SECTION 26.
Hal kept his eye upon his new acquaintance, and perceived that he was talking with others. Before long the man tackled Old Mike; and Mike of course could not refuse an invitation to grumble, though it came from the devil himself. Hal decided that something must be done about it.
He consulted his friend Jerry, who, being a radical, might have some touch-stone by which to test the stranger. Jerry sought him out at noon-time, and came back and reported that he was as much in the dark as Hal. Either the man was an agitator, seeking to "start something," or else he was a detective sent in by the company. There was only one way to find out--which was for some one to talk freely with him, and see what happened to that person!
After some hesitation, Hal decided that he would be the victim. It rewakened his love of adventure, which digging in a coal-mine had subdued in him. The mysterious stranger was a new sort of miner, digging into the souls of men; Hal would countermine him, and perhaps blow him up. He could afford the experiment better than some others--better, for example, than little Mrs. David, who had already taken the stranger into her home, and revealed to him the fact that her husband had been a member of the most revolutionary of all miners' organisations, the South Wales Federation.
So next Sunday Hal invited the stranger for another walk. The man showed reluctance--until Hal said that he wanted to talk to him. As they walked up the canyon, Hal began, "I've been thinking about what you said of conditions in these camps, and I've concluded it would be a good thing if we had a little shaking up here in North Valley."
"Is that so?" said the other.
"When I first came here, I used to think the men were grouchy. But now I've had a chance to see for myself, and I don't believe anybody gets a square deal. For one thing, nobody gets full weight in these mines--at least not unless he's some favourite of the boss. I'm sure of it, for I've tried all sorts of experiments with my partner. We've loaded a car extra light, and got eighteen hundredweight, and then we've loaded one high and solid, so that we'd know it had twice as much in it--but all we ever got was twenty-two and twenty-three. There's just no way you can get over that--though everybody knows those big cars can be made to hold two or three tons."
"Yes, I suppose they might," said the other.
"And if you get the smallest piece of rock in, you get a 'double-O,'
sure as fate; and sometimes they say you got rock in when you didn't.
There's no law to make them prove it."
"No, I suppose not."
"What it comes to is simply this--they make you think they are paying fifty-five a ton, but they've secretly cut you down to thirty-five. And yesterday at the company-store I paid a dollar and a half for a pair of blue overalls that I'd priced in Pedro for sixty cents."
"Well," said the other, "the company has to haul them up here, you know!"
So, gradually, Hal made the discovery that the tables were turned--the mysterious personage was now occupied in holding _him_ at arm's length!
For some reason, Hal's sudden interest in industrial justice had failed to make an impression.
So his career as a detective came to an inglorious end. "Say, man!" he exclaimed "What's your game, anyhow?"
"Game?" said the other, quietly. "How do you mean?"
"I mean, what are you here for?"
"I'm here for two dollars a day--the same as you, I guess."
Hal began to laugh. "You and I are like a couple of submarines, trying to find each other under water. I think we'd better come to the surface to do our fighting."
The other considered the simile, and seemed to like it. "You come first," said he. But he did not smile. His quiet blue eyes were fixed on Hal with deadly seriousness.
"All right," said Hal; "my story isn't very thrilling. I'm not an escaped convict, I'm not a company spy, as you may be thinking. Nor am I a 'natural born' coal-miner. I happen to have a brother and some friends at home who think they know about the coal-industry, and it got on my nerves, and I came to see for myself. That's all, except that I've found things interesting, and want to stay on a while, so I hope you aren't a 'dick'!"
The other walked in silence, weighing Hal's words. "That's not exactly what you'd call a usual story," he remarked, at last.
"I know," replied Hal. "The best I can say for it is that it's true."
"Well," said the stranger, "I'll take a chance on it. I have to trust somebody, if I'm ever to get anywhere. I picked you out because I liked your face." He gave Hal another searching look as he walked. "Your smile isn't that of a cheat. But you're young--so let me remind you of the importance of secrecy in this place."
"I'll keep mum," said Hal; and the stranger opened a flap inside his shirt, and drew out a letter which certified him to be Thomas Olson, an organiser for the United Mine-Workers, the great national union of the coal-miners!
SECTION 27.
Hal was so startled by this discovery that he stopped in his tracks and gazed at the man. He had heard a lot about "trouble-makers" in the camps, but so far the only kind he had seen were those hired by the company to make trouble for the men. But now, here was a union organiser! Jerry had suggested the possibility, but Hal had not thought of it seriously; an organiser was a mythological creature, whispered about by the miners, cursed by the company and its servants, and by Hal's friends at home. An incendiary, a fire-brand, a loudmouthed, irresponsible person, stirring up blind and dangerous passions! Having heard such things all his life, Hal's first impulse was of distrust. He felt like the one-legged old switchman who had given him a place to sleep, after his beating at Pine Creek, and who had said, "Don't you talk no union business to me!"
