The Coal War

by Upton Sinclair

Hal interviewed Mrs. Olson and Edstrom and a number of others, and made certain that Rovetta and Jerry had been in the tent-colony all the previous evening. Then he went for advice to his cousin, who knew the two Italians and admitted that they were decent men. But Appie did not see what anyone could do about it; he was strenuous in advising Hal to keep out of the mix-up, making no secret of the reason—that he was afraid of the extremes to which General Wrightman might go. “Wait a while,” he argued. “They’re bound to realize your men had nothing to do with it, and let them off.”

  But Hal was not to be held back. He first addressed a letter to the military commission, telling them of the evidence he had to offer; and when no answer came, he went up to the American Hotel, where the commission had its headquarters, and asked for an interview with the Judge-Advocate.

  This was Barry Cassels, a lawyer of Western City, well known to Hal. He was legal adviser to the General, and in this capacity had just delivered an opinion, to which the newspapers attached great weight, that the Governor had no legal authority to enforce his policy of keeping strikebreakers out of the mines. Besides being Judge-Advocate of Militia, Cassels was an attorney with a salary from mine-operators—though, as he made haste to explain, it was the metal-mining industry, not the coal-mining industry, which paid him. If it was on a public platform, he would make this explanation with grave impressiveness; if it was over high-balls at the club, he would make it with a wink. The “metal men” of the state were perfectly good friends with the “coal men”. They shipped their product over the same railroads, they borrowed their money from the same banks, they used the same lawyers and the same politicians to hoodwink the public, and the same militia officers to break the strikes of their workingmen.

  After an argument with a burly guard, Hal finally got his card taken in, but that was as far as he got; the answer came that Major Cassels was “busy”. Hal knew the Judge-Advocate for a gentleman with social ambitions, who ordinarily would not have declined intimacy with a member of the Warner family. Could it be that he was ashamed of his present job? Or was he sternly devoting himself to duty, refusing to be swayed by social favor?

  He had every reason to call himself “busy”, Hal had to admit. He was judge, jailer and prosecuting attorney to twenty-five “military prisoners”, in addition to those he was now gathering in on the charge of having conspired to the murder of Hanun. General Wrightman had made announcement that none of these prisoners were to have a jury trial; the General would constitute himself a “military district”, and the prisoners would be attended to by his “military court”. In a country supposed to be a democracy, with a constitution providing that the military should at all times be subordinate to the civil authority, this naturally caused complications, and taxed the subtlety and legal learning of a Judge-Advocate of Militia.

  This “military prisoner” idea had had its beginning ten years ago, when the president of the metal miners’ union had been thrown into jail on a charge that he had “desecrated the American flag” by having union sentiments printed on it. The case had been carried to the Supreme Court of the state, a body put into office by the copper-trust for the purpose of putting its rivals out of business. This court had sustained the right of militia officers to set aside the civil authority; but it had happened that the Chief Justice of the court was an honest man, and he delivered a dissenting opinion which for its eloquence and dignity deserves to be written beside the Declaration of Independence, and taught to every school-child in America.

  He declared that the court had not construed the Constitution, it had ignored it; that not one of the guarantees of personal liberty could any longer be enforced. “The accused may be guilty of the most heinous offenses. It may be that he deserves to linger in prison the remainder of his natural life; but he is entitled to his liberty unless someone, in proper form and before a proper tribunal, charges him with violation of the law. If one may be restrained of his liberty without charge being preferred against him, every other guarantee of the Constitution may be denied him. And when we deny to one, however wicked, a right plainly guaranteed by the Constitution, we take that same right from everyone. We cannot deny liberty today and grant it tomorrow; we cannot grant it to those heretofore above suspicion, and not grant it to those suspected of crime; for the Constitution is for all men—‘for the favorite at court; for the countryman at plow’—at all times and under all circumstances.”

