King Coal

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A man walked past Hal, greeting him in the semi-darkness with a nod and
a motion of the hand. It was the Reverend Spragg, the gentleman who was
officially commissioned to combat the demon rum in North Valley.

Hal had been to the little white church the Sunday before, and heard the
Reverend Spragg preach a doctrinal sermon, in which the blood of the
lamb was liberally sprinkled, and the congregation heard where and how
they were to receive compensation for the distresses they endured in
this vale of tears.

What a mockery it seemed! Once, indubitably, people had believed such
doctrines; they had been willing to go to the stake for them. But now
nobody went to the stake for them--on the contrary, the company
compelled every worker to contribute out of his scanty earnings towards
the preaching of them. How could the most ignorant of zealots confront
such an arrangement without suspicion of his own piety? Somewhere at the
head of the great dividend-paying machine that was called the General
Fuel Company must be some devilish intelligence that had worked it all
out, that had given the orders to its ecclesiastical staff: "We want the
present--we leave you the future! We want the bodies--we leave you the
souls! Teach them what you will about heaven--so long as you let us
plunder them on earth!"

In accordance with this devil's program, the Reverend Spragg might
denounce the demon rum, but he said nothing about dividends based on the
renting of rum-shops, nor about local politicians maintained by company
contributions, plus the profits of wholesale liquor. He said nothing
about the conclusions of modern hygiene, concerning over-work as a cause
of the craving for alcohol; the phrase "industrial drinking," it seemed,
was not known in General Fuel Company theology! In fact, when you
listened to such a sermon, you would never have guessed that the hearers
of it had physical bodies at all; certainly you would never have guessed
that the preacher had a body, which was nourished by food produced by
the overworked and under-nourished wage-slaves whom he taught!

SECTION 14.

For the most part the victims of this system were cowed and spoke of
their wrongs only in whispers; but there was one place in the camp, Hal
found, where they could not keep silence, where their sense of outrage
battled with their fear. This place was the solar plexus of the
mine-organism, the centre of its nervous energies; to change the simile,
it was the judgment-seat, where the miner had sentence passed upon
him--sentence either to plenty, or to starvation and despair.

This place was the "tipple," where the coal that came out of the mine
was weighed and recorded. Every digger, as he came from the cage, made
for this spot. There was a bulletin-board, and on it his number, and the
record of the weights of the cars he had sent out that day. And every
man, no matter how ignorant, had learned enough English to read those
figures.

Hal had gradually come to realise that here was the place of drama. Most
of the men would look, and then, without a sound or glance about, would
slouch off with drooping shoulders. Others would mumble to
themselves--or, what amounted to the same thing, would mumble to one
another in barbarous dialects. But about one in five could speak
English; and scarcely an evening passed that some man did not break
loose, shaking his fist at the sky, or at the weigh-boss--behind the
latter's back. He might gather a knot of fellow-grumblers about him; it
was to be noted that the camp-marshal had the habit of being on hand at
this hour.

It was on one of these occasions that Hal first noticed Mike Sikoria, a
grizzle-haired old Slovak, who had spent twenty years in the mines of
these regions. All the bitterness of all the wrongs of all these years
welled up in Old Mike, as he shouted his score aloud: "Nineteen,
twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty! Is that my weight, Mister? You want me
to believe that's my weight?"

"That's your weight," said the weigh-boss, coldly.

"Well, by Judas, your scale is off, Mister! Look at them cars--them cars
is big! You measure them cars, Mister--seven feet long, three and a half
feet high, four feet wide. And you tell me them don't go but twenty?"

"You don't load them right," said the boss.

"Don't load them right?" echoed the old miner; he became suddenly
plaintive, as if more hurt than angered by such an insinuation. "You
know all the years I work, and you tell me I don't know a load? When I
load a car, I load him like a miner, I don't load him like a Jap, that
don't know about a mine! I put it up--I chunk it up like a stack of hay.
I load him square--like that." With gestures the old fellow was
illustrating what he meant. "See there! There's a ton on the top, and a
ton and a half on the bottom--and you tell me I get only nineteen,
twenty!"

"That's your weight," said the boss, implacably.

"But, Mister, your scale is wrong! I tell you I used to get my weight. I
used to get forty-five, forty-six on them cars. Here's my buddy--ask him
if it ain't so. What is it, Bo?"

"Um m m-mum," said Bo, who was a negro--though one could hardly be sure
of this for the coal-dust on him.

