 Dedication to Mary Craig Kimbrough To whose persistence in the perilous task of tearing her husband's manuscript to pieces, the reader is indebted for the absence of most of the faults from this book. End of Dedication INTRODUCTION Upton Sinclair is one of the not too many writers who have consecrated their lives to the agitation for social justice, and who have also enrolled their art in the service of a set purpose. A great and non-temperizing enthusiast, he never flinched from making sacrifices. Now and then he attained great material successes as a writer, but invariably he invested and lost his earnings in enterprises by which he had hoped to ward off injustice and to further human happiness. Though disappointed time after time, he never lost faith nor courage to start again. As a convinced socialist and eager advocate of unpopular doctrines, as an exposure of social conditions that would otherwise be screened away from the public eye, the most influential journals of his country were as a rule arraigned against him. Though always a poor man, though never willing to grant to publishers the concessions essential for many editions in general popularity, he was maliciously represented to be a carpet knight of radicalism and a socialist millionaire. He has several times been obliged to change his publisher, which goes to prove that he is no seeker of material gain. Upton Sinclair is one of the writers of the present time most deserving of the sympathetic interest. He shows his patriotism as an American, not by joining in hymns to the very conditional kind of liberty peculiar to the United States, but by agitating for infusing it with the elixir of real liberty, the liberty of humanity. He does not limit himself to a dispassionate and entertaining description of things as they are, but in his appeals to the honor and good fellowship of his compatriots, he opens their eyes to the appalling conditions under which wage-earning slaves are living by the hundreds of thousands. His object is to better these unnatural conditions, to obtain for the very poorest a glimpse of light and happiness, to make even them realize the sensation of cozy well-being and the comfort of knowing that justice is to be found also for them. This time Upton Sinclair has absorbed himself in the study of the miner's life in the lonesome pits of the Rocky Mountains, and his sensitive and enthusiastic mind has brought to the world an American parallel to Germanol, Emile Zola's technical masterpiece. The conditions described in the two books are, however, essentially different. While Zola's working men are all natives of France, one meets in Sinclair's book a motley variety of European immigrants speaking a babel of languages, and therefore debarred from forming some sort of association to protect themselves against being exploited by the anonymous limited company. Notwithstanding this natural bar against united action on the part of the wage-earning slaves, the company feels far from at ease and jealously guards its interests against any attempt of organizing the men. A young American of the upper class with great sympathy for the downtrodden and an honest desire to get a firsthand knowledge of their conditions in order to help them, decides to take employment in a mine under a fictitious name and dressed like a working man. His unusual way of trying to obtain work arouses suspicion. He is believed to be a professional strike leader sent out to organize the miners against their exploiters, and he has not only refused work, but thrashed mercilessly. When finally he succeeds in getting inside, he discovers with growing indignation the shameless and inhuman way in which those who unearth the black coal are being exploited. These are the fundamental ideas of the book, but they give but a faint notion of the author's poetic attitude. Most beautifully is this shown in Howell's relation to a young Irish girl, Red Mary. She is poor, and her daily life harsh and joyless, but nevertheless her wonderful grace is one of the outstanding features of the book. The first impression of Mary is that of a Celtic Madonna with a tender heart for little children. She develops into a valkyrie of the working class, always ready to fight for the worker's right. The last chapters of the book give a description of the miner's revolt against the company. They insist upon their right to choose a deputy to control the weighing in of the coal, and upon having the mines sprinkled regularly to prevent explosion. They will also be free to buy their food and utensils wherever they like, even in shops not belonging to the company. In a post-script, Sinclair explains the fundamental facts on which his work of art has been built up. Even without the post-script, one could not help feeling convinced that the social conditions he describes are true to life. The main point is that Sinclair has not allowed himself to become inspired by hackneyed phrases that bondage and injustice and the other evils and crimes of kingdoms have been banished from republics, but that he is earnestly pointing to the honeycombed ground on which the greatest modern money-power has been built. The fundament of this power is not granite, but mines. It lives and breathes in the light because it has thousands of unfortunates toiling in the darkness. It lives and has its being in proud liberty because thousands are slaving for it, whose thralldom is the price of this liberty. This is the impression given to the reader of this exciting novel. Jorg Brandis. End of introduction. Book 1. Sections 1 through 2 of King Cole. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. King Cole by Upton Sinclair. Book 1. The Domain of King Cole. Section 1. The town of Pedro stood on the edge of the mountain country, a straggling assemblage of stores and saloons from which a number of branch railroads ran up into the canyons feeding the coal-camps. Through the week it slept peacefully, but on Saturday nights when the miners came trooping down and the ranchmen came in on horseback and in automobiles it wakened to a seething life. At the railroad station, one day late in June, a young man alighted from a train. He was about twenty-one years of age, with sensitive features, and brown hair having a tendency to waviness. He wore a frayed and faded suit of clothes, purchased in a quarter of his home city where the Hebrew merchants stand on the sidewalks to offer their wares. Also a soiled blue shirt without a tie, and a pair of heavy boots which had seen much service. Strapped on his back was a change of clothing and a blanket, and in his pockets a comb, a toothbrush, and a small pocket mirror. Sitting in the smoking-car of the train, the young man had listened to the talk of the coal-camps, seeking to correct his accent. When he got off the train he proceeded down the track and washed his hands with cinders, and lightly powdered some over his face. After studying the effect of this in his mirror, he strolled down the main street of Pedro and, selecting a little tobacco-shop, went in. In as surly a voice as he could muster, he inquired of the proprietress, �Can you tell me how to get to the Pine Creek mine?� The woman looked at him with no suspicion in her glance. She gave the desired information, and he took a trolley and got off at the foot of the Pine Creek canyon, up which he had a thirteen-mile trudge. It was a sun-shiny day, with the sky crystal clear and the mountain air invigorating. The young man seemed to be happy, and as he strode on his way he sang a song with many verses. �Old King Cole was a mario sole, and a mario sole was he. He made him a college all full of knowledge hurrah for you and me. Oh Liza, and come out with me, the moon is a-shining in the monkey-puzzle tree. Oh Liza, and I have begun to sing you the song of hair again. He keeps them a-roll this mario sole, the wheels of industry. A-roll and a-roll for his pipe and his bowl and his college faculty. Oh Mary Jane, come out in the lane, the moon is a-shining in the old pecan. Oh Mary Jane, don't you hear me is saying I'll sing you the song of hair again. So hurrah for King Cole and his fat payroll and his wheels of industry. Hurrah for his pipe and hurrah for his bowl and hurrah for you and me. Oh Liza, and come out with me, the moon is a-shining in the monkey-puzzle tree. And so on and on, as long as the moon was a-shining on a college campus. It was a mixture of happy nonsense and that questioning with which modern youth has begun to trouble its elders. As a marching tune the song was a trifle swift for the grades of a mountain canyon. Warner could stop and shout to the canyon walls and listen to their answer and then march on again. He had youth in his heart and love and curiosity. Also he had some change in his trousers pocket and a ten-dollar bill for extreme emergencies sewed up in his belt. If a photographer for Peter Harrigan's general fuel company could have got a snapshot of him that morning it might have served as a portrait of a coal miner in any prosperity publication. But the climb was a stiff one and before the end the traveler became aware of the weight of his boots and sang no more. Just as the sun was sinking up the canyon he came upon his destination, a gate across the road with a sign upon it, Pine Creek Coal Company, Private Property, Trespassing, Forbidden. Hal approached the gate which was of iron bars and padlocked. After standing for a moment to get ready his surly voice he kicked upon the gate and a man came out of a shack inside. What do you want? said he. I want to get in. I'm