Complete Works of Emile Zola (832 page)

“Yes, yes, that’s it,” murmured the other deputies, noticing M. Hennebeau make a violent movement as if to interrupt.

But Maheu cut the manager short. Now that he had set out his words came by themselves. At times he listened to himself with surprise as though a stranger were speaking within him. It was the things amassed within his breast, things he did not even know were there, and which came out in an expansion of his heart. He described the wretchedness that was common to all of them, the hard toil, the brutal life, the wife and little ones crying from hunger in the house. He quoted the recent disastrous payments, the absurd fortnightly wages, eaten up by fines and rest days and brought back to their families in tears. Was it resolved to destroy them?

“Then, sir,” he concluded, “we have come to tell you that if we’ve got to starve we would rather starve doing nothing. It will be a little less trouble. We have left the pits and we don’t go down again unless the Company agrees to our terms. The Company wants to lower the price of the tram and to pay for the timbering separately. We ask for things to be left as they were, and we also ask for five centimes more the tram. Now it is for you to see if you are on the side of justice and work.”

Voices rose among the miners.

“That’s it — he has said what we all feel — we only ask what’s reason.”

Others, without speaking, showed their approval by nodding their heads. The luxurious room had disappeared, with its gold and its embroideries, its mysterious piling up of ancient things; and they no longer even felt the carpet which they crushed beneath their heavy boots.

“Let me reply, then,” at last exclaimed M. Hennebeau, who was growing angry. “First of all, it is not true that the Company gains two centimes the tram. Let us look at the figures.”

A confused discussion followed. The manager, trying to divide them, appealed to Pierron, who hid himself, stammering. Levaque, on the contrary, was at the head of the more aggressive, muddling up things and affirming facts of which he was ignorant. The loud murmurs of their voices were stifled beneath the hangings in the hothouse atmosphere.

“If you all talk at the same time,” said M. Hennebeau, “we shall never come to an understanding.”

He had regained his calmness, the rough politeness, without bitterness, of an agent who has received his instructions, and means that they shall be respected. From the first word he never took his eye off Étienne, and manoeuvred to draw the young man out of his obstinate silence. Leaving the discussion about the two centimes, he suddenly enlarged the question.

“No, acknowledge the truth: you are yielding to abominable incitations. It is a plague which is now blowing over the workers everywhere, and corrupting the best. Oh! I have no need for any one to confess. I can see well that you have been changed, you who used to be so quiet. Is it not so? You have been promised more butter than bread, and you have been told that now your turn has come to be masters. In fact, you have been enrolled in that famous International, that army of brigands who dream of destroying society.”

Then Étienne interrupted him.

“You are mistaken, sir. Not a single Montsou collier has yet enrolled. But if they are driven to it, all the pits will enroll themselves. That depends on the Company.”

From that moment the struggle went on between M. Hennebeau and Étienne as though the other miners were no longer there.

“The Company is a providence for the men, and you are wrong to threaten it. This year it has spent three hundred thousand francs in building settlements which only return two per cent, and I say nothing of the pensions which it pays, nor of the coals and medicines which it gives. You who seem to be intelligent, and who have become in a few months one of our most skilful workmen, would it not be better if you were to spread these truths, rather than ruin yourself by associating with people of bad reputation? Yes, I mean Rasseneur, whom we had to turn off in order to save our pits from socialistic corruption. You are constantly seen with him, and it is certainly he who has induced you to form this provident fund, which we would willingly tolerate if it were merely a means of saving, but which we feel to be a weapon turned against us, a reserve fund to pay the expenses of the war. And in this connection I ought to add that the Company means to control that fund.”

Étienne allowed him to continue, fixing his eyes on him, while a slight nervous quiver moved his lips. He smiled at the last remark, and simply replied:

“Then that is a new demand, for until now, sir, you have neglected to claim that control. Unfortunately, we wish the Company to occupy itself less with us, and instead of playing the part of providence to be merely just with us, giving us our due, the profits which it appropriates. Is it honest, whenever a crisis comes, to leave the workers to die with hunger in order to save the shareholders’ dividends? Whatever you may say, sir, the new system is a disguised reduction of wages, and that is what we are rebelling against, for if the Company wants to economize it acts very badly by only economizing on the men.”