"I can't make a living no more!" exclaimed the old Slovak, his voice
trembling and his wizened dark eyes full of pleading. "What you think I
make? For fifteen days, fifty cents! I pay board, and so help me God,
Mister--and I stand right here--I swear for God I make fifty cents. I
dig the coal and I ain't got no weight, I ain't got nothing! Your scale
is wrong!"

"Get out!" said the weigh-boss, turning away.

"But, Mister!" cried Old Mike, following behind him, and pouring his
whole soul into his words. "What is this life, Mister? You work like a
burro, and you don't get nothing for it! You burn your own powder--half
a dollar a day powder--what you think of that? Crosscut--and you get
nothing! Take the skip and a pillar, and you get nothing! Brush--and you
get nothing! Here, by Judas, a poor man, going and working his body to
the last point, and blood is run out! You starve me to death, I say! I
have got to have something to eat, haven't I?"

And suddenly the boss whirled upon him. "Get the hell out of here!" he
shouted. "If you don't like it, get your time and quit. Shut your face,
or I'll shut it for you."

The old man quailed and fell silent. He stood for a moment more, biting
his whiskered lips nervously; then his shoulders sank together, and he
turned and slunk off, followed by his negro helper.

SECTION 15.

Old Mike boarded at Reminitsky's, and after supper was over, Hal sought
him out. He was easy to know, and proved an interesting acquaintance.
With the help of his eloquence Hal wandered through a score of camps in
the district. The old fellow had a temper that he could not manage, and
so he was always on the move; but all places were alike, he said--there
was always some trick by which a miner was cheated of his earnings. A
miner was a little business man, a contractor who took a certain job,
with its expenses and its chance of profit or loss. A "place" was
assigned to him by the boss--and he undertook to get out the coal from
it, being paid at the rate of fifty-five cents a ton for each ton of
clean coal. In some "places" a man could earn good money, and in others
he would work for weeks, and not be able to keep up with his
store-account.

It all depended upon the amount of rock and slate that was found with
the coal. If the vein was low, the man had one or two feet of rock to
take off the ceiling, and this had to be loaded on separate cars and
taken away. This work was called "brushing," and for it the miner
received no pay. Or perhaps it was necessary to cut through a new
passage, and clean out the rock; or perhaps to "grade the bottom," and
lay the ties and rails over which the cars were brought in to be loaded;
or perhaps the vein ran into a "fault," a broken place where there was
rock instead of coal--and this rock must be hewed away before the miner
could get at the coal. All such work was called "dead-work," and it was
the cause of unceasing war. In the old days the company had paid extra
for it; now, since they had got the upper hand of the men, they were
refusing to pay. And so it was important to the miner to have a "place"
assigned him where there was not so much of this dead work. And the
"place" a man got depended upon the boss; so here, at the very outset,
was endless opportunity for favouritism and graft, for quarrelling, or
"keeping in" with the boss. What chance did a man stand who was poor and
old and ugly, and could not speak English good? inquired old Mike, with
bitterness. The boss stole his cars and gave them to other people; he
took the weight off the cars, and gave them to fellows who boarded with
him, or treated him to drinks, or otherwise curried favour with him.

"I work five days in the Southeastern," said Mike, and when I work them
five days, so help me God, brother, if I don't get up out of this chair,
fifteen cents I was still in the hole yet. Fourteen inches of rock! And
the Mr. Bishop--that is the superintendent--I says, 'Do you pay
something for that rock?' 'Huh?' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'if you don't
pay nothing for the rock, I don't go ahead with it. I ain't got no place
to put that rock.' 'Get the hell out of here,' says he, and when I
started to fight he pull gun on me. And then I go to Cedar Mountain, and
the super give me work there, and he says, 'You go Number Four,' and he
says, 'Rail is in Number Three, and the ties.' And he says, 'I pay you
for it when you put it in.' So I take it away and I put it in, and I
work till twelve o'clock. Carried the three pair of rails and the ties,
and I pulled all the spikes--"

"Pulled the spikes?" asked Hal.

"Got no good spikes. Got to use old spikes, what you pull out of them
old ties. So then I says, 'What is my half day, what you promise me?'
Says he, 'You ain't dug no coal yet!' 'But, mister,' says I, 'you
promise me pay to pull them spikes and put in them ties!' Says he,
'Company pay nothin' for dead work--you know that,' says he, and that is
all the satisfaction I get."

"And you didn't get your half day's pay?"

"Sure I get nothin'. Boss do just as he please in coal mine."

SECTION 16.

