The Coal War

by Upton Sinclair

  “That’s all very well, Joe,” she answered; “but that’s a man’s talk, and I’m a woman. I lived a year with Mrs. Wyatt, and I watched those grand ladies, and I learned a lot. Maybe more than ye know yourself, Joe Smith!”

  He began to laugh. “We’ll have to compare notes some day. Did you run into the charming young matron who told me I was the one valid argument against monogamy?”

  But Mary could not be got to smile. “I’m not talking about that sort, Joe; I mean the ones that are good, accordin’ to their own ideas. Ye may laugh at them, but I know that a man who was brought up with them can’t get away so easy. ’Tis like a poison; ’tis in the food ye eat, in the clothes ye wear, in the air ye breathe. Ye’ll still have to go to their homes and sit at their tables. And there’ll be an evil spell in every move of their hands, in every liftin’ of their eyebrow!”

  “I understand about the eyebrow,” said Hal. He said it unsmilingly, as he saw she wished it. “You mean you couldn’t trust me, Mary?”

  “Yes, I mean that! I mean I’m afraid to love ye, Joe—that’s the God’s truth! For I could never set out to be like them. They have all the money in the world and all the time; they’ve nothing to do nor to think about but to make themselves beautiful! While I’ve got a job to do, Joe, and always will!” she paused, and he stood gazing into her burning eyes. It was really startling to him, for the girl was voicing the very thoughts that he himself had been wrestling with for many months! The problems of a “misalliance”! The application of revolutionary theory to the difficult field of matrimony!

  [18]

  He came a step nearer, and spoke gently. “You’ll have to take me—you, ‘Red Mary’—and make a real revolutionist out of me! You’ll have to save me from the wiles of these dangerous leisure-class ladies.”

  “Ah, Joe!” she cried. “What a job to set a woman! To be watchin’ a man—keepin’ other women away from him!”

  He began to laugh again—he could not help it. “You set a hard problem for me! What are you going to do—give me up to them?”

  “Joe,” she said, as gravely as ever, “ye remember just now, ye said, did I care for ye. Ye didn’t say that ye cared for me!”

  “You cut me off, Mary! I was going to say it—truly I was!”

  “Maybe, Joe—but first ye wanted to take me in your arms. But I don’t want it to be that way! I don’t want ye to take me because ye’re sorry for me, nor because ye happen to be near me. I don’t want ye to take me because ye want to get away from Jessie Arthur, nor because ye’re disgusted with your own world, and want to throw me in its face. I want ye to take me because ye know what I am, and ye really care for that.”

  “I see what you mean, Mary,” he said. He was no longer laughing. “I can say it—I really can.”

  She was looking at him, still with the fear in her eyes. “What a woman wants, Joe, is for a man to love her as much as she loves him. And don’t tell me that’s true with us—because it ain’t—it can’t be. I had the start of ye, Joe, I loved ye when I first met ye; I loved ye so that I was ready to throw meself away.”

  He answered: “I’m trying to catch up with you now, Mary!” And he took another step, in this process of catching up. But again she shrank back, and put out her hands—not tempting him to come nearer, but imploring him to keep away.

  “This is what I’m thinkin’ about, Joe—what I been afraid of all along. If ye don’t love me enough, then I couldn’t make ye happy, no matter how hard I tried. ’Tis not that I’d want to be askin’ pledges, ’tis not a thing a man can pledge. All I can do is to make sure ye really know me, and ye really want what I have to give.”

  “Mary,” he answered, gently, “you make me feel very humble. If I didn’t want you, I’d begin to. I don’t know any way to measure love and compare it. I know quite definitely that I’m through with my world—and that I’m only at the beginning with you.”

  She drew a deep breath, and he thought she was going to yield to him. But the fear of him and of his world, of his prestige, his wealth, his power, had been burned deep into her soul. When he tried to take her hands, she drew them back. “Joe!” she whispered. “If ye really love me, I want ye to prove it!”

