The Coal War

by Upton Sinclair

  Morris Lipinsky had faced such facts as these, and he had a remedy which he was willing to stay up all hours of the night explaining. He mentioned incidentally that there was an organization of college men interested in spreading such ideas, and might it not be a good thing to have a lecturer come to Harrigan? Hal offered the use of his rooms, and there was a meeting attended by some twenty students, who had brought to their attention the neglect of a most fascinating subject in the curricula of American colleges. The lecturer suggested the disturbing possibility that there might be some connection between this neglect, and the source from which the funds of American colleges were derived. And when some of the students wished to go on with this fascinating subject, their project met with a reception which caused them to recall this suggestion of the lecturer. They proposed to organize a “study chapter”, but the chancellor of Harrigan put his foot down; he would not have the name of Harrigan associated with Socialism!

  So throughout the precincts of the college broke out a lively controversy. Young men and women who had had no remotest desire to study Socialism took part in vehement discussions as to whether they had a right to study Socialism if they wished. Even one or two of the professors spoke up. Surely it was an unusual thing to forbid college students to study! Between athletics and fraternity life, it was so difficult to get them to study anything!

  Hal and Lipinsky took counsel, and called on the chancellor with a new and subtle proposition. The authorities would not permit a “Socialist” organization; but what if the students should meet to discuss, not Socialism, but social problems in general? Surely the authorities would not forbid that! Seeing the authorities begin to weaken, Hal pressed his advantage, stating that he intended to invite friends to his rooms to discuss social problems, unless this procedure was expressly forbidden.

  So once a week there was a gathering of students, and a discussion so exciting that it was sometimes difficult to get rid of the discussers. Even the professors took to coming, and taking part in the proceedings on equal terms with their students. A brand new experience to these gentlemen—to see American college boys taking ideas seriously enough to get angry over them! The time came when Hal’s rooms would hardly hold these gatherings. The most aloof and fashionable men in the student-body, pillars of fraternity-life like “Bob” Creston and Laurence Arthur, were first drawn in by curiosity and then drawn out by arguments, until you might hear them defending themselves and their privileges under the very thinnest veils of economic formula!

  [12]

  The climax came near the end of the year; when Dan Hogan, the notorious “I.W.W.” leader, happened to be in Western City. The brilliant idea occurred to these young collegiate revolutionists that the students might be interested to know what the “I.W.W.” had to report about the state of the country. So first they invited him—and then they announced that he was coming.

  Never would Hal forget the scene in his rooms that night; a cultured leisure-class audience, packed like sardines in a box, and a one-eyed, battle-scarred old veteran of the class-war, backed against the wall facing them. He had not wanted to come, he told them; he had no interest in leisure-class audiences, no faith in them; he was only wasting his breath, talking to them about things they could never understand. But the boys had insisted, and so here he was; he stood like a mangy old bear at bay, growling at them for their blindness and indifference to the horror of the life of millions upon whose toil they fed. He told them what he had seen and known—not because it was any use to tell them, but because his mind was full to bursting with it, because his soul was shaken to the deeps with it.

  It was facts that “Big Dan” told; no one could doubt that they were facts, no human imagination could have invented such things! He told of starvation and oppression; he pictured masses of men and women driven to desperation, flaming out in blind revolt, crushed into submission by club and bayonet and machine-gun. He told of prison-hells where men were driven insane, of bull-pens where men, and women too, were beaten and starved and frozen, or left to die of loathsome diseases. He told of the brutality of police and soldiery, of the corruption of courts and juries—the whole enormous, relentless machine of oppression which was “government” to the man underneath. He pictured the long agonies, the sacrifices and martyrdoms of labor’s nameless and forgotten heroes. He did not plead for them—he was too powerful for that; in the midst of his most moving cry of despair, of yearning for deliverance for his people, his scorn and fury would flash out again. He would hail the mighty hosts of labor, marching to their final and inevitable triumph! His voice would rise like a trumpet-call to this battle of the morrow.

  The news of this meeting spread like wild-fire through the college; it spread farther—to the trustees, to the politicians, to the Chamber of Commerce. The chancellor sent for Hal, and in a state of the wildest agitation denounced this outrage on college dignity. The college had barely escaped a hideous calamity; the Western City “Herald” had got hold of the story, and it had required the influence of one of the wealthiest of the trustees, exercised over the telephone at midnight, to avert this horror from the classic shades of Harrigan. There would be no more stuff about “free speech” in colleges; this undignified and unacademic propaganda would come to an end forthwith!

  Nor was this all for Hal. He was summoned to Western City by telephone, and made to listen to a discourse from his brother Edward.

  Two years previously Hal’s father had suffered a paralytic stroke, and his doctors declared that excitement of any sort might cost him his life; so Edward had taken over the affairs of the Warner Company—and incidentally, the duty of lecturing his younger brother. Hal was free; he had all the money he wanted, and only one thing in the world was asked of him, that he should not bring disgrace upon the family name. Did he realize that the one-eyed old ruffian whom he had received in his rooms and invited to supper in a college dining-hall had barely escaped hanging for a cowardly assassination?

