The Coal War (15 page)

And then came Frank Wagunik, claiming benefits because he had been discharged for union activity three months before the strike; and when you had decided his claim was just, there came Pete Zammakis, who had been discharged a year ago, and had been half starving ever since. And then came Mrs. Milinarich, the lady who had run a lodging-house for miners, and been sent out because she would not take care of “scabs”. Surely Mrs. Milinarich was entitled to rank as a striker!

[17]

All Hal's North Valley friends were gathered at Horton. John Edstrom took the job of bookkeeper in the headquarters tent; Mike Sikoria was appointed day-policeman, and proved an excellent hand at “jollying” the intractable—the principal part of a democratic policeman's duties. Jerry Minetti came, to take control of the forty-odd Italians; he and Rosa and the three children had a tent of their own, and Little Jerry did valuable work organizing the Dago mine-urchins, teaching them to sing the “Internationale” in Italian, and to give three cheers for “il Sciopero”!

The main committee consisted of Big Jerry, Moylan, Hal Warner, and Louie the Greek. As Moylan had to be away three quarters of the time, most of the difficult decisions fell upon Hal, and this kept him absorbed. He was willing to give all the time he had—to forget the outside world entirely, in the fascinations of this new democracy. But on the third day after his trip up the North Valley canyon, a thunderbolt fell upon him; while he was directing the unpacking of a load of blankets, Jim Moylan rushed up, crying, “Have you heard the news?”

“What?”

“Jeff Cotton's been shot!”

Hal stared at him, dumb.

“Shot and killed!”

“Who did it?”

“A couple of Greeks.”

“Strikers?”

“So they say. One was named Androkulos.”

“Androkulos!” echoed Hal. “My God!”

“You know him?” cried the other. He had forgotten the name—having so many strange names to remember. When Hal told him it was a youth from their colony, Jim Moylan was speechless.

“Have they caught him?” demanded Hal.

“No, both of them got away. They'll be hot after them, though.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Up near North Valley. They went after their things, and when Cotton wouldn't let them in, they pulled guns.”

“Poor Andy!” exclaimed Hal. The face of the lad rose before him, olive-skinned, rather girlish, with big mournful black eyes. He remembered what the boy had once said to him. “Don't want to be a miner. Don't want to get kil-lid!”

Hal reproached himself—he ought to have taken Androkulos in hand. But he had so many things on his mind, so many people to keep in hand; in the confusion he had not realized the seriousness of the young Greek's threats. And now it was too late! Andy was a murderer, there was a thousand dollars reward offered to anyone who would betray him, and if they caught him, they would hang him!

His fellow-Greeks would try to hide him, of course. Hal had to think but a short while to realize that he would help to hide him, if ever the chance came. And this was decidedly a startling discovery to a young college-graduate, hitherto law-abiding. If he were to hide the boy, or even to connive at his hiding, he would become a criminal himself, an accessory to murder, liable to a long term in prison.

For some days, Hal's imagination was busy with this situation. He pictured the boy stealing into his tent some night, appealing for aid; and the two of them caught, and delivered over to Sheriff Raymond! What a sensation there would be then, for a fact! Peter Harrigan would get busy, and Edward Warner and Garret Arthur would have something really to worry them!

The imagined melodrama was never staged. Hal did not see Androkulos again; the boy disappeared, no one knew where, or to what fate. But Hal never forgot the olive-skinned, girlish face and the mournful black eyes; nor did he forget his first experience with the psychology of the law-breaker. A truly appalling aspect of the American system of “invisible government”—that men were made into criminals by the automatic operation of their best human instincts! Of the hundreds of thousands who were undergoing the tortures of a barbarous prison-system, how many had been brought to their fate by such automatic operation of fundamental human feelings?

