The American: A Middle Western Legend

by Howard Fast

  And then, in the late sixties, it was discovered that there was coal under the green buttocks of their hills. That wasn’t merely a local manifestation; a similar process went on in Ohio, in Illinois, in Wales, in Belgium, and in Germany. But to these Pennsylvania farmers, it was local and unique. Men came into their valley and bought land. Overnight there was more hard money present than the valley had known in a century, and good money was paid to those who would work in the shafts—more cash for a week’s work than a farmer saw in a whole year. And with that money, a man could buy incredible things, slick-action guns to replace their old squirrel rifles—and who could live without such a gun, once having seen it?—bright goods for dresses, sweet candy, canned goods with a different taste, upholstered chairs, such as no one in the valley had ever owned, high-heeled shoes for the women, ready-made dresses, and so many other things that it would be impossible to list them all. Not only that, but one did not have to make a difficult trip to Pittsburgh to buy; no sooner had the company begun to sink the shafts than they opened stores right there in the valley, and the stores had stocked shelves six feet high. The first farmers who had sold out to the coal company walked around with pockets that bulged with cash and silver, and after they had bought everything they could see that they wanted, they still had money left, so the company opened a bank for them, and men from the company spoke to each farmer, convincing him why he should deposit his money in the bank.

  The farmers in the hills and up and down the valley heard the news and flocked in to see; when they saw what their neighbors had bought, they turned green with envy, and all the way back to their farms their wives nagged about what the others had and they didn’t have. Days went by and they resisted their wives’ nagging, but even so they were remembering the fine new Winchesters, the beautiful hunting boots, the silver spurs, the checked shirts, the Stetson hats, the cases of rings and brooches and necklaces—because a man wants to give things to a woman he cares for, and when his neighbor gives and he can’t, it eats into him.

  Then men from the company made their way into the hills. They had a proposition for the farmers, a proposition that was beautiful to hear and simple to understand. There were days when a farmer had a little time on his hands; suppose they signed up to work in the shafts on those free days? They would be well paid, and the company was willing to give any farmer who signed a contract an advance bonus of fifty dollars. Of course, it was not really a bonus; it would be deducted from their pay, but slowly, just a few dollars a week, and look how high the wages were! What farmer could resist such an offer as this; not only did they sign, but their sons signed, and every company agent rode out of the hills with pockets bulging with contracts. So the hill farmers came in and bought as well as the valley farmers, and, soon after, they came in to work in the shafts. And what the company men had said was true; they were well paid for their work in the shafts; only a dollar or two was deducted to repay the original debt. Not only that, but when a farmer had to go back for plowing, the company man in the store opened a big ledger and said, “Sign here, and you can have anything you want on long-term credit.”

  Never had the valley dreamed of such prosperity. Indeed, some of the farmers decided not to go back to their farms for the plowing, but to work the year round in the shafts where they could make twice what anyone could on a farm. And to make it easy for them, so that they would not have to kill themselves trudging to their farms and back, the company put up a line of wooden houses next to the store. It’s true that these houses were each attached to the next, that they were built out of green wood almost paper-thin, and that each contained only three rooms; but they were painted bright green and red, and they rented for a ridiculously small sum, on the average of three dollars a month per house. It more than made sense to live in them, and after the first batch of houses were rented, the company just kept on building, for more and more farmers saw the practicality of living in town.

  Nobody was surprised when the company built the saloon. There had been a tavern in the valley where you could buy hard cider, and certain individuals dealt in corn, but this was the first saloon. In the past, drinking had been a thing for parties, or infares as they called them locally, or something before dinner to whet one’s taste. The faith of these folk did not hold with drunkenness, and liquor did not go well with work in the fields. But men found that after ten or twelve hours in the shafts, there was a hunger that only hard liquor could ease, and there was not much protest when the company brought in the first saloon, or the second, or the third. It is true that old Pastor MacNulley raged about the wages of sin, but the wages of coal mining were something you could put your hand on—and, for some reason, the farmers felt they were not to blame. MacNulley blamed them; but they had seen this thing happen in such a way that no human being could resist, and as MacNulley continued to preach, church attendance fell off.

  But no one could blame the company either. During those first two or three years, the company was very, very good about everything. Take the saloons; the men found it hard to tell their wives that they had spent a dollar or two in one evening drinking, so they were grateful when the company opened ledgers in the saloons, and all one had to do to get a drink was sign his name. For that reason, even the God-fearing men did not protest too hard when the company began to bring in girls and make a brothel a subsidiary of each saloon. By now, several thousand families were living in lines of wooden shacks in the valley, and in spite of the high wages, most of the families found that they somehow could not quite make ends meet. On the farms, a shortage in terms of food was unknown, but, naturally, they had all sorts of things here that they did not have on the farms. Rather than give this up, they mortgaged their farms. In this too, the company cooperated, and the representative of the company bank handed out mortgage money right and left. A new wave of prosperity hit the town, which was now called Coal Center, but hard on it the people discovered that somehow they were losing their farms. Short-term, high-interest mortgages turned them into workers overnight, for by the time a thousand dollars of mortgage money had been used to pay store and saloon debts, very little was left.

