Memories of Another Day

by Harold Robbins

  The man stopped. “What the hell do you want? What do you mean breaking in here?”

  “The door was open,” Daniel said. He looked past the man to the others still seated behind the desk. “I came to see the boss o’ this yere union. I got important information fer ’im.”

  This time it was the man who sat in the center seat behind the desk that spoke. His voice was soft. “I’m Bill Foster, executive secretary of the union.”

  “Are you the boss?”

  Foster glanced at the men next to him. He nodded with a faint smile. “I guess that is what you might call me. What is it you want to see me about?”

  Daniel walked in front of the desk. “My name is Dan’l B. Huggins. Until tonight I was special guard on duty at Plant 5, U.S. Steel.”

  One of the other men started to interrupt Daniel. Foster silenced him with a gesture. “Yes?” he said softly.

  “Tonight we was tol’ that they ’spected a strike an’ that we was supposed to help the strikebreakers git th’u the picket lines even if it meant usin’ clubs and guns to do it. We was tol’ that we wouldn’ be alone, that a lot of men had already been deputized by the sher’f an’ would be out there to help us.”

  Foster’s voice was soft. “We already know that. What else can you tell us?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’ know. Nothin’, I guess. Sorry I bothered you.” He turned and started for the door.

  “Just a moment.” This man’s voice was one used to command. Daniel turned back. He was a thin-faced man with an almost patrician nose and mouth and dark hair and deep-set eyes. “Why did you come here?”

  “I quit an’ was tol’ to pack up and git out. Mebbe I wouldn’t o’ thought o’ comin’ here. After all, your fight was none o’ my business. But they was waitin’ fer me aroun’ the corner from the plant. After that I knew it was my business.”

  They were silent for a moment while they stared up at his battered face. Finally the thin-faced man spoke again. “It looks like they did a pretty good job on you.”

  “’Twon’t be nothin’ compared to what’s gonna happen to that sergeant when I git my han’s on him,” Daniel said. “Where I come f’om, we don’t take to things like that ’thout gittin’ our own back.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Fitchville, sir.”

  “Fitchville.” The thin-faced man’s voice was thoughtful. He glanced up sharply. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Huggins, sir. Dan’l B.”

  The man nodded suddenly. “You’re the boy who worked in the mines at Grafton, who—”

  “Yes, sir,” Daniel said quickly. “I’m that one.”

  The man was silent for a moment. “Would you mind waiting outside for just a few minutes?” he asked. “I would like to talk to my friends.”

  Daniel went back into the hall and closed the door behind him. The low hum of conversation rose behind him. He didn’t bother trying to listen to what they were saying. He pulled the bottle from the duffel bag and took another swig. One wasn’t enough; he was beginning to wear out. He took another.

  The door opened and the man who had first come toward him beckoned him inside. He went into the room, still holding the bottle of whiskey in his hand. They stared at the bottle, then up at him.

  He looked down at them. “It’s the on’y thing that’s keepin’ me goin’. Otherwise I’d fall on my face.”

  The thin-faced man spoke. “My name is Philip Murray, United Mine Workers, AFL. I spoke to my friend Mr. Foster about you, and if you want to help, I think he has a place for you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Murray.” He turned to look at Foster.

  “You won’t get the kind of pay you got from the mill,” Foster said quickly. “We haven’t that kind of money. Eight dollars a week and found is the best we can do.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Daniel said. “Jes’ what am I supposed to do fer this yere money?”

  “You know the guards; you know their methods, the way they work. When the strike comes, you’re going to have to be on the picket lines with us, telling us what we have to do to whip ’em.”

  “I don’ know whether I can, Mr. Foster, but I’ll certainly give it a try,” Daniel said. “But it seems to me that if you fellers don’ git off your ass real soon, by the time you call the strike they’ll have the whole United States Army against you.”

  Foster looked at him. His voice grew testy. “We’re just as aware of that as you are. The strike call is going out tomorrow.”

  Daniel looked at him without speaking.

  “Now you better go home and get some rest,” Murray said quickly.

  “I have no place to go,” Daniel said. “I lived in the barracks at the plant.” He felt himself beginning to weave slightly and put his hand on the desk to support himself.

  Foster got to his feet quickly. He gestured to the man who had come to the door. “There’s a cot in the next office. Help him in there and see to it that the doctor comes to see him first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said. The room was beginning to spin around him. “Thank you.” He felt the man’s hand take his arm. He managed to make it to the cot in the next room before he passed out. The date was September 22, 1919.

  ***

  A week later, more than three hundred thousand men were on strike, spread over eight states. But the key was Pittsburgh, the headquarters of the biggest company of them all, United States Steel.

  The day after the strike began, Elbert Gary, president of U.S. Steel, issued a statement which was widely reprinted in the newspapers in Pittsburgh and around the country.