[18]

Also Hal found himself haunted by the thought of Jeff Cotton: by the image of him sitting on his horse, alert and watchful, resembling a partridge; and again, by the image of him in his North Valley office, smiling cruelly at Hal. A merry duel of wits they had had; and at the climax of it, the mine-explosion had knocked them both over, and they had crouched on the floor, gazing at each other out of dazed and horrified eyes! In spite of himself, Hal had liked this black sheep of an old Virginia family; he had been a handsome devil, and a bold one. He had boasted himself “top-dog”, and had expected to remain it. Now, Hal thought, what kind of dog was he?

The killing of a company-marshal had sent a thrill of horror through all the coal-country; it was an eruption from the rumbling volcano of anarchy, on which all men knew they were treading. From that time, every mine-guard saw a potential murderer in every striker. When Hal went down the street and passed some of the deputies, he saw scowls and heard muttered curses. They looked around to make sure he was not following them; and he in turn felt impelled to make sure they were not following
him!

Such a tension inevitably led to clashes, especially when there was continual provocation in the form of “scabs”, or rumors of “scabs”. The Governor of the state announced his policy at the beginning of the strike; if
bona fide
workingmen wanted to go into the coal-fields to find jobs, they had a right to go, and he would protect them in that right, but he would not permit the wholesale importation of strike-breakers, and he would strictly enforce the law of the state, that men who were brought in to work where there was a strike, must be informed of the strike when they were hired.

This policy, announced after consultation with the union officers, was satisfactory to them. The trouble was, the agreement was not kept; strike-breakers were brought in from the beginning—precisely as if there had been no Governor, and no elaborate announcement of a “policy”.

It was hard to be sure about this at the outset. The strikers could not get into the camps, and the strike-breakers could not get out. But there were rumors from every side; there came long-distance telephone-calls, telling of strikebreakers on the way; there came telegrams from places as far away as St. Louis and Chicago, telling of the wholesale hiring of “scabs”. And such reports caused intense excitement. If the Governor will not enforce the law, let us enforce it! cried the hot-heads. And so the leaders would have to leave the pleasant work of building tent-platforms, and take to arguing and pleading in strange dialects.

Hal had come with an idea of what happens in strikes, derived from the reading of newspapers and the conversations of his leisure-class friends: the idea being that as soon as a strike is declared, the strikers with one accord turn out to defend their jobs with clubs and brick-bats and revolvers. But Hal saw that in this strike, at any rate, the course of events was entirely different. The leaders of the strike were convinced that they could win with the weapon of solidarity; they wanted no other weapon, and regarded a man who suggested any other as an enemy. There were rough characters among these miners, of course; but the vast majority of them were men accustomed to earning their bread by severe and patient toil. They had confidence in their leaders, and were eager to do what their leaders ordered. Their attitude to “scabs” was not always one of blind hatred; many of them could understand that the “scab” was a man out of a job like themselves, and that he might be ignorant concerning the wrongs suffered by the workers in this district. If they could explain to him, if they could plead with him, he might refuse to take the bread out of their children's mouths, and continue this system of oppression!

There came word to the Horton tent-colony that a couple of automobiles, each with two armed guards, were waiting at the railroad-station. That meant that strikebreakers were expected, and a dozen or more of the colonists set out for the village. “Go and see those fellows behave themselves,” said Jim Moylan to Hal; and so Hal ran after the party. When the train came in, he stood watching, with his friend Mike Madvik, the Croatian mule-driver, at his side.

Several men who looked like workingmen got off the train. “Fellow I know there!” exclaimed Madvik, and stepped forward to speak to the man; when one of the guards seized him by the shoulder and threw him back. There were cries from the other strikers, and a rush forward; whereupon the guard drew his revolver and sprang into the midst of them, striking right and left with the butt of the weapon. He struck one man in the jaw, and with another blow he laid open the Croatian's scalp. The other guards joined in, and having driven the angry strikers back, they pushed the strike-breakers into the automobiles, leaped onto the running-boards, and sped away.

