The Coal War (20 page)

There was general relief; but it died with the day-break, for no militia appeared, and more and more mine-guards kept coming. Toward the middle of that day, seven automobile loads were turned loose in the hills around Horton; the strikers rushed to the headquarters tent, declaring that they had been betrayed, that it was all a trap. They clamored for their arms, and marched out to fight again.

But now the guards were well armed and well led, and the strikers were repulsed, and the tent-colony was again under siege. All night the terror continued, and in the morning the strikers resolved to send their women and children to Pedro. The militia was all a myth, the colony was doomed to destruction! So, while General Jack and his men were digging trenches about the tents, General Jack's wife was marshaling women and children, in a weary and pathetic procession through the snow. Hal put Tommie Burke on his back and carried him over to the village of Horton, where a room was found in which he could stay with Jennie and Mary. As for the strikers, they settled down to a siege. Their supply of fuel had failed, their food was failing, but they would die rather than surrender to the guards.

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That day, however, the militia arrived. They detrained and camped a few miles below Horton, and the commander rode up to the colony under a flag of truce.

Adjutant-General Wrightman was an old man, with heavy white mustaches and beetling eyebrows; in civil life he was an oculist, but he looked imposing in his big military overcoat, with a sword and revolver in his belt, and he did the soldier business sufficiently well to impress the untutored strikers. He laid his hat and gloves on the table of the headquarters tent and made a little speech, in which he informed them that he had come to carry out the Governor's orders, disarming both factions in this wicked civil strife. He assured them that they would have fair treatment, that no further attacks upon them would be permitted; he ended by solemnly adjuring them, in the name of the law, to surrender their weapons and abandon their disorderly activities.

John Harmon replied to him, declaring that the strikers were peaceable people, who asked nothing but to be protected in their rights as citizens. He, for one, was willing to accept the General's assurance, and he believed the other leaders would do the same. They would do their best to influence their followers; the militia might come in without fear of trouble, and all weapons in the tent-colony would be given up as soon as they could be collected.

That evening Hal went down to the militia encampment. It was Company C which was coming to Horton—the company under the command of Captain Appleton Harding. Appie, needless to say, did not relish having to give up his law-practice and come to the coal-country in the midst of a blizzard; but he came, because it was his duty. He was a slender young man, wearing gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and looking more like a college professor than a soldier. But he was a man of rigid honor, and Hal felt sure that no outrages would be perpetrated under his authority.

Also there were Bob Creston and Dicky Everson, and half a dozen other of Hal's friends; for it happened that Company C was the “society” body of the State Guard. These young fellows had joined the militia because they liked to wear dress uniforms, and to invite their young lady friends to “hops” in the armory; but here they were trapped and ordered away on disagreeable duty! They vented their discontent upon Hal. What the hell was this stunt he was doing? Talk to them about brotherly love for “red-necks” and “wops”! Was he getting ready to go into politics? But when they heard a bit of his story, their attitude changed. Yes, it was rotten, they must admit; Hal might assure his “wops” that nothing of the sort would happen while Company C was on the ground!

Other circumstances contributed to restore the strikers' hopes. The Governor seemed so very much in earnest; he repeated his pledges publicly, and in such convincing fashion, that the doubters were silenced. The women and children came back from Pedro, and the men who had been hiding in the hills came in and surrendered their guns. Parties went down to visit the militia-men at their camp, and there was joking and good humor, and music and feasting in the tents.

