by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
When I first ventured on the scene the night shift was just gatherin’ toward the biggest scaffold of the whole bunch, so I wandered over that way myself. The big tower supported two bull wheels that ran in opposite directions, guiding cables which were pulling a trip of loaded coal cars up on one track while the other cable was sending down the empties on the other track.
The hole in the ground, into which these cables ran from the bull wheel, went straight in for about fifty feet and then seemed to jump off. Electric lights made the inside bright as day so that the well of inky blackness beyond the lights showed up strong. The cables roared and the ground shook to the rapid explosion of the steam hoist. This, I surmised, was a place for a cool head and a steady hand.
While I was watchin’, a coal smeared lad about of a size to be studyin’ fractions moseyed out to the jumpin’ off place. The roar of the cables increased, then was drowned in a growin’ mightier noise. The lad crouched as for a spring. The mighty roar achieved a climax. A hurtling black shape come pushing over the brink. The boy leaped in the air and landed square on the end of the moving mass.
He stooped, grasped the couplin’ that fastened the hoistin’ cable to the end of the car and, jerkin’ it loose, threw clevis and gear clear of the track. He leaped to the ground and gave scarcely a glance at the swift movin’ train of loaded one ton cars which went chargin’ through a muddle of switches out onto a trestle, where another and smaller boy took them in charge.
I was all excited by these maneuvers. I felt just like the time when the high climber accidentally cut his life rope with the axe and climbed down hangin’ onto the bark of the spare tree with his hands. Nobody else seemed to be much excited and the kid that had gone through the performance least of all. He hustled some empties into the tunnel, hooked ’em up and fastened the cable on and soon another trip was hurryin’ up from the guts of the earth while the empties were goin down.
On all sides there was a bunch of little shavers scurrym around amongst the cars spraggin’, oilin’, shovin’ and pushin’. There was a whole raft of ’em. Kids and coal minin’ seem to work together. I grew a lot of respect for coal miners in a few minutes. “If the kids were set at this sort of a job,” thinks I, “what was expected of the men?” I turned and sized up the group that was hangin’ round.
I saw right away where I was goin’ to horn in on some light exercise, for each one of these grimy slow movin’ plugs was exercisin’ some sort of a light. Some wore ’em on their caps like a posie on a summer bonnet, while another sort was carried in the hand like a little lantern.
I felt a big desire to have a shining light hung on me, so I approached one of the nearest light bearers and probed him as to how to get a job in the outfit.
Did you ever notice the hostility of some slaves toward the strangers that are rustlin’ a job from their masters? Well, this strange-cow-in-the-pas-ture attitude was noticeable for its absence here. I got all the information wanted cheerfully, and then went over and tackled the shifter, who looked just like the rest of the gang except that he carried two lights and a little more dry black mud.
He seemed almost human. Instead of askin’ about my lurid past or family connections, he seemed interested in the jobs to be filled and my ability to fill ’em. He went into the lamp house to see how the gang was lined up and came out with the haulage boss, who sized me up and said a few words about trips and number seven motor while I looked wise. I hooked a job ridin’ trip and was told to report the next day for afternoon shift.
After enterin’ my name and number in the office I went down to look for the boardin’ house. This affair was in one of the bigger white-washed shacks and the boardin boss was a big fat woman with a cockney accent and a warm and generous smile.
Accommodations was not exactly luxurious. I got a little single cot in a room with two other fellows. I was informed that the union had a big bath house by the mine so that all washin’ up would be done there.
While I was sittin’ in the main room on one of the luxurious kitchen chairs, the missus came in for a chat. She asked me about my clothes and finances as if she was an old pal. Finding that I was goin’ to work on the haulage crew she told me right off that I would need a miner’s cap and some shoe grease. Then she wrote out a slip that made my face good at the company store and I went up to this institution and got the goods.
The company store is a sort of clearing house. The bookkeeper is the postmaster, the timekeeper and paymaster all rolled into one by hand. He was a busy plug. A miner would put in so much time in the mine and would be given credit on the books for so much. His store bill, union dues and doctor’s fees were deducted from his credit balance and what was over he could get in cash every two weeks or so.
What struck me most was the spirit of friendliness that everyone showed. There was little of the backbitin’ and hate that is found in so many small towns and camps. A tolerant spirit was floatin’ around in the air and one seemed to grab onto it right away. Yet it was a rough and critical tolerance and not of the smooth, oily sort that one finds among the so-called cultured people.
I mentioned the fact to the boardin’ missus. She told me that there was jealousies and hates all right, but the general ideas of the miners discouraged ’em. She rattled off a few phrases like solidarity and direct action and the like, tryin’ to describe the past battles and conditions and I sat up and took notice. The boardin’ missus was no slouch to my mind. She explained how conditions were fought for.
Durin’ the evenin’ I had a good time listenin’ to the rag chewin’ that was carried on in the sittin’ room and out on the porch. Some of the boys had good ideas and I sat there as pleased as a bald headed man in the front row.
