The Coal War

by Upton Sinclair

  The editor could not see it. But Hal noticed that he went off and wrote as his leading editorial of the next week a temperate and even-handed exposition of the ideas which the young miner had explained to him. So Hal learned something about that British devotion to fair-play, that genius for statesmanship, which is responsible for what freedom now exists in the world. He tried to imagine a senator at Washington, the editor of an organ of culture in New York, coming down from his high seat of authority and taking lessons from a mine-boy! No, the thing was not thinkable! In America they would have barred the young man’s paper from the mails for “obscenity” or “sedition”; they would have sent a cursing police-official to suppress the young man’s meetings, and likely as not to bash in the young man’s head. And the editor of the organ of culture would have stayed in his sanctum, not mentioning, hardly even knowing of these proceedings, but writing bewildered editorials on the spread of the dynamite plague in the American labor movement!

  [24]

  In the middle of these events Hal’s thoughts were turned suddenly towards home. There came a letter from Jim Moylan, telling him that there no longer seemed hope of staving off a conflict in Pedro County. The discontent of the workers was mounting, and the operators remained as stubborn as ever. A formal set of demands had been drawn up and sent to them, but the communication remained without answer. Now a call was out for a convention of delegates from the various camps, and there could be little doubt that this convention would declare a strike.

  And the same mail brought a letter from Jerry Minetti, giving the news from the field. Jerry had been “fired” from another camp, but still he was able to do work for the union, for the men had taken to meeting secretly in the canyons. There had been a walk-out at San Rafael last week, and one was expected any time at Greenough. So many men were being turned off that a big strike had become a matter of life and death to the union. If Hal had any idea of helping, he had better be starting.

  Jerry stated the facts without comment; but Hal could read between the lines and realize what tension must be in the coal-towns. And the day after the receipt of the letters came a cablegram from Billy Keating, telling that Pete Hanun had shot and killed Tom Olson. Hal decided that the time for holidays was past. He took the letters and cablegram to Jessie and her mother, and informed them that he would have to leave for home.

  There was a terrible scene, of course. Jessie wept hysterically, and Mrs. Arthur was indignant. It startled Hal to see this placid lady, whom he thought of as amiability incarnate, suddenly transformed under provocation. It was not merely a personal discourtesy, because Hal was an escort, and their trip would be spoiled if he deserted them; it was an offense to Mrs. Arthur’s class prejudices—for Hal was going to mix himself up in a strike, and it was stupid folly, because he could not do the least good to poor ignorant people who were being deluded by selfish agitators.

  Before the discussion came to an end, Hal had been made to understand that in taking his departure in this way he might be giving up all hope of becoming a member of the Arthur family. And then Jessie flung herself into his arms, weeping like one possessed. “You are killing me for your old miners!” she cried; and when he tried to argue with her, she started back from him, her eyes flashing, her hands clenched. “Oh, how I hate your miners! How I hate them!”

  Mrs. Arthur sent a cablegram at once, and next morning there was a message for Hal from his father, imploring him not to take this mad step. Hal saw the hand of his brother in this, and appreciated the tact which had led Edward to dictate a plea instead of a command. But he cabled back that he had already engaged passage.

  Hal was humble and apologetic, and Jessie was haughty—that is, until the day before he sailed, when she broke down, imploring him almost on her knees to abandon his project. She was pleading not only for their love, but for his life. She had been impressed to this extent by the awful tales he told of the coal-camps—that she wanted her lover to keep out of them. Rough and untutored men might face such dangers, that was their part in life; but she and Hal belonged to a world in which such things had no place. What madness to throw away one’s birthright of safety and ease!

  All the way home, on the steamer and the train, Hal carried these images of Jessie with him; the feeling of her tears upon his hands, the sound of her sobbing in his ears. This was love, no doubt; but it seemed to him a cruel thing, not the brave thing he had dreamed. Much as it hurt him, he had to turn his back upon that love.

  In the ten days’ journey he had plenty of time to think about the course he was taking, to examine stone by stone the foundations of his beliefs. He was at the parting of the roads, he could see; casting away the life to which he had been born, his family, his friends, his whole “world” of privilege. To live in a beautiful house and eat at a well-appointed table; to wear elegant clothing and carry a full purse; to have a host of cheerful friends and be popular with them; to marry a charming girl and raise a loving family—these things were not to be lightly discarded by any man. But there was a price a man had to pay for them, the price of his conscience. He must know that these pleasant things came to him through the enslavement and degradation of thousands and tens of thousands of other people. He must know that the food he ate was the flesh of other people, the wine he drank was other people’s blood!

  There was no escaping this. Could any man of sense persuade himself that the privileged classes were doing or ever would do anything to compensate the masses for the misery and despair in which they lived? No, in this world of economic anarchy it was no matter of justice, it was a matter of power; some had the things by which others had to live, and they sold these things for a price, and enforced the price by the clubs of policemen.

