by Charles Egan
When he told Winnie what he had learnt that evening, she saw it all as immaterial.
‘We still have to eat, Luke,’ she said. ‘If you can’t work, at least you’ve got a seamstress in the family. And we don’t have to waste time in washing,’
‘Washing what?’
‘Washing the curtains every week. Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed. It’s not you that would have to wash them. Have you never noticed the amount of dust the breaker gives out?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And where do you think it all ends up?’
‘But sure we’ve no problem now. No breaker, no dust, no washing.’
‘Exactly,’ Winnie said.
*
Then their own coal ran out.
They scavenged the forests around for firewood. Soon the supply of dry timber had disappeared in the area. They went higher up the trail, looking for fallen trees and branches. When they found what Luke wanted, they attacked the trunks and branches with axes, cutting it into smaller pieces to carry back. But then there was nothing left there either.
‘What do we do now?’ Luke asked one evening.
‘I know what Winnie and myself are doing,’ Ellen replied. ‘We’re going up the culm bank. There’s plenty of coal in with it.’
‘You’re right,’ Luke said. ‘But I’ll tell you what, you leave that to us men, and you girls keep stitching shirts. That way we’ll keep some money coming in.’
The next morning, Luke and Ned took buckets and left the house. It was still dawn, but in the dim light, the culm bank almost appeared to be moving. There were dozens of women and children around the base and all the way to the top. For a moment, he thought back on the mass graves in Mayo; the rats crawling over dead bodies. To hell with it. He would have to stop thinking like that. He worked with Ned, picking fragments of anthracite out from the stone, until they had both filled two sacks. Then they hefted them onto their backs, and returned to the house.
Soon the easy supply of anthracite on the culm bank was gone. Some of the women began to dig deeper into the bank, but already Luke knew it was useless. Always, they looked at the anthracite bank just outside the mine entrances. They were well guarded though, day and night.
Slowly, their cash ran down. There were still no contributions from the Union’s strike fund. Winnie and Ellen cut back on portions in the meals, though there was no question of cutting back on Liam. In any case, he was still suckling.
‘We’ll soon have nothing left,’ Winnie said. ‘The truck shop has put all the prices up.’
‘Just what you’d expect,’ Ellen said, ‘and still they’re saying it’s not a lockout.’
‘And what will we do when we run out of money?’ Winnie asked.
‘The truck store will extend us credit,’ Ned said. ‘But we don’t want that, do we?’
‘No way do we want that,’ Luke said. ‘What with their prices, and their interest, we’d be paying it off for years.’
‘If we’d ever pay it off,’ Ned said.
One day, the shirt-man arrived. He brought in boxes of material, and placed them on the table. He was a thin-faced man, lean in appearance.
‘I want you to note,’ he said, ‘this material is white.’
He snatched a completed shirt from the table, placing it beside the material.
‘Have you washed these?’
‘We have,’ Ellen said, uncertainly.
‘They’ll need more washing back in the warehouse. That’ll cost, you know. How many have you done?’
‘Ten shirts,’ Winnie said. ‘How about you, Ellen?’
‘Twelve.’
The shirt-man counted them.
‘Eight cents per shirt,’ he said.
‘It was ten!’ Winnie exclaimed.
‘Well, it isn’t now. There’s thousands of women across the coal patches stitching. They can’t take this number of shirts in Philadelphia. New York neither.’
He left. Winnie looked at the money she had received. ‘What now?’
‘We’ll stitch more shirts. That’s all,’ Ellen said.
Winnie went up to the bedroom. When she came down, she handed Luke a needle and a thimble.
‘Here, you’d better get started.’
Luke looked at her in amazement. ‘Me! I wouldn’t be able.’
‘Here, it’s simple. Grab the needle.’ She handed him white thread. ‘Now all you’ve got to do is put that through the eye of the needle. Just like this.’
Luke tried again and again. ‘Arra, it’s impossible.’
‘Well, why can I do it?’
‘Because you’ve got smaller hands. Sure look at mine.’
Ned was laughing. ‘She thinks a miner can stitch shirts.’
‘And what are you laughing at?’ Ellen demanded. ‘Here, grab this.’
Slowly, the two men got used to stitching. Watching Winnie’s fingers move though, Luke wondered how anyone could work at a speed like that. He could not even get up to half. It was slower still, trying to stitch in straight lines. On more than one occasion, Winnie took his shirt from him, and stitched it herself.
Sometimes Luke took their remaining money to the truck store, but prices had increased beyond anything he could believe. He thought of the price of grain in Kilduff during the worst days of the Famine. Was it the same now? Surely, no luxuries could be afforded anymore. Basic corn, and no meat.
He was thankful, as the four-week lockout came towards an end.
‘Two days to go,’ he commented to Ned.
‘Yes,’ Winnie said, ‘and a week after that till we’ll have wages.’
Then the news came through.
Ned had been out playing cards in the Miners’ House.
‘They’ve extended the lockout,’ he said. ‘Another week.’
Luke stared at him in utter disbelief. ‘But how could they do that?’
‘They just did.’
