King Coal

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Hal had gone on with the quarrel, simply because he had to wait for the
automobile, and because he had endured indignities and had to vent his
anger and disappointment. But now he stopped quarrelling suddenly. His
attention was caught by the marshal's words, "You think the world is run
by talk!" Those were the words Hal's brother always used! And also, the
marshal had said, "You agitators!" For years it had been one of the
taunts Hal had heard from his brother, "You will turn into one of these
agitators!" Hal had answered, with boyish obstinacy, "I don't care if I
do!" And now, here the marshal was calling him an agitator, seriously,
without an apology, without the license of blood relationship. He
repeated the words, "That's what gets me about you agitators--you come
in here trying to stir these people up--"

So that was the way Hal seemed to the "G. F. C."! He had come here
intending to be a spectator, to stand on the deck of the steamer and
look down into the ocean of social misery. He had considered every step
so carefully before he took it! He had merely tried to be a
check-weighman, nothing more! He had told Tom Olson he would not go in
for unionism; he had had a distrust of union organisers, of agitators of
all sorts--blind, irresponsible persons who went about stirring up
dangerous passions. He had come to admire Tom Olson--but that had only
partly removed his prejudices; Olson was only one agitator, not the
whole lot of them!

But all his consideration for the company had counted for nothing;
likewise all his efforts to convince the marshal that he was a
leisure-class person. In spite of all Hal's "tea-party manners," the
marshal had said, "You agitators!" What was he judging by, Hal wondered.
Had he, Hal Warner, come to look like one of these blind, irresponsible
persons? It was time that he took stock of himself!

Had two months of "dirty work" in the bowels of the earth changed him
so? The idea was bound to be disconcerting to one who had been a
favourite of the ladies! Did he talk like it?--he who had been "kissing
the Blarney-stone!" The marshal had said he was "long-winded!" Well, to
be sure, he had talked a lot; but what could the man expect--having shut
him up in jail for two nights and a day, with only his grievances to
brood over! Was that the way real agitators were made--being shut up
with grievances to brood over?

Hal recalled his broodings in the jail. He had been embittered; he had
not cared whether North Valley was dominated by labour unions. But that
had all been a mood, the same as his answer to his brother; that was
jail psychology, a part of his summer course in practical sociology. He
had put it aside; but apparently it had made a deeper impression upon
him than he had realised. It had changed his physical aspect! It had
made him look and talk like an agitator! It had made him
"irresponsible," "blind!"

Yes, that was it! All this dirt, ignorance, disease, this knavery and
oppression, this maiming of men in body and soul in the coal-camps of
America--all this did not exist--it was the hallucination of an
"irresponsible" brain! There was the evidence of Hal's brother and the
camp-marshal to prove it; there was the evidence of the whole world to
prove it! The camp-marshal and his brother and the whole world could not
be "blind!" And if you talked to them about these conditions, they
shrugged their shoulders, they called you a "dreamer," a "crank," they
said you were "off your trolley"; or else they became angry and bitter,
they called you names; they said, "You agitators!"

SECTION 24.

The camp-marshal of North Valley had been "agitated" to such an extent
that he could not stay in his chair. All the harassments of his troubled
career had come pouring into his mind. He had begun pacing the floor,
and was talking away, regardless of whether Hal listened or not.

"A campful of lousy wops! They can't understand any civilised language,
they've only one idea in the world--to shirk every lick of work they
can, to fill up their cars with slate and rock and blame it on some
other fellow, and go off to fill themselves with booze. They won't work
fair, they won't fight fair--they fight with a knife in the back! And
you agitators with your sympathy for them--why the hell do they come to
this country, unless they like it better than their own?"

Hal had heard this question before; but they had to wait for the
automobile--and being sure that he was an agitator now, he would make
all the trouble he could! "The reason is obvious enough," he said.
"Isn't it true that the 'G. F. C.' employs agents abroad to tell them of
the wonderful pay they get in America?"

"Well, they get it, don't they? Three times what they ever got at home!"

"Yes, but it doesn't do them any good. There's another fact which the
'G. F. C.' doesn't mention--that the cost of living is even higher than
the wages. Then, too, they're led to think of America as a land of
liberty; they come, hoping for a better chance for themselves and their
children; but they find a camp-marshal who's off in his geography--who
thinks the Rocky Mountains are somewhere in Russia!"