  So Hal was going back to the coal-country, to pay for his privileges—his health, his freedom, his culture; he was going to pay the only price that would satisfy the God within him. That health and freedom and culture had been made from the labor of other people; they belonged to other people, and there was only one honest use a man could make of them—devoting them to putting an end to the system of parasitism, and leading the world’s wage-slaves into the future of brotherhood and co-operation.

  BOOK TWO

  GOVERNMENT BY GUNMEN

  [1]

  The office of the Western City “Gazette” was the place of places for a European voyager, reaching home on a week-day morning, and desiring to catch up with the stirring events of a labor war. The big, disorderly “city-room” was a-clatter with typewriters and telegraph instruments. There was no office boy to bar the door, and Hal strode in, and made his way to a corner where Billy Keating sat pounding his old machine. He looked up; his good-natured, full-moon face lighted with pleasure, and he sprang to his feet, and grabbed Hal by the two hands and shook them till they ached. What a pile of news he had! Here, take this chair—he swept a heap of dusty newspapers to the floor. Just a minute, while he hammered out the tail-end of a story about the gas fight for his first edition; then he would be free for an hour. Or perhaps in the meantime Hal would go in and chat with Pringle.

  Inside a glass partition sat Larry Pringle, managing editor, an emperor in shirt-sleeves, upon a throne heaped round with newspapers, pamphlets, clippings, letters, proofs. Lean and white-faced, with much gold in his teeth and a cigarette always between them, Larry’s restless eyes searched you as he talked, as if suspecting you had a story concealed in your vest-pocket. He made Hal think of a hawk—though some would have called him a buzzard; it was his business to search out uncleanness in the business-life of the great metropolis of the mining country. A strange kind of heroism, requiring a strange kind of mentality: a man who would live in poverty, refusing fortunes in bribes, for the satisfaction of telling how other men took them; who would imperil his own job, and the existence of his paper, fighting a battle for workingmen who had not sense enough to fight for themselves!

  Yes, said Pringle, there was going to be a strike in the coal-country. The operators were going to force
it, if necessary, in order to wipe out the labor movement in their three hundred camps. They had raised a fund of half a million for a start; Pringle gave the amounts which the “Big Three” had assessed themselves and the “little fellow”. He had had Keating on this job for a couple of weeks—in spite of a fight for cheaper gas which the paper was making.

  Billy came in, and two fountains of information poured forth. The reporter had the “real dope”; it was apparently a simple matter for him to ascertain what went on between Peter Harrigan and his lieutenants—Schulman, his general manager, Judge Vagleman, his chief counsel, and the heads of the two other companies which ran the coal-business of the state. At first you might doubt if Billy really knew the things he told; but you would not doubt that for long, for Billy proved his knowledge by the test of exact science, the ability to predict.

  Presently he revealed, in confidence, one of the sources of his information. So harsh was Old Peter’s rule that the “little fellows” were being driven to revolt. Did Hal know Perry White, president of the Red Mountain Company?

  Hal answered that he knew him very well. He had been superintendent of St. George’s Sunday-school when Hal was there—a tall, white-bearded old gentleman, very dignified, and with an exacting sense of honor. Hal remembered having heard his father say that “Perry” would not use his pass on a railroad of which he was a director, unless he happened to be travelling on business for that railroad.

  He was too good a man to be in the coal-business, said Billy; and it looked as if he would soon be out of it. At last meeting of the secret association of the coal-operators, the president of “Red Mountain” had dared to oppose Old Peter, pleading with the assemblage to meet some kind of a committee of their men and work out a settlement. Peter had flown into a rage with him, and now was seeking to buy him out, for fear he would not “stick”.

  “Why doesn’t he kick over the traces?” asked Hal. “Meet his men and sign a contract with them, as they do in other states!”

  “I asked him that,” said Billy. “He couldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “He might as well quit at once. There was a fellow, Otway, of Central Fuel, who tried that plan, and it took Old Peter’s crowd about six months to land him in bankruptcy. He couldn’t get cars from the railroads; and when he investigated, he found interlocking directorates, railroad officials owning coal-stock and working deals.”

  Pringle took from his desk a clipping from the “Gazette”, showing what sums were at stake in this controversy. The miners were demanding a ten per cent increase in wages, which would cost half a million a year; they were demanding a check-weighman, which would reduce the weight of a ton of coal from three thousand pounds to two, and cost one or two million more. So it would pay the operators to spend almost any amount, if they could break the union movement once for all. That was the economics of the situation, said the editor, and Hal might as well know it before he went in.

  “You don’t think the men stand a chance?”

  “You know what happened ten years ago,” said Pringle. “Peter Harrigan has the same power to-day. What’s to prevent his using it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hal—“unless it’s public sentiment. If people who care for justice and fair play could be roused, they might manage to cast some odium on him—more than a million dollars worth, possibly—”

  The other smiled. “You don’t know how low a price the old fellow puts on odium!”

  And Keating put in, “You should have heard Perry White tell about him at that meeting, with his cigar in one corner of his mouth, and his ugly lower lip sticking out. ‘I have a coal-business, Perry, and I intend to run it. Any time you want to pay my price, you can have it; but so long as it’s my business, it’s mine, and no damned union agitators are coming in giving me orders!’”