  “How, Mary?”

  “By waitin’! By goin’ away and thinkin’ it over!”

  “How long, Mary?” His tone indicated that it was not thinking he was interested in.

  “Just a while, Joe! We can’t love each other now—with ruin hangin’ over us as it is!”

  “So much the more reason for taking our happiness while we can, Mary! How long do you want me to wait?”

  “A few days, Joe!”

  “That’s rather indefinite.”

  “Three days, then! Take that long to think it over, Joe—before I let meself go, before I want ye so much that I can’t help meself!”

  And suddenly, before he could answer, she started past him. “Go away, Joe!” she whispered. “Please!” and sprang into the hospital-tent and out of his sight.

  [19]

  It was love in the midst of arms. On the morning after the passage between the two, before Hal had had time to get the dreams of Mary out of his mind, there came Lieutenant Stangholz to make another “search”—this time of the Greeks in the colony.

  The militiamen were especially set against the men of this race, because many of them had seen fighting in the Balkan wars, and were not so easily subdued as Slavs and Hunkies. They were for the most part unmarried men, and lived by themselves in a separate group of the tents. Four of them had been in the party with John Edstrom which had been tortured up at North Valley, and after that a number of them had got guns, and were open in their threats. The enemy had spies among them, of course, and when the spies would report such threats, the militiamen would reply in kind. Half a dozen of the strikers had made affidavit to having heard Lieutenant Carroll, the crony of Stangholz, declare that he meant to kill Louie. These affidavits had been published in the miners’ paper—with the result that the militia officer now threatened to kill the makers of the affidavits as well.

  Hal was routed out of bed, and ran over to do what he could to avert the threatened trouble. Stangholz had brought about a dozen men, and it was as if they walked in a den of fierce beasts, who crouched and watched for a moment to spring. Louie the Greek endeavored to argue with the officer, and was thrown back with an oath; there came a snarl from a hundred throats, and it really looked as if unarmed men were about to hurl themselves upon naked bayonets.

  Hal had evolved a method of dealing with Stangholz. The ex-mine-guard with the face of a bull-dog would curse the rich young man as furiously as he would any striker, but Hal knew that in his heart he was in awe of that “mystic spell” which had been able to throw open the door of General Wrightman’s dungeon of torture. So, when the Lieutenant began to bully his victims, Hal would come and stand by in silence—as if he were a statue of public opinion. The officer would go on blustering, cursing; but he never went to the same extremes as when Hal was away.

  Others hurried up, peace-makers, helping to control the Greeks: Mary Burke, Mrs. Olson, Kowalewsky, the Polish organizer, Jerry Minetti. Jerry had now had two or three weeks of freedom and fresh air and wholesome food, and was more than ever a power among the strikers. He pleaded and argued and cajoled—and meantime the militiamen were ripping up tent-platforms, slitting up mattresses, breaking open trunks. They did not find a single gun—not because there were none to find, but because the strikers had been warned by previous experiences, and had found safer hiding-places, and not taken too many into their confidence.

  The soldiers went away at last, partly because of their non-success, and partly because of the menacing aspect of the crowd. They took money and other property, as usual; and that was the last time, men said. So many said it that Hal was convinced it was true; if Stangholz came again, the Greeks would have their guns ready in the tents, and there would be fighting at the very start.

  It had come to be the general
conviction of the Horton people that the militia were bent upon wiping out their colony, as had been done in the case of Harvey’s Run. The soldiers had been making such threats for months, but now it was noticed that their words had become definite—they would set a time, as if they had heard rumors of the intentions of their officers. “You’ve only got a few more days now! We are going to fix you all right!” And they would point to the Black Hills, fifteen or twenty miles out on the plains, where the strikers had been herded in the struggle of ten years ago. “That’s where you’re bound for! The Black Hills for you!” Hearing such remarks, the strikers’ women and children had got into the mental state of those sects of religious fanatics who anticipate the coming of the judgment-day, and sell their worldly goods and gather in the fields to pray.