  “I know that,” said Hal. “I know also that a jury found him not guilty.”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” cried Edward. “Let’s talk straight to each other. Are there any of Hogan’s own followers who don’t believe that he did the murder?”

  “I don’t know as to that,” said Hal. “I haven’t had a chance to meet his followers. Have you?”

  Edward scorned this attempt at repartee. All the world knew that Hogan’s organization was carrying on a campaign of terrorism and blackmail, and that Hogan was the driving will of it. Hal might talk about the sufferings of miners, but Edward could answer by picturing the desolation in one American home. He knew the family of Dan Hogan’s victim; the son was a member of their college fraternity, a class-mate of their cousin, Appleton Harding. How would Edward feel, how would Harding feel, having to meet this young man in business and social life—and he knowing that Hal Warner had been publicly giving aid and support to the man who had blown up his father with a dynamite bomb?

  Hal thought about these complicated problems when he should have been thinking about Greek and trigonometry. In his mind the matter boiled itself down to one question—was modern industry lifting the worker, or was it degrading him? Was it disciplining him and fitting him for wider responsibilities, or was it beating him down, making him unfit for citizenship? There was the heart of the controversy, and upon the answer depended the attitude one should take.

  And Hal saw that however much both sides might differ, they were in agreement on the point which concerned him. Dan Hogan’s scornful words were burned into his brain: “You, living easy lives, getting the pretty thing you call culture—what do you know about the slaves of your mills and mines? You belong to some higher order of beings, who have the right to eat your fellows!” And on the other hand were the men of affairs—his brother, Jessie Arthur’s brothers, his cousin, “Appie” Harding—all calling him a theorist and a dreamer, taunting him because he was raised on books. What did he know about the cares of employers, the difficulty of handling large b
odies of ignorant and jealous men?

  Hal saw that whatever position he took, he could not maintain it until he could say that he knew something of his own knowledge. And so little by little there formed itself in his mind the concept of his Great Adventure. He would devote his summer’s vacation to a course in practical sociology—“field-work”, as it was called. He would put behind him his comfortable home and his leisure-class friends; he would take the clothes of a workingman, the name, the manner of speech, above all the purse of a workingman, and go into one of the centres of industry and see the labor problem for himself.

  Because of the arguments he had had with Percy Harrigan, he chose for his experiment one of Old Peter’s mountain fortresses. He saw all the evils of which Dan Hogan had told; and when the mine disaster took place, and he saw men penned up and left to die, he set out to rescue them—and so quite suddenly, what had begun as a sociological experiment was turned into a battle of the class-war. Before that battle was over, Hal had made pledges to his fellow-workers which he knew would change the whole future of his life.

  [13]

  Back in college again, Hal was trying in vain to persuade himself that he was interested in the Greek enclitic, in the membership of fraternities and the “line up” of a football team. There came letters from the coal-country—from Mary Burke, giving details of the war of bludgeon and revolver which the companies were waging against organizers; from Mrs. Jack David, telling how union literature in half a dozen languages had been smuggled into North Valley and distributed; from Mike Sikoria, the old Slovak whose “buddy” Hal had been, telling how he had sought a job in four camps in succession, and been met with a fist in his face; from Johann Hartman, secretary of the union local in Sheridan, telling of the “kangarooing” of Little Jerry’s father.

  How was it possible to preserve the academic ideal, the “passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence”, with such images as this in a man’s mind? Hal became more than ever a disturber of the classic halls of Harrigan. He got some of the rebels together, and forced the issue of free speech, proposing the organization of a “Social Study Club”. When this project was vetoed by the chancellor, there was another controversy, more vehement than before. Somehow the facts were whispered to Hal’s friend Billy Keating, a reporter on the Western City “Gazette”, which spread the whole story upon its front page, and called for a mass-meeting of citizens to protest against the state appropriation of money for coal-company colleges! So the chancellor weakened again, and there was a gathering in Hal’s rooms every Friday night—not a “Socialist” gathering, but one which discussed unacademic questions, and in a manner far from passionless. It was pledged to have no outside speakers, but there was no way to keep the spirit of a one-eyed old labor-agitator from coming to cast its shadow over the proceedings!

  In the Easter holidays Hal went home, to get the reaction of these events upon his relatives and friends: more especially upon the Arthur family.

  He was very much under the spell of Robert Arthur’s beautiful daughter. She was the thrill and rapture of first love to him; mysteries lurked in her fair hair, swift emotions chased one another across her features, like shadows of April clouds across a mountain lake. In chaste and secret whispers he heard in her presence the voice of new life, craving to be; as for Jessie, when she saw him after long absence, she went faint with excess of happiness.

  He came to her as a young hero, robed in light. But now this light was dimmed, and the April clouds threatened showers of tears. Laurence Arthur had “told on” Hal, how he was making himself president of a club of “rough-necks” and “goats”, leading a revolt against good society at Harrigan!

