The Coal War (30 page)

And that was true. This boy was a product of Will Wilmerding's moral work-shop, so to speak; he had the Wilmerding trade-mark on him. He was being put to strange uses, but the material was sound, and the maker knew it.

“If you'll only come and see, Uncle Will!” For Hal believed that if he could once get his friend to know the strikers, the problem would be solved. “Uncle Will” really was one of the most democratic people alive. He would labor over the soul of a poor boy exactly as hard as over the soul of a rich boy; he would welcome the poor boy to the church, and try to mix him up with the rich boy. And he was entirely naive about it—when they wouldn't mix, when he found the church becoming a church of rich people, with a mission on the side for the poor—it really distressed him, he did not know what to make of it. He did not see that the world outside was organized on exactly the opposite principle from his church; that he was trying to teach men to be brothers on Sunday, while all the rest of the week the world was teaching them to be wolves.

“Or rather, you see it,” argued Hal. “You admit that in social life and business, in the newspapers and even in the police-court, the rich boy stands upon a different basis from the poor boy. What blocks your mind is your idea of heaven. The things of this wicked world don't really matter—”

“Not at all! Not at all!” cried the clergyman; for he was what is called a “muscular Christian”, desiring righteousness on earth. “But I see the boy I love going into strange movements, being drawn away from his faith in his Redeemer—”

“You're turning things exactly about, Uncle Will! It was because I gave up the old dogmas that I set out to try to realize something here and now. You can tell yourself that Jesus was a god, and you can't blame men if they don't act like Him. But to me Jesus is a workingman suffering injustice; a proletarian leader, exactly like John Edstrom or Louie the Greek, whom you'll meet down in Horton. As for Peter Harrigan, who comes to worship Jesus in your church—he is the Jewish Pharisee and Roman plunderer who had Jesus nailed on a cross!”

Such is the new theology; like all theologies, it sounds blasphemous when first revealed. It did not convince the assistant rector of St. George's, and Hal was about to give up in despair, when a funny thing happened. He chanced to mention his interview with the publisher of the Western City “Herald”, and how “Tony” had advised him to “go and get himself a girl”.

A startled look came on Wilmerding's face. “Tony Lacking said that!”

“Yes, of course.” And at once Hal realized how this remark must hit his friend. The clergyman was devoting his life's energies to combatting “the sinful lusts of the flesh”; the precise point on which he was keenest was that young men should not get themselves “girls”! Hal saw his hands clench, and his face grow ruddier than he had ever seen it before. Yes, there could be no question about it, there was wickedness in high places in Western City! And who was to rebuke this wickedness if not one ordained in the line of the prophets and apostles? Because of that infamous jeer of the publisher of the “Herald”, the assistant rector of St. George's would face the scandal of being seen at a trade-union meeting!

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The meeting came off, and a couple of thousand people heard Jim Moylan and John Harmon tell what they had seen and experienced in the strike-field. Also Mother Mary, who had been shipped out of the strike-district, delivered one of her “tirades”, as the papers never failed to describe them. And then came the turn of Hal Warner.

It had never occurred to Hal that he was an orator, or could become one; but he had the main essential of true oratory—something to say, something he cared so much about that he had no time to think how he said it. If he could make this audience see and feel what was happening in the strike-country, some of them might get busy and save Minetti and Rovetta from torture! He told the story, with all the fervor and earnestness he could muster; he told it so that women wept, and men shouted with indignation. When he had finished they crowded about him to shake his hand and assure him of their sympathy and support.

So Hal went home, thinking he had really accomplished something; but next morning he got the papers, and some of the conceit was taken out of him. The papers featured the “tirade” of Mother Mary—for the obvious reason that the prejudice against her discounted what she said. One paper made no mention of Hal whatever, while in “Tony” Lacking's organ he had four lines, as follows: “Another speaker was Harold Warner, recently arrested in Pedro for disorderly conduct. Young Warner denounced the militia authorities in unmeasured terms, declaring that General Wrightman had the manners and ideals of a bandit-chief.” Now, Hal had said those words, and considered them well-chosen; but he was forced to realize that, standing alone, they were not convincing to the casual reader!