  After those first few years, a change began to take place in the manner of the company representatives. Now, in everything they said, they made vague reference to the owners back east; the owners ordered this and that done. Bad times had hit the country. The rent in the houses went up to five dollars a month; the owners did that because of bad times. Week by week, wages were lowered; the farmers, who were no longer farmers, were given to understand that now there was more than enough coal, and the only reason the company remained in the valley and continued to sink shafts was to keep the people from starvation. But this must not be a one-sided thing. The people of the valley must cooperate too. They must not grumble because wages dropped. They must not spread these ridiculous rumors that in Pittsburgh prices were very much cheaper. Didn’t they know that it cost money to haul the stuff in from Pittsburgh?

  But even if the people did grumble, there was not much more that they could do. In the time of a decade, their world had changed marvelously, and they were a part of the change, and because their farms were like a dream now, they accepted the change more or less passively. The town was a large community now; it had three newspapers and stores and there were new saloons the company didn’t own. It had habits of its own now. Morning began with a shrieking steam blast; out of the shacks came the men and children, down to boys of eight and nine, lunchpails in hand. A torrent of humanity flowed toward the mine. The very landscape they passed through had changed. There were new hills, black and ugly; the old earth was scarred and subdued. The torrent flowed down into the earth and in the bowels of the earth they remained until darkness. Then the whistle shrieked again, and the earth, gave up the old men, the young men, the children, now dirty, soot-covered, soul-weary in a dragging line that returned to the shacks.

  That was how coal came to the beautiful Monongahela Valley, and along with it came hunger. Wages cont
inued to drop; each year there was a period of partial layoff, and every six or seven years, the mine closed down and there was no work or wages at all. These intervals were called, vaguely, bad times, and during these bad times the people became more fleshless than ever, babies wailed with hunger, and the mouths of the women grew thin and bitter. In the first period of bad times, the company bank failed; nobody understood how the bank could fail even though the company continued, but the bank failed and that was all there was to it. It was then that an agitator, as he was called, a heavy-set man with a foreign accent, came into Coal Center and began to talk about something called a union. But the people there had known few foreigners and resented them, and therefore nobody made much of a fuss when the heavy-set man was found down by the riverbank with a bullet in his head.

  It was always said that things couldn’t become worse, but as the years went by, they did become worse and worse. Semi-starvation became a constant factor; the new generation of valley folk had grown up small and disease-ridden; and along with everything else, hope was disappearing.

  It was in this situation, about a generation after the mine had been opened, that the miners came together and decided not to work the mine until wages were raised. They didn’t know that what they were doing was striking because they didn’t know the word then, although they learned it soon enough. And in retaliation, the company closed the mine.

  Word came through to the outside, and it was into this dying town mat Albert Parsons came in 1886.

  III

  It must be understood that Lucy Parsons was not alone, a woman bereaved eternally, one person weeping for the defeat of a midwest politician, Altgeld by name; it must be understood in the context and fullness of things that if she wept, many wept, that if she made connection with the past and saw the future darkly, others did. Her actions, however, were in relation to a man hanged so long ago, and going through those things of his she had saved and treasured, she found a letter, one of those letters which he would write always, a letter in which he talked to her simply, reaching out for her strength and love, and which he began, always:

  My Dear Wife:

  … I reached the place about 2 o’clock P.M., and found myself a total stranger in a country town, which is a quaint, singular looking place, located in the narrow valley along the banks of the Monongahela and overshadowed by the towering hills of this region. The streets are dotted with groups of three and four men, coarsely-clad, grim-visaged, sturdy and solid; the weather cold and shivering; the prospect all but inviting. Not knowing which way to turn, I naturally inquired for the office of the Messenger. Once there, I inquired for the proprietor, Mr. Winehart, and at once introduced myself to him. I found him to be a young man of 35, a genuine type of the modern American—lank, thin-visaged, keen-eyed, quick-witted and resolute. After a few words, I inquired if he had received my note. He replied that he had, and had published it; upon request, I was handed a copy of the paper.

  The day was cold and depressing, the town uninviting, and the man who stood before me chilly as an iceberg. Imagine, then, my situation when I read the comment on the announcement [of a mass meeting to be held by Parsons], which advised the workingmen of Coal Center to receive Agitator Parsons with—rotten eggs, and throw him into the river! I said to myself: “Steady, steady—there is hard work ahead!”

  “Well,” said I, looking up and addressing the editor who stood nearby, “how is this?”

  “That’s our opinion of agitators in this region,” he replied.

  “I should expect such treatment from the coal syndicate,” said I, “but not from those whom it oppresses.”

  I remembered that the Messenger was the only paper in the valley which stood by the miners in their long strike, and while wondering at its hostility toward me the editor said:

  “Well, sir, these are our sentiments. These infernal agitators are a curse to us. They have ruined this valley. They have kept the miners idle, and they ought to be drowned.”

  While he spoke his jaws were firmly set and his countenance determined and pale.

  “Well, sir,” said I, keeping perfectly cool, “I have seen the papers of this valley abusing you because you stood for the struggling miners, and I judged from it you were something of an agitator yourself,” and I eyed him closely and I perceived I had fired a shot that struck him.