There was another way, Old Mike explained, in which the miner was at the
mercy of others; this was the matter of stealing cars. Each miner had
brass checks with his number on them, and when he sent up a loaded car,
he hung one of these checks on a hook inside. In the course of the long
journey to the tipple, some one would change the check, and the car was
gone. In some mines, the number was put on the car with chalk; and how
easy it was for some one to rub it out and change it! It appeared to Hal
that it would have been a simple matter to put a number padlock on the
car, instead of a check; but such an equipment would have cost the
company one or two hundred dollars, he was told, and so the stealing
went on year after year.

"You think it's the bosses steal these cars?" asked Hal.

"Sometimes bosses, sometimes bosses' friend--sometimes company himself
steal them from miners." In North Valley it was the company, the old
Slovak insisted. It was no use sending up more than six cars in one day,
be declared; you could never get credit for more than six. Nor was it
worth while loading more than a ton on a car; they did not really weigh
the cars, the boss just ran them quickly over the scales, and had orders
not to go above a certain average. Mike told of an Italian who had
loaded a car for a test, so high that he could barely pass it under the
roof of the entry, and went up on the tipple and saw it weighed himself,
and it was sixty-five hundred pounds. They gave him thirty-five hundred,
and when he started to fight, they arrested him. Mike had not seen him
arrested, but when he had come out of the mine, the man was gone, and
nobody ever saw him again. After that they put a door onto the
weigh-room, so that no one could see the scales.

The more Hal listened to the men and reflected upon these things, the
more he came to see that the miner was a contractor who had no
opportunity to determine the size of the contract before he took it on,
nor afterwards to determine how much work he had done. More than that,
he was obliged to use supplies, over the price and measurements of which
he had no control. He used powder, and would find himself docked at the
end of the month for a certain quantity, and if the quantity was wrong,
he would have no redress. He was charged a certain sum for
"black-smithing"--the keeping of his tools in order; and he would find a
dollar or two deducted from his account each month, even though he had
not been near the blacksmith shop.

Let any business-man in the world consider the proposition, thought Hal,
and say if he would take a contract upon such terms! Would a man
undertake to build a dam, for example, with no chance to measure the
ground in advance, nor any way of determining how many cubic yards of
concrete he had to put in? Would a grocer sell to a customer who
proposed to come into the store and do his own weighing--and meantime
locking the grocer outside? Merely to put such questions was to show the
preposterousness of the thing; yet in this district were fifteen
thousand men working on precisely such terms.

Under the state law, the miner had a right to demand a check-weighman to
protect his interest at the scales, paying this check-weighman's wages
out of his own earnings. Whenever there was any public criticism about
conditions in the coal-mines, this law would be triumphantly cited by
the operators; and one had to have actual experience in order to realise
what a bitter mockery this was to the miner.

In the dining-room Hal sat next to a fair-haired Swedish giant named
Johannson, who loaded timbers ten hours a day. This fellow was one who
indulged in the luxury of speaking his mind, because he had youth and
huge muscles, and no family to tie him down. He was what is called a
"blanket-stiff," wandering from mine to harvest-field and from
harvest-field to lumber-camp. Some one broached the subject of
check-weighmen to him, and the whole table heard his scornful laugh. Let
any man ask for a check-weighman!

"You mean they would fire him?" asked Hal.

"Maybe!" was the answer. "Maybe they make him fire himself."

"How do you mean?"

"They make his life one damn misery till he go."

So it was with check-weighman--as with scrip, and with company stores,
and with all the provisions of the law to protect the miner against
accidents. You might demand your legal rights, but if you did, it was a
matter of the boss's temper. He might make your life one damn misery
till you went of your own accord. Or you might get a string of curses
and an order, "Down the canyon!"--and likely as not the toe of a boot in
your trouser-seat, or the muzzle of a revolver under your nose.

SECTION 17.

Such conditions made the coal-district a place of despair. Yet there
were men who managed to get along somehow, and to raise families and
keep decent homes. If one had the luck to escape accident, if he did not
marry too young, or did not have too many children; if he could manage
to escape the temptations of liquor, to which overwork and monotony
drove so many; if, above all, he could keep on the right side of his
boss--why then he might have a home, and even a little money on deposit
with the company.

