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King Coal: A Novel, a novel by Upton Sinclair |
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Book 4. The Will Of King Coal - Section 6 To Section 10 |
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_ SECTION 6. How long could a man expect to stand on the steps of a company building, with a super and a pit-boss at his back, and organise a union of mine-workers? Hal realised that he must move the crowd from that perilous place. "You'll do what I say, now?" he demanded; and when they agreed in chorus, he added the warning: "There'll be no fighting! And no drinking! If you see any man drunk to-night, sit on him and hold him down!" They laughed and cheered. Yes, they would keep straight. Here was a job for sober men, you bet! "And now," Hal continued, "the people in the hospital. We'll have a committee go in and see about them. No noise--we don't want to disturb the sick men. We only want to make sure nobody else is disturbing them. Some one will go in and stay with them. Does that suit you?" Yes, that suited them. "All right," said Hal. "Keep quiet for a moment." And he turned to the superintendent. "Cartwright," said he, "we want a committee to go in and stay with our people." Then, as the superintendent started to expostulate, he added, in a low voice, "Don't be a fool, man! Don't you see I'm trying to save your life?" The superintendent knew how bad it would be for discipline to let Hal carry his point with the crowd; but also he saw the immediate danger--and he was not sure of the courage and shooting ability of book-keepers and stenographers. "Be quick, man!" exclaimed Hal. "I can't hold these people long. If you don't want hell breaking loose, come to your senses." "All right," said Cartwright, swallowing his dignity. And Hal turned to the men and announced the concession. There was a shout of triumph. "Now, who's to go?" said Hal, when he could he heard again; and he looked about at the upturned faces. There Were Tim and Wauchope, the most obvious ones; but Hal decided to keep them under his eye. He thought of Jerry Minetti and of Mrs. David--but remembered his agreement with "Big Jack," to keep their own little group in the back-ground. Then he thought of Mary Burke; she had already done herself all the harm she could do, and she was a person the crowd would trust. He called her, and called Mrs. Ferris, an American woman in the crowd. The two came up the steps, and Hal turned to Cartwright. "Now, let's have an understanding," he said. "These people are going in to stay with the sick men, and to talk to them if they want to, and nobody's going to give them any orders but the doctors and nurses. Is that right?" "All right," said the superintendent, sullenly. "Good!" said Hal. "And for God's sake have a little sense and stand by your word; this crowd has had all it can endure, and if you do any more to provoke it, the consequences will be on you. And while you're about it, see that the saloons are closed and kept closed until this trouble is settled. And keep your people out of the way--don't let them go about showing their guns and making faces." Without waiting to hear the superintendent's reply, Hal turned to the throng, and held up his hand for silence. "Men," he said, "we have a big job to do--we're going to organise a union. And we can't do it here in front of the hospital. We've made too much noise already. Let's go off quietly, and have our meeting on the dump in back of the power-house. Does that suit you?" They answered that it suited them; and Hal, having seen the two women passed safely into the hospital, sprang down from the porch to lead the way. Jerry Minetti came to his side, trembling with delight; and Hal clutched him by the arm and whispered, excitedly, "Sing, Jerry! Sing them some Dago song!"