“Ah! there we are!” cried M. Hennebeau. “I was expecting that — the accusation of starving the people and living by their sweat. How can you talk such folly, you who ought to know the enormous risks which capital runs in industry — in the mines, for example? A well-equipped pit today costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions; and it is difficult enough to get a moderate interest on the vast sum that is thus swallowed. Nearly half the mining companies in France are bankrupt. Besides, it is stupid to accuse those who succeed of cruelty. When their workers suffer, they suffer themselves. Can you believe that the Company has not as much to lose as you have in the present crisis? It does not govern wages; it obeys competition under pain of ruin. Blame the facts, not the Company. But you don’t wish to hear, you don’t wish to understand.”

“Yes,” said the young man, “we understand very well that our lot will never be bettered as long as things go on as they are going; and that is the reason why some day or another the workers will end by arranging that things shall go differently.”

This sentence, so moderate in form, was pronounced in a low voice, but with such conviction, tremulous in its menace, that a deep silence followed. A certain constraint, a breath of fear passed through the polite drawing-room. The other delegates, though scarcely understanding, felt that their comrade had been demanding their share of this comfort; and they began to cast sidelong looks over the warm hangings, the comfortable seats, all this luxury of which the least knick-knack would have bought them soup for a month.

At last M. Hennebeau, who had remained thoughtful. rose as a sign for them to depart. All imitated him. Étienne had lightly pushed Maheu’s elbow, and the latter, his tongue once more thick and awkward, again spoke.

“Then, sir, that is all that you reply? We must tell the others that you reject our terms.”

“I, my good fellow!” exclaimed the manager, “I reject nothing. I am paid just as you are. I have no more power in the matter than the smallest of your trammers. I receive my orders, and my only duty is to see that they are executed. I have told you what I thought I ought to tell you, but it is not for me to decide. You have brought me your demands. I will make them known to the directors, then I will tell you their reply.”

He spoke with the correct air of a high official avoiding any passionate interest in the matter, with the courteous dryness of a simple instrument of authority. And the miners now looked at him with distrust, asking themselves what interest he might have in lying, and what he would get by thus putting himself between them and the real masters. A schemer, perhaps, this man who was paid like a worker, and who lived so well!

Étienne ventured to intervene again.

“You see, sir, how unfortunate it is that we cannot plead our cause in person. We could explain many things, and bring forward many reasons of which you could know nothing, if we only knew where we ought to go.”

M. Hennebeau was not at all angry. He even smiled. “Ah! it gets complicated as soon as you have no confidence in me; you will have to go over there.”

The delegates had followed the vague gesture of his hand toward one of the windows. Where was it, over there? Paris, no doubt. But they did not know exactly; it seemed to fall back into a terrible distance, in an inaccessible religious country, where an unknown god sat on his throne, crouching down at the far end of his tabernacle. They would never see him; they only felt him as a force far off, which weighed on the ten thousand colliers of Montsou. And when the director spoke he had that hidden force behind him delivering oracles.

They were overwhelmed with discouragement; Étienne himself signified by a shrug of the shoulders that it would be best to go; while M. Hennebeau touched Maheu’s arm in a friendly way and asked after Jeanlin.

“That is a severe lesson now, and it is you who defend bad timbering. You must reflect, my friends; you must realize that a strike would be a disaster for everybody. Before a week you would die of hunger. What would you do? I count on your good sense, anyhow; and I am convinced that you will go down on Monday, at the latest.”

They all left, going out of the drawing-room with the tramping of a flock and rounded backs, without replying a word to this hope of submission. The manager, who accompanied them, was obliged to continue the conversation. The Company, on the one side, had its new tariff; the workers, on the other, their demand for an increase of five centimes the tram. In order that they might have no illusions, he felt he ought to warn them that their terms would certainly be rejected by the directors.

