The Coal War (34 page)

[37]

You might have thought that in the face of evidence such as this, the investigating committee would have considered itself bound to do something. But if you thought that, you would be showing yourself ignorant of the ways of investigating committees in America. For ours is a government of “checks and balances”, and we pride ourselves upon the difficulties we throw in the way of getting anything done by our authorities. We believe in “individual initiative”—which means the power of great wealth to get done what it wishes for itself.

The “Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining” set a date for its return to Washington; and on the day before its departure, Hal sought out Representative Simmons of Indiana, a farmer-legislator who in spite of his prejudice against unionism had shown some human feeling throughout the proceedings. “You're going away,” Hal said, “and you see our situation; these militiamen have been like a pack of hounds held in leash, and the moment you go, they'll be turned loose on the people who dared to appear before you.”

“It's hard to see what we can do about that,” said the legislator.

“One or two of you ought to stay here,” argued Hal. “You surely owe it to your witnesses to protect their lives!”

“We can't stay, Mr. Warner. We have other matters pressing for attention.”

Hal could understand that. It had been evident towards the end that the legislators were chafing to get back to Washington; they had a thousand errands to run for their constituents, their share of “pork” to secure, their “fences” to keep in repair. And here, two thousand miles away from the centre of events, they were compelled to sit and listen to the complaints of coal-miners who had no votes to give.

“You see,” explained Mr. Simmons, “ours is a government of divided powers. The task of this committee was to investigate a possible need of new legislation.”

“Will you recommend any new legislation?”

“It's difficult to think of any law that would remedy this present situation.”

“Let me suggest a law, Mr. Simmons—a law that would end this struggle at once. Make membership in a union compulsory in all coal-mines.”

It was evident from the look on Mr. Simmons' face that he was not going to recommend any law like that! “It would seem to me,” he said, “that the problem is to get the present laws enforced. And that is the duty of the Governor of your state.”

“But he won't do his duty. We've spent five miserable months proving that! So what next?”

The congressman was not in haste to reply to this. “You have an appeal to the President, of course—”

“But the President is a long way off, and has many things pressing for his attention. He's always reluctant to interfere in the affairs of a state, and he doesn't know much about the labor question anyway—he never had to work with his hands, and it's hard for him to imagine life in a mountain-fortress of the ‘G.F.C.' So he won't do anything until matters get worse. Isn't that about it, Mr. Simmons?”

The other indicated by silence that that was about it.

“All right then. I just want to get the situation clear. You are a representative of the government, and you've come out here and seen what is happening to us. You saw Major Cassels take the witness-stand at the outset and make the announcement that he would let the strikers air their grievances, and then riddle their case. But now we're done, and he has no evidence to present at all! General Wrightman refuses even to take the stand—unless you'll agree that our attorneys shall not cross-question him! He refuses to produce any of his ‘military prisoners', and your committee hasn't had the nerve to insist. Now you're going away again, and you have no hope to hold out to us—nothing to tell us, except that we must continue to suffer, until we make so much trouble that the President will be compelled to think about us.”

“Now!” protested the congressman. “I didn't say quite that.”

“No, you wouldn't put it in plain language; but isn't that what it comes to? You are going away, and certainly you must know that hell is going to break loose when you're out of the district. What is there left for us but to get ourselves arms and fight the militia of our state?”

“Young man! Don't talk like that!” exclaimed the congressman.

“I talk like that, Mr. Simmons, and it's not just talk. I have sources of information—people who come and tell me what Wrightman and Cassels are planning. I know it is their intention to break up these tent-colonies; also I know that the miners don't intend to stand it, and for my part, I don't intend to advise them to stand it. So we're going to get ready, and when it comes, it'll be civil war in this coal-country—nothing less than that!”

The farmer-legislator laid his knobby brown hand on Hal's shoulder. He liked this clear-eyed, desperate youngster, who for weeks had been drumming up witnesses and throwing them at his legislative head. “My boy,” said he, “take my advice, and don't do anything foolish!” And that was the end of the interview—that was what American government had to say on the subject of the class-war!

BOOK FOUR

CIVIL WAR

[1]

Springtime came late in these high mountain regions; it was the hope deferred which “maketh the heart sick”. The sun would shine, and pent-up women and children would come out of the tents; but then would come more rain and cold, and they would go back into their crowded quarters. There seemed an endless number of tiny snowstorms hidden back over the mountains, and the roads were red and sticky swamps. One night there came a furious gale, which blew down seventy of the tents. The shivering strikers found what consolation they could in the fact that the elements were impartial, and took the militia-tents as well.

Through all these troubles Hal Warner stuck by the Horton people, sharing their hardships, their hopes and fears. If you read the newspapers, what he was doing seemed the abyss of futility, for the strike was pictured as lost; strike-breakers were pouring into the district, and the mines were working at full capacity. But the old heads among the miners did not let themselves be cowed by such pronouncements. They knew the character of these strikebreakers, they knew that coal-mining on a big scale could not be done by such riff-raff. So they bided their time, keeping themselves warm as best they could in the tents, and occupying themselves with music and card-games and reading, and with baseball and football when the sun shone. The children went to school, and the grown-ups went to English classes, and to a class in economics, where John Edstrom and Mrs. Olson taught them the meaning of their effort, and of the whole effort of labor throughout the world.

At first this class had met one evening a week, but now it met every other evening, so intense was the interest. It was a sort of open forum, where the strikers threshed out their problems, and sought to make intellectual profit out of their physical sufferings. Some times the wind beat upon the big school-tent so that it was hard to hear the speaker; men sat in their overcoats, and could see their breath in the cold. But still they stayed on, questioning and disputing—just as in the “social study club” at Harrigan! The foreign-speaking leaders—men such as Louie the Greek, Wresmak and Rovetta and Kowalewsky—would carry the ideas they gained to groups of their compatriots. Also the plan had been taken up in other tent-colonies; so the light spread, and seeing it, Hal could keep his courage and faith, even in the moments of bitterest wrong and suffering.