  “Our valley is ruined and these agitators have done the work.”

  I paid no attention to this latter remark and began to read his paper. After five or ten minutes, I said to him:

  “I am a stranger here and, of course, don’t know whether I can get a hall or not. Do you know of any hall?”

  “Yes,” said he, “there are two, but I think Guiske’s is the best.”

  A smile of satisfaction ran over my face as I reflected and said to myself: “I have melted this man; he need not have given me this information, and on principle that “he who hesitates is lost,” I said: “Do you know Mr. Guiske and would you spare the time to walk down that way?”

  “I don’t care if I do,” said he, and putting on his coat we strolled leisurely down-town together. Meantime, I was engaged in conquering my antagonist. I said nothing about Socialism, but asked questions about truck stores, coal bosses, miners, etc., etc. Walking three blocks, we did not find the proprietor of the hall in, and upon the invitation of the editor we strolled around the town to find him. This took another half hour.

  Well, then we returned to Guiske’s store. An hour or more passed in casual conversation when the hallman appeared. Winehart engaged the hall, which is upstairs over two brick stores owned by the same man. He accompanied us to the hotel. Winehart said: “This is Mr. Parsons from Chicago; give him the best you have in the house, and send the bill to me.” He remained with me until 1 o’clock that night, and on bidding me goodnight said: “Parsons, I made a mistake,” and, holding my hand, he continued: “Count me your friend; put down my name for the Alarm. We must have you here again right away, and we will endeavor to raise the money and send for you from Pittsburgh before you come back to Chicago, when we will have over a thousand men to hear you.”

  The impression created upon the audience that night was tremendous. It seemed to stun them. They acted as a man who has been travelling a whole day and felicitating himself that he is near his journey’s end when it suddenly dawns upon him he has travelled the wrong direction, and must retrace his steps. He stops, sits down to rest, and ponders.

  Things are in a bad way in this region. There are no leaders among the wage slaves here.

  Oh, that I had the means! I would batter down the ramparts of wrong and oppression and plant the flag of humanity on the ruins. Truly the harvest is great, but it takes time and means, and no great means either, but more than we have. But patience, patience.

  Your loving husband,

  Albert R. Parsons

  January 26, 1886

  It was not this old letter that made Lucy Parsons weep. Her memories of the past were in the past, and along with them was the cutting edge of her sorrow. She wept because Altgeld had gone down, and because so much of hope had gone down with him.

  PART SEVEN

  The Coda

  Watching the small, thin man who argued the case for the union, Judge Kohlsaat indulged in philosophical reflection. The mighty are fallen and they become of low degree—or words to that effect occurred to him; and today, on the eleventh of March in 1902, the world was neither interested in nor concerned with a Chicago labor lawyer, John Peter Altgeld by name, who was engaged in pleading the case of the local cabmen’s union. Idly, Judge Kohlsaat wondered what the half-organized, struggling union could have paid Altgeld to make it worth his while to prepare long and scholarly briefs, and to stand in court for two long days arguing them. Certainly not half as much as a random corporation fee ten years ago, certainly not a quarter as much—perhaps nothing at all, for although labor leaders were accused of having vast sums of money with which to promote their activities, Judge Kohlsaat coul
d never quite decide where all this money came from.

  Judge Kohlsaat was bored; invariably, injunction proceedings bored him, for such a parade was made of rights, justice, constitutionality, precedent, custom, freedom, liberty, offense against liberty, and so forth and so on that the words lost all meaning; and in time it seemed that the very words were laughing at each other. And today, several times, Judge Kohlsaat had to restrain the impulse to say to the two lawyers, “Now look here, both of you. A dirty little combine of immigrant Irish and Central European hack drivers have set themselves up against the Pennsylvania Railroad. I repeat, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Such things can’t be. Let us be reasonable, gentlemen. Let us stop all this wearisome nonsense. This is twentieth-century America.” The impulse, however, was restrained; the long hours passed. The judge occupied himself variously. Sometimes he glanced at the briefs, which rested before him. Technically, they were to have been read and digested before this session opened, but after years of reading lengthy briefs, they turned into bitter medicine, and the judge was content to glance at them now and then and check some of the statements therein contained against the arguments of the attorneys. The judge would follow the progress of a fly across his stand. He would straighten creases in his robe. He would hum to himself. He would doodle with his pencil. He had a long history of investigation of means and methods of passing time, and in the course of a day he would inquire into all of them.

  Sometimes, lie listened to what the lawyers were saying. Altgeld interested him; Altgeld had been a judge too; Altgeld had been governor of the state; Altgeld had smashed Cleveland—the judge blinked and stared at the dry little man with the rasping voice. That man! Life is something or other, the judge reflected. That man pardoned the anarchists. The judge wondered why. A miscalculation, perhaps, one of those brutal miscalculations that change the whole course of a man’s life. How he must have regretted it! Why, without that pardon he could have been anything, anything at all—lived in the governor’s mansion all the rest of his days. Well, one man did this and another did that, and there was no understanding why. But run with the dogs and you become a dog yourself—and here was Altgeld.