Next morning the convention gathered, and Hal lured his group of friends still farther into the “lime-light”. “Among those who watched the proceedings from the gallery were Edward S. Warner, the coal-operator, Mrs. Edward S. Warner, Junior, Mrs. Adelaide Wyatt, and the Reverend William Wilmerding.”

There were five hundred delegates to this gathering, representing three hundred labor organizations, with a total of more than fifty thousand members. Things began to boil from the first moment, for Johann Hartman had succeeded in smuggling out a letter from the county-jail, and there was the story of its horrors in accents of unmistakeable truth—the starvation, the vermin, the cold, the torturing of men with bayonets and cold water. The reading of this letter almost broke up the proceedings at the start, for Mother Mary sprang to her feet and called upon the delegates to march forthwith to the Capitol to demand that the Governor should stop these outrages. There was vehement discussion, back and forth, and when the politicians among the labor men voted down the motion, Jim Moylan and Mother Mary and some fifty of the delegates went out and marched for themselves!

The rest stayed to listen to the deputy state labor commissioner, who told of his efforts to investigate peonage in the camps; also to Louie the Greek, who had been let out of jail the day before; also to George Tareski, an old Croatian miner whom Louie had brought with him, to tell the delegates how the militia had arrested him and set him to digging his own grave.

Tareski had worked for twenty years in the mines of this district; for ten years he had been an American citizen, and had a wife and three children on a little ranch which he had bought with the savings of his labor. He had written a letter to a fellow-countryman in the Hazleton camp, asking him not to work as a strike-breaker, but to come to the tent-colony, where he would be taken good care of. This letter had fallen into the hands of the mine-superintendent, and poor Tareski, setting out in the morning with his pick and shovel to hunt rabbits, was seized by two militiamen, taken to their camp, and locked in a cellar for three days without being allowed to communicate with anyone.

“The place was dirty, full of lice,” said the old Croatian. “I told the soldier up there, ‘I can not sleep there, I got to stand up all night.' Then some officer come in, and on Sunday morning he took me out of jail and he got my pick and shovel, and two soldiers took me away from the house and showed me the ground, marked already, and he says, ‘Here is your job. Two and a half feet wide, six feet long, eight feet deep. You dig this.' And while I was digging for a while the soldiers came around and they asked the guard, ‘What is that going to be, a toilet?' And he said, ‘We got a toilet.' And the soldier says, ‘That looks to me like somebody going to get buried in there.' And the guard says, ‘There's the man, who is digging it.' And after that some of them came around and say, ‘What are you going to use, a blanket or a coffin?' Some of them say blanket and some of them coffin, and the officers come and they put me in front of the line and told me to be ready. I think they are going to shoot me. They go to a place on the hill, a little bit level, and then a man come to me and talk to me in Polish language. He ask how I am, and I say, ‘Not much.' And he say, ‘Friend, I am sorry to tell you, but you are digging your own grave, you are going to be shot tomorrow morning.' He told me that in my own language. And I say, ‘Have you heard about it? What for?' He say, ‘I don't know. You must have done something very bad.' ‘You are sure?' I say. ‘Yes, everybody knows it already. They are sure going to kill you tomorrow morning. About three men going to shoot you.' And then I fell down in the hole, because he make me believe. I go to see officer, to send for my wife and children before they kill me, and he say, ‘Nothing doing!' I was crying. I say, ‘Give me a piece of paper. I want to write to them something.' And he say, ‘Nothing doing!' He say, ‘Dig and hurry up. If you don't dig I raise hell with you. If you don't dig I shoot you before time.' But I feel so bad I can't do any more, because he make me believe. And when I am so weak I can't dig, the officer put me in the ground in the cellar and then shut the door. And after a while another officer come and he ask, ‘What's the matter?' And they say to him, ‘I guess that fellow is pretty near crazy. You better do something for him.' And he say, ‘Now I turn you loose. You go home and stay with your wife and children, and don't write any more. Don't talk anything, and don't go any place from the place where you are living, because if you do I get you again.' When I come to my house my woman was pretty near crazy. She sent her brother to telephone to soldiers, if she couldn't come over there and see me or something, and they wouldn't let her come at all. And when I got home I dressed myself, I clean myself, I get some of them lice off me that I got in the jail, and then I come to union headquarters.”