looking for a job. Where do you come from? From Pedro. Where have you been working? I never worked in a mine before. Where did you work? In a grocery store. What grocery store? Peterson and Company in Western City. The guard came closer to the gate and studied him through the bars. Hey Bill, he called and another man came out from the cabin. Here's a guy says he worked in a grocery and he's looking for a job. Where's your papers? Demanded Bill. Everyone had told Hal that labor was scarce in the mines and that the companies were ravenous for men. He had supposed that a working man would only have to knock and it would be opened unto him. They didn't give me no papers, he said and added hastily. I got drunk and they fired me. He felt quite sure that getting drunk would not bar one from a coal camp. But the two made no move to open the gate. The second man studied him deliberately from top to toe and Hal was uneasily aware of possible sources of suspicion. I'm all right, he declared. Let me in and I'll show you. Still the two made no move. They looked at each other and then Bill answered, We don't need no hands. But exclaimed Hal, I saw a sign down the canyon. That's an old sign, said Bill. But I walked all the way up here. You'll find it easier walking back. But it's night. Scared of the dark kid, inquired Bill facetiously. Oh, say, replied Hal, give a fellow a chance. Ain't there some way I can pay for my keep or at least for a bump to-night? There's nothing for you, said Bill, and turned and went into the cabin. The other man waited and watched with a decidedly hostile look. Hal strove to plead with him, but thrice he repeated, Down the canyon with you. So at last Hal gave up and moved down the road apiece and sat down to reflect. It really seemed an absurdly illogical proceeding to post a notice, hands wanted, in conspicuous places on the roadside, causing a man to climb thirteen miles up a mountain canyon only to be turned off without explanation. Hal was convinced that there must be jobs inside the stockade, and that if only he could get at the bosses he could persuade them. He got up and walked down the road a quarter of a mile to where the railroad track crossed it, winding up the canyon. A train of empties was passing, bound into the camp. The cars rattling and bumping as the engine toiled up the grade. This suggested a solution of the difficulty. It was already growing dark. Crouching slightly Hal approached the cars, and when he was in the shadows made a leap and swung onto one of them. It took but a second to clamber in, and he lay flat and waited, his heart thumping. Before a minute had passed he heard a shout, and looking over he saw the Cerberus of the gate running down a path to the track, his companion Bill just behind him. Hey, come out of there! they yelled, and Bill leaped and caught the car in which Hal was riding. The latter saw that the game was up and sprang to the ground on the other side of the track and started out of the camp. Bill followed him, and as the train passed the other man ran down the track to join him. Hal was walking rapidly, without a word, but the Cerberus of the gate had many words, most of them unprintable, and he seized Hal by the collar, and shoving him violently planted a kick upon that portion of his anatomy which nature has constructed for the reception of kicks. Hal recovered his balance, and as the man was still pursuing him he turned and aimed a blow, striking him on the chest and making him real. Hal's big brother had seen to it that he knew how to use his fists. He now squared off, prepared to receive the second of his assailants. But in cold camps matters are not settled in that primitive way it appeared. The man halted, and the muzzle of a revolver came suddenly under Hal's nose. "'Stick him up,' said the man. This was a slang which Hal had never heard, but the meaning was inescapable. He stuck him up. At the same moment his first assailant rushed at him, and dealt him a blow over the eye which sent him sprawling backward upon the stones. End of Section 1. Section 2. When Hal came to himself again he was in darkness, and was conscious of agony from head to toe. He was lying on a stone floor, and he rolled over, but soon rolled back again, because there was no part of his back which was not sore. Later on, when he was able to study himself, he counted over a score of marks of the heavy boots of his assailants. He lay for an hour or two, making up his mind that he was in a lock-up, because he could see the starlight through iron bars. He could hear somebody snoring, and he called half a dozen times in a louder and louder voice, until at last hearing a growl. He inquired, Can you give me a drink of water? I'll give you hell if you wake me up again, said the voice, after which Hal lay in silence until morning. A couple of hours after daylight a man entered his cell. Get up, said he, and added a prod with his foot. Hal had thought he could not do it, but he got up. No funny business now, said his jailer, and grasping him by the sleeve of his coat, marched him out of the cell and down a little corridor into a sort of office, where sat a red-faced personage with a silver shield upon the lapel of his coat. Hal's two assailants of the night before stood nearby. Well, kid, said the personage in the chair, had a little time to think it over? Yes, said Hal briefly. What's the charge, inquired the personage of the two watchmen, trespassing and resisting arrest? How much money you've got, young fellow, was the next question. Hal hesitated. Speak up there, said the man. Two dollars and sixty-seven cents, said Hal, as well as I can remember. Go on, said the other, what you've given us, and then to the two watchmen, search him. Take off your coat and pants, said Bill promptly, and your boots. Oh, I say, protested Hal. Take him off, said the man, and clenched his fists. Hal took him off, and they proceeded to go through the pockets, producing a purse with the amount stated, also a cheap watch, a strong pocket knife, the toothbrush, comb, and mirror, and two white handkerchiefs, which they looked at contemptuously and tossed to the spittle-drenched floor. They unrolled the pack, and threw the clean clothing about. Then, opening the pocket knife, they proceeded to pry about the soles and heels of the boots, and to cut open the lining of the clothing. So they found the ten dollars in the belt, which they tossed onto the table with the other belongings. Then the personage with the shield announced, I find you twelve dollars and sixty-seven cents, and your watch and knife, he added with a grin. You can keep your snot rags. Now see here, said Al angrily, this is pretty raw. You get your duds on, young fellow, and get out of here as quick as you can, or you'll go in your shirt tail. But Hal was angry enough to have been willing to go in his skin. You tell me who you are, and your authority for this procedure. I'm Marshal of the camp, said the man. You mean you're an employee of the general fuel company, and you propose to rob me? Put him out, Bill, said the Marshal, and Hal saw Bill's fists clench. All right, he said, swallowing his indignation, wait till I get my clothes on. And he proceeded to dress as quickly as possible. He rolled up his blanket and spare clothing and started for the door. Remember, said the Marshal, straight down the canyon with you, and if you show your face round here again, you'll get a bullet through you. So Hal went out into the sunshine with a guard on each side of him as an escort. He was on the same mountain road, but in the midst of the company village. In the distance he saw the great building of the breaker, and heard the incessant roar of machinery and falling coal. He marched past a double lane of company houses and shanties, where slattern women in doorways and dirty children digging in the dust of the roadside paused and grinned at him, for he limped as he walked, and it was evident enough what had happened to him. Hal had come with love and curiosity. The love was greatly diminished. Evidently this was not the force which kept the wheels of industry a role. But the curiosity was greater than ever. What was there so carefully hidden inside this coal-camp stockade? Hal turned and looked at Bill, who had showed signs of humor the day before. See here, said he, you fellows have got my money, and you've blacked my eye, and kicked me blue, so you ought to be satisfied. Before I go, tell me about it, won't you? Tell you what, growled Bill, why did I get this? You're too gay, kid. Didn't you know you had no business trying to sneak in here? Yes, said Hal, but that's not what I mean. Why didn't you let me in at first? If you wanted a job in a mine, demanded the man, why didn't you go at it in the regular way? I didn't know the regular way. That's just it, and we wasn't taking chances with you. You didn't look straight. What did you think I was? What are you afraid of? Go on, said the man. You can't work me. Hal walked a few steps in silence, pondering how to break through. I see you're suspicious of me, he said. I'll tell you the truth, if you'll let me. Then, as the other did not forbid him, I'm a college boy, and I wanted to see life and shift for myself a while. I thought it would be a lark to come here. Well, said Bill, this ain't no football field, it's a coal mine. Hal saw that his story had been accepted. Tell me straight, he said. What did you think I was? Well, I don't mind telling, growled Bill. There's union agitators trying to organize these here camps, and we ain't taking no chances