King Coal

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Hal's tone, more than his words, made an impression. Edward thought
before he spoke. "Well, what's your new basis?"

"Just now I'm in the midst of a strike, and I can hardly stop to
explain."

"You don't think of Dad in all this madness?"

"I think of Dad, and of you too, Edward; but this is hardly the time--"

"If ever in the world there was a time, this is it!"

Hal groaned inwardly. "All right," he said, "sit down. I'll try to give
you some idea how I got swept into this."

He began to tell about the conditions he had found in this stronghold of
the "G. F. C." As usual, when he talked about it, he became absorbed in
its human aspects; a fervour came into his tone, he was carried on, as
he had been when he tried to argue with the officials in Pedro. But his
eloquence was interrupted, even as it had been then; he discovered that
his brother was in such a state of exasperation that he could not listen
to a consecutive argument.

It was the old, old story; it had been thus as far back as Hal could
remember. It seemed one of the mysteries of nature, how she could have
brought two such different temperaments out of the same parentage.
Edward was practical and positive; he knew what he wanted in the world,
and he knew how to get it; he was never troubled with doubts, nor with
self-questioning, nor with any other superfluous emotions; he could not
understand people who allowed that sort of waste in their mental
processes. He could not understand people who got "swept into things."

In the beginning, he had had with Hal the prestige of the elder brother.
He was handsome as a young Greek god, he was strong and masterful;
whether he was flying over the ice with sure, strong strokes, or cutting
the water with his glistening shoulders, or bringing down a partridge
with the certainty and swiftness of a lightning stroke, Edward was the
incarnation of Success. When he said that one's ideas were "rot," when
he spoke with contempt of "mollycoddles"--then indeed one suffered in
soul, and had to go back to Shelley and Ruskin to renew one's courage.

The questioning of life had begun very early with Hal; there seemed to
be something in his nature which forced him to go to the roots of
things; and much as he looked up to his wonderful brother, he had been
made to realise that there were sides of life to which this brother was
blind. To begin with, there were religious doubts; the distresses of
mind which plague a young man when first it dawns upon him that the
faith he has been brought up in is a higher kind of fairy-tale. Edward
had never asked such questions, apparently. He went to church, because
it was the thing to do; more especially because it was pleasing to the
young lady he wished to marry to have him put on stately clothes, and
escort her to a beautiful place of music and flowers and perfumes, where
she would meet her friends, also in stately clothes. How abnormal it
seemed to Edward that a young man should give up this pleasant custom,
merely because he could not be sure that Jonah had swallowed a whale!

But it was when Hal's doubts attacked his brother's week-day
religion--the religion of the profit-system--that the controversy
between them had become deadly. At first Hal had known nothing about
practical affairs, and it had been Edward's duty to answer his
questions. The prosperity of the country had been built up by strong
men; and these men had enemies--evil-minded persons, animated by
jealousy and other base passions, seeking to tear down the mighty
structure. At first this devil-theory had satisfied the boy; but later
on, as he had come to read and observe, he had been plagued by doubts.
In the end, listening to his brother's conversation, and reading the
writings of so-called "muck-rakers," the realisation was forced upon him
that there were two types of mind in the controversy--those who thought
of profits, and those who thought of human beings.

Edward was alarmed at the books Hal was reading; he was still more
alarmed when he saw the ideas Hal was bringing home from college. There
must have been some strange change in Harrigan in a few years; no one
had dreamed of such ideas when Edward was there! No one had written
satiric songs about the faculty, or the endowments of eminent
philanthropists!

In the meantime Edward Warner Senior had had a paralytic stroke, and
Edward Junior had taken charge of the company. Three years of this had
given him the point of view of a coal-operator, hard and set for a
life-time. The business of a coal-operator was to buy his labour cheap,
to turn out the maximum product in the shortest time, and to sell the
product at the market price to parties whose credit was satisfactory. If
a concern was doing that, it was a successful concern; for any one to
mention that it was making wrecks of the people who dug the coal, was to
be guilty of sentimentality and impertinence.

Edward had heard with dismay his brother's announcement that he meant to
study industry by spending his vacation as a common labourer. However,
when he considered it, he was inclined to think that the idea might not
be such a bad one. Perhaps Hal would not find what he was looking for;
perhaps, working with his hands, he might get some of the nonsense
knocked out of his head!