Next afternoon at three o’clock I reached the pit mouth and after gettin’ my lamp and brass check number I hung around with the rest of the bunch and watched the top eager go through his gymnastics with the gallopin’ cars. One of the miners came over and told me in a friendly way that I should be sure not to take any matches down with me, as that would raise hell if I did. I searched every pocket and got rid of all that I had. Later on I found that this gentle-voiced old Finn was chairman of the safety committee.
They rolled out the man cars. They was queer lookin’ rigs, just big open topless boxes on wheels with boards for seats, nailed crossways and slanting up in the air at an angle like the cow guards on a railroad crossing. When the car was runnin’ down the slope the seats was about horizontal.
As one car went down with a load of night shift men the other car came up from the bottom with a load of the day shift. The plugs comin’ off sure didn’t impress one with bein’ specimens of manly beauty. Smeared with coal dust and mud, with their clothes sticky and black with scrapins from chute and wall they was sure a hard lookin’ bunch.
Finally I got into the car with a big Italian that had taken me under his wing. We moved out slowly to the jump off and then picked up speed goin’ down the steep slope.
Everything was dark except for the light in our caps and these made the timbers that capped the slope and the posts and walls on the sides, quite plain. Half way down we passed the other car comin up. All that we could see was a blur of lights as they whizzed by.
Solidarity, August 11, 1917.
In order to make me feel good Tony alongside told about mines where the cable had broken while they were pullin’ the men out. He told about the runaways with such happy satisfaction that I figured that he was kiddin’ me. Later I found that he was only happy because it was the truth. You know a fellow always gets a sort of kick out of doin’ dangerous things cheerfully. The coal owners sure used short sightedness when they plastered the pit buildings full of safety first posters with the old bunk that it never pays to take a chance. If the miners really acted on that idea there would be a lot of perfectly good machinery and coal burnin stoves bein lugged up to the pawn shop, right away. Coal would be an inter-estin’ specimen.
At last we rolled out on the bottom of the eight
een hundred foot slope and we scrambled out on one side of the car while a gang of fierce eyed, muddy and sweaty miners piled in on the other side. There was no confusion however as the first men down were the first ones up and there was strict enforcement of the rule. The car climbed up and disappeared and I looked around me at this electric lighted gallery so deep under ground. The first thing that took my eyes was some petrified clam shells on the hangin wall just as natural as if they were ready to furnish the makins of a Coney Island chowder. Many a thing had happened in this highly important world of ours since they had played their last squirt in the sunshine on the beach.
We checked in, to a man with a book, and a big pencil, who kept track of the trip loads comin’ down and goin up. As I was walking on past groups of miners waitin’ their turn to go up, a little hard lookin Scot jumped out at me with a pad and pencil.
“Hi Laddie—sign this paper!” he commanded.
“What is it?” I asked thinkin’ maybe it was a contribution list for indignant Armenians or some-thin’ like it.
“It’s the union check off, Laddie,” he said seriously, “and you’ll have to sign it if you work wi’ us.” So I signed up and was a miners’ union man, except for the sacred oath with the right hand on the left breast in front of the Imperial Lizard.
Then I came to a little Italian who was the haulage boss on my shift. He was an excitable high ball artist but was ashamed of it and tried to cover it up with a forced good nature. He kept his mind fixed on the tonnage at all times. Otherwise he seemed a hell of a fine fellow. He had a hard case of producers’ mental cramp.
This boss took me over to a squat fat Austrian who was tinkerin’ with a low, wicked lookin’ motor, that looked like an armored car more than anything else. They told me to sit down and wait till the rest of the trips had pulled in to the different veins and chutes to load up and then we would start.
The night shift trooped by to their places in the interior and trip by trip the crowd of men on the bottom lessened. When the watch said four o’clock the trips commenced to roll out of the bottom with their ten and fifteen cars into the dark narrowness of the miles of tunneled gangways each foot of which had its danger to the trip rider and haulage man.
At last we too hooked onto a string of cars and went rolling into the mysterious inside. The big blue sparks from the trolley snapped and flamed while faster and faster the trip moved into the darkness with Johnny the boss, and myself draped over the end of the last car.
In places the roof was low and timbers had to be dodged or they would brush a plug off like he was a fly. Then the trolley hung low and there was a constant danger of touchin’ it and gettin’ electrocuted about half way.
A thousand dangers was on every hand. The little light on my cap was all that enabled me to see the overhead things that was ready to cave in my dome at any time I grew careless.
Johnny explained that I would get to know these dangers and would safeguard myself without thinkin’ about it. “It’s like a guy walkin’,” he said. “He’s takin’ a chance every minute dat he might fall down and bust his neck but he gets so used to it dat he protects himself widout any worryin’ at all. Besides dis is nuttin’. You’d ought to see what de miners is up against, up de pitch.”
We turned off of one tunnel into another and passed yawning black gangways to right and left but kept on goin’. These miles of track down here that took so many hours and days of workin’ together to build, these thousands of timbers each set of which took plannin’ and figurin’ of whole gangs workin’ for one impersonal end, the dozens of miles of galleries, gangways, chutes, counter air courses, and escapeways, all of these played up by the flickin’ light of my head lamp and emphasized by the pitchy blackness that was only relieved by the station lamps shinin so far away, these things sure made a guy feel like he was only a small part of somethin’ and not the whole cheese.
