by Charles Egan
‘So much for unskilled work,’ Jack said one day. ‘We’re damned near earning as much as the Kilkenny fellows now.’
‘Keep it up,’ Luke said. ‘We were working faster than this on the railways. It won’t be long until we’re earning far more than them.’
‘And God knows we’ll need it,’ Mick said. ‘Pay off those bastards in the truck store.’
Two weeks later, Luke was working beside Mick outside the Number Three Breaker, loading anthracite onto wagons.
‘Not much different to England, is it,’ Mick said. ‘Remember working like this along the Great Western Railway?’
‘They were good days.’
‘Yes, and us among the highest paid on the railways.’
‘Still, seven dollars a week isn’t so bad.’
‘If we can make it.’
‘Farrelly thinks we can.’
Mick leaned on his shovel.
‘I don’t know whether we can or not, we’ll see at the end of the week. But one way or another, there’s not many can work like us on the wagons. There’s many older men here wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace. And I’d pity any man on four dollars a week with seven children to feed. Sure they’d be starving.’
‘They would,’ Luke said.
‘And worse, fall behind in their payments to the truck store. Once you do that, they have you for life.’
A boy came out of the breaker, leading a small anthracite wagon, drawn by two mules.
‘And there’s your way out,’ Luke said. ‘If a man can’t earn enough, he gets his lads out working.’
‘And what are they paid?’ Mick asked. ‘A dollar a week?’
‘I’d say you’re right,’ said Luke. ‘A dollar a week at eight years old. Some life. But what can we do?’
‘Never mind.’
They worked on.
Eight or nine years old, Luke was thinking. How many on the Famine Relief Roads would have been that age, or even younger? Digging roads for pennies a day, and the mark of hunger on them. The fox faces. The hanging bellies. At least they weren’t starving here, but they were only children. Many were deformed, stooped like old men from long hours bent over the coal. Why weren’t they at school? What of Liam when he grew to their age? Accidents were common. Cholera was not the only way for children to die.
He decided to stop thinking about it.
Chapter 30
The Sunbury American, Pennsylvania. August 1849:
The Last of Earth. The Irish have been grievous sufferers by the prevailing disease, as might be expected from the mode of life of vast numbers of them, their poor accommodations, improper diet and exposure. Three or four miles east of Williamsburg there is a Roman Catholic cemetery where great numbers of them are interred. The grounds occupy about three acres. They have been used for interments for about two years. Already the whole space is occupied by graves yet bodies are still interred there in great numbers. The grave-diggers told us that for the last two months, there had been an average of more than 100 interments a day. During an hour and a half that we remained there, 25 bodies were brought in and interred. The graves are dug about eight feet deep and several coffins are piled upon each other, with a layer of earth between – the upper coffin being within three feet of the surface.
One Saturday, Luke accompanied Farrelly to the office to collect the weekly payment. Rapidly, Luke checked through the figures.
‘One moment,’ he said to the clerk. ‘This figure for the shovels we bought is wrong.’
‘It’s what you signed for.’
Luke pulled a sheet from his pocket and laid it down in front of the clerk.
‘These are the exact figures I signed for at the Store. Six dollars fifty for the shovels. Perhaps you could check them against the figures you have.’
The clerk went to a cabinet, took out a ledger and checked through it.
‘Well?’ Luke asked.
‘You’re right,’ the clerk said. ‘Anyone can confuse a six with a nine.’
Cantwell had come across. ‘Do we have a problem?’ he asked the clerk.
‘Nothing much,’ the man said. ‘A minor miscalculation.’
‘Fine,’ Luke said, ‘but we’ve another error on the top here. Sixty-three wagons. $1.45 a wagon, isn’t it? A total of $91.35.’
‘How can you be sure?’ the clerk said.
‘Just give me a piece of paper and a pen, I’ll show you.’
Luke wrote the figures out carefully. Cantwell was listening.