with them. This company gets its men through agencies, and if you'd went and satisfied them, you'd have been passed in the regular way. Or if you'd went to the office down in Pedro and got a pass, you'd have been alright. When a guy turns up at the gate and looks like a dude and talks like a college professor, he don't get by, see? I see, said Hal, and then, if you'll give me the price of a breakfast out of my money, I'll be obliged. Breakfast is over, said Bill. You sit round till the pinions gets ripe. He laughed, but then, mellowed by his own joke, he took a quarter from his pocket and passed it to Hal. He opened the padlock on the gate and saw him out with a grin, and so ended Hal's first turn on the wheels of industry. Hal Warner started to drag himself down the road, but was unable to make it. He got as far as a brooklet that came down the mountainside, from which he might drink without fear of typhoid. There he lay the whole day, fasting. Towards evening a thunderstorm came up, and he crawled under the shelter of a rock, which was no shelter at all. His single blanket was soon soaked through, and he passed a night almost as miserable as the previous one. He could not sleep, but he could think, and he thought about what had happened to him. Bill had said that a coal mine was not a football field, but it seemed to Hal that the net impress of the two was very much the same. He congratulated himself that his profession was not that of a union organizer. At dawn he dragged himself up and continued his journey, weak from cold and unaccustomed lack of food. In the course of the day he reached a power station near the foot of the canyon. He did not have the price of a meal, and was afraid to beg. But in one of the group of buildings by the roadside was a store, and he entered and inquired concerning prunes, which were twenty-five cents a pound. The price was high, but so was the altitude, and as Hal found in the course of time they explained the one by the other, not explaining, however, why the altitude of the price was always greater than the altitude of the store. Over the counter he saw a sign, We Buy Script at Ten Percent Discount. He had heard rumors of a state law forbidding payment of wages in script, but he asked no questions, and carried off his very light pound of prunes, and sat down by the roadside and munched them. Just beyond the powerhouse, down on the railroad track, stood a little cabin with a garden behind it. He made his way there, and found a one-legged old watchman. He asked permission to spend the night on the floor of the cabin, and seeing the old fellow look at his black eye he explained, I tried to get a job at the mine and they thought I was a union organizer. Well, said the man, I don't want no union organizers round here. But I'm not one, pleaded Hal. How do I know what you are? Maybe you're a company spy. All I want is a dry place to sleep, said Hal. Surely it won't be any harm for you to give me that. I'm not so sure, the other answered. However, you can spread your blanket in the corner, but don't you talk no union business to me. Hal had no desire to talk. He rolled himself in his blanket and slept like a man untroubled by either love or curiosity. In the morning the old fellow gave him a slice of cornbread and some young onions out of his garden, which had a more delicious taste than any breakfast that had ever been served him. When Hal thanked his host in parting, the latter remarked, All right, young fellow, there's one thing you can do to pay me, and that is say nothing about it. When a man has gray hair on his head and only one leg, he might as well be drowned in the creek as lose his job. Hal promised and went his way. His bruises pained him less and he was able to walk. There were ranch houses in sight. It was like coming back suddenly to America. Section 4. Hal had now before him a week's adventures as a hobo, a genuine hobo, with no ten-dollar bill inside his belt to take the reality out of his experiences. He took stock of his worldly goods and wondered if he still looked like a dude. He recalled that he had a smile which had fascinated the ladies. Would it work in combination with a black eye? Using no other means of support, he tried it on susceptible-looking housewives and found it so successful that he was tempted to doubt the wisdom of honest labor. He sang the harrigan song no more, but instead the words of a hobo song he had once heard. Oh, what's the use of working when there's women in the land? The second day he made the acquaintance of two other gentlemen of the road, who sat by the railroad track toasting some bacon over a fire. They welcomed him, and after they had heard his story, adopted him into the fraternity and instructed him in its ways of life. Pretty soon he made the acquaintance of one who had been a minor and was able to give him the information he needed before climbing another canyon. Dutch Mike was the name this person bore for reasons he did not explain. He was a black-eyed and dangerous-looking rascal, and when the subject of minds and mining was broached, he opened up the floodgates of an amazing reservoir of profanity. He was through with that game. How, or any other goddamn fool, might have his job for the asking. It was only because there were so many natural-born, goddamn fools in the world that the game could be kept going. Dutch Mike went on to relate dreadful tales of mine life and to summon before him the ghosts of one pit-boss after another, consigning them to the fires of eternal perdition. I wanted to work while I was young, said he, but now I am cured and for good. The world had come to seem to him a place especially constructed for the purpose of making him work, and every faculty he possessed was devoted to foiling this plot. Sitting by a campfire near the stream which ran down the valley, Hal had a merry time pointing out to Dutch Mike how he worked harder at dodging work than other men worked at working. The hobo did not seem to mind that, however. It was a matter of principle with him, and he was willing to make sacrifices for his convictions. Even when they had sent him to the work-house, he had refused to work. He had been shut in a dungeon and had nearly died on a diet of bread and water rather than work. If everybody would do the same, he said, they would soon bust things. Hal took a fancy to this spontaneous revolutionist and traveled with him for a couple of days, in the course of which he pumped him as to details of the life of a minor. Most of the companies used regular employment agencies, as the guard had mentioned, but the trouble was these agencies got something from your pay for a long time. The bosses were in cahoots with them. When Hal wondered if this were not against the law, Cut it out, Beau, said his companion. When you've had a job for a while, you'll know that the law in a coal camp is what your boss tells you. The hobo went on to register his conviction that when one man has the giving of jobs and other men have to scramble for them, the law would never have much to say in the deal. Hal judged this a profound observation and wished that it might be communicated to the professor of political economy at Harrigan. On the second night of his acquaintance with Dutch Mike, their jungle was raided by a constable with half a dozen deputies, for a determined effort was being made just then to drive vagrants from the neighborhood or to get them to work in the mines. Hal's friend, who slept with one eye open, made a break in the darkness, and Hal followed him, getting under the guard of the raiders by a football trick. They left their food and blankets behind them, but Dutch Mike made light of this, and lifted a chicken from a roost to keep them cheerful through the night hours, and stole a change of underclothing off a clothesline the next day. Hal ate the chicken, and wore the underclothing, thus beginning his career in crime. Parting from Dutch Mike, he went back to Pedro. The hobo had told him that saloon keepers nearly always had friends in the cold camps, and could help a fellow to a job. So Hal began inquiring, and the second one replied, yes, he would give him a letter to a man at North Valley, and if he got the job, the friend would deduct a dollar a month from his pay. Hal agreed, and set out upon another tramp up another canyon upon the strength of a sandwich bummed from a ranch house at the entrance to the valley. At another stockaded gate of the General Fuel Company, he presented his letter, addressed to a person named O'Callaghan, who turned out also to be a saloon keeper. The guard did not even open the letter, but passed Hal in at sight of it, and he sought out his man and applied for work. The man said he would help him, but would have to deduct a dollar a month for himself, as well as a dollar for his friend in Pedro. Hal kicked at this, and they bartered back and forth. Finally, when Hal turned away and threatened to appeal directly to the super, the saloon keeper compromised on a dollar and a half. You know mine work? He asked. Brought up at it, said Hal, made wise now in the ways of the world. Where did you work? Hal named several mines, concerning which he had learned something from the hobos. He was going by the name of Joe Smith, which he judged likely to be found on the payroll of any mine. He had more than a week's growth of beard to disguise him, and had picked up some profanity as well. The saloon keeper took him to interview Mr. Alex Stone, pit boss in number two mine, who inquired promptly. You know anything about mules? I