  The Reds, anarchists and agitators have seduced a portion of American workers to abandon their jobs in an effort to disrupt the steel industry and undermine the political stability of the United States. Fortunately for America, there are enough of us who remain steadfast to our patriotic duties and defend our country from the encroachment of these vipers. I hereby issue an appeal to all the workers who have been deluded into joining this false strike to return to their jobs and I give my word as President of U.S. Steel that no recriminations will be taken against them and no discrimination shown in their desire to work. Under no circumstances will any of the steel companies bow to the dictatorship of foreign Communist anarchists. The Strike is already lost, it is a doomed cause. Return to work and show your patriotism and faith in our glorious country.

  Two days later there were advertisements in all the papers and posters on walls all over the city, each proclaiming essentially the same message. Under a cartoon drawing of Uncle Sam showing a clenched fist and bare-muscled forearm and biceps, the message RETURN TO WORK was printed not only in English but in seven other languages so that all the workers could read it.

  Each day Daniel stood in the street in front of the steel mill as the pickets paraded. At first it was very quiet. The guards remained inside the gate; the police stood watching the pickets, who marched silently back and forth. Every now and then the strikers would look up to see if smoke was still issuing from the chimneys of the great blast furnaces. It was still coming out—thin and gray, which signified that the fires were still banked. When steel was being produced, the smoke belched forth thick and black with soot which settled over the entire area.

  Almost a week had passed when one of the pickets came over to Daniel, who was standing against the corner building, a cigar clenched between his teeth. “I think we’re going to win,” the picket said. “The furnaces haven’t worked for a week.”

  Daniel crossed from the corner to where he could look into the entrance yard of the mill. There were more guards on duty than usual. The picket followed him. “What you think, Danny?”

  “I don’ know,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “Somethin’s gonna happen. They been waitin’ long enough to see if we’d come back. Now they’re gonna have to begin work again.”

  “They can’t,” the man said. “They can’t run the furnaces without us.”

  Dan
iel didn’t answer. He didn’t have anything to say. He just felt that it was all going to come to a head. Real soon. That evening back in union headquarters, he sat silently, listening to the bustle around him. There were reports coming in by telephone from various strike centers in the different states. They were all the same. Quiet.

  Then one telephone call changed the whole picture. Four hundred Negroes were heading for Pittsburgh from South Carolina on a train that was due to arrive at eight o’clock the next morning.

  Chapter 7

  At six o’clock in the morning, the picket line that had kept vigil through the night in front of Plant No. 5 began to grow. The thirty-odd men gave way to their comrades who began to steadily fill the streets leading to the mill. Tired as they were from the long night, there was a tension in the air that kept them from making their way home to their beds. By eight o’clock there were four hundred men on the picket lines that moved slowly up and down the streets past the foundry gate. At nine o’clock there were more than seven hundred of them, and there was no longer room for a line: there was just a solid wall of pickets from the far side of the street to the mill gate; they moved slowly in place without room to go forward or backward.

  Daniel was standing on the north corner of the street across from the mill gate. On the steps of a small building behind him were the union leaders, Bill Foster and some of his assistants. Daniel climbed up the steps beside them so that he could see over the heads of the pickets. Behind the mill gate, the sergeant had all his men lined up in military platoon fashion. There were ten squads of eight men each, dressed in the guard’s uniform, each with billy club and gun.

  Daniel leaned toward Foster. “They brought in forty extra men,” he said. “There was no more’n forty in all when I was there.”

  Foster nodded grimly, his lips clenched tightly on an unlit cigar.

  “The sergeant is gonna use ’em as wedges once the gates is open, to clear the way fer the strikebreakers.”

  “I figured that,” Foster said tersely.

  “If’n we move the picket line up against the gates, they ain’t no way they kin open ’em,” Daniel said. “The gates opens out into the street.”

  Foster looked at him in surprise. “You sure? Nobody told me that.”

  “I’m sure,” Daniel said.

  Foster turned and whispered to two of his assistants. “Pass the word: Move up against the gates.”

  A few minutes later, the small open sidewalk in front of the gates and fence was packed with pickets as well as the street. Daniel could see the sergeant staring at them. He turned to his men, and a moment later each one of them held his billy club in his hand.

  A man wearing the big union button on his lapel came from around the corner and pushed his way up to Foster. His voice was guttural with a Middle European accent. “They got the scabs loaded into eight trucks. There’s about forty Cossacks on horses and two hundred sheriff’s deputies in front of them. The sheriff an’ some man in an army uniform are in a car in front of them. They should be turning up the street any minute now.”

  Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, a roar came from down the street. “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

  The mass of the picket line surged toward the street away from the gates. “Tell them to stay put!” Daniel shouted.

  Foster stood up, waving his arms. “Stand fast, men!” he shouted. “Don’t move away from the gates!”

  But it was too late. The striking ironworkers, in their eager desire to see who was coming, had already left their positions and were moving up the street. The first group of mounted police turned the corner six abreast, each policeman holding his nightstick up in one hand. Both the strikers and the police stopped and stared at each other silently. Behind them was an open touring car.

  The sheriff and the man in the army uniform got out of the car and walked past the mounted police to confront the strikers. The sheriff took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it and began to read in a loud voice that carried down the street to where Foster and the others were standing: “This is a court order signed by Judge Carter Glass, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Superior Court, ordering you strikers to disperse and let these men who want to work go to their jobs.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then a guttural roar seemed to rise from the throats of the crowd. The words were indistinguishable, because of the many languages spoken at the same time, but the meaning was clear. There was no way they were going to let the scabs through. They began to move menacingly toward the sheriff.