They got to the place appointed without any fighting. And meantime Hal had worked out in his mind a plan for communicating with this polyglot horde. He knew that half the men could not understand a word of English, and that half the remainder understood very little. Obviously, if he was to make matters clear to them, they must be sorted out according to nationality, and a reliable interpreter found for each group. The process of sorting proved a slow one, involving no end of shouting and good-natured jostling--Polish here, Bohemian here, Greek here, Italian here! When this job had been done, and a man found from each nationality who understood enough English to translate to his fellows, Hal started in to make a speech. But before he had spoken many sentences, pandemonium broke loose. All the interpreters started interpreting at the same time--and at the top of their lungs; it was like a parade with the bands close together! Hal was struck dumb; then he began to laugh, and the various audiences began to laugh; the orators stopped, perplexed--then they too began to laugh. So wave after wave of merriment rolled over the throng; the mood of the assembly was changed all at once, from rage and determination to the wildest hilarity. Hal learned his first lesson in the handling of these hordes of child-like people, whose moods were quick, whose tempers were balanced upon a fine point. It was necessary for him to make his speech through to the end, and then move the various audiences apart, to be addressed by the various interpreters. But then arose a new difficulty. How could any one control these floods of eloquence? How be sure that the message was not being distorted? Hal had been warned by Olson of company detectives who posed as workers, gaining the confidence of men in order to incite them to violence. And certainly some of these interpreters were violent-looking, and one's remarks sounded strange in their translations! There was the Greek orator, for example; a wild man, with wild hair and eyes, who tore all his passions to tatters. He stood upon a barrel-head, with the light of two pit-lamps upon him, and some two score of his compatriots at his feet; he waved his arms, he shook his fists, he shrieked, he bellowed. But when Hal, becoming uneasy, went over and asked another English-speaking Greek what the orator was saying, the answer was that he was promising that the law should be enforced in North Valley! Hal stood watching this perfervid little man, a study in the possibilities of gesture. He drew back his shoulders and puffed out his chest, almost throwing himself backwards off the barrel-head; he was saying that the miners would be able to live like men. He crouched down and bowed his head, moaning; he was telling them what would happen if they gave up. He fastened his fingers in his long black hair and began tugging desperately; he pulled, and then stretched out his empty hands; he pulled again, so hard that it almost made one cry out with pain to watch him. Hal asked what that was for; and the answer was, "He say, 'Stand by union! Pull one hair, he come out; pull all hairs, no come out'!" It carried one back to the days of Aesop and his fables! Tom Olson had told Hal something about the technique of an organiser, who wished to drill these ignorant hordes. He had to repeat and repeat, until the dullest in his audience had grasped his meaning, had got into his head the all-saving idea of solidarity. When the various orators had talked themselves out, and the audiences had come back to the cinder-heap, Hal made his speech all over again, in words of one syllable, in the kind of pidgin-English which does duty in the camps. Sometimes he would stop to reinforce it with Greek or Italian or Slavish words he had picked up. Or perhaps his eloquence would inflame some one of the interpreters afresh, and he would wait while the man shouted a few sentences to his compatriots. It was not necessary to consider the possibility of boring any one, for these were patient and long-suffering men, and now desperately in earnest. They were going to have a union; they were going to do the thing in regular form, with membership cards and officials chosen by ballot. So Hal explained to them, step by step. There was no use organising unless they meant to stay organised. They would choose leaders, one from each of the principal language groups; and these leaders would meet and draw up a set of demands, which would be submitted in mass-meeting, and ratified, and then presented to the bosses with the announcement that until these terms were granted, not a single North Valley worker would go back into the pits. Jerry Minetti, who knew all about unions, advised Hal to enroll the men at once; he counted on the psychological effect of having each man come forward and give in his name. But here at once they met a difficulty encountered by all would-be organisers--lack of funds. There must be pencils and paper for the enrollment; and Hal had emptied his pockets for Jack David! He was forced to borrow a quarter, and send a messenger off to the store. It was voted by the delegates that each member as he joined the union should be assessed a dime. There would have to be some telegraphing and telephoning if they were going to get help from the outside world. A temporary committee was named, consisting of Tim Rafferty, Wauchope and Hal, to keep the lists and the funds, and to run things until another meeting could be held on the morrow; also a body-guard of a dozen of the sturdiest and most reliable men were named to stay by the committee. The messenger came back with pads and pencils, and sitting on the ground by the light of pit-lamps, the interpreters wrote down the names of the men who wished to join the union, each man in turn pledging his word for solidarity and discipline. Then the meeting was declared adjourned till daylight of the morrow, and the workers scattered to their homes to sleep, with a joy and sense of power such as few of them had ever known in their lives before.
