To Make My Bread (51 page)

“It looks like Granpap's not the only one in the McClure family that will be a convict,” Zinie said, and got up to go.

They looked at her, and did not speak. Because she was to have a baby in a few months, they were trying to be patient with her. She wanted rest and peace, that they knew from their own experience, but when did they ever get it while working at machinery? This was what they could understand and Zinie could not, for John had kept her out of the mills, working extra time so that she might not be forced to go in. And Jennie, small Jennie Martin and the younger children had worked. Zinie was a little spoiled.

That evening the picket line went down to the mills and faced the militia. And it was only then that Ora learned that Young Frank was among the soldiers dressed up in uniforms, with their guns to fight against the strikers. She called out to him from across the road.

“Young Frank,” she said, “are you going t' fight against your own?

“Look,” she said and walked toward him from out the ranks of the strikers. “Look, here I am. Why don't you kill me?”

Young Frank stood sullenly in the line of soldiers and looked straight in front.Ora spoke to them all. “Boys,” she said. “Why don't you go home and stop fighting against women and children? Air we not your people? Don't you have mothers that have worked themselves to the bone for ye, and fathers that have slaved? And don't you slave in mills and other places for low wages? Go home, and don't fight your own people any more.”

Others spoke to the boys. And during the rest of the week when the mill was bringing in truck loads of workers from other states and the strikers persuaded them not to go in, the soldiers did not advance once toward the strikers. If any came too near the gate they held out their bayonets, but did not advance a step.

Ora tried to see Young Frank but they would not allow her to go in, and he never came to the house. John saw him later under curious circumstances. But before that night something was done that made everyone feel the power of the mill.

Handbills were distributed through the village which spoke in no uncertain terms:

“
TO THOSE OF OUR EMPLOYEES WHO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THE LATE HAPPY HOLIDAYS
—
GREETINGS
:

THOSE OF YOU WE CONSIDER RELIABLE MAY RETURN TO WORK BY WEDNESDAY NOON OR INDICATE YOUR DESIRE TO DO SO
.

TO THOSE WHO DO NOT WISH TO REMAIN IN OUR EMPLOY
:
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT YOU CANNOT CONTINUE TO OCCUPY OUR HOMES
,
NOR REMAIN ON THE PREMISES OF THE COMPANY
.”

THE WENTWORTH MILLS
.

John spoke to the strikers. “If they force us out of our homes,” he said, “we will put up tents. And there will be food. Do not go back.”

He said much more. Yet on Wednesday at noon the picket line was noticeably smaller, and before the quarter of one whistle blew many of the strikers, with faces averted, went through the gates protected by the drawn bayonets of the militia. Some turned at the gate and came back to join the line, but most of them walked through and entered the door of the mill. They could not bear the thought of being put out on the streets with their young. Some of them had sick people at home, and there were others who were timid and frightened.

Their return to work was a great blow to the rest, for it had been a heartening thought that the mill could not go on without them: that the great building was closed and dark. For if it was kept so, sometime in the near future the owners would say to them, “Come back, and we will do as you wish.” They were not asking for much. What they asked for was entirely reasonable. But they could see that the mill had power to hurt them and force them to their knees.

And the next day they felt the power more. For on that day men went to the houses of those who had not gone back into the mill, emptied them of furniture, and locked the doors of their own homes against them. They came to Ora's about eleven in the morning, and though it was raining they took everything she had and piled it out in the mud.

“You, Dewey Fayon,” Ora said. “You'd better not do this. Hit's against the law. I'll get the law to you.”

“Just try it,” Dewey Fayon said. “I'm the Law,” and he spat some tobacco juice on one of the mattresses.

When Bonnie came from Stumptown the furniture was still there in the rain, and Ora with her own, Sally's and Bonnie's young was standing on the porch of the house.

Next door they heard Sara Smith crying. Her husband was with her. He had been in the strike and would not go back, but he had been sorely tempted to do so, for his wife had a two days' old child. He had brought a mattress from the street back on the porch and laid his wife and baby there. Ora had helped to make her comfortable, then returned to the young ones on her porch.

Bonnie said, “John and Tom Moore and the rest are getting tents put up in the hollow north of Company land.”

“Ain't it terrible?” Ora said.

“Yes. But we've got to work and not cry,” Bonnie was almost downed to see that Ora had lost her grit for once. “I saw Sally Thomas' two young ones with small pox put right out on the street, in the wet and rain.”

Fifty families were put out of their homes that day, and there were many sick among them. The furniture stayed on the streets in the mud. Fortunately the rain stopped about evening.

Some of those who had been evicted had oil stoves, and in the early evening the smell of kerosene mixed with the odor of food that was being cooked on these stoves for the families evicted. Many were still wet from the rain, and after supper fires were built in the streets, where people gathered to dry out, and to talk about what was to be done. All night they kept up the fires. The men who were striking made up watches, and walked the streets, watching the fires and those who were trying to sleep on the hastily made up beds. The fires flickered up and shone on the closed houses and the scraggly dark piles of furniture in front of them.

Toward midnight John and some of the other men went to the union hall, for that needed a guard. Yet they felt almost helpless without firearms. What could they do if the mill decided to make any sort of raid on the hall? Later in the night they found out what could be done when the mill decided to use all its forces to bring them to their knees.

Tom Moore was in Sandersville with John Stevens, for in that place as in several other mills people were wishing to strike. John took the first watch in the hall, and the others lay on the floor and on the counters to get some sleep. He sat on the one chair in front of the table where they took in the names of the strikers. He was not sleepy and could have taken the watch for the whole length of the night, but knew that later he must try to get some rest. That there was danger he knew, for the mill was now roused like a beast that has been disturbed in its pleasant slumbers, and comes lumbering forth to kill or maim what has disturbed it. Everything that could be done to break them would be done.