Such a one was Jerry Minetti, who became one of Hal's best friends. He
was a Milanese, and his name was Gerolamo, which had become Jerry in the
"melting-pot." He was about twenty-five years of age, and what is
unusual with the Italians, was of good stature. Their meeting took
place--as did most of Hal's social experiences--on a Sunday. Jerry had
just had a sleep and a wash, and had put on a pair of new blue overalls,
so that he presented a cheering aspect in the sunlight. He walked with
his head up and his shoulders square, and one could see that he had few
cares in the world.

But what caught Hal's attention was not so much Jerry as what followed
at Jerry's heels; a perfect reproduction of him, quarter-size, also with
a newly-washed face and a pair of new blue overalls. He too had his head
up, and his shoulders square, and he was an irresistible object,
throwing out his heels and trying his best to keep step. Since the
longest strides he could take left him behind, he would break into a
run, and getting close under his father's heels, would begin keeping
step once more.

Hal was going in the same direction, and it affected him like the music
of a military band; he too wanted to throw his head up and square his
shoulders and keep step. And then other people, seeing the grin on his
face, would turn and watch, and grin also. But Jerry walked on gravely,
unaware of this circus in the rear.

They went into a house; and Hal, having nothing to do but enjoy life,
stood waiting for them to come out. They returned in the same
procession, only now the man had a sack of something on his shoulder,
while the little chap had a smaller load poised in imitation. So Hal
grinned again, and when they were opposite him, he said, "Hello."

"Hello," said Jerry, and stopped. Then, seeing Hal's grin, he grinned
back; and Hal looked at the little chap and grinned, and the little chap
grinned back. Jerry, seeing what Hal was grinning at, grinned more than
ever; so there stood all three in the middle of the road, grinning at
one another for no apparent reason.

"Gee, but that's a great kid!" said Hal.

"Gee, you bet!" said Jerry; and he set down his sack. If some one
desired to admire the kid, he was willing to stop any length of time.

"Yours?" asked Hal.

"You bet!" said Jerry, again.

"Hello, Buster!" said Hal.

"Hello yourself!" said the kid. One could see in a moment that he had
been in the "melting-pot."

"What's your name?" asked Hal.

"Jerry," was the reply.

"And what's his name?" Hal nodded towards the man--

"Big Jerry."

"Got any more like you at home?"

"One more," said Big Jerry. "Baby."

"He ain't like me," said Little Jerry. "He's little."

"And you're big?" said Hal.

"He can't walk!"

"Neither can you walk!" laughed Hal, and caught him up and slung him
onto his shoulder. "Come on, we'll ride!"

So Big Jerry took up his sack again, and they started off; only this
time it was Hal who fell behind and kept step, squaring his shoulders
and flinging out his heels. Little Jerry caught onto the joke, and
giggled and kicked his sturdy legs with delight. Big Jerry would look
round, not knowing what the joke was, but enjoying it just the same.

They came to the three-room cabin which was Both Jerrys' home; and Mrs.
Jerry came to the door, a black-eyed Sicilian girl, who did not look old
enough to have even one baby. They had another bout of grinning, at the
end of which Big Jerry said, "You come in?"

"Sure," said Hal.

"You stay supper," added the other. "Got spaghetti."

"Gee!" said Hal. "All right, let me stay, and pay for it."

"Hell, no!" said Jerry. "You no pay!"

"No! No pay!" cried Mrs. Jerry, shaking her pretty head energetically.

"All right," said Hal, quickly, seeing that he might hurt their
feelings. "I'll stay if you're sure you have enough."

"Sure, plenty!" said Jerry. "Hey, Rosa?"

"Sure, plenty!" said Mrs. Jerry.

"Then I'll stay," said Hal. "You like spaghetti, Kid?"

"Jesus!" cried Little Jerry.

Hal looked about him at this Dago home. It was a tome in keeping with
its pretty occupant. There were lace curtains in the windows, even
shinier and whiter than at the Rafferties; there was an incredibly
bright-coloured rug on the floor, and bright coloured pictures of Mount
Vesuvius and of Garibaldi on the walls. Also there was a cabinet with
many interesting treasures to look at--a bit of coral and a conch-shell,
a shark's tooth and an Indian arrow-head, and a stuffed linnet with a
glass cover over him. A while back Hal would not have thought of such
things as especially stimulating to the imagination; but that was before
he had begun to spend five-sixths of his waking hours in the bowels of
the earth.

He ate supper, a real Dago supper; the spaghetti proved to be real Dago
spaghetti, smoking hot, with tomato sauce and a rich flavour of
meat-juice. And all through the meal Hal smacked his lips and grinned at
Little Jerry, who smacked his lips and grinned back. It was all so
different from feeding at Reminitsky's pig-trough, that Hal thought he
had never had such a good supper in his life before. As for Mr. and Mrs.
Jerry, they were so proud of their wonderful kid, who could swear in
English as good as a real American, that they were in the seventh
heaven.

