Power (24 page)

“—doesn't it excite you, Mr. Cutter?” she finished.

“It excites me, Mrs. Holt,” I agreed. “It also worries me. It's the object of too much passion and hatred and fear on the part of the miners. That steam shovel does the work of two hundred men.”

“But when you think of the old way—crawling into the earth through those black tunnels and bent double to hack away at the coal with the whole world pressing on you—have you ever been in a mine, Mr. Cutter?”

I shook my head. “No—not yet.”

“I have been. Ben took me into one, and I was too proud to tell him how frightened I was, and when we were a mile or two underground—I don't know how far, but it seemed terribly far—I panicked and I knew that if I didn't see the outside I would die. Of course, I didn't die, but I never will forget the feeling. I can't believe that it's a good thing for men to work under such conditions, no matter what is said of the pride of a digger in his work. And this”—she pointed to the crater—”this will someday do away with the whole business of tunneling—”

“If it doesn't do away with the miners as well, Mrs. Holt.”

At this point, we were approaching a small shack, set back a few yards from the lip of the crater; and as we walked toward it, the door opened and a man carrying a rifle emerged. He had a flat, ugly face, and almost with a snarl, he informed us that this was private property and demanded to know where in hell we thought we were going. I reminded him that there was a lady present and that there was nothing much of any value that we could carry off on our bikes.

“All right, buster, so there's a lady present. Now I give you and the lady two minutes to get out of here.”

I stood there watching him, trying to think of some way to retrieve my bruised manhood, but Dorothy pulled at my sleeve and begged me to go. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, Mr. Cutter.”

I nodded, and we turned away from the place. As we left the mine behind us, she said to me, “Thank you, Mr. Cutter. I live in dread of something like this happening when Ben is with me. Ben would have felt an irresistible obligation to take the rifle away from him and break it over his head.”

“Do they always have armed guards here on Sunday?”

“Not so far as I know.”

We reached the road, mounted our bicycles, and rode for about half a mile away from Arrowhead. At a place where a flat, white rock lay alongside the road, Dorothy braked her wheel and dismounted.

“Do you mind if we rest for a while?” she asked. I joined her, and we sat down on the rock. “I'm shaking,” she said, holding out one hand. “I'm ashamed of myself. But I hate guns. They frighten me so. I'm so ashamed.”

“Why?” I smiled. “Because you hate guns? I hate them. They frighten me, and I'm not ashamed.”

“You can afford not to be ashamed, Mr. Cutter. Ben told me about your war record. You were a hero—”

“No. No, that's not true!”

“—but you were, and it gives you the right to be afraid of guns.”

“Believe me, it's a natural right.”

“Then we won't talk about guns. Tell me about your job. Do you like it?”

“I don't know,” I answered slowly. “I really don't know, because until today, I haven't had ten minutes to think about it. I'm not even sure that I know what my job is.”

“Tell me about it. You know, after that first night—well, I told Ben that I didn't think you'd stay. I was almost sure you wouldn't.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, unless it was that you suddenly made me aware of Pomax. You can get used to a place—even a place like Pomax. We've been here a few years and it feels like we've been here forever. But when you came, I suddenly saw it with fresh eyes. Do I sound very disloyal, Mr. Cutter?”

“I can't think of you being disloyal, Mrs. Holt. I don't think you know how.”

She smiled, not as before, but with sheer pleasure and gratification, her whole face mobile, the way a little girl smiles, and she told me, “Why that's the nicest thing I ever had said to me, Mr. Cutter, and I don't think you were trying to be artful. I think you said it because you meant it.”

“I did.”

“Then I'm going to go around in a glow all day. But do tell me about your job.”

I told her everything I could think of, and then suddenly, it was late and she was wondering how she could have sat there and let the whole afternoon go by. We rode back to Pomax, and at the edge of town, I left her.

 

14

I turned over in my mind the question of whether to say anything to Ben Holt about meeting his wife, and the very fact that I should have dwelled upon it perplexed me. I realized then that Dorothy would come home and blurt it out; it was not in her to hide anything, and certainly there was no reason for me to have the slightest trace of guilt. I decided to mention it to Ben in passing, but then one thing piled up upon another so rapidly that I didn't have a chance to bring it up.