But now the experiment had been made, and the revelation had burst upon
Edward that it had been a ghastly failure. Hal had not come to realise
that labour was turbulent and lazy and incompetent, needing a strong
hand to rule it; on the contrary, he had become one of these turbulent
ones himself! A champion of the lazy and incompetent, an agitator, a
fomenter of class-prejudice, an enemy of his own friends, and of his
brother's business associates!

Never had Hal seen Edward in such a state of excitement. There was
something really abnormal about him, Hal realised; it puzzled him
vaguely while he talked, but he did not understand it until his brother
told how he had come to be here. He had been attending a dinner-dance at
the home of a friend, and Percy Harrigan had got him on the telephone at
half past eleven o'clock at night. Percy had had a message from
Cartwright, to the effect that Hal was leading a riot in North Valley;
Percy had painted the situation in such lurid colours that Edward had
made a dash and caught the midnight train, wearing his evening clothes,
and without so much as a tooth-brush with him!

Hal could hardly keep from bursting out laughing. His brother, his
punctilious and dignified brother, alighting from a sleeping-car at
seven o'clock in the morning, wearing a dress suit and a silk hat! And
here he was, Edward Warner Junior, the fastidious, who never paid less
than a hundred and fifty dollars for a suit of clothes, clad in a
"hand-me-down" for which he had expended twelve dollars and forty-eight
cents in a "Jew-store" in a coal-town!

SECTION 11.

But Edward would not stop for a single smile; his every faculty was
absorbed in the task he had before him, to get his brother out of this
predicament, so dangerous and so humiliating. Hal had come to a town
owned by Edward's business friends, and had proceeded to meddle in their
affairs, to stir up their labouring people and imperil their property.
That North Valley was the property of the General Fuel Company--not
merely the mines and the houses, but likewise the people who lived in
them--Edward seemed to have no doubt whatever; Hal got only exclamations
of annoyance when he suggested any other point of view. Would there have
been any town of North Valley, if it had not been for the capital and
energy of the General Fuel Company? If the people of North Valley did
not like the conditions which the General Fuel Company offered them,
they had one simple and obvious remedy--to go somewhere else to work.
But they stayed; they got out the General Fuel Company's coal, they took
the General Fuel Company's wages--

"Well, they've stopped taking them now," put in Hal.

All right, that was their affair, replied Edward. But let them stop
because they wanted to--not because outside agitators put them up to it.
At any rate, let the agitators not include a member of the Warner
family!

The elder brother pictured old Peter Harrigan on his way back from the
East; the state of unutterable fury in which he would arrive, the storm
he would raise in the business world of Western City. Why, it was
unimaginable, such a thing had never been heard of! "And right when
we're opening up a new mine--when we need every dollar of credit we can
get!"

"Aren't we big enough to stand off Peter Harrigan?" inquired Hal.

"We have plenty of other people to stand off," was the answer. "We don't
have to go out of our way to make enemies."

Edward spoke, not merely as the elder brother, but also as the money-man
of the family. When the father had broken down from over-work, and had
been changed in one terrible hour from a driving man of affairs into a
childish and pathetic invalid, Hal had been glad enough that there was
one member of the family who was practical; he had been perfectly
willing to see his brother shoulder these burdens, while he went off to
college, to amuse himself with satiric songs. Hal had no
responsibilities, no one asked anything of him--except that he would not
throw sticks into the wheels of the machine his brother was running.
"You are living by the coal industry! Every dollar you spend comes from
it--"

"I know it! I know it!" cried Hal. "That's the thing that torments me!
The fact that I'm living upon the bounty of such wage-slaves--"

"Oh, cut it out!" cried Edward. "That's not what I mean!"

"I know--but it's what _I_ mean! From now on I mean to know about the
people who work for me, and what sort of treatment they get. I'm no
longer your kid-brother, to be put off with platitudes."

"You know ours are union mines, Hal--"

"Yes, but what does that mean? How do we work it? Do we give the men
their weights?"

"Of course! They have their check-weighmen."

"But then, how do we compete with the operators in this district, who
pay for a ton of three thousand pounds?"

"We manage it--by economy."

"Economy? I don't see Peter Harrigan wasting anything here!" Hal paused
for an answer, but none came. "Do we buy the check-weighmen? Do we bribe
the labour leaders?"

Edward coloured slightly. "What's the use of being nasty, Hal? You know
I don't do dirty work."