  [20]

  Different people responded in different fashion to such terrors. Some gave way to them utterly; they would go about white-faced and abject, cowering at every sound. But others had spirit, and fought in their own souls, and if you were a psychologist, you would be interested in the signs of their inner state. Some would brag about what they were going to do, working themselves into belligerency as a defense against their own cowardice. Others went about their affairs unmoved; but you discovered that there were two types of these—some who were merely dull and unimaginative, and others who were highly strung, but determined not to let it show. There is a story of a young officer, going into battle with his teeth chattering, and saying, “Yes, I’m afraid; and if you were half as afraid as I am, you’d have run away long ago!” Hal suspected that Mary Burke belonged to this group, and he was sure that little Mrs. David did.

  Old John Edstrom was lifted out of bed by the general excitement. He was feeble, suffering from shock, as the doctor said; he was covered with cruel bruises, and could hardly take any food. Nevertheless, he went about in the tents, talking to the people in his gentle, winning voice, and when you had listened a while you would realize that in this shrunken and twisted and beaten old body dwelt one of the bravest spirits you might ever meet in life. For Edstrom had been through more than one of labor’s agonies, and had sat late on many a lonely night, meditating them, working out his philosophy. It was a high and difficult philosophy; at first when you listened to it you might think the old man was in his dotage, or that he was talking empty words that he had got out of some book.

  He would say to people—to rough and ignorant men, to women bent and worn with household drudgery, even to little children—that they were part of a mighty host which had been marching for ages, and would march for ages after they were dead—the host of labor, moving out of slavery into freedom and joy. So they must not think about themselves too much, they must not fear for themselves; whether they won or lost, whether they lived or died, was not the question, but only whether they helped to bring labor nearer to its goal. The old man would go farther yet—he insisted that they would help more if they would have nothing to do with guns, if they would hold themselves quite above the wickedness of their enemies; they must fight, of course, and fight hard—but with their minds, with their souls. And of course most of the people to whom he talked had no idea about such fighting as that; they did not know what he meant, and when he explained it, they could not see what good it would do. It sounded like religion, which most of them despised, because it was preached by hirelings of their oppressors.

  But they knew the old Swede was a remarkable man, because he had read so much, he could tell them things about their own countries, which many of them, being ignorant peasants, had never heard before. He could tell the Greeks about episodes in their history, both ancient and modern, he could tell the Bulgars about their long struggles with the Turks, he could tell the Italians about Garibaldi, who had not been afraid to appeal to the utter-most heroism in his followers. He had not offered them higher wages and “prosperity”; he had said, “Men, I bring you wounds and death!”

  —And then would come vehement arguments; for Garibaldi had been a fighter, and so had Leonidas, and all the other heroes; they had not told their followers to stay quiet and suffer whatever their enemies did! The old man would try to explain, that the world had moved on, that there might be other methods of gaining one’s ends in a democracy. But you could not get Greek and Bulgarian and Italian peasants to see that. Democracy had no meaning to them, they had no votes and no share in government; to them the tyranny of the “G.F.C.”, manifested through gunmen and militia, was exactly the same thing as the tyranny of Austrian and Turk.

  [21]

  The old Swede came into Hal’s tent after supper. He had something to say; and Hal, seeing how feeble he was, made him lie down on the cot—on his face, because of the bruises on his back.

  What he wanted was to persuade Hal to go away from Horton. He said frankly what he did not say to the others, that he had become convinced that the tent-colony was to be destroyed, and he thought that Hal’s life was too valuable to be thrown away. It sounded like harsh doctrine, but it was a fact nevertheless, that ignorant and helpless working-people would have to be sacrificed by thousands in this class-war; but a man who could think, who had the rare gift of leadership—he ought to be saved. How many young men were there who had money and education, who were willing to come and help the workers in their struggles? Such a man was like a watcher on a hill-top, he could spy out the pathway ahead, and speak words of warning and guidance to the marching host of labor.