Firstly, the International Miners Union threw a picket line around the entrance to the Dakota Pit. This was an Associated Miners colliery, and when their men reported to work, they tried to break through the picket line. There was a bad fight, and five men were hurt enough to require medical attention. The Chicago papers carried banner headlines about the violence at Egypt, and I found myself trying to convince the press that a splinter union was an enemy of the public as well as the great majority of mineworkers. It was not easy—and the more so since Ben and his associates had never properly worked out any real understanding of their relationship with the small Associated Miners Union. For my part, I could form no clear picture of what the smaller union represented. When I spoke to one of our men, I got a picture of vicious reactionaries, labor spies, company men in union clothes; when I spoke to another, I got as earnest a picture of Bolsheviks, anarchists, and Wobblies.

There was a meeting that lasted half the night, centering around the problem presented to us by the big Arrowhead Pit. Although no more than a dozen men were required to conduct the steam-shovel mining and stock-piling that Hans Klingman, the boss there, had pledged to limit himself to, we received constant reports of a steady flow of new men from Chicago. Nor were the descriptions of these men in any way reassuring. They were not diggers; all reports agreed on that; and so far as we could learn, they were the pale, hard-eyed inhabitants of the Chicago back alleys and gutters. I didn't put much stock in the stories that these were full-fledged gangsters, recruited from some of the big Chicago mobs; I felt that it was more likely these were drunks, loafers, petty hoodlums, and perhaps a scattering of flophouse bums; for even bonus wages would not bring mobsters into a strip mine in Egypt. But what was most disturbing was the fact that these men were not needed; they had no work to do; they were fed and lodged at the mine in hastily erected tents; and according to all stories, they were armed. Not only did we hear of rifles and pistols, but there was one not-to-be-dismissed report of two Browning machine guns.

And as fast as these men arrived at the mine, they were given union cards in the Associated Miners by Gus Empek.

Jack Mullen kept pounding on this during the meeting. “Ben,” he said, “I been telling you for years what Gus Empek and that lousy mob he calls a union is. We let them get fat on our flesh. Now look what that bastard is doing!”

“We know what that bastard is doing,” Ben agreed. “He's using his union to break this strike. But do we have to be such damn hotheaded fools as to walk right into the trap he set for us? We already had the worst possible press with the business at the Dakota Pit. What does it get us? Headlines? Cries of violence—the lawless miners! Bring in the National Guard! Break the strike! The hell with that! I want to win this strike and win it legally.”

“No. We got to close down that Arrowhead Pit.”

“How? They're digging coal, but they're not shipping it out. What should we do? Go in there against their guns? Have some kind of a war? I'm sick and tired of wars. Let's try this one without being killed. We got enough widows in the union already.”

“I agree with Ben,” Mark Golden said. “This is a trap—just as sure as God, this is a trap.”

“And if they start shipping coal?” Mullen demanded.

“We'll face that when it happens.”

The meeting went on for hours, but always around the same points and coming to no solutions.

The next morning, a telephone call from Pittsburgh told us that injunctions had been issued, over fifty struck pits opened, and two hundred and twelve men had been arrested. Two of the men in prison had been beaten to death. A few hours later, Ben, Mark Golden, and I were on our way to Pittsburgh.

 

15

A man named Paul Wassilinski, one of a number of men Golden had gotten released on bail, was brought up to my hotel room for me to take down his story. This was on the third day after we had arrived in Pittsburgh. Golden brought him up to the room. He was a big, soft-skinned Lithuanian, with a broad, cowlike face and a child's blue eyes. One of his arms had been broken and was in a plaster cast and a sling. He was also badly bruised around the face and neck, and an eye was closed, discolored and swollen. I gave him a drink of straight whisky, and then he sat down in the armchair in the room, looking around with admiration. He had never been in a hotel before, or, as he told me, in a room as fine as this one.

