The Coal War: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

  The present study went by the name of Elon Barstow, and had been an obscure politician, a ranchman member of the state legislature. He had debts, and a mortgage or two, according to rumor; it was everywhere known that his nomination had been decided upon at a dinner-party in the home of Peter Harrigan. In appearance he was a small man, with a curious sort of face—childish, but wizened, making you think of a prematurely old infant. In manner he was nervous and uneasy, peering at you as he talked, as if groping to get hold of you. Hal had been told that he was half blind, and could not make out a person’s features at all.

  [22]

  Hal explained his business; he had just come from the strike-field, where he had seen things the Governor ought to know about. But at once the Governor interrupted; he had received Mr. Warner’s telegram, about the forceable detaining of men in the mines, and he would not believe such tales. He considered it very wrong for a young man of good family to take such a line as Hal had taken—giving encouragement to dangerous and unruly foreigners, who were destroying property and making resistance to the state, because of the violent talk of outside agitators, especially that incendiary old woman “Mother Mary”—

  Hal had been told about Governor Barstow by Billy Keating, who had interviewed him more than once. He took it as a personal grievance that you should oppose his policies; his voice would rise high and angry as he complained about the troubles you were making for his administration. If you argued with him, his excitement would increase, until he would be pounding his desk. The thing you must do was to get even more excited; to shout louder than he shouted, to pound harder on the desk. So you might make him quail—make him admit there was something in your argument, and that something must be done about the matter.

  Hal had never learned to pound desks; but he had practiced arguing on Edward, and having once got started, he kept on, so fast that the little Governor could not get in a word. He told of incident after incident which he had seen with his own eyes—the violation of law after law, even of fundamental constitutional rights. After he had gone on for half an hour, arguing, exhorting, he saw tears of distress in his victim’s eyes. “Mr. Warner, what can I do? I tell you frankly—I don’t understand about coal-mines. I’m a ranchman—that is the only business I know. They keep telling me that conditions are peculiar in this state—there are reasons, for instance, why there should be so many accidents. What can I do?”

  As Hal argued, it came to him what the little Governor ought to do—to go down to the strike-field himself. Let him see with his own eyes what was happening! Let him hear the stories of the people! Even if he did nothing positive, his presence would have a moral effect. It might remind the deputies that there was such a thing as law!

  Hal made the suggestion. Yes, said the other, he had thought of that—several people had urged his going. He had engagements at the moment, but he might go next week.

  “But if you wait, you may be too late!” argued Hal. He went on, remembering another remark Billy Keating had made—that you might labor for hours and convince Governor Barstow, but he would remain of the conviction only so long as it took somebody else to get into his office, and to shout at him still louder, and pound on his desk still harder. The loudest shouter and hardest desk-pounder of all was Peter Harrigan, and so it was that he ruled. Not long after this one of the Coal King’s letters was published, in which he told about this himself—referring to the chief executive of his state as “our little cowboy Governor”, and declaring that he treated him as one treated a child, first “spanking” him, and then “giving him candy” to soothe his feelings!

  So Hal tried to persuade the Governor to act. There might be another “battle of Horton” at any moment! But the other would not promise; he had grave matters pressing for his attention; but meantime he would telephone to Sheriff Raymond, and give him strict orders to enforce the law impartially. Hal might rest assured there would be no more attacks upon tent-colonies.

  [23]

  Not many of Hal’s friends read the “Gazette”, but it seemed that all of them had somehow got hold of the issue containing Billy’s account of his trip up the North Valley canyon. Now as he walked down the street, he had to face the witticisms of youth, and the admonitions of maturity. After an hour or two of telling things over and over, he recalled the existence of the art of printing, and dropped into the office of the United Mine Workers, to suggest that they ought to get out a pamphlet, so that a man could have something to hand to his friends.