  Hal had not thought much about the possibility of losing his own life in this struggle; he had been so wrought up about what was happening to other people that he had really forgotten himself. But Edstrom insisted that he could no longer count on the “mystic spell” to protect him; the militia were so enraged that they would kill him as quickly as the next man. And besides, if it came to a fight, the bullets would fly promiscuously, and would not be considerate of what they struck. Hal had been on the ground long enough to know everything, and now the thing for him to do was to go up to Western City, and use his power to stir the public conscience.

  Mary Burke came in, to get her patient and put him to bed in the hospital-tent. Hearing Edstrom’s argument, she backed it up with intense conviction. But Hal would not give in. It was indeed “harsh doctrine”, that he was to consider himself too good to share the dangers of his friends! Could he say that he had more right to life than Mary herself? Could he be sure that in the long run he would be of more use to the working-class?

  Outside, as they talked, there came to them the voices of some of the children, and suddenly Little Jerry opened the flap of the tent and peered in, to say good-night to his pal and play-fellow. And there was another argument! Who could look into the eager eyes of that child, and watch his quick mind unfolding, and say what possibilities of service to the working-class might be hidden in him?

  Little Jerry entered. He had been to the school-tent, where Mrs. Olson had an hour of story-telling before bedtime—thus doing her part to keep up the morale of the community, to banish night-mares from little children’s sleep. The Dago mine-urchin had been hearing a thrilling tale about a thing called a “geenee”, which came out of a bottle, and spread all over the sky, and might be compelled to do a man’s bidding, if only the man knew the spell. “Jesus,” said Little Jerry, “how I wisht I had one o’ them geenees!”

  “What would you do with him?” inquired Hal; and the youngster’s imagination was turned loose in Arabian Nights’ fashion. That “geenee” would come out of his bottle and proceed to the militia-camp; he’d go tramping on the tents, and scattering destruction; he’d smash them militiamen like they was cockroaches! You bet when they seen him on the ball-ground, they wouldn’t come to bother no games!

  “An’ I’d send him to get that feller Jesus Christ,” declared Little Jerry. “He’d lift him up by the back of his neck, and take him and do him like they done Mr. Edstrom!”—This was not some new and terrifying kind of blasphemy of Little Jerry’s invention; it was merely the established manner of reference to
Lieutenant Stangholz!

  Hal laughed and told his little friend about a new kind of “geenee” which Mr. Edstrom proposed to raise up. It was a slow process, bringing into being this labor genius, but some day he would be big enough to take “Jesus Christ” and all the rest of the gunmen and soldiers—and not smash them or torture them—but put them to doing their share of honest work in coal-mines. And with this new and more modern form of fairy story, Hal broke up the argument, and strolled home with the Dago mine-urchin, and went into the tent to say how-dy-do to Rosa, and to take a peep at the little black-eyed Dago doll.

  They could only whisper, for Big Jerry lay asleep on his cot, and sleep was not so easy for him, since his long torturing in prison. Little Jerry had learned to go about on tip-toe, for his father was apt to be cross; it was very distressing, for he had never been that way before. Like many another child, Little Jerry made the discovery that heroism and martyrdom, in their familiar domestic aspects, are not at all the romantic and picturesque things they are portrayed in the books!

  [22]

  The next day chanced to be Sunday, the Greek Easter. The Greeks were accustomed to make much of this holiday, celebrating it with old ritual and festivities, after the fashion of the German Christmas. They got out their national costumes, which every man had brought with him from the old country; they hoisted Greek and American flags, and in the bright sunshine of an April morning they turned out in the square in the midst of the tent-colony to dance their national dances. It was a grand festivity for everyone. The Greeks had a big new tent which they set up on the edge of the field, and they prepared a banquet to which all the strikers were welcome. There was music and sandwiches and coffee, and a ball-game in the afternoon, and dancing and singing in the evening.