"I know that line of talk!" exclaimed the other. "I learned to wave the
starry flag when I was a kid. But I tell you, you've got to get coal
mined, and it isn't the same thing as running a Fourth of July
celebration. Some church people make a law they shan't work on
Sunday--and what comes of that? They have thirty-six hours to get soused
in, and so they can't work on Monday!"

"Surely there's a remedy, Cotton! Suppose the company refused to rent
buildings to saloon-keepers?"

"Good God! You think we haven't tried it? They go down to Pedro for the
stuff, and bring back all they can carry--inside them and out. And if we
stop that--then our hands move to some other camps, where they can spend
their money as they please. No, young man, when you have such cattle,
you have to drive them! And it takes a strong hand to do it--a man like
Peter Harrigan. If there's to be any coal, if industry's to go on, if
there's to be any progress--"

"We have that in our song!" laughed Hal, breaking into the
camp-marshal's discourse--

"He keeps them a-roll, that merry old soul--
The wheels of industree;
A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl
And his college facultee!"

"Yes," growled the marshal. "It's easy enough for you smart young chaps
to make verses, while you're living at ease on the old man's bounty. But
that don't answer any argument. Are you college boys ready to take over
his job? Or these Democrat politicians that come in here, talking
fool-talk about liberty, making labour laws for these wops--"

"I begin to understand," said Hal. "You object to the politicians who
pass the laws, you doubt their motives--and so you refuse to obey. But
why didn't you tell me sooner you were an anarchist?"

"Anarchist?" cried the marshal. "_Me_ an anarchist?"

"That's what an anarchist is, isn't it?"

"Good God! If that isn't the limit! You come here, stirring up the
men--a union agitator, or whatever you are--and you know that the first
idea of these people, when they do break loose, is to put dynamite in
the shafts and set fire to the buildings!"

"Do they do that?" There was surprise in Hal's tone.

"Haven't you read what they did in the last big strike? That dough-faced
old preacher, John Edstrom, could tell you. He was one of the bunch."

"No," said Hal, "you're mistaken. Edstrom has a different philosophy.
But others did, I've no doubt. And since I've been here, I can
understand their point of view entirely. When they set fire to the
buildings, it was because they thought you and Alec Stone might be
inside."

The marshal did not smile.

"They want to destroy the properties," continued Hal, "because that's
the only way they can think of to punish the tyranny and greed of the
owners. But, Cotton, suppose some one were to put a new idea into their
heads; suppose some one were to say to them, 'Don't destroy the
properties--_take them!_'"

The other stared. "Take them! So that's your idea of morality!"

"It would be more moral than the method by which Peter got them in the
beginning."

"What method is that?" demanded the marshal, with some appearance of
indignation. "He paid the market-price for them, didn't he?"

"He paid the market-price for politicians. Up in Western City I happen
to know a lady who was a school-commissioner when he was buying
school-lands from the state--lands that were known to contain coal. He
was paying three dollars an acre, and everybody knew they were worth
three thousand."

"Well," said Cotton, "if you don't buy the politicians, you wake up some
fine morning and find that somebody else has bought them. If you have
property, you have to protect it."

"Cotton," said Hal, "you sell Old Peter your time--but surely you might
keep part of your brains! Enough to look at your monthly pay-check and
realise that you too are a wage-slave, not much better than the miners
you despise."

The other smiled. "My check might be bigger, I admit; but I've figured
over it, and I think I have an easier time than you agitators. I'm
top-dog, and I expect to stay on top."

"Well, Cotton, on that view of life, I don't wonder you get drunk now
and then. A dog-fight, with no faith or humanity anywhere! Don't think
I'm sneering at you--I'm talking out of my heart to you. I'm not so
young, nor such a fool, that I haven't had the dog-fight aspect of
things brought to my attention. But there's something in a fellow that
insists he isn't all dog; he has at least a possibility of something
better. Take these poor under-dogs sweating inside the mountain, risking
their lives every hour of the day and night to provide you and me with
coal to keep us warm--to 'keep the wheels of industry a-roll'--"

SECTION 25.