  In the office were Harmon’s secretary, and a couple of officials of the union. They agreed that Hal’s idea was a good one. Would he write the pamphlet? Obviously, he was the man for the job—he was so full of the subject. Hal agreed to do the writing that very night. Next day was Sunday, but the secretary knew a union printing-place that would stay open and do the work, and on Monday morning Hal might walk down Broadway, handing out pamphlets right and left. Or he might give a list of names, and the secretary would mail copies.

  Next Hal went to see Adelaide Wyatt and her parlor-maid. He remembered how, after the North Valley disaster, he had got a new sense of the horror of the thing from seeing Mary’s grief; and now again, watching the girl, he realized afresh the passions of this coal-camp war. Mary sat with her hands clenched till the knuckles shone white, and her lips were quivering with pain. He tried to spare her some of the details, but she dragged them out of him. She wanted to know everything, to suffer every pang.

  “Joe,” she exclaimed, “I got to go back! I can’t stay here and live easy while this is goin’ on!”

  Now it sometimes happens that a man who is stern and rigid in dealing with himself, is soft and cowardly about making others suffer. Hal recalled the hum of machine-gun bullets in the “battle of Horton”; he did not want Mary within the range of those bullets. “There’s nothing you can do—” he began.

  “I got no right to stay away from it, Joe!”

  “Mary,” he argued, “be sensible. Nobody ought to be there that can be anywhere else.”

  “And my little brother and sister—”

  “You ought to get them up here!”

  “That’s what I tell her,” put in Adelaide.

  “What would I do with them?”

  “You can find them a home,” said Hal. “Go and see the labor men—they’ll know some working-class family where they can stay. Jennie can go to school, and we’ll find a job for Tommie.”

  He thought for a moment. There was the “Emporium”, which seemed a store-house of jobs. “Mrs. Pattie” would not be thinking kindly of Hal, since he had withdrawn his foot from her embrace; but Adelaide could go to her, and tell the pitiful story of two mining-camp children in terror of machine-gun bullets. “Mrs. Pattie” would have a thrill of the philanthropic nerve, and would see that some other boy was discharged to make a place for Tommie; and this would give her such a sense of goodness and usefulness that she would feel justified in a thousand new acts of vanity and extravagance. Or so Hal put it—having become bitter under the influence of machine-gun fire.

  Adelaide agreed to the program, and it was arranged that Hal should send the children as soon as he got back to Horton. Mary began to ask questions again, and he told about his interviews with the sheriff and the Governor, and about his further plans. Adelaide was deeply moved by his narrative, and declared that she would say something about gunman outrages at the next meeting of the Tuesday Afternoon Club. If you knew anything about Western City society, you could picture what a flying of fur there would be, when the coal-strike was discussed before the wives and daughters and sisters and cousins and aunts of the operators!

  There was another person upon whom Hal had designs; he would sow seeds of dissension in the home of his brother. Lucy May, Edward’s pretty young wife, was a real human being; moreover she came from Philadelphia, where people have top-lofty notions about themselves, and are not to be awed by Western coal-magnates. Hal would tell her about things that were happening to children; Lucy May had th
ree, whom she loved to the point of frenzy, so it ought to be easy to bring tears into her eyes.

  The nefarious project was under way when Edward came home at six o’clock in the evening. It was just all he could do to respect the decencies of hospitality; all through the perfect dinner which his wife had seen to providing him, he nagged at his brother, and three or four times Lucy May put in some remark which indicated that the seeds of lunacy had begun to sprout in her mind also. Could it be that the strikers were all ruffians? And had Edward heard what some of the mine-guards had admitted to Hal about themselves? The effect of all this was to confirm Edward in one of his strongest convictions—that the secret purpose of all Socialists is to break up the home.

  Then it transpired that Hal intended to spend most of the night writing an incendiary pamphlet; and that Lucy May had invited him to stay and do his writing in the guest-chamber of Edward’s home! “I suppose next thing you’ll be signing your name to the pamphlet!” growled Edward; and Hal looked interested. That might not be a bad idea! What did Lucy May think about it?