During such long evenings in the tent-colony Hal had a chance for heart-to-heart talks with many of the people. He heard their stories, and came to know their inmost thoughts. There was John Harmon, for example—a truly great man, whom it was a heartening thing to have encountered. Harmon did not know he was a great man, he was really without thought of himself; he displayed an annoying inability to tell his own story, to realize that there was anything picturesque or romantic about his struggle for an education and his life-long efforts for the welfare of his people. If you wished to draw him out, you must get him to talking about these people, the wrongs he had seen them suffer, the dreams he knew they were dreaming.

“John,” said Hal, one time, “do you know whom you make me think of?”

“No,” said Harmon. “Who?”

“George Washington.”

The other looked at him, thinking that he must be joking; then he began to laugh. He laughed a long time, in his slow, quiet way. It seemed to him immensely funny.

“I've read his letters,” explained Hal. “I've an idea that he was about your sort of a man. He set free a nation, and you are trying to set free an industry. Of course it will depend upon whether you succeed—what history has to say about you.”

“Well,” answered the other, “it never occurred to me that history would be interested in me. But you can set this down for certain, Hal—we are going to succeed. Maybe not this time, maybe not in our generation; but sooner or later, labor will be free. That's what I'd like to say to our masters, if I could ever get them to listen; there's only one thing they have to say about the matter—shall it be peaceably, or in a revolution, with a lot of bloodshed.”

“And which way do you think it will be?”

“I don't know. If I could have my way, there'd never be a law broken; but as you see, I'm not having my way. Peter Harrigan is having his—and teaching our people to hate the law.”

In his most desperate moods, Hal got the habit of going to John Harmon for comfort; for no outrage, no matter how terrible, ever was able to shake his steadfast faith. “I know how you feel,” he would say. “This is your first strike, it seems to you that to lose it will be more than you could bear. But take it from me—I've lived through many strikes, and I've never got all I asked for, nor even all I hoped for, but all the time I've seen the movement growing. We are educating our people and disciplining them, we are training leaders for them, we are working out our tactics and studying our campaign. We are slow, but we move like a glacier, there's nothing can bar our path forever. Before we get through, we're going to give the world a new democracy—and one that is good every day in the year, and not merely on election-day!”

[2]

And then there was Mother Mary. When this old lady first came to Horton, the General sent a squadron of cavalry to put her on a train. When she came back, he arrested her and put her in a hospital. It sounded better to say she was a patient in a hospital, rather than a prisoner in a jail, though the difference was not very great, since she was kept in one room, and was not allowed to have a newspaper or a book, or to be spoken to either by the nurses, or by the five soldiers who were always on guard. When she fell ill, and the nurses brought in a physician, he was ejected by the troopers; and so Wrightman kept her for five weeks—until he learned that her attorneys were about to make application to the Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. Then he put her on the train again and shipped her out. But she turned round and came a third time, so he had her taken off the train at Sheridan and put in a damp cell in the basement of the court-house—the same cell which had caused the death of a Greek prisoner from rheumatism of the heart. This old woman of eighty-two years he kept in this place for twenty-four days. And when he learned that the Supreme Court was about to hand down a decision in her favor, he turned her loose, and after the court had adjourned, he re-arrested her—thus playing, as it were, a game of tag with the most august tribunal of the state!

But in the end Mother Mary's persistence won out; she was set free and came to Horton, where she was welcomed with a procession, and with cheers and singing. During the week or two that she was resting in the colony, Hal spent many an entertaining hour listening to her pungent wit. For the old lady differed from John Harmon in this respect, she knew the part she played, and had a sense of its picturesqueness. She would tell endless stories about her adventures: about strikes she had led and speeches she had made; about interviews with president's and governors and captains of industry; about jails and convict camps, and a “bull-pen” full of small-pox patients. All over the country she had roamed, and wherever she went the flame of protest had leaped up in the hearts of men; her story was a veritable Odyssey of revolt.

Adelaide Wyatt had sent to Hal a copy of “Simple Simon”, the weekly scandal-sheet which was helping in the war on the strikers. It contained an article about the old “agitator”, which did not trouble to employ the usual method of innuendo, but set forth explicitly how “Mother Mary” had been the “madame” of a number of houses of prostitution, giving the street-addresses of the houses and the names of different business partners. “I wonder if any of it's true,” wrote Adelaide.

Hal asked the old lady, who told him the story of her early days. She had supported herself by sewing corsets, and had been this far depraved, that she was willing to work for anyone who would pay her wages. In this way she had come to know a poor girl of the town, who died of consumption, and begged with her dying breath to be buried by the church. Mother Mary applied to one priest after another, and all refused, and for this she denounced them in a letter to the newspapers.

“That was my first appearance in public,” she said; “and, of course, it got me placed. Afterwards, when I began to speak up for the workers, the Pinkertons went to work, and they've made me the ‘madame' of every place where I ever did sewing!”

The old lady took a great fancy to Mary Burke, who of course regarded her as a kind of divinity, and hung upon her every word. They sat one night in the headquarters tent, the two women with John Harmon and Hal, talking of the labor movement, its hope of freedom, its vision of brotherhood.

“Mary,” said the older woman, “you're a fine girl, and there's many a fight coming where you'll be needed. So keep your head up—don't let them get you with pretty clothes and an easy life, the things they use to break down our girls. I'm getting old, Mary—there'll have to be some of you to take my place.”