worked in a stable, said Hal. I know about horses. Well, mules is different, said the man. One of my stable men got the colic the other day, and I don't know if he'll ever be any good again. Give me a chance, said Hal. I'll manage them. The boss looked him over. You look like a bright chap, said he. I'll pay you $45 a month, and if you make good, I'll make it $50. All right, sir, when do I start in? You can't start too quick to suit me. Where's your duds? This is all I've got, said Hal, pointing to the bundle of stolen underwear in his hand. Well, chuck it there in the corner, said the man. Then suddenly he stopped and looked at Hal frowning. You belong to any union? Lord, no. Did you ever belong to any union? No, sir, never. The man's gaze seemed to imply that Hal was lying and that his secret soul was about to be read. You have to swear to that, you know, before you can work here. All right, said Hal, I'm willing. I'll see you about it tomorrow, said the other. I ain't got the paper with me. By the way, what's your religion? Seventh-day Adventist? Holy Christ, what's that? It don't hurt, said Hal. I ain't supposed to work on Saturdays, but I do. Well, don't you go preaching it round here. We got our own preacher. You chip in fifty cents a month for him out of your wages. Come ahead now, and I'll take you down. And so it was that Hal got his start in life. End of section four. Section five. The mule is notoriously a profane and godless creature. A blind alley of nature, so to speak, a mistake of which she is ashamed, and which she does not permit to reproduce itself. The thirty mules under Hal's charge had been brought up in an environment calculated to foster the worst tendencies of their natures. He soon made the discovery that the colic of his predecessor had been caused by a mule's hind foot in the stomach, and he realized that he must not let his mind wander for an instant if he were to avoid this dangerous disease. These mules live their lives in the darkness of the earth's interior, only when they fell sick were they taken up to see the sunlight and to roll about in green pastures. There was one of them called Dago Charlie, who had learned to chew tobacco and to rummage in the pockets of the miners and their buddies. Not knowing how to spit out the juice, he would make himself ill, and then he would swear off from indulgence. But the drivers and the pit boys knew his failing and would tempt Dago Charlie until he fell from grace. Hal soon discovered this moral tragedy and carried the pain of it in his soul as he went about his all-day drudgery. He went down the shaft with the first cage, which was very early in the morning. He fed and watered his charges and helped to harness them. Then when the last four hooves had clattered away, he cleaned out the stalls and mended harness and obeyed the orders of any person older than himself who happened to be about. Next to the mules his torment was the trapper boys and other youngsters with whom he came into contact. He was a newcomer, and so they hazed him. Moreover, he had an inferior job, there seemed to their minds to be something humiliating and comic about the task of tending mules. These urchins came from a score of nations of southern Europe and Asia. There were flat-faced Tartars and swarthy Greeks and shrewd-eyed little Japanese. They spoke a compromise language consisting mainly of English curse words and obscenities. The filthiness which their minds had spawned was incredible to one born and raised in the sunlight. They alleged obscenities of their mothers and their grandmothers, also of the Virgin Mary, the one mythological character they had heard of. Poor little creatures of the dark, their souls grime and smutted even more quickly and irrevocably than their faces. Hal had been advised by his boss to inquire for board at Reminitsky's. He came up in the last car at twilight and was directed to a dimly-lighted building of corrugated iron, whereupon inquiry he was met by a stout Russian who told him he could be taken care of for twenty-seven dollars a month, this including a cot in a room with eight other single men. After deducting a dollar and a half a month for his saloon keepers, fifty cents for the company clergyman and a dollar for the company doctor, fifty cents a month for wash house privileges and fifty cents for a sick and accident benefit fund, he had fourteen dollars a month with which to clothe himself, to found a family, to provide himself with beer and tobacco, and to patronize the libraries and colleges endowed by the philanthropic owners of coal mines. Supper was nearly over at Reminitsky's when he arrived. The floor looked like the scene of a cannibal picnic, and what food was left was cold. It was always to be this way with him, he found, and he had to make the best of it. The dining-room of this boarding-house, owned and managed by the G. F. C., brought to his mind the state prison which he had once visited, with its rows of men sitting in silence eating starch and grease out of ten plates. The plates here were of crockery half an inch thick, but the starch and grease never failed. The formula of Reminitsky's cook seemed to be, when in doubt, add grease and boil it in. When ravenous as Howe was after his long tramp and his labor below ground, he could hardly swallow this food. On Sundays, the only time he ate by daylight, the flies swarmed over everything, and he remembered having heard of physicians say that an enlightened man should be more afraid of a fly than of a Bengal tiger. The boarding-house provided him with a cot and a supply of vermin, but with no blanket, which was a necessity in the mountain regions. So after supper, he had to seek out his boss and arrange to get credit at the company store. They were willing to give a certain amount of credit, he found, as this would enable the camp-martial to keep him from straying. There was no law to hold a man for debt, but Howe knew by this time how much a camp-martial cared for law. End of Section 5 Book 1, Section 6-8 of King Cole. For three days Howe toiled in the bowels of the mine, and ate and pursued vermin at Reminitsky's. Then came a blessed Sunday, and he had a couple of free hours to see the sunlight and to get a look at the North Valley camp. It was a village, straggling along more than a mile of the mountain canyon. In the center were the great breaker buildings, the shaft house, and the powerhouse with its tall chimneys. Nearby were the company store and a couple of saloons. There were several boarding houses, like Reminitsky's, and long rows of board cabins containing from two to four rooms each, some of them occupied by several families. A little way up a slope stood a schoolhouse and another small one-room building which served as a church, the clergyman belonging to the general fuel company denomination. He was given the use of the building by way of start over the saloons which had to pay a heavy rental to the company. It seemed a proof of the innate perversity of human nature that even in spite of this advantage, heaven was losing out in the struggle against hell in the coal camp. As one walked through this village, the first impression was of desolation. The mountain's tower, barren and lonely, scarred with the wounds of geologic ages. In these canyons the sun set early in the afternoon, the snow came early in the fall. Everywhere nature's hands seemed against man, and man had succumbed to her power. Inside the camps one felt a still more cruel desolation, that of sordidness and animalism. There were a few pitiful attempts at vegetable gardens, but the cinders and smoke killed everything, and the prevailing color was of grime. The landscape was strewn with ash heaps, old wire and tomato cans, and smudged and smuddy children playing. There was a part of the camp called Shantytown, where a mid-minature mountains of slag, some of the lowest of the newly arrived foreigners, had been permitted to build themselves shacks out of old boards, tin, and sheets of tar paper. These homes were beneath the dignity of chicken houses, yet in some of them a dozen people were crowded, men and women sleeping on old rags and blankets on a cinder floor. Here the babies swarmed like maggots. They wore, for the most part, a single ragged smock, and their bare buttocks were shamelessly upturned to the heavens. It was so the children of the cavemen must have played, thought Hal, and waves of repulsion swept over him. He had come with love and curiosity, but both motives failed here. How could a man of sensitive nerves, aware of the refinements and graces of life, learn to love these people, who were on a front to his every sense, a stench to his nostrils, a jabbering to his ear, a procession of deformities to his eye? What had civilization done for them? What could it do? After all, what were they fit for, but the dirty work they were penned up to do? So spoke the haughty race consciousness of the Anglo-Saxon, contemplating these Mediterranean hordes, the very shape of whose heads was objectionable. But Hal stuck it out, and little by little, new vision came to him. First of all, it was the fascination of the mines. They were old mines, veritable cities tunneled out beneath the mountains, the main passages running for miles. One day Hal stole off from his job, and took a trip with a rope-rider, and got through his physical senses a realization of the vastness and strangeness and loneliness of this labyrinth of night. In number two mine the vein ran up at a slope of perhaps five degrees. In part of it the empty cars were hauled in