Such stories as this, told with the simple pathos of the poor, sent Lucy May home to make her husband's life a burden; they sent Will Wilmerding home to his study to pray. After his prayer—possibly because of it—he paid a visit to the office of Judge Vagleman, chief counsel for the General Fuel Company, and one of the trustees of St. George's. For an hour that eminent lawyer argued with his assistant rector, pointing out the other side of the complex social problem. What did Wilmerding know about this Tareski, for example? About the letter he had written to his fellow-countryman? Suppose it had been a threat of murder, instead of a polite invitation to quit work and come to the tent-colony! Here was a letter just received from Bernard Vagleman, the judge's son in Pedro, telling of his efforts to convict strikers who had ambushed four mine-guards in an automobile and shot them. The host of perjured witnesses the strikers were bringing! Was it not a fact that the rank and file of these poor wretches were being intimidated by agitators? It would surely be a calamity if a man of influence like the assistant rector should let himself be drawn into such a controversy, to give public encouragement to law-breakers!

After the clergyman had left, Judge Vagleman called up Peter Harrigan; and Peter Harrigan called up Dr. Penniman, and there was a terrible scene between Uncle Will and his rector, about which Hal did not hear until long afterwards. Dr. Penniman was unsparing in his indignation. How could Wilmerding feel that he had the right to go over his rector's head, to compromise the church, to bring scandal upon its hallowed name? It was not merely an act of folly, it was insubordination, rank presumption! So Wilmerding went back to his study to pray some more!

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Meantime the convention was continuing its sessions. A few of the delegates wished to call a general strike; others wished to order an investigation. Matters were brought to a head by Mother Mary, who made another speech, urging her idea that the convention should march in a body and demand an interview with Governor Barstow. So it was voted, and on the following morning occurred a march of five hundred delegates, and perhaps a thousand sympathizers, to the white marble State House on the hill. At the head marched Mother Mary and Louie the Greek, carrying an American flag, and behind them came the delegates singing the union song. They went quietly, but there was resolution in every face. Their mood had been voiced by the little old woman: “When you go to the Governor, don't say Your Honor, for he has no honor. Don't call him Your Excellency, for there is nothing excellent about him. Go up there and demand your rights and see that you get them!”

The little cowboy Governor was of course in a panic. At first he refused to meet the delegates at all, but finally he consented, provided their questions should be submitted in writing, and provided they should not ask any questions he did not want to answer. With a burly detective on each side of him, he came to the legislative chamber and listened to plain talk from the miners' leaders.

A more pitiful exhibition of futility could hardly have been given by a public man. First he backed down squarely from the position he had permitted General Wrightman to take; it had never been the intention of the military commission to “try” the strikers, it was purely a commission for “investigation”. But what was the difference, demanded the delegates—so long as the General could put men in jail and keep them
incommunicado
for as long a time as he wished? The Governor declared that the civil authorities of Pedro County had refused to prosecute the cases: in answer to which the strikers presented in a couple of hours a telegram from the District Attorney, declaring that he had never refused to prosecute a case, and never would refuse. The Governor repeated his usual meaningless platitudes, that he wished to “see justice done”, that he was “determined to enforce the law”. The strikers answered by presenting a telegram from Pedro, to the effect that General Wrightman had that morning turned out his troops and cleared all the principal streets of the town, shutting up the inhabitants in their homes while a crowd of two hundred strike-breakers were brought through to the coal-camps!