  And then, in grave and solemn words, he warned the people of his state concerning the perils involved in this precedent. “We cannot sow the dragon’s teeth and harvest peace and repose; we cannot sow the whirlwind and gather the restful calm. Our fathers came here as exiles from a tyrant King. Their birthright of liberty was denied them by a horde of petty tyrants that infested the land, sent by the King to loot, to plunder and to oppress. Arbitrary arrests were made, and judges aspiring to smiles of the prince refused by pitiful evasions the writ of habeas corpus. Our people were banished; they were denied trial by jury; they were deported for trial for pretended offenses; and they finally resolved to suffer wrong no more, and pledged their lives, their property and their sacred honor to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and for us, their children. But if the law is as this court has declared, then our vaunted priceless heritage is a sham, and our fathers ‘stood between their loved homes and war’s desolation’ in vain.”

  [13]

  Now these prophesies were coming to fulfilment; now men saw the harvesting of the “dragon’s teeth”. Ten years had passed, and General Wrightman was not waiting for the Governor to declare martial law; he was not even troubling to declare martial law himself—he was merely declaring a “military district”, which apparently he regarded as coterminous with the state. And when the little cowboy Governor announced that he disapproved these proceedings and would not permit them, the General said nothing, but went right on doing what he had announced. The Governor sent down his secretary to see about it, but the General paid no more attention to the secretary than he had paid to the Governor; he appointed his court, and tried his prisoners, and locked them in jail for long terms.

  Nor could you even protest against these proceedings! The “policy committee” of the union refused to recognize this “military court”, and Jim Moylan was sent down to the field to inform the strikers as to their constitutional rights. There was a meeting in the union hall in Pedro, at which Moylan declared that General Wrightman’s commission was without power in law, and that everyone should refuse to answer its questions or to pay attention to its threats. The result was that early next morning a lieutenant of militia called upon the young Irishman and politely informed him that the authorities wished to talk with him.

  Moylan went down to the hotel and was ushered into a room before Major Cassels, who began to ask him questions; and when the labor leader followed his own advice of refusing to talk to this “military commission”, General Wrightman burst into the room in a rage. “Take this man and lock him up in jail until he’s ready to answer!”

  Moylan made an attempt to argue the matter. “Has the Governor declared martial law here?”

  But the other answered, “I’ll have no academic discussions with you! You’ll go to jail until you are ready to answer questions.”

  So they took the young fellow off to the city-jail, which was stuffed with suffocating prisoners, tier upon tier. But they did not keep him very long, for Jim Moylan was known and trusted by every labor leader in the state, and Governor Barstow suddenly had a hornet’s nest about his ears. It happened to be just when the beetle-rhinoceros conference was taking place, and the beetles refused to proceed unless Moylan was released. So the Governor telephoned orders, and that afternoon the young man came out, and went to Sheridan and addressed a tremendous mass-meeting of the miners. Next morning Keating, who was picking up gossip at the Capitol, telephoned word that the beetle-rhinoceros conference had come to nothing, and that there was a company of soldiers waiting at the depot in Pedro, to arrest Moyl
an when he stepped off the train. The young Irishman took an automobile and got out through the back country, and up to Western City, where as yet the “civil authority” had some little standing.

  [14]

  Kowalsky, the Polish suspect, spent five days in jail before Major Cassels realized that he had got the wrong man. The one they really wanted was the Polish organizer, whose name was Kowalewsky! Kowalsky came back to the Horton colony and told how he had been taken before the “commission”, and had been badgered and cross-questioned by Major Cassels and young Vagleman. Having no idea what they wanted of him, all the poor fellow could do was to fall down on his knees and plead that he had a wife and three children.

  At last they had sent him to jail—the county-jail, where the murder-suspects were kept. The place was unheated all night—in the midst of winter, and with openings through which the snow sprayed over the prisoners. Kowalsky told what he had received for food: at eight o’clock in the morning, three small biscuits “no bigger than a dollar”, an inch and a half slice of bacon, and a cup of very bad coffee without sugar or milk; again at two in the afternoon, a tablespoon full of beans, a couple of slices of bread, and a very small chunk of bad meat. Those two meals were all anybody was having. The Polack, trembling with illness and excitement, declared: “I don’t go to toilet all them five days. I ask them fellers, they all don’t go to toilet all them five days—such rotten food they give us!”

