it.”

Poor Edward! He was a man of busines, to whom money is the blood of life, and he was facing the perplexity which confronts such a man when dealing with a matter of conscience, whose life-blood is drawn from another source.

“What would you do?” he demanded.

“I'm going to the coal-fields,” said Hal. “I think I can get a job.”

“When they know who you are?”

“I don't mean a job with Old Peter. I'm a member of the union, and I think I can earn my salary as an organizer.”

When Edward answered, the energy was gone from his voice. “And be killed, like that fellow Olson?”

“Not necessarily,” Hal replied. “I should say that might rest with you.”

“With
me
!”

“If you should see fit to send a return message to Old Peter, letting him understand that your brother is to have his rights as an American citizen—”

“Oh, my God!” broke in Edward.

“I know,” said Hal, “it sounds mad to you, but perhaps it won't as time goes on. I'm going to the coal-country to do my duty, and before I get through I may have to call on you for help. If I do, you'll give it, I'm sure.”

“I'll see you in hell first!” cried the other.

Hal answered, “There's no use trying to get mad, Brother. I'm right, and in your heart you know it. You've been to that coal-country, and you know that the men who're running it aren't fit to run a pirate-ship. And just remember this, whenever you are worrying about my safety, whenever Dad is worrying about it—any time you get ready to go to Old Peter and talk to him straight, you can make me fairly safe in the coal-country!”

The train was gliding through a tangle of tracks and yards and coal-sheds, and came to rest in the big depot. Hal alighted and strode down the platform—and there was his father, toddling towards him with stretched out arms. How unutterably pitiful he was, in his mingled happiness and anxiety! He caught the boy in his arms and kissed him; and while they sat in the automobile, he would run his trembling hand over Hal's sleeve, or catch the boy's fingers in his feeble grip, looking pleadingly at him. “You're not going back to the mines, Hal!”

Hal answered, “Let's not talk about that now, Dad. I'm so glad to see you!”

But they could not avoid talking about it. The old man could look at Edward's face, frowning and tense, and read the story there. Tears came into his eyes, and when Hal looked at him, the tears came into Hal's eyes also. It was no joke, this being a revolutionist!

[3]

In the office of the United Mine Workers John Harmon sat at his desk—a man Hal had come to know well, and for whom he had a deep admiration. Harmon was a miner born, his Scotch parents and grand-parents having been miners as far back as he knew. At home Hal had been taught to think of a labor leader as a noisy and pushing person, thriving upon trouble; but Harmon was exactly the opposite of that—gentle of manner, slow-spoken, patient, with a quiet humor which you might miss at first. He was a man of big stature, with features so regular that they might have served as a model for a sculptor. He was not a man of imagination; he did not appreciate his own role, he could not tell his own story—but you knew that he was a solid man, who weighed the consequences of an action before he took it, and having once set forward, seldom needed to change his course.

The miners had chosen him for their best; but he was not good enough for the operators of this district, it appeared. If he had been a bandit-chief, they could not have spurned him more haughtily. In vain did he devise methods of adjustment, in vain did he write letters to the operators, individually or collectively, calling their attention to the discontent of the men, the violations of law and even of common-sense in the camps. The letters remained unanswered, and Peter Harrigan and his associates remained unaware of the existence of such a person as the executive of the miners' international.

They objected to the character of the members of the union, so the newspapers said; but Harmon pointed out that it was the operators who determined this. There could be no qualification for membership in a miners' union, save that the man was a worker in the mines. It the union was not representative of all the workers, whose fault was it—considering the methods used with anyone who sought to increase the membership?

Harmon spoke of the murdered organizer. Hal knew Tom Olson, there was no need to say that he had not been a man of violence, that he had not been in Pedro for any purpose of violence. And as for Pete Hanun and Gus Dirkett, the coal-company detectives who had shot him down in cold blood—they were out on bail, roaming the streets and terrorizing the miners with the very same guns which had done the murder! There would be a trial, some day, but everyone knew the farce it would be. “Alf” Raymond, the sheriff, would be the man who selected the jury; they would put on the stand a couple of Mexicans, who had perhaps never been in the state before, but who would swear they had seen Tom Olson draw a weapon; and on that testimony the jury would acquit the gunmen. They had been doing such things for thirty years in that “Empire of Raymond”, as Pedro County was called.

No, said Harmon—and his voice trembled with feeling-there was no sincerity in the contentions of the operators. The reason they would not recognize the union was because they could make better terms with the individual man, could exploit his labor more effectively. They were doing it so effectively that the task of the union leaders was to stave off revolt; and it really seemed as if the other side must know this, and be bent on forcing the issue. Only that morning there had come a telegram from Jim Moylan, who was in the field, telling how thirty-seven men, with their families, had been thrown out of Castleton camp for having attended a union meeting in the canyon.

There was nothing to do but get ready for the struggle. The union had just lost a strike in West Virginia, and the same detective agencies which had crushed it, the same strike-breakers, even the same machine-guns, were being shipped to the West. The union had countered by shipping the tents in which the West Virginia strikers had been housed; but in this effort they had struck a snag. Gunmen and machine-guns had come through on time, but tents had been mislaid. They had been shifted from one railroad to another, from one siding to another, and no one seemed to know just where they were. Of course, said Harmon, with his quiet humor, everybody knew that freight sometimes got delayed, and that shippers sometimes lost their tempers; it would not do to make charges that one could not prove—but it was well known that Peter Harrigan was a director in several railroads, and so were other coal-company owners and officials. Hal found himself suddenly recalling Otway, of “Central Fuel”, and his experience with interlocking directorates!