"I don't mean to be nasty, Edward; but you must know that many a
business-man can say he doesn't do dirty work, because he has others do
it for him. What about politics, for instance? Do we run a machine, and
put our clerks and bosses into the local offices?"

Edward did not answer, and Hal persisted, "I mean to know these things!
I'm not going to be blind any more!"

"All right, Hal--you can know anything you want; but for God's sake, not
now! If you want to be taken for a man, show a man's common sense!
Here's Old Peter getting back to Western City to-morrow night! Don't you
know that he'll be after me, raging like a mad bull? Don't you know that
if I tell him I can do nothing--that I've been down here and tried to
pull you away--don't you know he'll go after Dad?"

Edward had tried all the arguments, and this was the only one that
counted. "You must keep him away from Dad!" exclaimed Hal.

"You tell me that!" retorted the other. "And when you know Old Peter!
Don't you know he'll get at him, if he has to break down the door of the
house? He'll throw the burden of his rage on that poor old man! You've
been warned about it clearly; you know it may be a matter of life and
death to keep Dad from getting excited. I don't know what he'd do; maybe
he'd fly into a rage with you, maybe he'd defend you. He's old and weak,
he's lost his grip on things. Anyhow, he'd not let Peter abuse you--and
like as not he'd drop dead in the midst of the dispute! Do you want to
have that on your conscience, along with the troubles of your workingmen
friends?"

SECTION 12.

Hal sat staring in front of him, silent. Was it a fact that every man
had something in his life which palsied his arm, and struck him helpless
in the battle for social justice?

When he spoke again, it was in a low voice. "Edward, I'm thinking about
a young Irish boy who works in these mines. He, too, has a father; and
this father was caught in the explosion. He's an old man, with a wife
and seven other children. He's a good man, the boy's a good boy. Let me
tell you what Peter Harrigan has done to them!"

"Well," said Edward, "whatever it is, it's all right, you can help them.
They won't need to starve."

"I know," said Hal, "but there are so many others; I can't help them
all. And besides, can't you see, Edward--what I'm thinking about is not
charity, but _justice_. I'm sure this boy, Tim Rafferty, loves his
father just exactly as much as I love my father; and there are other old
men here, with sons who love them--"

"Oh, Hal, for Christ's sake!" exclaimed Edward, in a sort of explosion.
He had no other words to express his impatience. "Do you expect to take
all the troubles in the world on your shoulders?" And he sprang up and
caught the other by the arm. "Boy, you've got to come away from here!"

Hal got up, without answering. He seemed irresolute, and his brother
started to draw him towards the door. "I've got a car here. We can get a
train in an hour--"

Hal saw that he had to speak firmly. "No, Edward," he said. "I can't
come just yet."

"I tell you you _must_ come!"

"I can't. I made these men a promise!"

"In God's name--what are these men to you? Compared with your own
father!"

"I can't explain it, Edward. I've talked for half an hour, and I don't
think you've even heard me. Suffice it to say that I see these people
caught in a trap--and one that my whole life has helped to make. I can't
leave them in it. What's more, I don't believe Dad would want me to do
it, if he understood."

The other made a last effort at self-control. "I'm not going to call you
a sentimental fool. Only, let me ask you one plain question. What do you
think you can _do_ for these people?"

"I think I can help to win decent conditions for them."

"Good God!" cried Edward; he sighed, in his agony of exasperation. "In
Peter Harrigan's mines! Don't you realise that he'll pick them up and
throw them out of here, neck and crop--the whole crew, every man in the
town, if necessary?"

"Perhaps," answered Hal; "but if the men in the other mines should join
them--if the big union outside should stand by them--"

"You're dreaming, Hal! You're talking like a child! I talked to the
superintendent here; he had telegraphed the situation to Old Peter, and
had just got an answer. Already he's acted, no doubt."

"Acted?" echoed Hal. "How do you mean?" He was staring at his brother in
sudden anxiety.

"They were going to turn the agitators out, of course."

"_What?_ And while I'm here talking!"

Hal turned toward the door. "You knew it all the time!" he exclaimed.
"You kept me here deliberately!"

He was starting away, but Edward sprang and caught him. "What could you
have done?"

"Turn me loose!" cried Hal, angrily.

"Don't be a fool, Hal! I've been trying to keep you out of the trouble.
There may be fighting."

Edward threw himself between Hal and the door, and there was a sharp
struggle. But the elder man was no longer the athlete, the young bronzed
god; he had been sitting at a desk in an office, while Hal had been
doing hard labour. Hal threw him to one side, and in a moment more had
sprung out of the door, and was running down the slope.