  But the food was the least of it. The commission had apparently made up its mind to extract confessions by torture. Not one of the men had been allowed to sleep—not an hour during the five days and nights of horror! The guard had been changed every two hours, and they would go up and down the corridor and prod the men in the feet with bayonets. When they crouched in the corners of their cells to get away from this, buckets of cold water were thrown upon them. All day and all night you heard the moaning of agonized wretches, and the curses of their tormentors.

  Now and then militiamen would come in and stand in front of the bars of the cage and question them; so gradually the prisoners learned the story they were supposed to confirm. Jerry Minetti had given Dinardo twenty-five dollars to shoot Pete Hanun, and had promised him a thousand dollars additional if he kept quiet about it. He had given twenty-five to Rovetta and to Kowalsky, to keep them quiet. “He don’t give me nothing,” declared Kowalsky—“only one day when strike begin he give me three meal-tickets. They say, ‘You say he give you twenty-five dollars, you get out; you don’t say it, you stay here, you don’t never sleep no more!’”

  A couple of days later they decided to drag in another man—Johann Hartman, the old “Dutchy” who was secretary of the union local in Pedro. They arrested him at two o’clock in the morning, and raided his office and took his papers; next day came a report that the truth was out at last—a list of the murderers had been found in Hartman’s desk, and Hartman himself had confessed!

  It was Mary Burke who brought this news. “It’s a lie!” she cried, with flashing eyes. “He’s got nothing to confess, but if he had, he’d die first!”

  Hal read the newspaper account, which reported Hartman as declaring to Major Cassels that the reason he had remained a German citizen was that he despised America and its government. “I know he never said that,” declared Hal. “I asked him that very question, and he told me that no union man could get naturalization papers in this country!”

  Now this was Hal’s first experience with the “frame up”, and it put him in a difficult position. He knew Jerry Minetti, he had shared the young Italian’s hopes and fears, and believed he could say with certainty that assassination had no part in Jerry’s program for winning the strike. But on the other hand, was he to think that Barry Cassels, a “society man”, supposed to be a gentleman—or young Bernard Vagleman, whom he had known at St. George’s—that such men were engaged in a conspiracy to send innocent men to the gallows?

  One thing was about as hard to believe as the other, and Hal swung between the two. Pete Hanun had been a wild beast, and one could not count it much of a crime to shoot him. Might it not be that Jerry, driven to desperation, had actually connived at the crime? If he had harbored such a desperate secret, he would have kept it from Hal, knowing that Hal would have opposed him.

  But, even granting that this was true, why this torture of men in prison? If Cassels had evidence of murder, let him go ahead and try the guilty man; but let him not get evidence by the methods of the Spanish Inquisition!

  [15]

  Tim Rafferty came out, having served his thirty days for carrying a revolver. He had been in the county-jail with the murder-suspects, and was ill with the horror of what he had seen. He declared that Rovetta and Dinardo were out of their minds, and could be heard raving by the other prisoners. Perhaps they were giving them dope in their food; or perhaps it was just cold and exhaustion and torture.

  Rosa Minetti heard this, and she came to the headquarters tent, weeping hysterically. Why did they not do something? They must do something! She stood twisting her hands together, she caught Hal by the coat, pleading with him frantically to save her husband. Hal must know that Jerry was innocent; and Hal had rich friends, there must be some way he could stop this horrible cruelty!

  All this was hard on the young man. He could not eat or sleep for thinking about it. If he put food in his mouth, it would suggest the thought, how could he sit eating, while the men in the jail were starving! If he lay down to sleep, the thought would come, how could he rest in comfort, while his friends were being kept awake with bayonets and cold water? So Hal ate and slept very little; and as every physician knows, a man who does not eat or sleep becomes nervous and irresponsible—liable to go “off his head”, as Captain Harding phrased it.