[4]

Hal went for a call on Adelaide Wyatt, and told her about his parting with Jessie and Mrs. Arthur. Adelaide told him about the latest rumblings of Mount Vesuvius, which had been audible to many people in Western City. And then the revolutionary parlor-maid came in—and what a time they had, exchanging news! Mary had just had a letter from Mrs. Jack David, describing the reign of terror in North Valley. Jeff Cotton, the camp-marshal, had been drunk all summer, it seemed, and his treatment of the men was atrocious. The company was getting in Japs and Koreans, and the decent men were going out in a stream. “Joe,” said Mary, suddenly, “how do Koreans talk?”

“I suppose there's a Korean language,” said he. “I learned a few words from Cho, the ‘rope-rider'.” And then he laughed. “Are you wanting to study it?”

“I was just wonderin' what we'd do, if they filled up the mines with people like that.”

“We'd find a way to reach them, never fear, Mary. There's no kind of people in the world that don't want freedom, and that don't find out sooner or later about standing together.”

Mary had been reading a history of the trade-union movement, and also a pamphlet about industrial unionism, the wonderful new idea of “one big union” of all the workers in an industry. So she and Hal had many things to talk about; Mrs. Wyatt said she wished that every well-to-do person in Western City might be provided with a revolutionary parlor-maid, and have such interesting discussions in her home! Mary laughed—she could realize the strangeness of this situation as keenly as any well-to-do person. But then her brow clouded; it was so hard for her to stay here and be comfortable, when she read what was going on in the coal-country! She wanted to know what Hal thought about her going back.

“There's nothing you can do just now,” he answered. “The money you send home is more important.”

“I might help to wake up the people, Joe!”

“They don't need that—there's enough bitterness and blind discontent. What they'll need are ideas; and if you stay here a while, and study and think, you'll be of more use later on.”

“I know,” said the girl. “Mrs. Wyatt tells me that. But 'tis so hard, when ye hear about all the sufferin'! It seems like ye could hardly bear to sit down to a table with plenty to eat on it!” She sat with her hands clenched, and there was a quiver in her voice, that went to the souls of both her auditors. Hal knew these qualms—they had brought him home from Europe and his sweetheart. As for Adelaide-she lived the life of her class, she did not want people to say that her interest in new ideas had made her into a “crank”; but when she got this thrill of Mary's, she must have had moments of doubt about her costly clothes and her gracious home!

Hal asked about the Minettis, and learned that they had returned to Pedro, where Jerry was now working. Rosa had written a post-card; she had a new baby, which kept her busy. Another person who had written was John Edstrom. “The old gentleman's been sick again,” said Mary. “If it hadn't been for what ye sent him, Joe, he'd 'a starved!”

“I suppose they'd have fed him at least,” said Hal. “Or don't they take miners into the poor-house?”

“I never heard,” said Mary. “When a miner gets too old to work, he generally drifts away to some other job. Mr. Edstrom says that cold weather's coming, and he's hoping to earn a bit tendin' furnaces. He's sure paid for the help he gave us at North Valley!”

Hal went away with the thought—how many thousands of other men there were all over the country, obscure, unheeded men, paying the same desperate price for loyalty to their class! And all the comfortable, kindly people Hal knew, who went about their affairs of pleasure and profit, leaving these obscure, unheeded ones to be rolled down by Peter Harrigan's machine of greed! Comfortable, kindly people, who had no revolutionary parlor-maids, but who had formulas, whereby they justified themselves in leaving the world as it was. Religious formulas—they were having the poor always with them, they were rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's! And economic formulas—they were maintaining the beneficent system of freedom of contract,
laissez faire
and the “open shop”—while eleven thousand men, with thrice as many women and children dependent upon them, were bracing themselves in anguish and despair for a struggle against annihilation!

[5]

Hal did what one man could. He sought out the comfortable, kindly people he knew, arguing, pleading, adding to the reputation he had won as a fanatic. He went out to Harrigan; but the professor of economics to whom he appealed was reading the proofs of a book on the theory of value. He listened politely while his former student told him that he knew nothing at first hand about industry; but for some reason he did not feel inclined to drop his book and complete his education in Peter Harrigan's coal-camps.

Hal went to St. George's. Will Wilmerding, the assistant, was away; and Dr. Penniman, the rector, had no patience whatever with “agitators”. White-haired and dignified, polished and urbane Dr. Penniman was on the surface, but when you dug below you discovered a zealot out of the seventeenth century. There was a ritual and a system of salvation, and these were the things that mattered to erring and mortal man; if the ritual and the system were right, it made little difference what wages a man got, or what kind of house he lived in. It was obvious, of course, that Dr. Penniman did not apply that doctrine to the clergy; his check came regularly the first of each month, and his house was warm and sanitary. But if you should venture, in the most tactful way imaginable, to point out that aspect of the matter, you would stir what seemed an unchristian set of emotions in the bosom of the white-haired and dignified rector.

Everywhere Hal went, these same unchristian emotions seemed to rise to meet him; at his club, at his father's office, on the street. Arguments would be started, and people would show exasperation at the connecting of their ideas with their pocket-books. “Appie” Harding, Hal's cousin, for example—a rising young lawyer who disliked labor leaders, and took coal-company cases when they came along! And if “Appie's” angry dignity annoyed Hal, he might get his comfort from the cynical good-humor of “Bob” Creston, who grinned cheerfully when Hal suggested that his indifference to conditions in coal-camps might be influenced by his engagement to Betty Gunnison, Percy Harrigan's pretty cousin.