SECTION 13.

Coming to the main street of the village, Hal saw the crowd in front of
the office. One glance told him that something had happened. Men were
running this way and that, gesticulating, shouting. Some were coming in
his direction, and when they saw him they began to yell to him. The
first to reach him was Klowoski, the little Pole, breathless; gasping
with excitement. "They fire our committee!"

"Fire them?"

"Fire 'em out! Down canyon!" The little man was waving his arms in wild
gestures; his eyes seemed about to start out of his head. "Take 'em off!
Whole bunch fellers--gunmen! People see them--come out back door. Got
ever'body's arm tied. Gunmen fellers hold 'em, don't let 'em holler,
can't do nothin'! Got them cars waitin'--what you call?--"

"Automobiles?"

"Sure, got three! Put ever'body in, quick like that--they go down road
like wind! Go down canyon, all gone! They bust our strike!" And the
little Pole's voice ended in a howl of despair.

"No, they won't bust our strike!" exclaimed Hal. "Not yet!"

Suddenly he was reminded of the fact that his brother had followed
him--puffing hard, for the run had been strenuous. He caught Hal by the
arm, exclaiming, "Keep out of this, I tell you!"

Thus while Hal was questioning Klowoski, he was struggling
half-unconsciously, to free himself from his brother's grasp. Suddenly
the matter was forced to an issue, for the little Polack emitted a cry
like an angry cat, and went at Edward with fingers outstretched like
claws. Hal's dignified brother would have had to part with his dignity,
if Hal had not caught Klowoski's onrush with his other arm. "Let him
alone!" he said. "It's my brother!" Whereupon the little man fell back
and stood watching in bewilderment.

Hal saw Androkulos running to him. The Greek boy had been in the street
back of the office, and had seen the committee carried off; nine people
had been taken--Wauchope, Tim Rafferty, and Mary Burke, Marcelli,
Zammakis and Rusick, and three others who had served as interpreters on
the night before. It had all been done so quickly that the crowd had
scarcely realised what was happening.

Now, having grasped the meaning of it, the men were beside themselves
with rage. They shook their fists, shouting defiance to a group of
officials and guards who were visible upon the porch of the
office-building. There was a clamour of shouts for revenge.

Hal could see instantly the dangers of the situation; he was like a man
watching the burning fuse of a bomb. Now, if ever, this polyglot horde
must have leadership--wise and cool and resourceful leadership.

The crowd, discovering his presence, surged down upon him like a wave.
They gathered round him, howling. They had lost the rest of their
committee, but they still had Joe Smith. Joe Smith! Hurrah for Joe! Let
the gunmen take him, if they could! They waved their caps, they tried to
lift him upon their shoulders, so that all could see him.

There was clamour for a speech, and Hal started to make his way to the
steps of the nearest building, with Edward holding on to his coat.
Edward was jostled; he had to part with his dignity--but he did not part
with his brother. And when Hal was about to mount the steps, Edward made
a last desperate effort, shouting into his ear, "Wait a minute! Wait!
Are you going to try to talk to this mob?"

"Of course. Don't you see there'll be trouble if I don't?"

"You'll get yourself killed! You'll start a fight, and get a lot of
these poor devils shot! Use your common sense, Hal; the company has
brought in guards, and they are armed, and your people aren't."

"That's exactly why I have to speak!"

The discussion was carried on under difficulties, the elder brother
clinging to the younger's arm, while the younger sought to pull free,
and the mob shouted with a single voice, "Speech! Speech!" There were
some near by who, like Klowoski, did not relish having this stranger
interfering with their champion, and showed signs of a disposition to
"mix in"; so at last Edward gave up the struggle, and the orator mounted
the steps and faced the throng.

SECTION 14.

Hal raised his arms as a signal for silence.

"Boys," he cried, "they've kidnapped our committee. They think they'll
break our strike that way--but they'll find they've made a mistake!"

"They will! Right you are!" roared a score of voices.

"They forget that we've got a union. Hurrah for our North Valley union!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" The cry echoed to the canyon-walls.

"And hurrah for the big union that will back us--the United Mine-Workers
of America!"

Again the yell rang out; again and again. "Hurrah for the union! Hurrah
for the United Mine-Workers!" A big American miner, Ferris, was in the
front of the throng, and his voice beat in Hal's ears like a
steam-siren.