  The young man could no longer go to his cousin to protest, for Appie had been supplanted in the control of Horton; another company had moved to the neighborhood, commanded by a Major Singleton, a crony of Wrightman and Cassels, and including some of the most hated of the mine-guards, among them “Lieutenant” Stangholz. Nor could Hal get satisfaction by wiring the Governor, for his messages went unanswered; nor by writing letters to the newspapers, for his letters were not published. What could he do?

  The tension was made worse by the arrest of Louie the Greek, charged with complicity in the murder. It had been conceivable that Jerry had had something to do with the shooting, but concerning Louie there could simply be no question. And word came that they were torturing him like the others; the guards had declared they would kill him, and the jailer had knocked him down on the way to his cell.

  Right on top of all this came the experience of Mike Sikoria. Mike had a sister somewhere in the East, and she had been ill, and he was anxiously awaiting a letter from her. He had got the idea that his mail was not being sent to the tent-colony, and he wanted to go to the post-office at the village to make sure. There had recently been a big stir in the newspapers over the matter of keeping men away from post-offices; the Federal authorities had threatened to interfere, and Wrightman and Vagleman had issued denials that anybody ever had been, or would be, or could be, denied access to a United States post-office. The old Slovak had heard of this, and was foolish enough to believe it, and set out for the Horton post-office, which was at the railroad-station, to ask about his mail.

  Hal saw him returning an hour or so later, white and faint, with two men helping him along. His left arm hung limp at his side and he moaned with agony whenever it was touched. They took him to the hospital-tent, and there, while the doctor and Mary Burke attended to his injury, he told what had befallen him.

  There had been a soldier sitting near the depot, but having waited until the train was gone, Mike thought it would be all right for him to approach. “I go right up to the post-office—over here,” he said; he always illustrated everything with gestures—but now, alas, he had only one hand for the purpose! “There come two soldiers on the corner, like this, and there is the door like that. I took the door—go to open it. He say
s, ‘Where you going, hobo?’—I says, ‘No place—go to get my mail.’—He says, ‘I give you mail.’ And he bring down his gun on my arm. He hit me with the shaft—the wood piece—and I dropped right there. I don’t know nothing for about five minutes. I fell right in the snow. I fell, and he kicked me, he says, ‘Get up!’—I don’t know nothing about it, but after I wake myself up, he says, ‘Get up, you son of a ——, get up. Go to work.’—‘Go to work?’ I says. ‘I can’t work,’ I says. ‘I don’t want to work with my arm like this. I got enough,’ I says, and I start back to tent-colony. But on the way there is another soldier, and he says, ‘Where you going?’—I says, ‘I am going to the tent-colony.’—‘Why don’t you go to work?’ he says. —‘I don’t have to go to work,’ I says. ‘You don’t make me go to work.’ And he come over and kicked me. He says, ‘Go on.’ And I can’t say nothing—he got a rifle and a gun, and a pistol and a bayonet—everything. What’s a poor man going to do—with his poor arm—with his smashed arm?”

  The wound was a serious one, the flesh being torn loose from the bone for a considerable distance; the doctor declared that it would be slow to heal; Mike was an old man, and it might be a year before he was well. At which the old Slovak began to weep in despair. Yes, he was an old man—fifty-eight years—and what was he going to do, a cripple? What could a miner do with only one arm? He appealed to the doctor and the crowd of sympathetic onlookers. “Is it right? Shall a young soldier hit an old man like that? Is it good to smash an old man’s arm because he goes to get his mail?”

  [16]

  That was the climax for Hal. He went back to his tent, and spent the evening writing a letter to Lucy May. He put the letter on the midnight train, with a special delivery stamp; and next morning he himself took the train to Pedro.