The Coal War (21 page)

This singing served another purpose—a substitute for whiskey. Up in the coal-camps men had got drunk, because there was nothing else for them to do, because overwork and misery predisposed them to it, and social feeling and business interest pushed them on. But here was an enemy to be fought, and drinking men do not make good soldiers. The managing committees could not forbid a man's going off and getting drunk in the towns, but they could forbid him to come to the colony when he was drunk, and they could bar liquor from the tents. What excuse had any striker for getting drunk on alcohol, when he might get drunk upon faith and hope and solidarity?

Hal remembered how, at the beginning, he had shrunk from these people, his Anglo-Saxon prejudices offended. But now that he had come to know them intimately, how cheap such feelings seemed! Yes, they were dirty—but how glad they were to be clean, how quickly they responded to suggestions! They were ignorant—but so eager to learn, if only you came to them with sympathy! Hal was sanitary officer, among his many occupations, and he saw how glad people were to take his advice. They had leisure now, they were not exhausted when they came home; so they could take pride in the place where they lived. Above all things in the world they desired to be like Americans. Did not every man of them, with his first spare wages, make haste to get a suit of store-clothes, and a celluloid collar, and possibly even a fancy ready-made tie? Only give them a chance, give their children a chance, and in a little while you would think their ancestors had come over in the Mayflower!

[2]

Mary Burke came back from Horton, bringing her little brother and sister. Mrs. Wyatt offered her money, so that she could take care of the children outside the tent-colony; but Mary did not wish to be under obligations. There were wounded and sick people to be taken care of, and she could work in the hospital-tent and earn her living, at the same time that she was helping her brother. Mary had some clothes now, and could keep herself neat, as a nurse ought to be.

Hal saw in her no trace of that melancholy which had so impressed him at their first acquaintance; none of those moods of bitterness and despair. Mary had now her job to do; she and Mrs. David and Mrs. Olson were the three most intelligent among the strikers' women, and the executive committee looked to them in all matters which involved the children. So Hal saw a great deal of Mary in the headquarters tent, and saw his faith in her justified.

Here, as in North Valley, young couples went to stroll in the moonlight; but Hal and “Red Mary” were no longer among them. They realized that the mine-guards believed the worst of them, and they felt that they owed it to the union to give no cause for criticism. Besides, they were really not thinking about themselves now; they were lost in this fascinating new experiment in democracy. You may think that you know about life, who live isolated and selfish lives, seeing to the welfare of one little family; but you have no real idea of the possibilities of your being, until you have become part of some great body of people, working for some great cause—until you have merged your life in a social life—until you know what it is to tremble with the fears and thrill with the hopes of a great mass of human beings.

Such was the condition here—brought about automatically by the strike. The cleverest and most capable person in this tent-colony realized that he was nothing by himself, he was able to do nothing by himself. When he sang a song about brotherhood, he had a real feeling about a real fact; it was true that the man who stood by his side and sang was his brother, bound to him in sufferings, in fears and in triumphs. And this was a tremendous discovery, something which you could only understand by experiencing it, and which then you could never forget. That was what old John Edstrom had meant when he said, Once a striker, always a striker! After this experience, the lowest and most degraded man in the tent-colony would know himself for something different, he would have a new outlook upon life.

And this gigantic effort of thirty thousand people was succeeding! The mighty machine of oppression and greed which had made their lives a nightmare for so many years was going to be broken at last! Their masters would have to come to them and make terms; the miners would go back to work with the knowledge that they had rights, and the power to enforce those rights! “We got them! We got them!” cried Jerry Minetti; and Old Mike would caper with glee and exclaim, “We teach them fellers a lesson!” Mary Burke, hardly able to face the thought, would clench her hands and whisper, “Do you think it's possible, Joe? Do you think it's possible?”

At that time Hal really thought it was. The operators had proclaimed to the world that what kept their employes from going back to work was fear of the violence of “agitators”; but here the militia was on the ground, and rigid order was kept—yet scarcely a man went back to work, scarcely a man! All through the district the mines were dead; no “empties” went up the branch-railroads, no loads of coal came down; and here was winter coming on, and the world was clamoring for coal. In Western City the small consumer was paying a cent a pound for it, and there were meetings of protest, demands that if the operators could not run their mines, the state should take over the job.

But among the older and wiser of the strike-leaders there were no illusions about the situation. They knew the power of their enemies, and realized that these enemies would not surrender easily. Billy Keating especially was full of forebodings; they would find that Old Peter had hardly got started to fight! Could not Hal see that the respite the strikers were enjoying was a pure gift from the Governor of the state? It depended upon his order against the bringing in of strike-breakers. So long as he enforced that order, he was using the power of the state to give victory to the strikers; while if he rescinded the order, he would be using the same power to give them defeat.

[3]

There being no more news in “the field”, Billy Keating was recalled to Western City, and from here he wrote Hal about the war which was being fought in the white marble State House on the hill. On one side were the “Big Three”—Peter Harrigan, Allen of the Western-American and Harbridge of Central Fuel—together with their henchmen and allies, the big bankers and captains of industry of the state; on the other side were the miners' leaders, with the support of the State Federation of Labor: the scene of the war being the mind of that most pitiful creature, the “little cowboy Governor”.

It was at this time that Old Peter wrote the letter which fastened this name upon the chief executive of his state, telling how he “spanked” him and then “gave him candy”. The awarding of such punishments and favors is usually done in the privacy of the family; but up at the State House the reporters were swarming, on the alert for news, and once a group of them got a glimpse into the family's affairs. Someone going out left open the door of the Governor's office, and the voice of Peter Harrigan was heard: “You God-damned coward, we aren't going to stand for this! You've got to do something, and do it quick, or we'll get you!”