He had learned this, among other things: That so long as he was docile and humble the owners would be kind to him. But if he once began to think for himself and ask for a better life they wanted to crush him. There was a telephone in the union hall and many times a day it would ring and voices spoke to them threatening death if they did not give up the strike. And they received many letters, he and Bonnie and Tom Moore. They addressed Bonnie as “nigger lover” because she worked in Stumptown among the colored people. But Bonnie went right on, for she was strong in knowing that Mary Allen and the others there needed the message as much as her people did. She could not be so selfish as to keep it only for herself and hers. She was not made in that fashion.

Suddenly John became aware that people were walking in the street outside. He realized that for some time he had been hearing the noises some distance away, but they had come into his thoughts as noises come in a dream. He touched Jesse on the shoulder and woke him.

“I think there may be trouble,” he said.

They listened. There were voices outside.

“Had I better call the militia to protect us?” Jesse asked. “They're not far away.”

“Wait,” John said. He woke the others. They sat sleepy-eyed, huddled together on the floor, and singly on the counters. John stood in the middle of the long room, facing the door. There was a heavy crash on the door, and then another. The butt of a gun came through the splintered boards, and then the head of an ax crashed through. The others were wide awake now. All were standing, waiting for what was coming through the door.

“If I had my gun!” Jesse cried out as if he was in pain.

“Get away from that door,” John called out.

There was no answer, but a hand reached through the splintered part and unlocked the door. It was filled with men. They had on masks which hid the lower part of their faces. The first ones entered, and others followed them. There must have been a hundred altogether, crowding into the room and filling the street outside. They had guns and axes in their hands.

“Get out,” the leader said to the strikers. “Get out of here. If you don't want to be carried out.”

John looked at the faces of his friends. “Comrades,” he said, using a word that he had not thought of using, “I reckon since they're armed and we not, hit's best for us t' go.”

The men turned slowly without speaking. Together they walked through the back entrance, down the alley between stores, and came out on the other side of the street. There in the dark they watched the mob at its work.

Everything was smashed. The whole wooden structure was made into a heap of wood. As each wall went down a hate like fire came up in John. It was not a hate against the men who were tearing down the building, but against those he knew had sent them, against the Power that was behind the lawlessness. He and the others in the strike had not broken one law since it had begun. And the Power could break every law.

Standing in the dark with the others he saw the masked men go to the relief store. They knocked in the glass windows. The splintering of the glass fell on him as if it was the splintering of his hopes for the union. They knocked in the door and came out carrying the precious bags and boxes of food. These they scattered on the sidewalk and in the mud of the road and stamped on them. Then they went back for more. When everything was finished one of the leaders stood outside the door and fired his revolver three times into the air. As he raised his face the mask fell off and John saw that it was the night superintendent of the mills, Jim Strothers.

The mob moved off to the east, and before they were out of sight the militia came running from the other direction.

John and the others crossed the street to see the wreck that had been made. The militia halted before them with bayonets outstretched. Their commander came up and spoke to John. He did not look at the mob that was still near enough for him to reach.

“What is this?” he asked sternly. John pointed to the smashed union hall.

“You might see,” he said. “That mob you see going up the street did it. A mob from the mill. Jim Strothers, the night Super, was one of them.”

“You can tell that when you come up in court,” the commander told him. He called up some of his men and they surrounded the strikers.

“Where are we going?” John asked.

“To jail,” the commander said.

“What for?”

“For disturbing the peace.”

They marched along the road, surrounded by the militia. John saw Young Frank two rows ahead. Without seeming to hurry he moved forward faster than the others and pulled the militiaman who was holding his arm forward until he was just behind Young Frank.

Young Frank was holding the arm of Henry Sanders.

“How long, Young Frank,” John said to him in a low voice as they walked along, “how long you going t' fight us?”

“Here,” Young Frank said to the militiaman who had John's arm. “You take this man and give me yours.” The young militiaman sleepily reached ahead and took Henry's arm. Young Frank came to John's side.

“Look here,” he whispered, “we don't like this kind of work. We want to go home, and told them so. We hope to get away by the end of the week. It's dirty work. I may be mean . . . but I don't like dirty work.”

When John was bailed out of jail two days later, he found the militia gone. But something had come in its place. Over a hundred of the worst men in the town and county had been sworn in as deputy sheriffs. They were stationed day and night on every street leading to the mills. And leading them was Sam McEachern, who had lived in the mountains, the one that Minnie had spoken about. Ora picked him out the first day. She remembered him well, though years had passed since he had left the hills with Minnie behind him on his horse.

A
T
the north of the Company property there was a high piece of ground with two new houses on it, at some distance from each other. Behind the houses was a large open piece of ground sloping down to a grove of trees. The trees filled a hollow or small valley, which had a spring at one end and a small stream running through the center. It was in this hollow that John had been taken by some of his school mates during his first year in school, when he had knocked down Albert Burnett and run away to the mountains to find Granpap.

The union rented this hollow for the tents, along with a piece of land on the high part of the ground just between the two new houses. There they built, with the help of Mrs. Sevier's husband who was an excellent carpenter, a small building that was the new union office.

Down in the hollow they put up the tents, and people who had been evicted—and many more had been put out since the first day—moved in all the furniture they could. They put up a rough shelter for a kitchen, and ate in the open, or if it was raining took the food into their tents. During the day one of the relief workers and some of the women took the old car and drove into the country where they asked farmers for what they were able to give. It was amazing the numbers of poor who were farmers. Yet they were willing, most of them, to share what they had, potatoes, and other vegetables, with those who were striking.