  [2]

  Hal had seen the members of his family, and heard their views. His brother Edward had met him at six o’clock in the morning, having taken a four-hour train journey and spent the night in a junction-hotel, in order to be the first to get the young fanatic’s ear. While the train was speeding over the flat prairies, covered with beet-fields and bordered with towering red-brown mountains, Hal was hearing his brother’s impassioned arguments. He was surprised by the amount of energy Edward was willing to expend. Could it be that Edward had inside news about what was coming?

  In the course of the stormy scene, the truth came out. Edward had heard from Old Peter! Just how, he would not say; but the understanding had been caused to reach Edward Warner that the Coal King had heard of Hal’s return from Europe, and the reason for it, and wished to make clear that the young man’s meddling in the coming strike would be taken as a declaration of war between the two families. There would be no excuses accepted, no plea that Hal could not be controlled. It was Edward’s business to find a way to control him!

  And Edward had thought of a way; in his desperation he revealed it soon. The father would be called in, and Hal’s income stopped. At present he was accustomed to signing his father’s name to checks; but now that pleasant custom would cease.

  Hal considered this proposition, and answered, gravely, “I think, Edward, that’s the thing for you to do.”

  “What?”

  “Cut me off, and let Old Peter know that you’ve cut me off. That’s the way to avert his anger from you.”

  “Damn it!” cried Edward. “I’m not afraid of Old Peter!”

  “You aren’t? But I thought—”

  “Naturally, I don’t want to go hunting trouble—”

  “Well, that’s what I mean—and it’s not fair that you should have to. It’s not fair for me to use Dad’s money to make trouble for his business. Cut me off, let everybody know that I’m acting on my own. That will settle it.”

  Poor Edward! He was a man of busines, to whom money is the blood of life, and he was facing the perplexity which confronts such a man when dealing with a matter of conscience, whose life-blood is drawn from another source.

  “What would you do?” he demanded.

  “I’m going to the coal-fields,” said Hal. “I think I can get a job.”

  “When they know who you are?”

  “I don’t mean a job with Old Peter. I’m a member of the union, and I think I can earn my salary as an organizer.”

  When Edward answered, the energy was gone from his voice. “And be killed, like that fellow Olson?”

  “Not necessarily,” Hal replied. “I should say that might rest with you.”

  “With me!”

  “If you should see fit to send a return message to Old Peter, letting him understand that your brother is to have his rights as an American citizen—”

  “Oh, my God!” broke in Edward.

  “I know,” said Hal, “it sounds mad to you, but perhaps it won’t as time goes on. I’m going to the coal-country to do my duty, and before I get through I may have to call on you for help. If I do, you’ll give it, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first!” cried the other.

  Hal answered, “There’s no use trying to get mad, Brother. I’m right, and in your heart you know it. You’ve been to that coal-country, and you know that the men who’re running it aren’t fit to run a pirate-ship. And just remember this, whenever you are worrying about my safety, whenever Dad is worrying about it—any time you get ready to go to Old Peter and talk to him straight, you can make me fairly safe in the coal-country!”

  The train was gliding through a tangle of tracks and yards and coal-sheds, and came to rest in the big depot. Hal alighted and strode down the platform—and there was his father, toddling towards him with stretched out arms. How unutterably pitiful he was, in his mingled happiness and anxiety! He caught the boy in his arms and kissed him; and while they sat in the automobile, he would run his trembling hand over Hal’s sleeve, or catch the boy’s fingers in his feeble grip, looking pleadingly at him. “You’re not going back to the mines, Hal!”

  Hal answered
, “Let’s not talk about that now, Dad. I’m so glad to see you!”

  But they could not avoid talking about it. The old man could look at Edward’s face, frowning and tense, and read the story there. Tears came into his eyes, and when Hal looked at him, the tears came into Hal’s eyes also. It was no joke, this being a revolutionist!

  [3]

  In the office of the United Mine Workers John Harmon sat at his desk—a man Hal had come to know well, and for whom he had a deep admiration. Harmon was a miner born, his Scotch parents and grand-parents having been miners as far back as he knew. At home Hal had been taught to think of a labor leader as a noisy and pushing person, thriving upon trouble; but Harmon was exactly the opposite of that—gentle of manner, slow-spoken, patient, with a quiet humor which you might miss at first. He was a man of big stature, with features so regular that they might have served as a model for a sculptor. He was not a man of imagination; he did not appreciate his own role, he could not tell his own story—but you knew that he was a solid man, who weighed the consequences of an action before he took it, and having once set forward, seldom needed to change his course.

  The miners had chosen him for their best; but he was not good enough for the operators of this district, it appeared. If he had been a bandit-chief, they could not have spurned him more haughtily. In vain did he devise methods of adjustment, in vain did he write letters to the operators, individually or collectively, calling their attention to the discontent of the men, the violations of law and even of common-sense in the camps. The letters remained unanswered, and Peter Harrigan and his associates remained unaware of the existence of such a person as the executive of the miners’ international.