long trains by an endless rope. But coming back loaded they came of their own gravity. This involved much work for the spraggers, or boys who did the braking. It sometimes meant runaway cars, and fresh perils added to the everyday perils of coal mining. The vein varied from four to five feet in thickness. A cruelty of nature which made it necessary that the men at the working face, the place where new coal was being cut, should learn to shorten their stature. After Hal had squatted for a while and watched them at their tasks, he understood why they walked with head and shoulders bent over, and arms hanging down, so that, seeing them coming out of the shaft and the gloaming, one thought of a file of baboons. The method of getting out the coal was to undercut it with a pick, and then blow it loose with a charge of powder. This meant that the miner had to lie on his side while working, and accounted for other physical peculiarities. Thus, as always, when one understood the lives of men, one came to pity instead of despising. Here was a separate race of creatures, subterranean, gnomes, pent up by society for purposes of its own. Outside, in the sunshine-flooded canyon, long lines of cars rolled down with their frayed of soft coal, coal which would go to the ends of the earth, to places the miner never heard of, turning the wheels of industry whose products the miner would never see. It would make precious silks for fine ladies, it would cut precious jewels for their adornment, it would carry long trains of softly upholstered cars across deserts and over mountains, it would drive palatial steamships out of wintry tempests into gleaming tropic seas, and the fine ladies in their precious silks and jewels would eat and sleep and laugh and lie at ease, and would know no more of the stunted creatures of the dark than the stunted creatures knew of them. Hal reflected upon this, and subdued his Anglo-Saxon pride, finding forgiveness for what was repulsive in these people, their barbarous, jabbering speech, their vermin-ridden homes, their bare-bottomed babies. END OF SEXION VI It chanced before many days that Hal got a holiday, relieving the monotony of his labors a stable man, an accidental holiday not provided for in his bargain with the pit-boss. Something went wrong with the ventilating course in number two, and he began to notice a headache, and heard the men grumbling that their lamps were burning low. Then as matters began to get serious, orders came to get the mules to the surface. Which meant an amusing adventure. The delight of Hal's pets at seeing the sunlight was irresistibly comic. They could not be kept from lying down and rolling on their backs in the cinder-strewn street, and when they were corralled in a distant part of the camp where actual grass grew, they abandoned themselves to rapture like a horde of school-children at a picnic. So Hal had a few free hours, and being still young and not cured of idle curiosities, he climbed the canyon wall to see the mountains. As he was sliding down again toward evening, a vivid spot of color was painted into his picture of mine-life. He found himself in somebody's backyard and being observed by somebody's daughter, who was taking in the family wash. It was a splendid figure of a lass, tall and vigorous, with the sort of hair that in polite circles is called auburn, and that flaming color in the cheeks, which is nature's recompense to people who live where it rains all the time. She was the first beautiful sight Hal had seen since he had come up the canyon, and it was only natural that he should be interested. It seemed to him that, so long as the girl stared, he had a right to stare back. It did not occur to him that he, too, was a pleasing sight, that the mountain air had given color to his cheeks and a shine to his gay brown eyes, while the mountain winds had blown his wavy brown hair. "'Hello,' said she, at last, in a warm voice unmistakably Irish. "'Hello yourself,' said Hal, in the accepted dialect. Then he added, with more elegance. "'Pardon me for trespassing on your wash.' Her gray eyes opened wider. "'Go on,' she said. "'I'd rather stay,' said Hal. It's a beautiful sunset. "'I'll move so you can see it better.' She carried her armful of clothes over and dropped them into the basket. "'No,' said Hal. "'It's not so fine now. The colors have faded.' She turned and gazed at him again. "'Go on, witchy. I've been teased about my hair since before I could talk.' "'Tis Envy,' said Hal, dropping into her way of speech, and he came a few steps nearer so that he could inspect the hair more closely. It lay above her brow in undulations which were agreeable to the decorative instinct, and a tight heavy braid of it fell over her shoulders and swung to her waistline. He observed the shoulders, which were sturdy, obviously accustomed to hard labor, not conforming to accepted romantic standards of femininity, yet having an athletic grace of their own. They were covered with a faded blue calico dress, unfortunately not entirely clean. Also the young man noticed there was a rent in one shoulder through which a patch of skin was visible. The girl's eyes, which had been following his, became defiant. She tossed a piece of her washing over the shoulder, where it stayed through the balance of the interview. "'Who are ye?' she demanded suddenly. "'My name's Joe Smith. I'm a stable man in number two.' "'And what were ye doing up there, if a body might ask?' She lifted her gray eyes to the bare mountain side, down on which he had come sliding in a shower of loose stones and dirt. "'I've been surveying my empire,' said he. "'You're what?' "'My empire. The land belongs to the company, but the landscape belongs to him who cares for it.' She tossed her head a little. "'Where did ye learn to talk like ye do?' "'In another life,' said he, before I became a stable man, Not in entire forgetfulness, but trailing clouds of glory did I come.' For a moment she wrestled with this, then a smile broke up on her face. "'Sure, tis like a poetry book. Say some more.' "'O singe fort, so swess and find,' quoted Hal, and saw her look puzzled. "'Aren't you American?' she inquired, and he laughed. The speak of foreign language in North Valley was not a mark of culture. "'I've been listening to the crowd at Reminitsky's,' he said, apologetically. "'Oh, you eat there?' "'I go there three times a day. I can't say I eat very much. Could you live on greasy beans?' "'Sure,' laughed the girl. "'The good old potatoes is good enough for me.' "'I should have said you lived on rose-leaves,' he observed. "'Go on, witchy, tis the blarney stone you've been kissin.' "'Tis no stone I'd be wasting my kisses on.' "'You're gettin' bold, Mr. Smith. I'll not listen to ye.' And she turned away and began industriously taking her clothes from the line. But Hal did not want to be dismissed. He came a step closer. "'Coming down the mountainside,' he said, "'I found something wonderful. It's bare and grim up there. But I came on a sheltered corner where the sun shone, and there was a wild rose—only one, I thought to myself. So roses grow, even in the loneliest parts of the world.' "'Sure, tis a poetry book again,' she cried. Why didn't she bring the rose?' "'There is a poetry book that tells us to leave the wild rose on its stalk. It will go on blooming there, but if one were to pluck it, it would wither in a few hours.' He had meant nothing more by this than to keep the conversation going, but her answer turned the tide of their acquaintance. "'You can never be sure, lad. Perhaps tonight a storm may come and blow it to pieces. Perhaps if ye'd pulled it and been happy, to it have been what the rose was for.' Whatever of unconscious patronage there had been in the poet's attitude was lost now in the eternal mystery. Whether the girl knew it, or cared, she had won the woman's first victory. She had caught the man's mind and pinned it with curiosity. What did this wild rose of the mining-camps mean? The wild rose, apparently unconscious that she had said anything epic-making, was busy with the wash, and, meantime, Hal Warner studied her features and pondered her words. From a lady of sophistication they would have meant only one thing, an invitation. But in this girl's clear gray eyes was nothing of wantonness, only pain. But what was this pain in the face and words of one so young, so eager, and alive? Was it the melancholy of her race, the thing one got in old folk-songs? Or was it a new and special kind of melancholy, engendered in mining-camps in the far west of America? The girl's countenance was as intriguing as her words. Her gray eyes were set under sharply-defined dark brows, which did not match her hair. Her lips also were sharply defined and straight, almost without curves, so that it seemed as if her mouth had been painted in carbon upon her face. These features gave her, when she stared at you, an aspect vivid and startling, bold with a touch of defiance. But when she smiled the red lips would curve into gentler lines, and the gray eyes would become wistful and seemingly darker in color. Winsome indeed, but not simple, was this Irish lass. She was very sweet and sweet, and she told him it was Mary Burke. "'You've not been here long, I take it,' she said, or ye'd have heard of red Mary, tis a long of this hair.' "'I've not been here long,' he answered. But I shall hope to stay now, a long of this hair. May I come to see you some time, Miss Burke?' She did not reply but glanced at the house where she lived. It was an unpainted three-room cabin, more dilapidated than