Mines I decided was no place for individual freedom. The more I saw of my job that day the more I figured that this was correct. We loaded trip after trip of cars full to overflowing, from the chutes. The miners up the pitch depended on us to use our heads at all times so that they would not be cut off in the black damp and gas that was sure to gather when the air courses were diverted.
Every thing you did had to be done just so, on account, of the peculiar desire that a lot of the rest of us have, to remain all in one piece that can move around some. And that is what coal mining amounts to. It is a wild struggle to get the wages that can be had by diggin’ coal, diggin’ the coal and stayin’ in such a shape so that the wife will recognize you when you come home. This complication naturally needs unionism and real helpful understanding of the local problems.
Unionism is my long suit and you can bet I was interested in the one that I had just joined. A lot of us has heard about the United Mine Workers and the funny thing is that the news is mostly in two classes, that is the sort of news that we can rely on. One sort of material is like the facts of the Ludlow Massacre and the West Virginia battles of the last twenty years.
Then there is the other sort. The facts that Mitchell, one time official of the Mine Workers, died with an estate of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the way that the officials often have of letting the rank and file carry on the battles of the organization when they get in a tight place while they sit back and issue public interviews discouraging the members.
Naturally I was interested in the whys and wherefores of such an organization and you can bet I was on hand to take in anything that had a bearin’ on the subject.
At the very next union meeting I got my first earful. After bein solemnly swore in I took a seat and looked at the maze of faces that looked out from the seats arranged, like the Russian bond holders, with the backs to the wall.
There was a safety committee report to listen to and I heard myself bein issued instructions from the body assembled not to leave any ties or rails layin’ alongside the track in the gangways and was impressed with the need to handle things with an eye to the welfare of my fellow workers. These fellows was lookin’ after the bosses’ business in order to keep out of the little plot of holy-ground up on the hill.
Then they discussed methods of pullin’ pillars and seemed to take exception to the technique of one of the bosses in this respect. The said boss was called in and made his statement in regards to the matter and was issued instructions to pull his pillars in the way that provided some chance of escape in at least nine out of ten times if you’re lucky.
I commenced to wonder what was the need of the confounded Super that had held down the office chair anyway. With a management committee and the office force organized I had a notion that this mine would run some considerable more coal per shift under a workers’ society.
Still it seemed we was just startin’. The Pit committee made a report and it was announced that the Grand Kleagle up in the office had been forced to change his mind about the amount of time supposed to be put in at cleanin’ the slope. Full pay was given for three quarters of a shift for all in this class. Other little matters of discussion had been talked over with The Most Noble One and been settled, it was reported.
I commenced to think I had landed right down in a camp where the wobblies’ dream had come true. But after a while I changed my mind some. The Royal dignitaries from the district office took the floor under good and welfare and proceeded to solemnly warn us about the nefarious influences that was at work to bust up our glorious solidarity. Them infernal wobblies in one of the sister locals had kicked over the traces through utter ignorance and had voted out a lot of real funds from the local treasury for the benefit of some of those criminals that the wobs called class war prisoners. It was very painful to relate, we was told, but the special session of the executive board had passed a motion that no funds should be spent from local treasuries for purposes of this kind. That in the future any such expenditure would have to be made by means of a special assessment levied per capita on the members of the local.
/> It was a grand speech. It overflowed with respect for a few individuals that had been taken in by the insidious propaganda of these violent reds, but no member of this great union was goin’ to stand by and see the great American flag insulted by this ignorant gang of scabs and dual unionists if the district officers and loyal members could help it. There was about an hour of this first by one indignant pie card and then another.
As soon as the oratorical debauch was over somebody with a sweet talking voice in the body made a motion that we go back to new business. It was slid across the floor without a squeak. Then something banged. Somebody in the back of the hall got the floor and said “Mr. Prayzident! I moof dat we donate wan hunderd dollars to the Northwest Districk Defense Committee.” Somebody shouted a second. Then there was a lot of racket. It was evident that the well oiled machinery had slipped a cog.
But the riders of the tricky office chairs was not to be felled so easy. Long practice had made ’em sticky. When quiet was restored there was a point of order made. The motion was out of order because the executive board had already ruled that no such action could be taken. The chairman, the honorable president, declared the motion out of order.
Then came the intended motion to endorse the action of the executive board. The fattest and most oratorical of the Royal dignitaries secured the floor. We listened for three quarters of an hour to his bunk. We heard about the history of the I.W.W. from the day that the first of these degenerates ever got together right down the descent they had made till the present day. Then somebody else got the floor. He said that he had different ideas about the I.W.W. He said the I.W.W. had some of the finest principles in the world but they was the worst managed organization under the sun. He was a grand friend of the I.W.W., he was. He managed to throw more slams and venom than any enemy I ever heard. And so it was. Even I commenced to wonder if the I.W.W. had been foolin’ me all these years. And then the motion was put to a vote on a call of the previous question. It was put fast too.