It was decided that the coming of the troops to the colony should be made the occasion of a demonstration. The strikers resented the false accounts of the fighting which had been published in the newspapers, and they wanted to show the country that they were decent, law-abiding men, with proper respect for the flag and the government. There was a day of hurried preparations; over a thousand children were gathered from the near-by tent-colonies, and the women set to work to dress them for a holiday. They bought all the white goods they could find in the little store at Horton, and brought from Pedro as much as several men could carry; there was cutting and sewing and fitting all night, and next day came two brass bands, and there was a pageant so pathetic that Hal could hardly keep the tears from his eyes. Little children of the coal-camps, marching out all in white, in spite of cold and snow on the ground; little children of twenty nations, waving American flags! Cheap flags, stiff and shiny, some of them no bigger than a child's hand—but meaning the same as if they had been big and made of costly silks. They meant that America had come to the coal-camps! The dream of liberty and self-government, which these children, or their parents, had come from the far ends of the earth to seek—this dream was at last become reality in their lives!

Little Jerry had on those wonderful clothes which Hal had bought him for the New Year's party; also he had two wreaths of pink paper roses which his mother had made him. He gave one of these wreaths to Hal, and made him put it on; he clung to Hal's hand, and clamored for him to fall in with the procession. Also the two David children and the swarm of little Rafferties crowded about him and clamored; so he went, with children dancing about him, and children's voices singing in his ears, “My country, 'tis of thee”.

And here came the soldiers, tramping through the snow—all in dress uniform, with glorious big flags of silk flying in the wintry gale, and a fifer and drummer making shivery music. The children divided, and the soldiers marched through, under a shower of paper flowers and confetti: General Wrightman, his horse prancing, the rider sitting stiff and solemn, staring ahead, his white mustaches looking like snow on his rosy face; Captain Porter, a real-estate man, with Troop A of the cavalry; Captain Smithers, a leading hardware merchant, with Battery One, two rumbling cannon and a mounted machine-gun; Captain Harding, with his “society” company of infantry, the men marching by fours, some of them looking stern and self-conscious, others grinning, and dodging the paper roses.

The children fell in behind and followed the procession, through densely-packed lines of strikers. Such cheering and yelling—you could hardly hear the two brass bands, blowing for dear life, each a different tune! Hal looked at the faces in this crowd as he passed: Old Mike Sikoria, with a cap of purple tissue paper on his head, capering like a trained billy-goat; “General” Jack David, having dismounted and resigned his commission; John Edstrom, white-haired and benevolent looking, smiling feebly; Louis the Greek, black-eyed and olive-skinned, his mouth open, singing “America” in Greek; Charlie Ferris, with his head still bandaged where Jeff Cotton had hit him; poor pathetic little Klowowski, with his face almost hidden in bandages, where the bullet had taken his four teeth!

There was many a bandage in this throng, not only on men, but on women and children; but now the wounds of war were forgotten, the hatreds of war were swept away. The American flag had come in, there would be no more Government by Gunmen! That night there was a big dance and a feast, and everywhere you went through the tent-colony, you heard men singing their song of hope:

“We'll win the fight today, boys,

We'll win the fight today,

Shouting the battle-cry of union!”

BOOK THREE

LAW AND ORDER

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The next two weeks were among the most interesting of Hal Warner's life. This wonderful experiment in democracy which he was watching came as it were from under an evil spell, and found freedom to express itself. Collectively, the strikers had the sense of power, of certainty for the future; while individually they were happier than they had ever been in their lives before. They had comfortable homes, they had enough to eat, and they made their life one long celebration.

All sorts of musical talent discovered itself in the tent-colony; there was an impromptu concert going on somewhere all the time, and on two evenings a week the big school-tent was cleared out, and there was a dance with a regular orchestra, made up entirely of strike talent. To these festivities all the world was welcome—especially the militia, whom the colonists looked upon as their deliverers. The militiamen were glad enough to come to the dances; even the young society men, who found the military routine wearisome, and were surprised to find how gracefully the daughters of these foreign races could dance.

Then in the day-time, the soldiers and strikers would go a-hunting. The soldier would take his gun, and the miner his pick and spade, which was quite as necessary to hunting in that country. A man could not get much meat upon the strike allowance of three dollars a week, and the militiamen soon grew sick of their rations of “bully beef” and “salt horse”, canned corn, beans and “hard tack”. So, when the hunters came in with a load of jack-rabbits in a bag, there would be a grand feast, and afterwards there would be music and dancing in the square in the middle of the tent-colony, and the Greeks and Bulgarians and “Montynegroes”, who were war-veterans, would take the militiamen's guns and show how they drilled “in old country”.