the average, with bare dirt and cinders about it, and what had once been a picket fence, now falling apart and being used for stovewood. The windows were cracked and broken, and upon the roof were signs of leaks that had been crudely patched. "'May I come?' he made haste to ask again, so that he would not seem to look too critically at her home. "'Perhaps she may,' said the girl, as she picked up the clothes basket. He stepped forward, offering to carry it, but she did not give it up. Holding it tight, and looking him defiantly in the face, she said, "'You may come, but you'll not find it a happy place to visit, Mr. Smith. You'll hear soon enough from the neighbors.' "'I don't think I know any of your neighbors,' said he. There was sympathy in his voice, but her look was no less defiant. "'You'll hear about it, Mr. Smith, but you'll hear also that I hold me head up, and it is not so easy to do that in North Valley.' "'You don't like the place?' he asked, and he was amazed by the effect of this question, which was merely polite. It was as if a storm-cloud had swept over the girl's face. I hate it. It is a place of fear and devils.' He hesitated a moment, then. "'Will you tell me what you mean by that when I come?' But Red Mary was winsome again. "'When you come, Mr. Smith, I'll not be entertaining you with troubles. I'll put on me company manner, and we'll go out for a nice walk, if you please.' All the way as he walked back to Reminitsky's to supper, Hal thought about this girl, not merely her pleasantness to the eye, so unexpected in this place of desolation, but her personality, which baffled him, the pain that seemed always just beneath the surface of her thoughts, the fierce pride which flashed out at the slightest suggestion of sympathy, the way she had of brightening when he spoke the language of metaphor, however trite. How had she come to know about poetry books? He wanted to know more about this miracle of nature, this wild rose blooming on a bare mountain side. End of Section 8, Book 1, Sections 9-11 of King Cole. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. King Cole by Upton Sinclair. Book 1, The Domain of King Cole. Section 9. There was one of Mary Burke's remarks upon which Hal soon got light. Her statement that North Valley was a place of fear. He listened to the tales of these underworld men until it came so that he shuttered with dread each time that he went down in the cage. There was a wire-haired and almond-eyed Korean named Cho, a rope rider in Hal's part of the mine. He was one of those who had charge of the long trains of cars called Trips, which were hauled through the main passageways. The name rope rider came from the fact that he sat on the heavy iron ring to which the rope was attached. He invited Hal to his seat with him, and Hal accepted, at peril, of his job as well as of his limbs. Cho had picked up what he fondly thought was English, and now and then one could understand a word. He pointed upon the ground and shouted above the rattle of the cars. Big dust! Hal saw that the ground was covered with six inches of cold dust, while on the old disused walls one could write his name in it. Much blow up! said the rope rider, and when the last empty cars had been shunted off into the working rooms and he was waiting to make up a return trip, he labored with gestures to explain what he meant. Load cars! Bang! Bust like hell! Hal knew that the mountain air in this region was famous for its dryness. He learned now that the quality which meant life to invalids from every part of the world meant death to those who toiled to keep the invalids warm. Driven through the mines by great fans, this air took out every particle of moisture and left cold dust so thick and dry that there were fatal explosions from the mere friction of loading shovels. So it happened that these mines were killing several times as many men as other mines throughout the country. Was there no remedy for this? Hal asked, talking with one of his mule drivers, Tim Rafferty, the evening after his ride with Cho. There was a remedy, said Tim. The law required sprinkling the mines with adobe dust, and once in Tim's life he remembered this law as being obeyed. There had come some big fellows inspecting things and previous to their visit there had been an elaborate campaign of sprinkling, but that had been several years ago and now the apparatus was stored away, nobody knew where, and one heard nothing about sprinkling. It was the same with precautions against gas. The North Valley mines were especially gassy, it appeared. In these old rambling passages one smelled a stink as of all the rotten eggs and all the barnyards of the world, and this sulfur-edded hydrogen was the least dangerous of the gases against which a miner had to contend. There was the dreaded choke-damp, which was odorless and heavier than air. Striking into soft, greasy coal, one would open a pocket of this gas, a deposit laid up for countless ages, awaiting its predestined victim. A man might sink to sleep as he lay at work, and if his buddy or helper happened to be out of sight and to delay a minute too long, it would be all over with the man. And there was the still more dreaded fire-damp, which might wreck a whole mine and kill scores and even hundreds of men. Against these dangers there was a fire-boss, whose duty was to go through the mine, testing for gas, and making sure that the ventilating course was in order, and the fans working properly. The fire-boss was supposed to make his rounds in the early morning, and the law specified that no one should go to work till he had certified that all was safe. But what if the fire-boss overslept himself or happened to be drunk? It was too much to expect thousands of dollars to be lost for such a reason. So sometimes one saw men ordered to their work and sent down grumbling and cursing. Before many hours some of them would be prostrated with headache and begging to be taken out, and perhaps the superintendent would not let them out because if a few came the rest would get scared and want to come also. Once, only last year, there had been an accident of that sort. A young mule driver, a Croatian, told Hal about it while they sat munching the contents of their dinner-pales. The first cage-load of men had gone down into the mine, sullenly protesting, and soon afterwards someone had taken down a naked light, and there had been an explosion which had sounded like the blowing up of the inside of the world. Eight men had been killed, the force of the explosion being so great that some of the bodies had been wedged between the shaft wall and the cage, and it had been necessary to cut them to pieces to get them out. It was them japs that were to blame, vowed Hal's informant. They hadn't ought to turn them loose in coal mines, for the devil himself couldn't keep a jap from sneaking off to get a smoke. So Hal understood how North Valley was a place of fear. What tales the old chambers of these mines could have told if they had had voices? Hal watched the throngs pouring into their labors, and reflected that according to the statisticians of the government, eight or nine of every thousand of them were destined to die violent deaths before a year was out, and some thirty more would be badly injured. And they knew this, they knew it better than all the statisticians of the government, yet they went to their tasks. Reflecting upon this, Hal was full of wonder. What was the force that kept men at such a task? Was it a sense of duty? Did they understand that society had to have coal, and that someone had to do the dirty work of providing it? Did they have a vision of a future, great and wonderful, which was to grow out of their ill-requited toil? Or were they simply fools or cowards, submitting blindly, because they had not the wit nor the will to do otherwise? Curiosity held him. He wanted to understand the inner souls of these silent and patient armies, which through the ages have surrendered their lives to other men's control. End of Section 9. Section 10. Hal was coming to know these people, to see them no longer as a mass to be despised or pitied in bulk, but as individuals with individual temperaments and problems, exactly like people in the world of the sunlight. Mary Burke and Tim Rafferty, Cho the Korean, and Mad Vic the Croatian, one by one these individualities etched themselves into the foreground of Hal's picture, making it a thing of life, moving him to sympathy and fellowship. Some of these people, to be sure, were stunted and dulled to assorted ugliness of soul and body, but on the other hand some of them were young and had the light of hope in their hearts and the spark of rebellion. There was Andy, a boy of Greek parentage, Androculos was his right name, but it was too much to expect anyone to get that straight in a cold camp. Hal noticed him at the store and was struck by his beautiful features and the mournful look in his big black eyes. They got to talking and Andy made the discovery that Hal had not spent all his time in cold camps, but had seen the great world. It was pitiful, the excitement that came into his voice, he was yearning for life with its joys and adventures, and it was his destiny to sit ten hours a day by the side of a chute with the rattle of coal in his ears and the dust of coal in his nostrils picking out slate with his fingers. He was one of many scores of breaker boys. Why don't you go away? asked Hal. Christ, how I get away, Godmother, two sisters. And your father? So Hal made the discovery that Andy's father had been one of