‘Now,’ Luke said, when he had finished, ‘if we make the deductions and divide among fourteen men.’
‘I suppose you’re going to give me that figure too?’ the clerk said.
‘$6.06 per man.’
‘Write it out.’
Luke did.
The clerk passed on the new calculations to the cashier beside him, where the gang were lined up. He began to pay each in succession. Luke wondered why this was necessary, and why the gross amount could not be paid to Farrelly direct. Perhaps they did not trust him.
There was a man standing across from the table, watching. He wore a cutaway coat with high cravats on his shirt. He walked across to the pay desk.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked Cantwell.
‘Luke Ryan,’ Cantwell said.
‘You compute well, Mr. Ryan,’ the man said. ‘Did you do all those calculations in your head just now?’
‘I did,’ Luke said.
‘Amazing. And you write well too. What else can you do?’
Luke went to speak, but Farrelly spoke first.
‘He can manage men. Men and boys. He’s done it before.’
‘Has he, by God?’
They were dismissed.
‘Why did you say that?’ Luke asked, as they left.
‘Look,’ Farrelly said, ‘I’m already managing a contract gang. That fellow, he’s Sugden.’
‘Sugden!’
‘He runs the mine. The Mine Boss.’
‘I know who Sugden is.’
‘If we’re lucky he might ask you to run another contract. Who knows?’
‘Why would that be lucky?’ Luke asked.
‘Look, think it through. How many other Irish men are there around? None of them run their own contracts except us, and almost none of them can add or subtract, far less multiply. They need their own gangs, these fellows. The Operators won’t allow Unions anymore, so how else can they make a better living. They need a good foreman of their own. It’s your own people you must think of.’
*
A few days later, a man came to the wagons.
‘Luke Ryan,’ he shouted.
‘Here,’ Luke shouted.
‘Mr. Cantwell is looking for you.’
‘For what?’ Luke asked the man, irritably.
‘The sack, what else?’ the man answered. ‘Why do you think Cantwell would want to see you?’
Luke walked towards Cantwell’s office. The man ran after him.
‘Not that way, he’s over at Head Office. Come on.’
They reached the Head Office. Luke was ushered into a room. Both Sugden and Cantwell were sitting at a desk.
‘I’d ask you to sit, Mr. Ryan,’ Sugden said, ‘but the furniture…’
‘I understand,’ Luke said. He stayed standing. Perhaps Farrelly was right. A gang of his own?
‘How did you learn to calculate like that?’ Sugden asked.
‘Back in County Mayo. My uncle ran a school.’
‘Taught you well, it would seem.’
Luke said nothing.
‘Tell me,’ said Cantwell, ‘Farrelly says you’ve managed men?’
‘I have.’
‘Many?’
‘Two hundred. Four hundred at times.’
‘Four hundred!’ Sugden exclaimed.
‘I was running gangs on the Relief Works back the winter of ’46.’
‘Relief?’
‘Famine Relief,’ Cantwell explained.
‘You’d hardly be well-l
iked for that!’ Sugden said to Luke.
‘It was a tough time, right enough,’ Luke said. ‘Caught between the bosses and the people. Like you say, it wasn’t always easy. Many’s the time the gangs blamed me for whatever happened, but sure what could I do? One thing I’d say, I made sure they all got paid, living or dead. Whether they got it, or their widows and families got it, I paid them, but they hated me for it.’
‘Ideal so,’ Sugden said. ‘We’re looking for a man well used to being hated.’
‘Hated?’
‘Look, if you’re used to managing men, you’ll know that decisions have to be made, and enforced. The enforcement is the important part.’
Enforcers?
‘You’re right,’ Luke said, ‘but…’
‘We’re looking for a Breaker Boss over at Number One. We need a man who’d not back down in the face of intimidation. Would you take it?’
‘But why…?’
‘Dai Lloyd has gone,’ Cantwell said. ‘Gone to California, prospecting for gold. Damned fool.’