Also the militiamen and strikers played baseball together; and it is impossible to despise anyone with whom you play baseball. When it came to mingling the races, a baseball bat was better than any wizard's wand. Jerry Minetti, who in his organizing work had had trouble with race prejudice, sat watching a game among these Balkan peoples, who at home had been at one another's throats. “Somebody ought to make Balkan Baseball League,” said he. “Then they don't fight over there!”

The colonists had leisure also for study and discussion. Hal now saw in the case of many, what he had seen in the case of Mary Burke—the discovery of the intellectual life. Someone started a class in English, and in a few days a tent was crowded with pupils. They had put up a school-tent for the children, but it had been impossible to get a teacher, on account of the continual fighting. But now Mrs. Olson, the young widow of the murdered organizer, gave up her position in Western City and came to help the colony. Also there developed local talent; white-haired and benevolent old John Edstrom liked to get the youngsters about him and tell stories, and Mrs. Olson insisted that that was a fine thing—children ought to hear stories all the time. She got books for him—poetry, and all sorts of fairy tales and legends, and three times a week he would read to a whole tent-full of youngsters. Also he would tell them stories about the lives of workingmen, about strikes that he had seen; giving them little Sunday-school lessons in the new religion of solidarity.

It was a great occasion for all sorts of people who had things to teach. The Socialists gave out pamphlets, and Socialist papers in all languages were read until they were frayed to pieces. The miners were publishing a daily paper in Pedro, giving their side of the strike; you might see one copy of this paper being read aloud to half a dozen men. There were the Syndicalists, with their vision of one big union of all the workers; there were all sorts of men “making talk”—even employes of the Schultz Detective Agency! One of these gentry, posing as a striker, made a speech in which he urged the miners to burn all the coal-camps; and he had a photograph taken of himself making this speech, which photograph he sent to the agency as evidence of his services. It happened that this letter and photograph came into the hands of a union sympathizer in Schultz's office, who forwarded them secretly to John Harmon. If that speech happened to be reported in the capitalist newspapers, what a to-do there would have been about violence in the tent-colonies! And what a time Hal would have had persuading any of his friends to consider the idea that the speaker might have been in the hire of the coal-operators!

Upon first coming to North Valley, Hal Warner had been struck by the rigid race-lines, the little social sets into which the population was divided; but now before his eyes he saw these lines being wiped out, he saw twenty nations being melted into one. Old Mrs. Rafferty, who in times past had been for Irishmen only, was now heard to remark, “I never knew them Greeks was such gentlemen! Sure now, they're a fine lot, ain't they?”

Then again, among the wonders of camp-life was the musical power revealed by the once-despised “Dagos”. They had most marvelous choruses, with complicated voice parts; they had revolutionary songs, which Jerry Minetti and other Socialists taught them. The words were Italian, but the spirit could not be missed by any striker; Irish and Welsh and American miners would listen and marvel, saying, “Would you ever have thought that Dagos could make music like that?”

There were leaflets of union songs to be had in half a dozen languages; and those who knew how to sing gathered groups of the others and taught them. These songs were full of the vision and the resolution of labor; they taught the new morality of brotherhood, of mutual helpfulness, of useful work as opposed to parasitism. Perhaps they would not have passed a severe test as music or as literature, but they were adapted to their purpose of impressing untutored minds. Hearing men chanting these lessons over and over, Hal thought of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, where the scientist, working by strange and terrible feats of surgery to turn animals into human beings, wishes to cure the monsters he has created of their habits of lust and murder, and to this end composes maxims in rhythmical form, which in lonely places they chant in chorus all through the jungle-night.