those men whose bodies had had to be cut to pieces to get them out of the shaft. Now the son was chained to the father's place until his time too should come. Don't want to be minor, cried the boy. Don't want to get killed. He began to ask, timidly, what Hal thought he could do if he were to run away from his family and try his luck in the world outside. Hal, striving to remember where he had seen all of skined Greeks with big black eyes in this beautiful land of the free, could hold out no better prospect than a shoe-shining parlor or the wiping out of wash bowls in a hotel lavatory handing over the tips to a fat padroni. Andy had been to school and had learned to read English and the teacher had loaned him books and magazines with wonderful pictures in them. Now he wanted more than pictures. He wanted the things which they portrayed. So Hal came face to face with one of the difficulties of mine operators. They gathered a population of humble serfs, selected from 20 or 30 races of hereditary bondsmen, but owing to the absurd American custom of having public schools, the children of this population learned to speak English and even to read it. So they became too good for their lot in life, and then a wandering agitator would get in and all of a sudden there would be hell. Therefore, in every coal camp had to be another kind of fire boss, whose duty it was to guard against another kind of explosions, not of carbon monoxide but of the human soul. The immediate duties of this office in North Valley devolved upon Jeff Cotton, the camp marshal. He was not at all what one would have expected from a person of his trade, lean and rather distinguished looking, a man who in evening clothes might have passed for a diplomat. But his mouth would become ugly when he was displeased, and he carried a gun with six notches upon it. Also he wore a deputy sheriff's badge to give him immunity for other notches he might wish to add. When Jeff Cotton came near, any man who was explosive went off to be explosive by himself. So there was order in North Valley, and it was only on Saturday and Sunday nights when the drunks had to be suppressed or on Monday mornings when they had to be hailed forth and kicked to their work that one realized upon what basis this order rested. Besides Jeff Cotton and his assistant, Bud Adams, who wore badges and were known, there were other assistants who wore no badges and were not supposed to be known. Coming up in the cage one evening, Howell made some remark to the Croatian mule driver, Madvik, about the high price of company store merchandise and was surprised to get a sharp kick on the ankle. Afterwards as they were on their way to supper, Madvik gave him the reason. Red-faced feller, Gus, look out for him, company spotter. Is that so? said Howell with interest. How do you know? I know, everybody know. He don't look like he had much sense, said Howell, who had got his idea of detectives from Sherlock Holmes. No take much sense. Go pit boss, say, Joe feller, talk too much, say store rob him, say store rob him. Any damn fool do that, hey? To be sure, admitted Howell, and the company pays him for it? Pit boss pay him. Maybe give him drink, maybe two bits. Then pit boss come to you. You shoot your mouth off too much, feller. Get the hell out of here, see? Howell saw. So you go down canyon, then maybe you go another mine. Boss say, where you work? You say, North Valley. He say, what your name? You say, Joe Smith. He say, wait. He go in, look at paper. He come out, say, no job. You say, why not? He say, shoot off your mouth too much, feller. Get the hell out of here, see? You mean a blacklist, said Howell. Sure, blacklist. Maybe telephone. Find out all about you. You do anything bad, like talk union. Madvick had dropped his voice and whispered the word union. They send your picture. Don't get job nowhere in state. How you like that? End of section 10. Section 11. Before long, Howell had a chance to see this system of espionage at work. And he began to understand something of the force which kept these silent and patient armies at their tasks. On a Sunday morning, he was strolling with his mule driver friend, Tim Rafferty, a kindly lad with a pair of dreamy blue eyes and his cold-smutted face. They came to Tim's home, and he invited Howell to come in and meet his family. The father was a bowed and toil-worn man, but with tremendous strength in his solid frame, the product of many generations of labor and coal mines. He was known as old Rafferty, despite the fact that he was well under fifty. He had been a pit-boy at the age of nine, and he showed Howell a faded leather album with pictures of his ancestors in the old country, men with sad, deeply-lined faces, sitting very stiff and solemn to have their presentments made permanent for posterity. The mother of the family was a gaunt, gray-haired woman with no teeth, but with a warm heart. Howell took to her because her home was clean. He sat on the family doorstep, amid a crowd of little Rafferty's with newly-washed Sunday faces, and fascinated them with tales of adventures cribbed from Clark Russell and Captain Maine Reed. As a reward, he was invited to stay for dinner, and had a clean knife and fork and a clean plate of steaming hot potatoes with two slices of salt-pork on the side. It was so wonderful that he forthwith inquired if he might forsake his company boarding-house and come and board with them. Mrs. Rafferty opened wide her eyes. Sure, exclaimed she, do you think you'd be let? Why not, asked Howell. Sure, it would be a bad example for the others. Do you mean I have to board at Reminitsky's? There be six company boarding-houses, said the woman. And what would they do if I came to you? First, you'd get a hint, and then you'd go down the canyon, and maybe us after ye. But there's lots of people have boarders in Shantytown, objected Howell. Oh, them whops, nobody counts them. They live any way they happen to fall. But you started at Reminitsky's, and would not be healthy for them that took ye away. I see, laughed Howell. There seem to be a lot of unhealthy things hereabouts. Sure there be. They sent down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think. Anyway, you can see something white in the bottom. So you have to trade at the store, too? I thought ye said ye'd worked in coal mines, put in old Rafferty, who had been a silent listener. So I have, said Howell, but it wasn't quite that bad. Sure, said Mrs. Rafferty. I'd like to know where twas, then, in this country. Me and me old man spent weary years a-hunting. Thus far the conversation had proceeded naturally. But suddenly it was as if a shadow passed over it, a shadow of fear. Howell saw old Rafferty look at his wife, and frown and make signs to her. After all, what did they know about this handsome young stranger who talked so glibly and had been in so many parts of the world? "'Tis not complaining, we'd be,' said the old man. And his wife made haste to add. If they let peddlers and the like of them come in, to it be no end to it, I suppose, we find they treat us here as well as anywhere. "'Tis no joke, the life of working men, wherever ye try it,' added the other. And when young Tim started to express an opinion, they shut him up with such evident anxiety that Howell's heart ached for them, and he made haste to change the subject. On the evening of the same Sunday Howell went to pay his promised call upon Mary Burke. She opened the front door of the cabin to let him in, and even by the dim rays of the little kerosene lamp there came to him an impression of cheerfulness. "'Hello,' she said, just as she had said it when he had slid down the mountain into the family wash. He followed her into the room, and saw that the impression he had got of cheerfulness came from Mary herself. How bright and fresh she looked! The old blue calico, which had not been entirely clean, was newly laundered now, and on the shoulder where the rent had been was a neat patch of unfaded blue. There being only three rooms in Mary's home, two of these necessarily bedrooms, she entertained her company in the kitchen. The room was bare, Howell saw, there was not even so much as a clock by way of ornament. The only charm the girl had been able to give to it, in preparation for company, was that of cleanness. The bored floor had been newly sanded and scrubbed, the kitchen table also had been scrubbed, and the kettle on the stove, and the cracked teapot and bowls on the shelf. Mary's little brother and sister were in the room. Jenny, a dark-eyed, dark-haired little girl, frail with a sad, rather frightened face, and Tommy, a round-headed youngster, like a thousand other round-headed and freckle-faced boys. Both of them were now sitting very straight in their chairs, staring at the visitor with a certain resentment, he thought. He suspected that they had been included in the general scrubbing. In as much as it had been uncertain just when the visitor would come, they must have been required to do this every night, and he could imagine family disturbances with arguments, possibly not altogether complementary, to Mary's new feller. There seemed to be a certain uneasiness in the place. Mary did not invite her company to a seat, but stood irresolute, and after how had ventured a couple of friendly remarks to the children, she said abruptly, Shall we be taken that walk we spoke of, Mr. Smith? Delighted, said Hal, and while she pinned on her hat before the broken mirror on the shelf, he smiled at the children and quoted two lines from his harrigan song. O Mary Jane, come