Free The Coal War by Upton Sinclair Page A

unionism. Olson was in Western City for a few days’ rest, and Hal went away early from a fare-well dinner-party at the Arthurs’ and spent half the night talking with the organizer.
    For three years Olson had been at work in the coal-camps, and not once had he been caught. But many times he had come close to it! It gave one a thrill, just to sit here in his home, for when he came, he had to steal in by night, and shave off his beard and change his clothes and his accent. His wife was a school-teacher, and told her friends that her husband was a “travelling-man”. Only one or two intimates knew the truth about him.
    Camp after camp the young fellow told of, the strange experiences he had had, the personalities he had encountered. Sometimes he was afraid to trust anyone, but would slip union literature into men’s dinner pails or their coat-pockets, and not stop to ask results. Sometimes advances would be made to him, and then he would have to make up his mind whether he was dealing with a bona fide workingman or a company spy. No less than three times he found himself sparring for an opening with another organizer, a man he had never hear of, and who had never heard of him!
    Olson was a fellow with a sense of humor, and knew how to tell his adventures. He would reproduce the manner and dialect of different personalities, so that you saw them before you. His pretty young wife would sit and listen, not trying to hide her pride in him. She was a miner’s daughter, and this fight was hers.
    Throughout the district, he said, there were now hundreds of men and women working to spread the union message. Few of them knew each other; even in the same camps there were separate groups, having no contact. Old Johann Harman, the secretary in Sheridan, was the only man who had a complete list—and he had it in his head! But some day the moment would come; these scattered rebels would spring up and discover one another, these frail strands would be woven into one cord!
    â€œWhen will it be?” Hal asked; and the other answered that it could not be put off much longer.
    â€œThis summer, you think?”
    â€œI hope not. We’ve just had a big strike in West Virginia, and you know how it was smashed. Cost us a million dollars, and nothing to show for it.”
    â€œWell,” said Hal, “I’m going abroad, but I want to tell you, when the strike comes in this district, cable me, and I’ll take the next steamer. I’m telling my brother that, and my father, and everybody. I don’t mean to miss it!”
    â€œWe’ll let you know,” said Olson; and the two of them shook hands on the bargain. The scene was stamped upon Hal’s mind indelibly—embodying to him the mystery of the thing which men call fate. Men walk blind-folded into the future; they grope in darkness, amid lurking destructions; and is there anywhere a power that foresees, that could perchance be persuaded to warn? Here, on this soft June evening, Hal parted with the organizer and his happy young wife; and the next time he heard the name of Tom Olson was in a cablegram from Billy Keating, three months later, telling him that his friend had been murdered in cold blood upon the main street of Pedro, shot through the body by a coal-company detective, Hal’s old enemy, Peter Hanun, the “breaker of teeth”!

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    Mrs. Arthur and her charges set out for Europe by the Mediterranean route. They landed at Naples, and went up the slopes of Vesuvius, through the ruins of Pompeii, and out in a launch to Capri. Hal escorted them upon these jaunts; and then, while they were resting, he made a discovery. The peasants of this poverty-ridden region, victims of exploitation since the dawn of history, had come at last upon the road to power. They had combined into agricultural laborers’ unions, against the absentee landlords who spent the fruit of their toil in the cafés of Paris and the