The shirt-man had not come back. Now they had no cash whatsoever.
‘We can get credit at the truck store,’ Luke said.
‘As if we damned well want to,’ Ned answered.
‘As if we’d any choice,’ Luke said.
He dragged himself up to the truck store. The price of corn had gone up again. So had the rate of interest. ‘Thirty percent,’ he gasped.
‘Take it or leave it’.
Luke took it.
Winnie and Ellen had cut back to one meal a day. Luke was beginning to feel sluggish. He realised he had not met Farrelly, O’Brien or Kilgallon for a few weeks, and somehow, no longer cared.
Another week. Another extension of the lockout.
‘They use big words anyhow,’ Luke said. ‘It’s almost poetic.’
‘Damn your poetry,’ Winnie said, gruffly.
Luke realised she was finding it hard to feed Liam. He did not comment on it, preferring not to upset her. She was on the edge already. She had already come close to losing Liam to cholera in New York. Now they were facing starvation.
Impossible. This was the United States of America.
Stories of famine in Ireland drifted back to the coal patches, often through the Hibernian Clubs. Luke felt worse than ever. They were starving in America. How on earth could they send money to their starving families in Mayo?
Then the shirt man returned.
‘Which is one good thing,’ Winnie said.
They went back to stitching shirts.
‘And at least there’s no coal dust to be turning them grey,’ Ellen said. ‘But the prices in the truck store have gone up again.’
One night, the truck store was attacked. Screaming men broke down the doors and the windows. Luke saw a stream of women in the moonlight, running towards the store, and even as they came out, they were fighting over the spoils. Then the police arrived. A baton charge scattered the women.
Winnie had come outside, standing beside him. He pulled her back. She resisted, still watching the spectacle, as women were coshed by the heavy batons.
Lackan
was awash with rumours. There was talk of women killed, though Luke doubted it if had really happened. A few days later though, attention turned to the coal banks. A group of women roped the top of the fences and pulled them down. This time, the police were late in arriving and the banks of anthracite were too extensive to guard. The running battle went on for two days.
‘I can’t understand it,’ Ellen said. ‘That’s always been our right. The women have always taken the coal. What’s wrong with them now?
‘It’s the Operators, I’d say,’ Ned said. ‘They’re trying to break us, force us into the truck store and credit forever.’
‘It’s not worth it,’ Luke said. ‘The warmer weather is coming anyhow. We’ll need little enough coal for cooking. But don’t worry, we’re back working on Monday.’
*
The lockout was extended for a seventh week.
There were rumours of deaths from starvation in the remote coal patches in the mountains.
Still Luke was extending his credit at the truck store to pay for food, but even so, they were all gaunt with hunger now. He was desperate. At thirty percent interest, it would be almost impossible to ever pay back the debt. Would Liam grow to be a man, cursing his father’s debts?
To hell with that. How much further could they cut back on food? One meal a day, and little enough at that.
‘I’d never thought I’d feel like this in America,’ Ellen said. ‘This is out-and-out war. They’ll not stop till they have us on our knees.’
They continued stitching shirts, often in the sputtering light of a single candle. The price had dropped to six cents per shirt.
‘It’s worse than Ireland,’ Winnie said one night. ‘We had a famine there, and what did we do? We fled across the Great Ocean to America, the land that can feed the world, and here we are, starving. These Operators, they’re worse than the bloody landlords.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Luke said. ‘And talking of bloody landlords. The stories of famine from home are getting worse. There’s evictions around the county. What can we do? We’ve no money for ourselves.’
‘Borrow from the truck store,’ Winnie said.
‘We can’t. Credit is for truck, not for cash. They reckon we’d disappear if we had cash in our pockets.’
At last, the extension was coming to an end.
‘And they’re saying it’s for sure this time,’ Ned said. ‘There’s no further extensions. We’re back to work on Monday. We won’t have to starve anymore.’
‘And damned glad I’ll be of that,’ Luke said. ‘I couldn’t have taken much more of this.’
*
The following day was a Sunday. Luke stayed home with Winnie and Ellen, while Ned went playing cards in the Miners’ House.
‘I hope he won’t be gambling,’ Ellen said.
‘I doubt if anyone will have anything to gamble with,’ Winnie said.
It was late when Ned returned. He thumped the table in fury. Ellen jumped back, stunned.
‘Ned, what in the name of God…?’
‘The Union,’ he yelled.
‘The Union? But what have they done?’
‘A strike. That’s what they’ve done. The bloody Union have declared a strike.’
Chapter 24
Freeman’s Journal, Dublin. May 1849:
In consequence of the low price of coal, the miners of Pennsylvania are determined not to forward any more for the present. The result is a falling off already of beyond one hundred thousand tons in the supply of coal from that quarter as compared with the same date in former years.
Luke hugged Winnie close in bed that night. Thankfully, Liam was asleep.
‘How could they do this?’ she asked. ‘What kind of animals are they? They’re meant to be on our side. If they wanted a strike they could at least have waited until we had fed ourselves before they starved us again.’
‘I know, alanna,’ Luke said, ‘I can’t understand it any more than you can.’