out in the lane. The moon is a shining in the old pecan. Tommy and Jenny were too shy to answer, but Mary exclaimed, Tis in a tin can you see it shine in here. They went out. In the soft summer night it was pleasant to stroll under the moon, especially when they had come to the remote parts of the village, where there were not so many weary people on doorsteps and children playing noisily. There were other young couples walking here under the same moon. The hardest day's toil could not so sap their energies that they did not feel the spell of this soft summer night. Hal, being tired, was content to stroll and enjoy the stillness, but Mary Burke sought information about the mysterious young man she was with. You've not worked long in coal mines, Mr. Smith, she remarked. Hal was a trifle disconcerted. How did you find that out? You don't look it, you don't talk it. You're not like anybody or anything around here. I don't know how to say it, but you make me think more of the poetry books. Flattered as Hal was by this naive confession, he did not want to talk of the mystery of himself. He took refuge in a question about the poetry books. I've read some, said the girl, more than you'd have thought, perhaps. This was a flash of her defiance. He asked more questions and learned that she, like the Greek boy, Andy, had come under the influence of that disturbing American institution, the public school. She had learned to read, and the pretty young teacher had helped her, lending her books and magazines. Thus she had been given a key to a treasure-house, a magic carpet on which to travel over the world. These similes Mary herself used, for the Arabian knights had been one of the books that were loaned to her. On rainy days she would hide behind the sofa, reading at a spot where the light crept in, so that she might be safe from small brothers and sisters. Joe Smith had read these same books that appeared, and this seemed remarkable to Mary, for books cost money and were hard to get. She explained how she had searched the camp for new magic carpets, finding a poetry book by Long Fellow, and a book of American history, and a story called David Copperfield, and last and strangest of all, another story called Pride and Prejudice. A curious freak of fortune, the prim and sentimentally quivering Jane Austin in a cold camp in a far western wilderness, an adventure for Jane as well as for Mary. What had Mary made of it, Hal wondered? Had she reveled shop girl fashion in scenes of pallid ease? He learned that what she had made of it was despair. This world outside, with its freedom and cleanness, its people living gracious and worthwhile lives, was not for her. She was chained to a scrub pail in a cold camp. Things had got so much worse since the death of her mother, she said. Her voice had become dull and hard. Hal thought that he had never heard a young voice express such hopelessness. You've never been anywhere but here, he asked. I've been in two other camps, she said, first the Gordon and then East Run, but they're all alike. But you've been down to the towns? Only for a day, once or twice a year, once I was in Sheridan and in a church I heard a lady sing. She stopped for a moment, lost in this memory. Then suddenly her voice changed, and he could imagine in the darkness that she had tossed her head defiantly. I'll not be entertained in company with my troubles. You know how tiresome that is when you hear it from somebody else, like my next door neighbor, Mrs. Zamboni. Do you know her? No, said Hal. The poor old lady has troubles enough, God knows. Her man's not much good. He's troubled with the drink, and she's got eleven children, and that's too many for one woman. Don't you think so? She asked this with a naivete which made Hal laugh. Yes, he said, I do. Well, I think people had helped her more if she'd not complained so, and half of it in the slavish language that a body can't understand. So Mary began to tell funny things about Mrs. Zamboni and her other polyglot neighbors, imitating their murdering of the Irish dialect. Hal thought her humor was naive and delightful, and he led her on to more cheerful gossip during the remainder of their walk. End of Section 12 Section 13 But then, as they were on their way home, tragedy fell upon them. Hearing a step behind them, Mary turned and looked. Then, catching Hal by the arm, she drew him into the shadows at the side, whispering to him to be silent. The bent figure of a man went past them, lurching from side to side. When he had turned and gone into the house, Mary said, It's my father, he's ugly when he's like that. And Hal could hear her quick breathing in the darkness. So that was Mary's trouble, the difficulty in her home life to which she had referred at their first meeting. Hal understood many things in a flash, why her home was bare of ornament, and why she did not invite her company to sit down. He stood silent, not knowing what to say. Before he could find the word, Mary burst out, Oh, how I hate a Callahan that sells stuff to my father. His home with plenty to eat in it, and his wife dressing in silk and going down to mass every Sunday, and thinking herself too good for a common miner's daughter. Sometimes I think I'd like to kill them both. That wouldn't help much, Hal ventured. No, I know. There'd only be some other one in his place. You got to do more than that, to change things here. You got to get after them that make money out of a Callahan. So Mary's mind was groping for causes. Hal had thought her excitement was due to humiliation or to fear of a scene of violence when she reached home, but she was thinking of the deeper aspects of this terrible drink problem. There was still enough unconscious snobbery in Hal Warner for him to be surprised at this phenomenon in a common miner's daughter, and so, as at their first meeting, his pity was turned to intellectual interest. They'll stop the drink business altogether some day, he said. He had not known that he was a prohibitionist. He had become one suddenly. Well, she answered, they'd best stop it soon if they don't want to be too late. Tis a sight to make your heart sick to see the young lads coming home staggering, too drunk even to fight. Hal had not had time to see much of this aspect of North Valley. They sell to boys, he asked. Sure, who's to care? A boy's money's as good as a man's. But I should think the company, the company lets the saloon building, that's all the company cares. But they must care something about the efficiency of their hands. Sure, there's plenty more where they come from. When you can't work, they fire you, and that's all there is to it. And is it so easy to get skilled men? It don't take much skill to get out coal. The skill is in keeping your bones whole, and if you can stand breaking them, the company can stand it. They had come to the little cabin. Mary stood for a moment in silence. I'm talking bitter again, she exclaimed suddenly, and I promised you me company manner. But things keep happening to set me off. And she turned abruptly and ran into the house. Hal stood for a moment, wondering if she would return. Then, deciding that she had meant that as good night, he went slowly up the street. He fought against a mood of real depression, the first he had known since his coming to North Valley. He had managed so far to keep a certain degree of aloofness that he might see this industrial world without prejudice. But tonight his pity for Mary had involved him more deeply. To be sure, he might be able to help her to find her work in some less crushing environment. But his mind went on to the question, how many girls might there be in mining camps, young and eager, hungering for life but crushed by poverty and by the burden of the drink problem? A man walked past Hal, greeting him in the semi-darkness with a nod and a motion of the hand. It was the Reverend Sprague, 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 Sprague 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 veil 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 Sprague 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 overwork 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 undernourished wage slaves whom he taught. End of Section 13 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, Howe 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 center 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. Howe had gradually come to realize 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 way-boss behind the latter's back. He might gather a knot of fellow grumblers about him. It was to be noted that the camp-martial had the habit of being on hand at this hour. It was on one of these occasions that Howe first noticed Mike Secoria, a grizzly-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 way-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 minor. 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 minor. I don't load him like a jab 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, um, um, um, said Bo, who was a negro, though one could hardly be sure of this for the cold dust on him. I can't make a living no more, exclaimed the old slovak, his voice trembling His voice trembling, and his wizened dark eyes full of pleading. What do 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 way-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 burrow, and you don't get nothing for it. You burn your own powder, half a dollar a day powder. What do you think of that? Cross-cut, 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.