Seeing Hal's emotion, the organiser gave an uneasy laugh. "While you're hoping I'm not a 'dick,' I trust you understand I'm hoping _you're_ not one."
Hal's answer was to the point. "I was taken for an organiser once," he said, and his hands sought the seat of his ancient bruises.
The other laughed. "You got off with a beating? You were lucky. Down in Alabama, not so long ago, they tarred and feathered one of us."
Dismay came upon Hal's face; but after a moment he too began to laugh.
"I was just thinking about my brother and his friends--what they'd have said if I'd come home from Pine Creek in a coat of tar and feathers!"
"Possibly," ventured the other, "they'd have said you got what you deserved."
"Yes, that seems to be their attitude. That's the rule they apply to all the world--if anything goes wrong with you, it must be your own fault.
It's a land of equal opportunity."
"And you'll notice," said the organiser, "that the more privileges people have had, the more boldly they talk that way."
Hal began to feel a sense of comradeship with this stranger, who was able to understand one's family troubles! It had been a long time since Hal had talked with any one from the outside world, and he found it a relief to his mind. He remembered how, after he had got his beating, he had lain out in the rain and congratulated himself that he was not what the guards had taken him for. Now he was curious about the psychology of an organiser. A man must have strong convictions to follow that occupation!
He made the remark, and the other answered, "You can have my pay any time you'll do my work. But let me tell you, too, it isn't being beaten and kicked out of camp that bothers one most; it isn't the camp-marshal and the spy and the blacklist. Your worst troubles are inside the heads of the fellows you're trying to help! Have you ever thought what it would mean to try to explain things to men who speak twenty different languages?"
"Yes, of course," said Hal. "I wonder how you ever get a start."
"Well, you look for an interpreter--and maybe he's a company spy. Or maybe the first man you try to convert reports you to the boss. For, of course, some of the men are cowards, and some of them are crooks; they'll sell out the next fellow for a better 'place'--maybe for a glass of beer."
"That must have a tendency to weaken your convictions," said Hal.
"No," said the other, in a matter of fact tone. "It's hard, but one can't blame the poor devils. They're ignorant--kept so deliberately. The bosses bring them here, and have a regular system to keep them from getting together. And of course these European peoples have their old prejudices--national prejudices, religious prejudices, that keep them apart. You see two fellows, one you think is exactly as miserable as the other--but you find him despising the other, because back home he was the other's superior. So they play into the bosses' hands."
SECTION 28.
They had come to a remote place in the canyon, and found themselves seats on a flat rock, where they could talk in comfort.
"Put yourself in their place," said the organiser. "They're in a strange country, and one person tells them one thing, and another tells them something else. The masters and their agents say: 'Don't trust the union agitators. They're a lot of grafters, they live easy and don't have to work. They take your money and call you out on strike, and you lose your jobs and your home; they sell you out, maybe, and go on to some other place to repeat the same trick.' And the workers think maybe that's true; they haven't the wit to see that if the union leaders are corrupt, it must be because the bosses are buying them. So you see, they're completely bedevilled; they don't know which way to turn."
The man was speaking quietly, but there was a little glow of excitement in his face. "The company is forever repeating that these people are satisfied--that it's we who are stirring them up. But are they satisfied? You've been here long enough to know!"
"There's no need to discuss that," Hal answered. "Of course they're not satisfied! They've seemed to me like a lot of children crying in the dark--not knowing what's the matter with them, or who's to blame, or where to turn for help."
Hal found himself losing his distrust of this man. He did not correspond in any way to Hal's imaginary picture of a union organiser; he was a blue-eyed, clean-looking young American, and instead of being wild and loud-mouthed, he seemed rather wistful. He had indignation, of course, but it did not take the form of ranting or florid eloquence; and this repression was making its appeal to Hal, who, in spite of his democratic impulses, had the habits of thought of a class which shrinks from noisiness and over-emphasis.
Also Hal was interested in his attitude towards the weaknesses of working-people. The "inertia" of the poor, which caused so many people to despair for them--their cowardice and instability--these were things about which Hal had heard all his life. "You can't help them," people would say. "They're dirty and lazy, they drink and shirk, they betray each other. They've always been like that." The idea would be summed up in a formula: "You can't change human nature!" Even Mary Burke, herself one of the working-class, spoke of the workers in this angry and scornful way. But Olson had faith in their manhood, and went ahead to awaken and teach them.