"Boys," Hal resumed, when at last he could be heard, "use your brains a
moment. I warned you they would try to provoke you! They would like
nothing better than to start a scrap here, and get a chance to smash our
union! Don't forget that, boys, if they can make you fight, they'll
smash the union, and the union is our only hope!"

Again came the cry: "Hurrah for the union!" Hal let them shout it in
twenty languages, until they were satisfied.

"Now, boys," he went on, at last, "they've shipped out our committee.
They may ship me out in the same way--"

"No, they won't!" shouted voices in the crowd. And there was a bellow of
rage from Ferris. "Let them try it! We'll burn them in their beds!"

"But they _can_ ship me out!" argued Hal. "You _know_ they can beat us
at that game! They can call on the sheriff, they can get the soldiers,
if necessary! We can't oppose them by force--they can turn out every
man, woman and child in the village, if they choose. What we have to get
clear is that even that won't crush our union! Nor the big union
outside, that will be backing us! We can hold out, and make them take us
back in the end!"

Some of Hal's friends, seeing what he was trying to do, came to his
support. "No fighting! No violence! Stand by the union!" And he went on
to drive the lesson home; even though the company might evict them, the
big union of the four hundred and fifty thousand mine-workers of the
country would feed them, it would call out the rest of the workers in
the district in sympathy. So the bosses, who thought to starve and cow
them into submission, would find their mines lying permanently idle.
They would be forced to give way, and the tactics of solidarity would
triumph.

So Hal went on, recalling the things Olson had told him, and putting
them into practice. He saw hope in their faces again, dispelling the
mood of resentment and rage.

"Now, boys," said he, "I'm going in to see the superintendent for you.
I'll be your committee, since they've shipped out the rest."

The steam-siren of Ferris bellowed again: "You're the boy! Joe Smith!"

"All right, men--now mind what I say! I'll see the super, and then I'll
go down to Pedro, where there'll be some officers of the United
Mine-workers this morning. I'll tell them the situation, and ask them to
back you. That's what you want, is it?"

That was what they wanted. "Big union!"

"All right. I'll do the best I can for you, and I'll find some way to
get word to you. And meantime you stand firm. The bosses will tell you
lies, they'll try to deceive you, they'll send spies and trouble-makers
among you--but you hold fast, and wait for the big union."

Hal stood looking at the cheering crowd. He had time to note some of the
faces upturned to him. Pitiful, toil-worn faces they were, each making
its separate appeal, telling its individual story of deprivation and
defeat. Once more they were transfigured, shining with that wonderful
new light which he had seen for the first time the previous evening. It
had been crushed for a moment, but it flamed up again; it would never
die in the hearts of men--once they had learned the power it gave.
Nothing Hal had yet seen moved him so much as this new birth of
enthusiasm. A beautiful, a terrible thing it was!

Hal looked at his brother, to see how he had been moved. What he saw on
his brother's face was satisfaction, boundless relief. The matter had
turned out all right! Hal was coming away!

Hal turned again to the men; somehow, after his glance at Edward, they
seemed more pitiful than ever. For Edward typified the power they were
facing--the unseeing, uncomprehending power that meant to crush them.
The possibility of failure was revealed to Hal in a flash of emotion,
overwhelming him. He saw them as they would be, when no leader was at
hand to make speeches to them. He saw them waiting, their life-long
habit of obedience striving to reassert itself; a thousand fears
besetting them, a thousand rumours preying upon them--wild beasts set on
them by their cunning enemies. They would suffer, not merely for
themselves, but for their wives and children--the very same pangs of
dread that Hal suffered when he thought of one old man up in Western
City, whose doctors had warned him to avoid excitement.

If they stood firm, if they kept their bargain with their leader, they
would be evicted from their homes, they would face the cold of the
coming winter, they would face hunger and the black-list. And he,
meantime--what would he be doing? What was his part of the bargain? He
would interview the superintendent for them, he would turn them over to
the "big union"--and then he would go off to his own life of ease and
pleasure. To eat grilled steaks and hot rolls in a perfectly appointed
club, with suave and softly-moving servitors at his beck! To dance at
the country club with exquisite creatures of chiffon and satin, of
perfume and sweet smiles and careless, happy charms! No, it was too
easy! He might call that his duty to his father and brother, but he
would know in his heart that it was treason to life; it was the devil,
taking him onto a high mountain and showing him all the kingdoms of the
earth!

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