‘They never even asked us.’
‘They didn’t.’
‘But this Bates fellow, what kind of man is he? What game is he playing at?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Luke said. ‘Either he’s working for the Operators, or he’s trying to play some kind of political game.’
‘Or he just hates the Irish,’ Winnie said.
‘Yes, that’s another possibility.’
Winnie blew out the candle. For some time, she was silent, but Luke knew she was not sleeping. At last she turned to him again.
‘I don’t know when they’ll finish with their strike. We really are starving now, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ Luke said.
‘Or at best, the child will end up with rickets. Stunted growth too. Maybe that’s what they want. Short fellows to work the low drifts in the mines.’
Luke was getting concerned. He wondered if Winnie was quite stable. Still, no matter how he thought about it, there was no sensible explanation for the strike. Perhaps Winnie was the one who was sound, and the rest of the world was mad.
He slept, until he was awoken by Winnie’s shout. He started up out of the bed, realising that it was daylight. Winnie was at the window.
‘Luke, come and look at this.’
He stared out the window. Right across Lackan, hundreds of men were streaming towards the mines.
‘They’re open, they’re open.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Luke said, ‘I’d better get moving.’
Half an hour later, he was at the weigh station. He waved at Farrelly and the others as they went down the deep drift. Six days to the end of the week, and money. Real money. Not that they should spend too much of it. It would be a year at least before they could spend all their wages again. Their first need was food, but that would still have to be kept to a low level. The reports coming back from Ireland were savage. As soon as possible, he would have to start sending money back to Mayo. If not, he, Winnie and Liam would live, but their families in Ireland would die. A deadly choice.
And the other desperate need was his debt at the truck store. Thirty percent interest. It just had to be paid off, and paid off quickly. That would not be easy. If he let it get away from him, he would never catch up.
But there were other things to concentrate on. Much of the time he was working alongside Cantwell, ordering the carts forward, placing the weights on the scales, and agreeing the results. Every evening, he and Cantwell would check the accuracy of the weights.
Mostly, the mules were led out by miners, though sometimes by young boys. Sometimes the boys were pulling the wagons on their own. This made him uneasy.
Just as disturbing, were the boys working inside the breakers, hunched or kneeling over the moving belts of coal. He was working alongside the Number Two Breaker, and in the gloomy light, he could see them picking slate and grey rock out from the black anthracite.
Another line of slate pickers was made up of old men, a few with missing legs, working alongside the boys. Few of them were as nimble in picking out the slate as the boys were.
*
On the third day of work, a stranger came across to Luke at the weigh station. He was wearing a long duster overcoat, made from a rough black canvas, ripped in places. A wide, black belt held it together; brown leather showing through the cracks.
‘What are you doing?’ the man demanded to know.
‘Isn’t it obvious,’ Luke said. ‘Weighing coal, what else.’
‘And who pays you?’
‘The Union.’
‘Not any longer. I represent the Union here. There’s a strike on, you know. And, by God, you’d better shut down, otherwise you’ll pay the penalty.’
He left, without further explanation.
Another cart was waiting for the weigh station.
‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s the Union,’ he told them. ‘They want us to close the weigh station.’
‘But why?’
‘Damned if I know.’
<
br /> Cantwell strode over. ‘What in hell did he want?’
‘He said he was from the Union, and I’ve got to stop for the strike.’
‘The bastard. He’s always causing trouble.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Carew. He’s one of the Union negotiators.’
‘A rough fellow?’
‘Rough is right,’ Cantwell said. ‘He’s got one hell of a name for trouble, that bastard.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse. He was some kind of officer in the Cherokee Wars down in Texas, but he got himself court-martialled. Damned if I know what for. Even the army wouldn’t have him.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘Ignore him. If we stop the weigh station we’ll have to dismiss everyone, and you’re not going to do that, are you?’
Luke was caught. He realised he could not stop, and he kept working for the rest of the day. Towards evening, Farrelly came, leading a mule and cart.
‘I’m not being paid, Martin, you know that?’
‘What?’
‘The Union have refused to pay me. They say there’s a strike on.’
‘But…’
‘It’s different for ye. It’s the Operators are paying ye, and the Operators are back in business, but the Union isn’t. They’ve said I’ll pay the penalty if I carry on. Whatever that means.’
He decided not to mention the episode to anyone else. He could clarify all, either with the Union or the Operator tomorrow.
*
He went home with Ned. As Ellen and Winnie cleared the dishes, Luke sat talking to Ned about the other events of the day. No tobacco or whiskey though.
‘I’m just so glad to be back at work,’ Ned told him. ‘Not that we’re doing any great production. Seven weeks of lazing around doesn’t help. Still, I reckon we’ll get up our speed, and be back to normal tonnage within a week or two.’
‘I know,’ Luke said, ‘we’ll need it too.’
There was a loud knock on the door, and a shout of ‘Union’.
Ned stared at Luke.
‘I’d better open it.’
Two men pushed their way inside. Luke recognised one of them as Carew. Both men had pistols pushed down inside their belts. The metal glinted grey and gold in the candlelight.