  For a moment, the sheriff held his ground. “This here’s Brigadier General Standish of the Pennsylvania National Guard with me. He has direct orders from the Governor to call out the Pennsylvania National Guard if there is any trouble.”

  “They won’t be no trouble if you don’t make it, Sheriff,” a voice roared from the back of the strikers. “Jes’ you turn them trucks aroun’ an’ send them niggers back where they came from!”

  The strikers picked it up. They began to chant. “Send the scabs back where they came from! Send the scabs back where they came from!”

  “This is my last appeal to you men!” the sheriff shouted. “Disperse peacefully now an’ nobody’ll get hurt.”

  For an answer, the strikers closest to the sheriff locked arms and began to chant, while moving rhythmically in step side to side. “Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever!”

  The sheriff tried to shout over them, but their voices drowned him out. He stood there staring at them.

  Daniel looked at Foster. The union leader’s face was pale, his lips clenched. “You better tell the men to pull back, Mr. Foster. Those police are gonna ride right over ’em.”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Foster said tensely. “That would show the whole world what they really are. Tools of the capitalists.”

  “That ain’t gonna he’p the strikers they beat up on,” Daniel said.

  “Maybe it will make the country wake up and pay attention to what’s going on under their noses,” Foster replied. He turned to the strikers and shouted. “Stand fast, men! Solidarity forever!” He held up his clenched fist, arm bent in a Communist salute.

  “Solidarity!” the strikers shouted.

  The sheriff turned and, followed by the soldier, went back to his car. The strikers began to laugh and jeer, thinking they had forced the sheriff to retire. A moment later, their laughter turned into instant panic and fear.

  Without so much as a signal, the mounted police charged their horses directly into the front of the strikers, their clubs swinging and flailing about, hitting men indiscriminately. In less than a minute there were fourteen men lying in the street, semiconscious and bleeding. Unconcerned, the police drove their horses over them into the next rank of strikers. Behind the mounted police came hundreds of uniformed deputies swinging their clubs. More strikers began to fall in the street, and the screams of pain and fear began to rise over the noise. Suddenly the strikers broke and began to run toward the sides and the other streets. Relentlessly the police followed them. Now there was a clear path to the gates.

  Daniel saw the sergeant give the order, the gates begin to swing open. A moment later the guards came out at the back of the strikers who remained, they too swinging their clubs.

  Daniel turned to look at Foster. The union leader seemed paralyzed, incapable of motion. “We better git our ass outta here!” Daniel said.

  Foster didn’t move. Daniel turned to two of Foster’s assistants. “Better git him out.”

  The two men grabbed Foster by the arms and they went down the steps, dragging him around the corner. He moved with them unresisting, almost as if he were in a daze.

  Daniel watched as the first truck began to roll through the steel-mill gates. The blacks stood about fifty in a truck like herded sheep, their faces gray with fear. The sergeant came outside the gate and began waving the rest of the trucks in. Daniel came down the steps and moved quickly through the straggling strikers and came out of the cr
owd just behind the sergeant.

  The sergeant was waving his billy club in the air, directing the trucks. Daniel reached up and picked the club from his hand. The sergeant turned in surprise. “What the hell?”

  “Howdy, Sergeant,” Daniel said with a smile. Then before the sergeant had a chance to react, Daniel smashed the billy club full across the sergeant’s face. The man’s mouth, nose and chin dissolved into a mess of blood and broken bone. He began to fall. Daniel kicked him as he went down, and the sergeant fell backward under the wheels of the passing truck. There was a popping sound almost like a balloon bursting as the wheels went over the sergeant’s chest, collapsing the ribs and crushing his spine, and when the truck had passed, Daniel knew he was looking down at a dead man. Still holding the billy club in his hand, he turned away and began to walk slowly toward the side street.

  A deputy sheriff came running toward him. He saw the club in Daniel’s hand and took him for one of the private police. “What happened back there?”

  Daniel looked at him. “I think one o’ the trucks jes’ run over some prick.”

  “Jesus!” the deputy swore. “Did yuh ever see anythin’ like it?”

  “Nope,” Daniel said, and continued walking away. When he turned up the side street, he threw the billy club into the gutter. He walked five blocks to the nearest saloon. Once inside, he ordered a bottle of whiskey all for himself. He took three quick drinks. Then the bartender came over to him. “Know anything about how the strike is going over at the mill?”

  Daniel poured himself another drink. “What strike?” he asked. “I’m a stranger aroun’ here myse’f.”

  Chapter 8

  It was later in the afternoon when Daniel got back to the union office. He had expected to find an attitude of despair after the ignominious defeat of the morning. But that wasn’t the way it was.

  Instead there seemed to be an attitude of excitement, almost an exultation, as Foster and his assistants jumped from one telephone to another, talking rapidly to strike centers in other cities. Daniel stood in the doorway listening to Foster talking on the telephone.