Hal took the job of binding up the head of his mule-driver friend; all during the operation the poor fellow was crying—not with pain, but with rage. Hal strove to tell him, in words of one syllable, of the wonderful vision of labor-solidarity, the one big union that was coming out of agonies such as these. But all the time Hal had an inner struggle to be convinced by his own eloquence. He really wanted to get a gun!

A day or two later a group of strikers flagged a railroad-train, to make a search for strike-breakers. They did not find any, as it happened, but they made a terrible excitement. Reading about it in the Western City papers, one got the impression that the coal-camps were in a state near to insurrection; and how could a young man of decent rearing and education give his support to such rioters and assassins? Hal could see the impression his relatives and friends must be getting, yet he was powerless to convey any other impression to them.

The newspapers were so very plausible in their accounts, that sometimes even Hal would be seized with doubts. Might it not be that some of these things were happening as described? He knew that the strikers were men with a sense of bitter wrongs, and that some of them were inflaming this sense with liquor. Might it not be that some of them had done the wild deeds which the newspapers told about? Some of them in remoter parts of the field, too far for Hal to know them!

There came one flagrant incident, a night attack upon the Harvey's Run mine, by what the papers described as a mob of armed strikers. There was a tent-colony in this neighborhood, and Jim Moylan got it on the telephone, and received most solemn assurance that there had been no fighting whatever—at least none that the strikers knew of. So Hal called up Billy Keating, who was in Pedro, and suggested that he make an investigation of this particular riot. Billy set out, and next day the “Gazette” had a report of what he had found. Over a thousand shots were fired, according to the story; but Billy had challenged the marshal of the camp, who had been able to show only three bullet-holes in the buildings—and these in an unoccupied Japanese boarding-house! It was claimed that the attacking mob had been hidden on the hillside above the camp; but Keating had stuck a lead-pencil through the bullet-holes, and found all three of them horizontal! It was the most obvious kind of “frame-up”; yet the newspapers were making it the basis of a demand for the calling out of the militia!

[19]

The reason for such proceedings was plain enough to Hal. The coal-operators were in a state of dismay, because of the completeness of the strike. Their reports had led them to expect a quick collapse; but here practically all their men were out; and many of the best were leaving the district, over five hundred having purchased railroad tickets on a single day! The efforts to keep them by force had broken down; in several cases the camp had risen
en masse
, stormed the defenses, and marched out. In other camps the union had sent in spies among the strike-breakers, and there were secret meetings, and the strike-breakers were striking!

The cost of paying and feeding the guards and deputies amounted to something like ten thousand dollars a day; and this expense the operators wished to put off on the state. They wanted the Governor to order out the militia; and to support the demand, they wanted violence.

Day by day the rifle-carrying “guards” crowded closer upon the tent-colonies, their ways becoming more insolent, their language more vile. They would stop and turn back parties of men from the post-office; solitary men they would beat, women they would grossly insult. They attacked strikers who came into the open camps to demand their back pay; they arrested men for attempting to speak to strike-breakers, even in public places. And when all this failed, they took to hiding in the hills, or in the coal-camps which happened to be near the tent-colonies, and practicing long-range firing with human targets.

There were a dozen tent-colonies, scattered along the railroad for fifty miles; and this last-mentioned experience befell them all. Again and again the miners' officials went to Sheriff Raymond, asking protection. They demanded that he take away the deputy's commissions which he had illegally issued to non-residents. They demanded that he furnish men to protect the tents—offering to lodge and feed some of the deputies, in the hope of keeping off the bullets of the others! But the sheriff-emperor said No; and when Harmon and Moylan requested that he issue deputy's commissions to the strikers, so that they might protect their own homes, he answered, “I never arm both factions!”

So naturally the miners took to arming themselves. Before this, it had been the hot-heads who bought weapons; but after the interview with Alf Raymond, the union officials themselves ordered guns and ammunition. This fact, of course, became known, and was diligently used by the strikers' enemies, in order to make the public believe that the strikers were law-breakers and desperadoes.