The committee and its body-guard repaired to the dining-room of Reminitsky's, where they stretched themselves out on the floor; no one attempted to interfere with them, and while the majority snored peacefully, Hal and a small group sat writing out the list of demands which were to be submitted to the bosses in the morning. It was arranged that Jerry should go down to Pedro by the early morning train, to get into touch with Jack David and the union officials, and report to them the latest developments. Because the officials were sure to have detectives following them, Hal warned Jerry to go to MacKellar's house, and have MacKellar bring "Big Jack" to meet him there. Also Jerry must have MacKellar get the _Gazette_ on the long distance phone, and tell Billy Keating about the strike. A hundred things like this Hal had to think of; his head was a-buzz with them, so that when he lay down to sleep he could not. He thought about the bosses, and what they might be doing. The bosses would not be sleeping, he felt sure! And then came thoughts about his private-car friends; about the strangeness of this plight into which he had got himself! He laughed aloud in a kind of desperation as he recalled Percy's efforts to get him away from here. And poor Jessie! What could he say to her now? The bosses made no move that night; and when morning came, the strikers hurried to the meeting-place, some of them without even stopping for breakfast. They came tousled and unkempt, looking anxiously at their fellows, as if unable to credit the memory of the bold thing they had done on the night before. But finding the committee and its body-guard on hand and ready for business, their courage revived, they felt again the wonderful sentiment of solidarity which had made men of them. Pretty soon speech-making began, and cheering and singing, which brought out the laggards and the cowards. So in a short while the movement was in full swing, with practically every man, woman and child among the workers present. Mary Burke came from the hospital, where she had spent the night. She looked weary and bedraggled, but her spirit of battle had not slumped. She reported that she had talked with some of the injured men, and that many of them had signed "releases," whereby the company protected itself against even the threat of a lawsuit. Others had refused to sign, and Mary had been vehement in warning them to stand out. Two other women volunteered to go to the hospital, in order that she might have a chance to rest; but Mary did not wish to rest, she did not feel as if she could ever rest again. The members of the newly-organised union proceeded to elect officers. They sought to make Hal president, but he was shy of binding himself in that irrevocable way, and succeeded in putting the honour off on Wauchope. Tim Rafferty was made treasurer and secretary. Then a committee was chosen to go to Cartwright with the demands of the men. It included Hal, Wauchope, and Tim; an Italian named Marcelli, whom Jerry had vouched for; a representative of the Slavs and one of the Greeks--Rusick and Zammakis, both of them solid and faithful men. Finally, with a good deal of laughter and cheering, the meeting voted to add Mary Burke to this committee. It was a new thing to have a woman in such a role, but Mary was the daughter of a miner and the sister of a breaker-boy, and had as good a right to speak as any one in North Valley.
Hal read the document which had been prepared the night before. They demanded the right to have a union without being discharged for it. They demanded a check-weighman, to be elected by the men themselves. They demanded that the mines should be sprinkled to prevent explosions, and properly timbered to prevent falls. They demanded the right to trade at any store they pleased. Hal called attention to the fact that every one of these demands was for a right guaranteed by the laws of the state; this was a significant fact, and he urged the men not to include other demands. After some argument they voted down the proposition of the radicals, who wanted a ten per cent. increase in wages. Also they voted down the proposition of a syndicalist-anarchist, who explained to them in a jumble of English and Italian that the mines belonged to them, and that they should refuse all compromise and turn the bosses out forthwith. While this speech was being delivered, young Rovetta pushed his way through the crowd and drew Hal to one side. He had been down by the railroad-station and seen the morning train come in. From it had descended a crowd of thirty or forty men, of that "hard citizen" type which every miner in the district could recognise at the first glance. Evidently the company officials had been keeping the telephone-wires busy that night; they were bringing in, not merely this train-load of guards, but automobile loads from other camps--from the Northeastern down the canyon, and from Barela, in a side canyon over the mountain. Hal told this news to the meeting, which received it with howls of rage. So that was the bosses' plan! Hot-heads sprang upon the cinder-heap, half a dozen of them trying to make speeches at once. The leaders had to suppress these too impetuous ones by main force; once more Hal gave the warning of "No fighting!" They were going to have faith in their union; they were going to present a solid front to the company, and the company would learn the lesson that intimidation would not win a strike. So it was agreed, and the committee set out for the company's office, Wauchope carrying in his hand the written demands of the meeting. Behind the committee marched the crowd in a solid mass; they packed the street in front of the office, while the heroic seven went up the steps and passed into the building. Wauchope made inquiry for Mr. Cartwright, and a clerk took in the message. They stood waiting; and meanwhile, one of the office-people, coming in from the street, beckoned to Hal. He had an envelope in his hand, and gave it over without a word. It was addressed, "Joe Smith," and Hal opened it, and found within a small visiting card, at which he stared. "Edward S. Warner, Jr."! For a moment Hal could hardly believe the evidence of his eyesight. Edward in North Valley! Then, turning the card over, he read, in his brother's familiar handwriting, "I am at Cartwright's house. I must see you. The matter concerns Dad. Come instantly." Fear leaped into Hal's heart. What could such a message mean? He turned quickly to the committee and explained. "My father's an old man, and had a stroke of apoplexy three years ago. I'm afraid he may be dead, or very ill. I must go." "It's a trick!" cried Wauchope excitedly. "No, not possibly," answered Hal. "I know my brother's handwriting. I must see him." "Well," declared the other, "we'll wait. We'll not see Cartwright until you get back." Hal considered this. "I don't think that's wise," he said. "You can do what you have to do just as well without me." "But I wanted you to do the talking!" "No," replied Hal, "that's your business, Wauchope. You are the president of the union. You know what the men want, as well as I do; you know what they complain of. And besides, there's not going to be any need of talking with Cartwright. Either he's going to grant our demands or he isn't." They discussed the matter back and forth. Mary Burke insisted that they were pulling Hal away just at the critical moment! He laughed as he answered. She was as good as any man when it came to an argument. If Wauchope showed signs of weakening, let her speak up!