When the meal was over, Hal leaned back and exclaimed, just as he had at
the Rafferties', "Lord, how I wish I could board here!"

He saw his host look at his wife. "All right," said he. "You come here.
I board you. Hey, Rosa?"

"Sure," said Rosa.

Hal looked at them, astonished. "You're sure they'll let you?" he asked.

"Let me? Who stop me?"

"I don't know. Maybe Reminitsky. You might get into trouble."

Jerry grinned. "I no fraid," said he. "Got friends here. Carmino my
cousin. You know Carmino?"

"No," said Hal.

"Pit-boss in Number One. He stand by me. Old Reminitsky go hang! You
come here, I give you bunk in that room, give you good grub. What you
pay Reminitsky?"

"Twenty-seven a month."

"All right, you pay me twenty-seven, you get everything good. Can't get
much stuff here, but Rosa good cook, she fix it."

Hal's new friend--besides being a favourite of the boss--was a
"shot-firer"; it was his duty to go about the mine at night, setting off
the charges of powder which the miners had got ready by day. This was
dangerous work, calling for a skilled man, and it paid pretty well; so
Jerry got on in the world and was not afraid to speak his mind, within
certain limits. He ignored the possibility that Hal might be a company
spy, and astonished him by rebellious talk of the different kinds of
graft in North Valley, and at other places he had worked since coming to
America as a boy. Minetti was a Socialist, Hal learned; he took an
Italian Socialist paper, and the clerk at the post-office knew what sort
of paper it was, and would "josh" him about it. What was more
remarkable, Mrs. Minetti was a Socialist also; that meant a great deal
to a man, as Jerry explained, because she was not under the domination
of a priest.

SECTION 18.

Hal made the move at once, sacrificing part of a month's board, which
Reminitsky would charge against his account with the company. But he was
willing to pay for the privilege of a clean home and clean food. To his
amusement he found that in the eyes of his Irish friends he was losing
caste by going to live with the Minettis. There were most rigid social
lines in North Valley, it appeared. The Americans and English and Scotch
looked down upon the Welsh and Irish; the Welsh and Irish looked down
upon the Dagoes and Frenchies; the Dagoes and Frenchies looked down upon
Polacks and Hunkies, these in turn upon Greeks, Bulgarians and
"Montynegroes," and so on through a score of races of Eastern Europe,
Lithuanians, Slovaks, and Croatians, Armenians, Roumanians, Rumelians,
Ruthenians--ending up with Greasers, niggers, and last and lowest, Japs.

It was when Hal went to pay another call upon the Rafferties that he
made this discovery. Mary Burke happened to be there, and when she
caught sight of him, her grey eyes beamed with mischief. "How do ye do,
Mr. Minetti?" she cried.

"How do ye do, Miss Rosetti?" he countered.

"You lika da spagett?"

"You no lika da spagett?"

"I told ye once," laughed the girl--"the good old pertaties is good
enough for me!"

"And you remember," said he, "what I answered?"

Yes, she remembered! Her cheeks took on the colour of the rose-leaves he
had specified as her probable diet.

And then the Rafferty children, who had got to know Hal well, joined in
the teasing. "Mister Minetti! Lika da spagetti!" Hal, when he had
grasped the situation, was tempted to retaliate by reminding them that
he had offered to board with the Irish, and been turned down; but he
feared that the elder Rafferty might not appreciate this joke, so
instead he pretended to have supposed all along that the Rafferties were
Italians. He addressed the elder Rafferty gravely, pronouncing the name
with the accent on the second syllable--"Signer Rafferti"; and this so
amused the old man that he chuckled over it at intervals for an hour.
His heart warmed to this lively young fellow; he forgot some of his
suspicions, and after the youngsters had been sent away to bed, he
talked more or less frankly about his life as a coal-miner.

"Old Rafferty" had once been on the way to high station. He had been
made tipple-boss at the San Jose mine, but had given up his job because
he had thought that his religion did not permit him to do what he was
ordered to do. It had been a crude proposition of keeping the men's
score at a certain level, no matter how much coal they might send up;
and when Rafferty had quit rather than obey such orders, he had had to
leave the mine altogether; for of course everybody knew why he had quit,
and his mere presence had the effect of keeping discontent alive.

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