These were the last words Hal spoke. They were obvious enough words, yet
when he looked back upon the coincidence, it seemed to him a singular
one. For while he was sitting there chatting, it happened that the poor
under-dogs inside the mountain were in the midst of one of those
experiences which make the romance and terror of coal-mining. One of the
boys who were employed underground, in violation of the child labour
law, was in the act of bungling his task. He was a "spragger," whose
duty it was to thrust a stick into the wheel of a loaded car to hold it;
and he was a little chap, and the car was in motion when he made the
attempt. It knocked him against the wall--and so there was a load of
coal rolling down grade, pursued too late by half a dozen men. Gathering
momentum, it whirled round a curve and flew from the track, crashing
into timbers and knocking them loose. With the timbers came a shower of
coal-dust, accumulated for decades in these old workings; and at the
same time came an electric light wire, which, as it touched the car,
produced a spark.

And so it was that Hal, chatting with the marshal, suddenly felt, rather
than heard, a deafening roar; he felt the air about him turn into a
living thing which struck him a mighty blow, hurling him flat upon the
floor. The windows of the room crashed inward upon him in a shower of
glass, and the plaster of the ceiling came down on his head in another
shower.

When he raised himself, half stunned, he saw the marshal, also on the
floor; these two conversationalists stared at each other with horrified
eyes. Even as they crouched, there came a crash above their heads, and
half the ceiling of the room came toward them, with a great piece of
timber sticking through. All about them were other crashes, as if the
end of the world had come.

They struggled to their feet, and rushing to the door, flung it open,
just as a jagged piece of timber shattered the side-walk in front of
them. They sprang back again, "Into the cellar!" cried the marshal,
leading the way to the back-stairs.

But before they had started down these stairs, they realised that the
crashing had ceased. "What is it?" gasped Hal, as they stood.

"Mine-explosion," said the other; and after a few seconds they ran to
the door again.

The first thing they saw was a vast pillar of dust and smoke, rising
into the sky above them. It spread before their dazed eyes, until it
made night of everything about them. There was still a rain of lighter
debris pattering down over the village; as they stared, and got their
wits about them, remembering how things had looked before this, they
realised that the shaft-house of Number One had disappeared.

"Blown up, by God!" cried the marshal; and the two ran out into the
street, and looking up, saw that a portion of the wrecked building had
fallen through the roof of the jail above their heads.

The rain of debris had now ceased, but there were clouds of dust which
covered the two men black; the clouds grew worse, until they could
hardly see their way at all. And with the darkness there fell silence,
which, after the sound of the explosion and the crashing of debris,
seemed the silence of death.

For a few moments Hal stood dazed. He saw a stream of men and boys
pouring from the breaker; while from every street there appeared a
stream of women; women old, women young--leaving their cooking on the
stove, their babies in the crib, with their older children screaming at
their skirts, they gathered in swarms about the pit-mouth, which was
like the steaming crater of a volcano.

Cartwright, the superintendent, appeared, running toward the fan-house.
Cotton joined him, and Hal followed. The fan-house was a wreck, the
giant fan lying on the ground a hundred feet away, its blades smashed.
Hal was too inexperienced in mine-matters to get the full significance
of this; but he saw the marshal and the superintendent stare blankly at
each other, and heard the former's exclamation, "That does for us!"
Cartwright said not a word; but his thin lips were pressed together, and
there was fear in his eyes.

Back to the smoking pit-mouth the two men hurried, with Hal following.
Here were a hundred, two hundred women crowded, clamouring questions all
at once. They swarmed about the marshal, the superintendent, the other
bosses--even about Hal, crying hysterically in Polish and Bohemian and
Greek. When Hal shook his head, indicating that he did not understand
them, they moaned in anguish, or shrieked aloud. Some continued to stare
into the smoking pit-mouth; others covered the sight from their eyes, or
sank down upon their knees, sobbing, praying with uplifted hands.

Little by little Hal began to realise the full horror of a
mine-disaster. It was not noise and smoke and darkness, nor frantic,
wailing women; it was not anything above ground, but what was below in
the smoking black pit! It was men! Men whom Hal knew, whom he had worked
with and joked with, whose smiles he had shared; whose daily life he had
come to know! Scores, possibly hundreds of them, they were down here
under his feet--some dead, others injured, maimed. What would they do?
What would those on the surface do for them? Hal tried to get to Cotton,
to ask him questions; but the camp-marshal was surrounded, besieged. He
was pushing the women back, exclaiming, "Go away! Go home!"