So Hal hurried off, and climbed the street which led to the superintendent's house, a concrete bungalow set upon a little elevation overlooking the camp. He rang the bell, and the door opened, and in the entrance stood his brother. Edward Warner was eight years older than Hal; the perfect type of the young American business man. His figure was erect and athletic, his features were regular and strong, his voice, his manner, everything about him spoke of quiet decision, of energy precisely directed. As a rule, he was a model of what the tailor's art could do, but just now there was something abnormal about his attire as well as his manner. Hal's anxiety had been increasing all the way up the street. "What's the matter with Dad?" he cried. "Dad's all right," was the answer--"that is, for the moment." "Then what--?" "Peter Harrigan's on his way back from the East. He's due in Western City to-morrow. You can see that something will be the matter with Dad unless you quit this business at once." Hal had a sudden reaction from his fear. "So that's all!" he exclaimed. His brother was gazing at the young miner, dressed in sooty blue overalls, his face streaked with black, his wavy hair all mussed. "You wired me you were going to leave here, Hal!" "So I was; but things happened that I couldn't foresee. There's a strike." "Yes; but what's that got to do with it?" Then, with exasperation in his voice, "For God's sake, Hal, how much farther do you expect to go?" Hal stood for a few moments, looking at his brother. Even in a tension as he was, he could not help laughing. "I know how all this must seem to you, Edward. It's a long story; I hardly know how to begin." "No, I suppose not," said Edward, drily. And Hal laughed again. "Well, we agree that far, at any rate. What I was hoping was that we could talk it all over quietly, after the excitement was past. When I explain to you about conditions in this place--" But Edward interrupted. "Really, Hal, there's no use of such an argument. I have nothing to do with conditions in Peter Harrigan's camps." The smile left Hal's face. "Would you have preferred to have me investigate conditions in the Warner camps?" Hal had tried to suppress his irritation, but there was simply no way these two could get along. "We've had our arguments about these things, Edward, and you've always had the best of me--you could tell me I was a child, it was presumptuous of me to dispute your assertions. But now--well, I'm a child no longer, and we'll have to meet on a new basis." Hal's tone, more than his words, made an impression. Edward thought before he spoke. "Well, what's your new basis?" "Just now I'm in the midst of a strike, and I can hardly stop to explain." "You don't think of Dad in all this madness?" "I think of Dad, and of you too, Edward; but this is hardly the time--" "If ever in the world there was a time, this is it!" Hal groaned inwardly. "All right," he said, "sit down. I'll try to give you some idea how I got swept into this." He began to tell about the conditions he had found in this stronghold of the "G. F. C." As usual, when he talked about it, he became absorbed in its human aspects; a fervour came into his tone, he was carried on, as he had been when he tried to argue with the officials in Pedro. But his eloquence was interrupted, even as it had been then; he discovered that his brother was in such a state of exasperation that he could not listen to a consecutive argument. It was the old, old story; it had been thus as far back as Hal could remember. It seemed one of the mysteries of nature, how she could have brought two such different temperaments out of the same parentage. Edward was practical and positive; he knew what he wanted in the world, and he knew how to get it; he was never troubled with doubts, nor with self-questioning, nor with any other superfluous emotions; he could not understand people who allowed that sort of waste in their mental processes. He could not understand people who got "swept into things." In the beginning, he had had with Hal the prestige of the elder brother. He was handsome as a young Greek god, he was strong and masterful; whether he was flying over the ice with sure, strong strokes, or cutting the water with his glistening shoulders, or bringing down a partridge with the certainty and swiftness of a lightning stroke, Edward was the incarnation of Success. When he said that one's ideas were "rot," when he spoke with contempt of "mollycoddles"--then indeed one suffered in soul, and had to go back to Shelley and Ruskin to renew one's courage. The questioning of life had begun very early with Hal; there seemed to be something in his nature which forced him to go