And then came the whining tones of the pitiful chief executive: “Don't be too hard on me, gentlemen, I'm doing it as fast as I can!”

When this news came to Hal, in a letter from Billy, he did not show it to anyone in the tent-colony. There was no one he could bear to torment with such a terrifying picture. But he wrote to John Harmon, who had gone back to Western City, warning him that now was the critical time, and that he must move every influence he possessed. So there was a great mass-meeting of protest, called by the State Federation of Labor, and this meeting sent a delegation to interview Governor Barstow. The trouble, the delegation insisted, was all because the operators refused to negotiate with the union, even to meet the union leaders. If a conference could be held, a settlement might be arrived at. Was it not the duty of the Governor to insist upon such a conference, rather than to let himself be used as a tool for the crushing of the strike?

The unions had one threat which they could make—that of a general strike throughout the state. The Executive Committee of the State Federation was authorized to take such action; and when they held up this spectre before the “little cowboy Governor”, he would lose his self-control and plead with them, as abjectly as a few hours before he had been pleading with Peter Harrigan. A monstrous and wicked thing for men to talk of crippling the industries of a great commonwealth!

This cry was taken up by the newspapers, which said nothing about Peter Harrigan's desk-pounding, but pictured the labor men as holding a pistol at the Governor's head. It was unheard of arrogance; and apparently Peter Harrigan and Judge Vagleman thought so too, for they saw the United States prosecuting attorney, and caused a Federal grand jury to indict forty-two of the leaders of the coalstrike for conspiracy in restraint of trade!

There was a struggle going on for the sympathy of the public; and in this contest the operators had all the advantages. They could publish whatever they pleased in the papers, not merely their arguments, but their news; they had unlimited funds to be used in propaganda, public and private. Just now they were publishing in newspapers throughout the state a series of advertisements with the sarcastic headline:
“STARVATION WAGES IN COAL MINES”
. There would follow an elaborate set of figures showing the average daily earnings of all the miners in a certain mine on a certain day—which average was from three to four dollars. And how could the miners explain to the public the subtle knavery of these figures? It was true that they got three or four dollars a day—on the days when they were paid; but there were, on the average, only a hundred and ninety-one such days a year; and what about the days when they were
not
paid? The companies appeared to cover that point by declaring that the men were at liberty to work as many days as they pleased; from this the public would conclude that the men must have spent the other hundred and seventy-four days loafing in saloons. Who would credit that on those extra days—even the Sundays, often—the miner was down in the pit, slaving as hard as a man could slave, but without having a cent to show for it?

This was the “dead work”, about which so much controversy centered; cleaning out rooms, “brushing”, timbering, “grading bottoms”, laying track, removing falls of rock! All this work had to be done before any coal could be cut or loaded; and while he was doing it, the miner's name did not appear on the payroll or anywhere else. The state bureau of labor made a computation, based upon thousands of payrolls, and upon the full number of working days, which showed that the average earnings of a miner were not three or four dollars a day, but a dollar and sixty-eight cents a day! And this sum had to be spent in company-stores at company-store prices—and in a country where the cost of living was going up ten per cent a year!

[4]

While Peter Harrigan and his associates were laboring with the Governor, the company officials and attorneys in the field were laboring with General Wrightman. They knew the General of old; he was their man, by all his class-prejudices and his personal weaknesses. Why need he be so strenuous in enforcing the Governor's “policy”? If strikebreakers came in, a few at a time and quietly, surely no great harm would be done! Here were five who wanted to get into North Valley; men who were willing to swear they were natives of the state, and had worked in coal-mines for years. Surely such men had a right to go to work! There was a bunch who started for Barela, disguised as railroad section-hands. The strikers at Horton saw them and gave chase, and the militia gave chase to the strikers, and there was an excited argument on the road. Surely the militia should have maintained its dignity in a situation such as that!

Also there was the question of the disarming of the mine-guards. There had been much said about this intention when the militia had first come into the field, and had wanted to get the strikers' arms without trouble. The strike-leaders had agreed to give them up, and Captain Harding had come to the Horton colony to get them. He had found thirty-two guns stacked up in the headquarters tent; and when General Wrightman was dissatisfied with this and ordered a search of the colony, the strikers had submitted good-naturedly, helping to take up their tent-platforms, and adding a child's air-rifle and a pea-shooter to the collection. The soldiers did not find many guns, and General Wrightman became angry, declaring that the leaders were not playing fair with him. That was not true, the leaders had done their best; it was not their fault if some of the men were distrustful, and had chosen to wrap up their weapons in oil-cloth and bury them secretly in the hills.

Hal found out from Mike Sikoria that some of the young fellows had done this. “Sure they hide them,” said Mike. “They try them militias a little bit. Let them get guns from the mine-guards—they got lots more guns than what our fellers got.” And Wresmak, the Bohemian, who had spent the last of his savings for a first-class rifle, admitted that he had concealed it. It wasn't doing anybody any harm under the ground, and it would stay there so long as the soldiers kept their promises and played fair.

And now it began to appear that Mike and Wresmak had not been so ill-advised in their suspicions. Schulman and young Vagleman and the rest of the conspirators were able to persuade the General to let some of the mine-guards keep their rifles, and even to return secretly the few he had taken away. There were rumors that the Governor meant to change his “policy”; if he did change it, there would surely be more trouble, and the militia would be glad of the help of the Schultz Detective Agency.

From that the conspirators went one step farther. What about the guns which had been taken from the strikers? Among them were some perfectly good weapons, and surely it was folly to leave them lying unused. Since there could be no idea of returning them to the “red-necks” who had owned them, was it not common-sense to let the mine-guards have them—quietly, of course.