  Hal tried to explain, but there was no making Jessie see that a Socialist “goat” was different from any other kind of “goat”. A cheap and obvious device for people to attain prominence in college-life! Hal himself was generous, naive; he had no conception of the horrid insincerities of some people, their craving to thrust themselves forward, to make the acquaintance of their betters. Why, there was a Jew in this “Study Club” of Hal’s! A fellow who, at the last commencement, had pushed himself into a group of Jessie’s friends without being introduced! No, said Hal, that was another Jew. But Jessie was not pacified—all Jews looked alike to her.

  What Hal was doing would ultimately cut him off entirely from social life. How could he expect people to tolerate him, if he persisted in discussing their private affairs? And so, of course, came an argument—what are a man’s private affairs? His coal-mines where he works thousands of other men as serfs? If Percy Harrigan chose to take that attitude, and to “cut” Hal because he sympathized with the employes of the “G.F.C.”—why, Hal would simply forget that he knew the Coal King’s son. Percy was a good fellow, but he wasn’t the brainiest man in the college, by any means, nor the one Hal would prefer as an intimate. Had not Jessie herself expressed the opinion that he would never be able to get away with his important airs, if it were not for his father’s millions?

  Jessie admitted that Percy was not the greatest of her troubles. There was her brother, who was terribly stirred up; and more serious yet, there was her father. Someone had teased Mr. Arthur at his club, mentioning that he was to have a Socialist for a son-in-law, and the old gentleman talked about it all the time—he was threatening what he called “a serious talk”. What would Hal do about that?

  Here indeed, was cause for uneasiness. Hal had never failed in tact in his dealings with Mr. Arthur; he had taken the proper interest in the country-place, he had duly inquired as to new developments, and gone promptly to see them—finding his consolation in the fact that Jessie went along, and that he could hold her hand while inspecting the Annamese rooster and sampling the Siberian strawberries. But there was one thing he could not pretend, no matter how much he might be in love with the lovely Jessie—that was, that he was impressed by the old gentleman’s views on social questions. After once he had heard these views, he sought tactfully to shift the conversation, pleading an engagement on the tennis-court. But now the tennis-court was covered with snow; and before he and Jessie could think of another excuse, here came the old gentleman puffing in!

  [14]

  The head of the banking-house of Robert Arthur and Sons was a self-made man, and saw nothing to be ashamed of in the fact. He had begun life as a clerk of the mining-exchange, way back in the early days; he had been sober, plodding, and acquisitive, and now in his late years he was one of the financial powers of the city. All that he had, he had earned, and he was satisfied of his right to it. That jealous persons should dispute his right—the unsuccessful whom he had watched and condemned for their lack of sobriety and ploddingness and acquistiveness—that anyone could understand. That such persons should get together and found a school of thought; that they should start a political party and take to making speeches on street-corners—that too was comprehensible. The one incomprehensible thing was that these jealous and greedy spirits should receive the backing of men of education and responsibility—for example, a young man who had been permitted to become engaged to Robert Arthur’s favorite daughter!

  The old gentleman invited Hal into the library, and invited Jessie out; having got himself into his big leather arm-chair, and Hal in a smaller chair opposite to him, he began what was clearly to be the “serious talk”. He had recently heard about certain ideas adopted by his future son-in-law, and he desired to make an effort to understand these ideas.

  Hal began very tactfully, taking his start from Little Jerry. And that was all very well—Little Jerry was a clever child, and if conditions in North Valley were as he described them, the matter ought to be brought to the attention of the executive officers of the General Fuel Company, who would correct the evils. And so at once came controversy; “Joe Smith”, ex-miner’s “buddy”, revealed his notion that the heads of the General Fuel Company, gentlemen with whom Mr. Arthur did business every day, knew about these conditions, and deliberately maintained them! Such a notion revealed
a disordered state in a young man’s mind-it revealed that he had been listening to agitators!

  And what was the young man’s program—what did he expect to do about the wrongs he described? When the young man started to explain, his future father-in-law was unable to hear more than three sentences. Why, that was Socialism! And did not the young man realize that Socialists wanted to divide things up and start over again? Could not he see that if this were done, it would be only a short time before the capable men would have everything again? Socialists wanted to have everything owned and run by the state; and could not anyone see that that must lead to the building up of a political machine, worse than any ever known before?

  Hal was so indiscreet as to attempt to point out to Mr. Arthur that these two ideas about Socialism were diametrically opposed, and so at least one of them must be incorrect; but at this the old gentleman became still more irritated; he made clear that his ideas were his ideas, and were to be treated respectfully, like his roosters. The old gentleman’s face was round, and his eyes were round, and his two fists were round; he had a way of lifting both fists and pounding down with them to impress his arguments upon you. It was as if he were working a heavy churn, and at each thump would come a bounce in the big leather chair!

  Hal was quite willing to be reduced to silence; but having definitely come out as an enemy of the system of things on which Robert Arthur’s banking-business was built, he could not plausibly change his views at short notice. He realized, however, that the old gentleman desired exactly that; he was resolved either to reform this deluded young man, or else to make clear to him that he could not expect to be received into the Arthur family!