to the roots of things; and much as he looked up to his wonderful brother, he had been made to realise that there were sides of life to which this brother was blind. To begin with, there were religious doubts; the distresses of mind which plague a young man when first it dawns upon him that the faith he has been brought up in is a higher kind of fairy-tale. Edward had never asked such questions, apparently. He went to church, because it was the thing to do; more especially because it was pleasing to the young lady he wished to marry to have him put on stately clothes, and escort her to a beautiful place of music and flowers and perfumes, where she would meet her friends, also in stately clothes. How abnormal it seemed to Edward that a young man should give up this pleasant custom, merely because he could not be sure that Jonah had swallowed a whale! But it was when Hal's doubts attacked his brother's week-day religion--the religion of the profit-system--that the controversy between them had become deadly. At first Hal had known nothing about practical affairs, and it had been Edward's duty to answer his questions. The prosperity of the country had been built up by strong men; and these men had enemies--evil-minded persons, animated by jealousy and other base passions, seeking to tear down the mighty structure. At first this devil-theory had satisfied the boy; but later on, as he had come to read and observe, he had been plagued by doubts. In the end, listening to his brother's conversation, and reading the writings of so-called "muck-rakers," the realisation was forced upon him that there were two types of mind in the controversy--those who thought of profits, and those who thought of human beings. Edward was alarmed at the books Hal was reading; he was still more alarmed when he saw the ideas Hal was bringing home from college. There must have been some strange change in Harrigan in a few years; no one had dreamed of such ideas when Edward was there! No one had written satiric songs about the faculty, or the endowments of eminent philanthropists! In the meantime Edward Warner Senior had had a paralytic stroke, and Edward Junior had taken charge of the company. Three years of this had given him the point of view of a coal-operator, hard and set for a life-time. The business of a coal-operator was to buy his labour cheap, to turn out the maximum product in the shortest time, and to sell the product at the market price to parties whose credit was satisfactory. If a concern was doing that, it was a successful concern; for any one to mention that it was making wrecks of the people who dug the coal, was to be guilty of sentimentality and impertinence. Edward had heard with dismay his brother's announcement that he meant to study industry by spending his vacation as a common labourer. However, when he considered it, he was inclined to think that the idea might not be such a bad one. Perhaps Hal would not find what he was looking for; perhaps, working with his hands, he might get some of the nonsense knocked out of his head! But now the experiment had been made, and the revelation had burst upon Edward that it had been a ghastly failure. Hal had not come to realise that labour was turbulent and lazy and incompetent, needing a strong hand to rule it; on the contrary, he had become one of these turbulent ones himself! A champion of the lazy and incompetent, an agitator, a fomenter of class-prejudice, an enemy of his own friends, and of his brother's business associates! Never had Hal seen Edward in such a state of excitement. There was something really abnormal about him, Hal realised; it puzzled him vaguely while he talked, but he did not understand it until his brother told how he had come to be here. He had been attending a dinner-dance at the home of a friend, and Percy Harrigan had got him on the telephone at half past eleven o'clock at night. Percy had had a message from Cartwright, to the effect that Hal was leading a riot in North Valley; Percy had painted the situation in such lurid colours that Edward had made a dash and caught the midnight train, wearing his evening clothes, and without so much as a tooth-brush with him! Hal could hardly keep from bursting out laughing. His brother, his punctilious and dignified brother, alighting from a sleeping-car at seven o'clock in the morning, wearing a dress suit and a silk hat! And here he was, Edward Warner Junior, the fastidious, who never paid less than a hundred and fifty dollars for a suit of clothes, clad in a "hand-me-down" for which he had expended twelve dollars and forty-eight cents in a "Jew-store" in a coal-town! _ |
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