What? Go home? they cried. When their men were in the mine? They crowded
about him closer, imploring, shrieking.

"Get out!" he kept exclaiming. "There's nothing you can do! There's
nothing anybody can do yet! Go home! Go home!" He had to beat them back
by force, to keep them from pushing one another into the pit-mouth.

Everywhere Hal looked were women in attitudes of grief: standing rigid,
staring ahead of them as if in a trance; sitting down, rocking to and
fro; on their knees with faces uplifted in prayer; clutching their
terrified children about their skirts. He saw an Austrian woman, a
pitiful, pale young thing with a ragged grey shawl about her head,
stretching out her hands and crying: "Mein Mann! Mein Mann!" Presently
she covered her face, and her voice died into a wail of despair: "O,
mein Mann! O, mein Mann!" She turned away, staggering about like some
creature that has received a death wound. Hal's eyes followed her; her
cry, repeated over and over incessantly, became the leit-motif of this
symphony of horror.

He had read about mine-disasters in his morning newspaper; but here a
mine-disaster became a thing of human flesh and blood. The unendurable
part of it was the utter impotence of himself and of all the world. This
impotence became clearer to him each moment--from the exclamations of
Cotton and of the men he questioned. It was monstrous, incredible--but
it was so! They must send for a new fan, they must wait for it to be
brought in, they must set it up and get it into operation; they must
wait for hours after that while smoke and gas were cleared out of the
main passages of the mine; and until this had been done, there was
nothing they could do--absolutely nothing! The men inside the mine would
stay. Those who had not been killed outright would make their way into
the remoter chambers, and barricade themselves against the deadly "after
damp." They would wait, without food or water, with air of doubtful
quality--they would wait and wait, until the rescue-crew could get to
them!

SECTION 26.

At moments in the midst of this confusion, Hal found himself trying to
recall who had worked in Number One, among the people he knew. He
himself had been employed in Number Two, so he had naturally come to
know more men in that mine. But he had known some from the other
mine--Old Rafferty for one, and Mary Burke's father for another, and at
least one of the members of his check-weighman group--Zamierowski. Hal
saw in a sudden vision the face of this patient little man, who smiled
so good-naturedly while Americans were trying to say his name. And Old
Rafferty, with all his little Rafferties, and his piteous efforts to
keep the favour of his employers! And poor Patrick Burke, whom Hal had
never seen sober; doubtless he was sober now, if he was still alive!

Then in the crowd Hal encountered Jerry Minetti, and learned that
another man who had been down was Farenzena, the Italian whose
"fanciulla" had played with him; and yet another was Judas
Apostolikas--having taken his thirty pieces of silver with him into the
deathtrap!

People were making up lists, just as Hal was doing, by asking questions
of others. These lists were subject to revision--sometimes under
dramatic circumstances. You saw a woman weeping, with her apron to her
eyes; suddenly she would look up, give a piercing cry, and fling her
arms about the neck of some man. As for Hal, he felt as if he were
encountering a ghost when suddenly he recognised Patrick Burke, standing
in the midst of a group of people. He went over and heard the old man's
story--how there was a Dago fellow who had stolen his timbers, and he
had come up to the surface for more; so his life had been saved, while
the timber-thief was down there still--a judgment of Providence upon
mine-miscreants!

Presently Hal asked if Burke had been to tell his family. He had run
home, he said, but there was nobody there. So Hal began pushing his way
through the throngs, looking for Mary, or her sister Jennie, or her
brother Tommie. He persisted in this search, although it occurred to him
to wonder whether the family of a hopeless drunkard would appreciate the
interposition of Providence in his behalf.

He encountered Olson, who had had a narrow escape, being employed as a
surface-man near the hoist. All this was an old story to the organiser,
who had worked in mines since he was eight years old, and had seen many
kinds of disaster. He began to explain things to Hal, in a matter of
fact way. The law required a certain number of openings to every mine,
also an escape-way with ladders by which men could come out; but it cost
good money to dig holes in the ground.

At this time the immediate cause of the explosion was unknown, but they
could tell it was a "dust explosion" by the clouds of coke-dust, and no
one who had been into the mine and seen its dry condition would doubt
what they would find when they went down and traced out the "force" and
its effects. They were supposed to do regular sprinkling, but in such
matters the bosses used their own judgment.