“Just try to make yourself as comfortable as you can, Mr. Wassilinski,” I said to him. “I'm going to ask you some questions.”

“Sure,” he nodded. “But you don't call me Mr. Wassilinski, huh? You call me mister, it makes me feel like a boss. With all this pains and hurts I got on me, I don't want to feel like a boss right now. You understand? Call me Paul.”

“All right, Paul. How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Married?”

“I got good wife—fine three kids.”

“You're not born in this country, Paul?”

“No. I taken here I'm nine year old.”

“And how long have you worked in the mines, Paul?”

“Since I'm eleven. That's twenty-five, twenty-four year.”

“And how long have you been a member of the International Miners Union, Paul?”

“Long as I work in mine. I tell you something—my papa say to me, in old country, Paul, no union, a man's same as a slave. I come here, I see a union, maybe I don't know nothing else, I know that. Everybody say, Paul, you a dumb Polack. I'm Litvak, but they see you from old country, they call you Polack. So I join union, I got enough sense for that.”

“And what is your post in the union, Paul?”

“I'm member strike committee for whole district.”

“And where were you working when the strike began?”

“Demerest Collieries.”

“And where were you arrested? On the picket?”

“No. They come to home. Some lousy fink tell them who is strike committee. They come to home.”

“How many other men were arrested at the same time?”

“I don't know that. They take me Pittsburgh and put me in cell with two other members strike committee, Joey Shine and Alec Vostov. That's all I see, poor Joey and Alec.”

“Did they give you a hearing? Did they take you into court? Did they arraign you before a judge?”

“Hell, no. Nothing like that.”

“How long did they keep you in the cell?”

“Overnight, maybe whole day. One glass water to drink, one rotten boloney sandwich. Then they take three of us to room in cellar. In room is six cops and table and chair. On table is paper for us to sign.”

“Did they let you read this paper, Paul?”

“Tell you truth, I don't read so good English. I don't read so good Litvak either. But poor Joey Shine, he smart. He reads. He tell them it God damn lie what they write there.”

It was at this point in the question-and-answer procedure of getting a statement from Wassilinski that Ben Holt entered the room. I paused, while he shook hands with Wassilinski; then he motioned for me to continue, sitting down on the bed and lighting a cigar. I recorded each answer in my own shorthand.

“Do you remember what was on the paper, Paul?”

“I remember what Joey Shine gets so mad about. He gets angry because they say Ben Holt is Bolshevik, agent Moscow, and we got dynamite stashed away to blow up tipples and car. ‘Son of a bitch,' he yell at them, ‘you got to kill me before I sign this.' So they kill him and Alec. That's right. They kill him.”

“You don't remember anything else that might have been written on the papers?”

“I only know what Joey yell about.”

“What happened then?”

“They start beat Joey. They push him up against wall and punch him in belly. Two of them hold arms, third punch him in belly. I try help him, they twist arm around my back and break it. Then they put Joey in chair and put pen in his hand. He throw pen at them. Then they beat him around face and head with little clubs. One eye come out. He fall down on floor, and they kick him. Alec try push them away from Joey, they beat Alec around head and try make him sign. Then they beat him more. I try stop them and they hit me in face. I'm no good with broken arm. Then I faint and don't remember nothing until I wake up in prison hospital.”

The silence after that was broken by Ben asking Wassilinski whether he'd like a cigar.

“That's nice, Ben. I don't smoke. I used to smoke, wife say it take bread out of children mouths. So I stop smoking. Lose the taste for it.”

Ben nodded. Golden stared at Wassilinski moodily, and I said, “You understand, Paul, that I have been putting down the questions and answers. I'll have them typed up, and then we'll ask you to sign it in front of a notary public. You may have to give evidence in court about this. Will you do that?”

“I do it,” Wassilinski nodded. Then he sat in silence for a while. I guess there was nothing any of us wanted to say, so we sat there silently, and finally Wassilinski shook his head and said that it was a terrible thing to see two men die. They didn't have to die. “Like they tell me in the old country, you go away to a war and die, but nobody make no sense of it.”