Luke hesitated, thinking quickly of many things. All that Winnie and he had spoken about, being trapped on a miner’s wages. A future for their own children. But what of his days as a supervisor on the Famine Relief Works, despised by his own people. An enforcer? Which was most important? The past? Or the future?
‘Twelve dollars a week,’ Sugden said, noting his hesitation. ‘With a house of your own. Rent free.’
Still, he wavered. The famine in Mayo was getting worse. He had increasing commitments to his own family and Winnie’s family. What choice was there? The silence dragged.
‘Fifteen dollars,’ Sugden said.
‘I’ll take it,’ Luke said.
*
Winnie was stunned.
‘Breaker Boss? But they’re tough fellows, aren’t they? How many Irish Bosses are there here?’
‘None. Maybe that’s why they want one now.’
‘Better at keeping the Irish in line?’ she said. ‘Just like Danny was.’
‘I don’t know. There’s one problem, though. We’d be leaving our own people.’
‘Who are…?’
‘Farrelly and the fellows, they’re our people. Kilduff and around. Do you think they’d understand?’
‘I don’t know. That depends. But what are they offering you?’
‘Fifteen dollars a week.’
Winnie staggered against the bed.
‘Fifteen dollars! That’s impossible.’
‘That’s the rate. Guaranteed. No need for piecework. And a house too.’
‘A house too?’ Winnie gasped.
‘Rent free.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s what I’m telling you? They want us to move in over the next few days. So now what?’
‘We take it.’
‘That’s what I told them,’ Luke said. ‘But Farrelly and the rest, I don’t know if they’d understand. And I know damn well what Mick O’Brien would think.’
‘Yes,’ Winnie said, ‘but it’s not Mick O’Brien I’m thinking of. It’s my family. One child, and one coming. You know what all the other families are like around here. Most all of them in pawn to the truck store, and in debt for years, or forever. Isn’t that the way of it?’
‘It is,’ Luke said.
‘And what of what we owe the truck store? We’d never be able to pay it off. Even as a miner, we’d be leaving it for Liam to pay when we’re dead and gone. What chance in life would he ever have? This is our chance to break away from all that, Luke. Our own place to raise a family. Money to school our children, and money to send back to Carrigard and Brockagh. Who do we think of first? The other fellow, or our own families here and in Mayo. I’ll tell you the answer Luke. We go with our own families. We cannot – we will not – let our children starve again.’
*
The reaction from the gang was different.
‘Well by God,’ Farrelly said, ‘I thought you might be a foreman, have a gang of your own, but a Breaker Boss, I’d never expected that.’
‘Nor had I,’ Luke said.
‘Will you take it?’ McGlinn asked. ‘Abandon all your own people?’
‘Sure how could I not,’ Luke said, ‘it’s my own people I’m thinking of. There’s starvation back in Mayo, and my own family need the money, Winnie’s family too. Isn’t that thinking of my own people?’
‘And are we not your own people?’
‘You won’t be working for me, one way or another,’ Luke said.
‘No,’ McGlinn said, ‘it’s other Irish fellows who’ll be working for you. You’ll be grinding their faces into the dirt, you and your like. Just like the supervisors on Famine Relief. Give them a taste of power, and they can never stop.’
‘I’d advise you very strongly against taking the job,’ Mick said. ‘It’s very dangerous.’
‘How’s that?’ Luke asked.
‘Why do you think Lloyd left Number One?’
‘Gone hunting gold,’ Luke said.
Mick snorted. ‘That’s what they told you?’
‘You got a better reason?’
‘He got another coffin notice, that’s the reason. He was a Breaker Boss, and that was enough. He got the message too, and cleared to hell out. He knew he’d be knifed if he didn’t. Now they want you in, and you know why? Because everyone else is terrified to step into his shoes at Number One.’
*
Luke was still torn about his acceptance of the position. What O’Brien had said was true.