Hal was only half listening to these explanations. The thing was too raw
and too horrible to him. What difference did it make whose fault it was?
The accident had happened, and the question was now how to meet the
emergency! Underneath Olson's sentences he heard the cry of men and boys
being asphyxiated in dark dungeons--he heard the wailing of women, like
a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent
accompaniment of muted strings: "O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!"

They came upon Jeff Cotton again. With half a dozen men to help him, he
was pushing back the crowd from the pit-mouth, and stretching barbed
wired to hold them back. He was none too gentle about it, Hal thought;
but doubtless women are provoking when they are hysterical. He was
answering their frenzied questions, "Yes, yes! We're getting a new fan.
We're doing everything we can, I tell you. We'll get them out. Go home
and wait."

But of course no one would go home. How could a woman sit in her house,
or go about her ordinary tasks of cooking or washing, while her man
might be suffering asphyxiation under the ground? The least she could do
was to stand at the pit-mouth--as near to him as she could get! Some of
them stood motionless, hour after hour, while others wandered through
the village streets, asking the same people, over and over again, if
they had seen their loved ones. Several had turned up, like Patrick
Burke; there seemed always a chance for one more.

SECTION 27.

In the course of the afternoon Hal came upon Mary Burke on the street.
She had long ago found her father, and seen him off to O'Callahan's to
celebrate the favours of Providence. Now Mary was concerned with a
graver matter. Number Two Mine was in danger! The explosion in Number
One had been so violent that the gearing of the fan of the other mine,
nearly a mile up the canyon, had been thrown out of order. So the fan
had stopped; and when some one had gone to Alec Stone, asking that he
bring out the men, Stone had refused. "What do ye think he said?" cried
Mary. "What do ye think? 'Damn the men! Save the mules!'"

Hal had all but lost sight of the fact that there was a second mine in
the village, in which hundreds of men and boys were still at work.
"Wouldn't they know about the explosion?" he asked.

"They might have heard the noise," said Mary. "But they'd not know what
it was; and the bosses won't tell them till they've got out the mules."

For all that he had seen in North Valley, Hal could hardly credit that
story. "How do you know it, Mary?"

"Young Rovetta just told me. He was there, and heard it with his own
ears."

He was staring at her. "Let's go and make sure," he said, and they
started up the main street of the village. On the way they were joined
by others--for already the news of this fresh trouble had begun to
spread. Jeff Cotton went past them in an automobile, and Mary exclaimed,
"I told ye so! When ye see him goin', ye know there's dirty work to be
done!"

They came to the shaft-house of Number Two, and found a swarm of people,
almost a riot. Women and children were shrieking and gesticulating,
threatening to break into the office and use the mine-telephone to warn
the men themselves. And here was the camp-marshal driving them back. Hal
and Mary arrived in time to see Mrs. David, whose husband was at work in
Number Two, shaking her fist in the marshal's face and screaming at him
like a wild-cat. He drew his revolver upon her; and at this Hal started
forward. A blind fury seized him--he would have thrown himself upon the
marshal.

But Mary Burke stopped him, flinging her arms about him, and pinning him
by main force. "No, no!" she cried. "Stay back, man! D'ye want to get
killed?"

He was amazed at her strength. He was amazed also at the vehemence of
her emotion. She was calling him a crazy fool, and names even more
harsh. "Have ye no more sense than a woman? Running into the mouth of a
revolver like that!"

The crisis passed in a moment, for Mrs. David fell back, and then the
marshal put up his weapon. But Mary continued scolding Hal, trying to
drag him away. "Come on now! Come out of here!"

"But, Mary! We must do something!"

"Ye can do nothin', I tell ye! Ye'd ought to have sense enough to know
it. I'll not let ye get yeself murdered! Come away now!" And half by
force and half by cajoling, she got him farther down the street.

He was trying to think out the situation. Were the men in Number Two
really in danger? Could it be possible that the bosses would take such a
chance in cold blood? And right at this moment, with the disaster in the
other mine before their eyes! He could not believe it; and meantime
Mary, at his side, was declaring that the men were in no real danger--it
was only Alec Stone's brutal words that had set her crazy.

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