“Reflect before committing any follies,” he repeated, disturbed at their silence.

In the porch Pierron bowed very low, while Levaque pretended to adjust his cap. Maheu was trying to find something to say before leaving, when Étienne again touched his elbow. And they all left in the midst of this threatening silence. The door closed with a loud bang.

When M. Hennebeau re-entered the dining-room he found his guests motionless and silent before the liqueurs. In two words he told his story to Deneulin, whose face grew still more gloomy. Then, as he drank his cold coffee, they tried to speak of other things. But the Grégoires themselves returned to the subject of the strike, expressing their astonishment that no laws existed to prevent workmen from leaving their work. Paul reassured Cécile, stating that they were expecting the police.

At last Madame Hennebeau called the servant:

“Hippolyte, before we go into the drawing-room just open the windows and let in a little air.”

CHAPTER 3

A FORTNIGHT had passed, and on the Monday of the third week the lists sent up to the managers showed a fresh decrease in the number of the miners who had gone down. It was expected that on that morning work would be resumed, but the obstinacy of the directors in not yielding exasperated the miners. The Voreux, Crévecoeur, Mirou, and Madeleine were not the only pits resting; at the Victoire and at Feutry-Cantel only about a quarter of the men had gone down; even Saint-Thomas was affected. The strike was gradually becoming general.

At the Voreux a heavy silence hung over the pit-mouth. It was a dead workshop, these great empty abandoned Yards where work was sleeping. In the grey December sky, along the high footbridges three or four empty trains bore witness to the mute sadness of things. Underneath, between the slender posts of the platforms, the stock of coal was diminishing, leaving the earth bare and black; while the supplies of wood were mouldering beneath the rain. At the quay on the canal a barge was moored, half-laden, lying drowsily in the murky water; and on the deserted pit-bank, in which the decomposed sulphates smoked in spite of the rain, a melancholy cart showed its shafts erect. But the buildings especially were growing torpid, the screening-shed with closed shutters, the steeple in which the rumbling of the receiving-room no more arose, and the machine-room grown cold, and the giant chimney too large for the occasional smoke. The winding-engine was only heated in the morning. The grooms sent down fodder for the horses, and the captains worked alone at the bottom, having become labourers again, watching over the damages that took place in the passages as soon as they ceased to be repaired; then, after nine o’clock the rest of the service was carried on by the ladders. And above these dead buildings, buried in their garment of black dust, there was only heard the escapement of the pumping-engine, breathing with its thick, long breath all that was left of the life of the pit, which the water would destroy if that breathing should cease.

On the plain opposite, the settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante seemed also to be dead. The prefect of Lille had come in haste and the police had tramped all the roads; but in face of the calmness of the strikers, prefect and police had decided to go home again. Never had the settlement given so splendid an example in the vast plain. The men, to avoid going to the public-house, slept all day long; the women while dividing the coffee became reasonable, less anxious to gossip and quarrel; and even the troops of children seemed to understand it all, and were so good that they ran about with naked feet, smacking each other silently. The word of command had been repeated and circulated from mouth to mouth; they wished to be sensible.

There was, however, a continuous coming and going of people in the Maheus’ house. Étienne, as secretary, had divided the three thousand francs of the provident fund among the needy families; afterwards from various sides several hundred francs had arrived, yielded by subscriptions and collections. But now all their resources were exhausted; the miners had no more money to keep up the strike, and hunger was there, threatening them.

Maigrat, after having promised credit for a fortnight, had suddenly altered his mind at the end of a week and cut off provisions. He usually took his orders from the Company; perhaps the latter wished to bring the matter to an end by starving the settlements. He acted besides like a capricious tyrant, giving or refusing bread according to the look of the girl who was sent by her parents for provisions; and he especially closed his door spitefully to Maheude, wishing to punish her because he had not been able to get Catherine. To complete their misery it was freezing very hard, and the women watched their piles of coal diminish, thinking anxiously that they could no longer renew them at the pits now that the men were not going down. It was not enough to die of hunger, they must also die of cold.