The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. A coffin notice? The Molly Maguire gang? Or could it just have been some miner with a grudge against the Breaker Boss? O’Brien himself? Could he be that extreme? Did all the other men in the gang think the same as O’Brien did?
One thing was true though. In becoming a Breaker Boss, he would no longer be one of Farrelly’s gang. Being promoted to a position on a level with Farrelly would be one thing. Now he would be senior to him. Miners did not mix with Breaker Bosses; that was for sure. And no Breaker Bosses in this part of the coal fields were Mayo men. English and Welsh certainly, Kilkenny men maybe, but Mayo never.
He thought back to his days as a supervisor on the Famine Relief Works in County Mayo. His work there had been crucial, but no one else saw it that way. During the Famine, the supervisors were utterly despised, almost as much as the Landlords’ agents. Could they not see that no supervisors meant no wages at all, little as they were? No, they could not. Always, Luke had been forced to hard decisions. Deciding who would be entitled to work on the Works meant, in a backhanded way, deciding who would not, and that was a death sentence for many families. It gave him a power he had never wanted. Sugden knew that too, when he had offered him the position. A man who was used to being hated. Would it be true here too?
He had worked on the weigh station for a few weeks. While he was there, he had not been hated. He had been supported by the Union and the men. Having one of their own at the weigh station ensured there was no short measure, and they knew Luke was fair. Some may have thought that he could have tipped the weighbridge in their favour, but most knew that he could not, and in that way, he would have lost his position. But that had only lasted a few weeks. Now, after the collapse of the Bates Union, there were no miners checking the weights at the weighbridge, and the miners distrusted the foremen.
He was surprised when Farrelly supported him.
‘I know what Mick has been on about,’ he told Luke one night, ‘but don’t pay any heed to him. He’s not a bad fellow in many ways, but he thinks he can take on the Operators and win.’
‘Would that he could,’ Luke said.
‘We may dream. But we have to live out the reality of it. Lloyd was a bastard, that’s why he got the coffin notice, I’ve no doubt, but it’s like when you were on the weigh station. If you’re seen to be fair, the men will respect that. What Mick might think of it is another matter, but sure you can ignore him.’
; ‘You think so?’
‘Just think of this. What do you think Mick would have done if it was offered to him? Would he have turned it down? Like hell, he would!’
In the end, the most vital factor was his own family, and that meant there was no real choice at all. The experience of hunger in America had shocked Winnie. Never again! As Breaker Boss, he would have fifteen dollars a week, with no rent to pay, and he could pay off the debt at the truck store. And Liam would be educated. He did not know how, or as what, but it would be done, and Liam would never be a miner, far less a slate picker.
And Mayo? Starvation right across the County. Cholera too, he had no doubt. Pat was working as a clerk in Castlebar, but how long would that last? Then his family’s survival would depend on him, and, now the hunger in the mines was over, he would have to ensure his own family survived any future famines or fevers. Brigid would be schooled, but she would need more than basic schooling. And what other children would there be in Carrigard? He remembered Sarah. A good woman, that was for sure. Would Pat continue working as a clerk or would he take over the farm in Carrigard? He would just have to wait and see. But, one way or another, there would be more children, and those children would have to be schooled. And the blight would continue year after year after year. It was too powerful to be stopped, how could it be? One way or the other, the cost of feeding and schooling the family would have to be paid, until they all abandoned Mayo.
*
On his first morning in the breaker, Cantwell asked him into his office.
‘I’d like to congratulate you on your promotion,’ he said. ‘It’s a great move up in the world for you, and none deserving it more. You mightn’t know it, but Sugden was gobsmacked when he saw the way you could reckon in your head. There’s not many who can do that, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ Luke said. ‘Couldn’t he have taken me as a clerk? That would have been easier.’
‘Maybe he could have, but he reckoned you were better qualified than that. I won’t say he wasn’t already thinking of having you as Breaker Boss, but when you said about managing four hundred men, that decided him for sure and certain. Damn it Luke, there’s few men in the mines who’ve ever done that.’