  The pamphlet was written between the hours of eight o’clock and two next morning; and at eight on Sunday morning a messenger boy took it off to Harmon’s secretary, and Hal washed the weariness and wrinkles from his face, and came downstairs to a breakfast of kidney-stew and waffles, which represented the supreme effort of Lucy May’s Virginia cook to restore cheerfulness to the distracted household. In the course of the repast Hal made the announcement that he was planning to accompany the family to St. George’s.

  He saw a frown on his brother’s face.

  “What’s the matter, Edward? Old Peter won’t order me out, will he?”

  “How can I tell what you’ll be up to?”

  “Well,” said Hal, “if you think it’ll make trouble for the old man to see me in your pew—”

  “Nonsense!” broke in Lucy May. “Of course you shall sit in our pew!” And Edward gave a glance at his pretty little lady, and swallowed the rest of his kidney-stew and waffles in silence.

  [24]

  There was a family reunion in St. George’s that Sunday morning: Edward Warner Senior, and his sister, Aunt Harriet, who took care of him, and Edward Junior, and Lucy May, and little Lucy May, their eldest child, looking like a tiny white fairy in a white silk hat and white silk dress and white silk stockings and shoes. Hal stood in the aisle and let all this family in, and then took the outside seat; he noticed with an inward grin that his brother was nervous about this. Was Edward afraid that Hal might interrupt the service—telling the congregation what the Coal King was doing to his serfs?

  They were ultra “high church” at St. George’s; catering to a class of people who were used to elegance in their homes, and assumed that their God would expect it in his. They had candles and processions, a costly choir, and most gorgeous altar-cloths and communion plate; and two or three times on Sundays, and often several times on week days, they gathered together in honorific clothing, and went through hallowed formalities in honor of an ancient Hebrew divinity.

  And they would listen to texts out of ancient Hebrew literature! The tirades, the clamor of ragged old shepherds and vagabonds, solemnly intoned before this refined and aristocratic congregation! You might hear Dr. Penniman, white-haired and dignified, polished and urbane, reading Isaiah on the subject of those ladies of fashion who go with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes and a mincing gate; you might hear him repeat without a blush or quiver the old prophet’s obscene and terrifying threats against these vile creatures—and with never a suspicion that the remarks might have application to members of the congregation who had been dancing the tango on the previous evening! You might hear Mr. Wilmerding, quoting the incendiary utterances of the carpenter’s son: “Woe unto you, you lawyers!”—and in the presence of no less than three members of the legal department of the General Fuel Company! Or the needle and the camel’s eye—in the presence of Peter Harrigan himself!

  It was Wilmerding who preached that morning: dear “Uncle Will”, with his rugged, knobby face, and his brown beard which he wore upon principle, a symbol that he was not quite so “high church” as his rector. Everything was a symbol to the clergyman, Hal knew—every shade of color in his robes, every gesture of his hands, every intonation of his rolling voice. He preached upon faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these; and Hal sat and listened, marveling to realize how the world had changed. He loved “Uncle Will” as much as ever; yet it was impossible to keep his unruly mind from formulating hateful images of his boyhood’s friend. He was one of the Coal King’s lackeys; he cleaned up, with this thing he called charity, the human wreckage of the Coal King’s profit-machine. He was, quite literally, the Coal King’s old clothes man; twice a year he collected the garments which the congregation found no longer suited to its social position, and distributed them to the grateful poor, who had no social position to consider. Or he was a clerk of the Coal King’s conscience-department; a soul-physician, administering spiritual soporifics, ecclesiastical anodynes. Strange that a young man could sit through a service in St. George’s, and think thoughts such as these, and not have them manifested in the form of sulphurous fumes, or a glare of flame, or other infernal phenomena!

  Time came for the collection, and half a dozen gentlemen in dignified frock-coats arose and marched up to the altar-rail, while the organist played soft music to which they did not keep step. Dr. Penniman put into their hands the collection-plates, mahogany with red plush centres, and they turned and came down the aisles. One came to the Warner pew to begin his round: a thick-set, elderly man, partly bald, with a smooth-shaven face and cheeks that seemed to sag at the bottom. His lower lip thrust out, and the heavy lines about the sides of his mouth, gave him a grim expression. He walked with a firm tread, staring before him, wholly bent upon the service of the Lord. But when he came to the Warner pew, his eyes met suddenly with those of the young man in the outside seat; his grim face flushed, and his lips became set in a way that was suggestive rather of week-days, than of the service of the Lord, and gratitude for the round silver dollar which Hal was donating to that service!

  There were members of the congregation watching, and noting the little drama. The faintest possible thrill went about, and Edward Warner’s face grew red with embarrassment. Why had he not had the wit to put his mad brother in an inside seat, so that he could not stare directly into Peter Harrigan’s face?

  The offertory was sung, and the benediction given, and the singing choir marched out; then, while people gathered to greet one another, and to look rather than whisper their little thrill, Hal went into the vestry-room, where Will Wilmerding was taking off his robes, and putting on the detachable white cuffs which he wore—possibly a symbol of the fact that he was a servant of the Most High, and not of the fashions of this world. He took Hal in his arms, and gave him one of his tickling hairy kisses, exclaiming, “What’s this you have been doing, boy?”

  Hal answered, “I have been about my father’s business.” And this when he saw Judge Vagleman, chief counsel of the General Fuel Company, standing within hearing! “I want to come to lunch with you,” he went on. “I’ve something important to talk to you about.”

  It was embarrassing for the clergyman, but Hal had no mercy; he meant to “get” Will Wilmerding, he told himself. The clergyman came of an old English family, and under his professional humility was buried real human pride. He would not remain Peter Harrigan’s old clothes-man, if once he could be made to see himself in that role! There would be an old clothes-man’s revolt, possibly even an old clothes-man’s union!

  They had their first bout that night, after the evening services, in the study of the little home where Wilmerding lived with his old mother. Hal told his story, and they argued back and forth for hours. Hal did not succeed in his project of persuading his friend to come at once to the strike-country; but he left him pacing the floor of his study, with his hands tightly shut and his face strained and haggard. Hal went home in
the certainty that he had planted the seeds of a mighty spiritual crisis in the soul of Peter Harrigan’s assistant rector!

  [25]

  Next morning Hal set out as a distributor of pamphlets; one of those wistful, pathetic persons, with the pockets of their overcoats bulging, who encounter you timidly, and try to accomplish their purpose without letting you know that they are out especially to save your soul. At least, that was the picture of the situation which Bob Creston took into the Merchants’ Club, to the vast hilarity of the younger crowd—excepting Appie Harding, who happened to be the wistful propagandist’s cousin, and Garret Arthur, who happened to be his prospective brother-in-law.

  But in the course of the day Hal lost his wistfulness and timidity. He took a copy of his pamphlet to Larry Pringle, and found the “Gazette” office in a state of excitement, owing to the arrival of a telephone message from Keating. A stenographer had taken it down, and Hal sat by this man’s typewriter and read the words as they popped into view on the machine.

  There had been another “battle of Horton” that morning, and Keating had been present, and gave his description as an eye-witness. A mile or so down the railroad-track from the colony was a steel bridge where the county road crossed, and under this bridge three gunmen had concealed themselves and opened fire on the tents. There were at this time about twelve hundred people in the colony, and probably two hundred of the men had weapons of some sort, most of them shot-guns and cheap revolvers. As before, they rushed out and began firing blindly—the little Italian had fired his shot-gun into a pile of steel-rails and nearly blinded himself. Pretty soon one of the men, who had gone in the direction of the firing, came back with one eye knocked to a pulp by a spent bullet; and then came a second man, with his hand to his cheek, and blood pouring in a stream through his fingers. The account gave the name of this last man—Klowowski; it was the Paul Revere of the coal-camps, the little Polack who had met Hal and Jim Moylan on the first night of their coming to Horton! Hal saw in a swift vision his pitiful, eager face; above the click of the typewriter keys he heard the shrill voice: “Big men from union come make talk! Ever’body come! Tell ever’body!”