He had learned this, among other things: That so long as he was docile and humble the owners would be kind to him. But if he once began to think for himself and ask for a better life they wanted to crush him. There was a telephone in the union hall and many times a day it would ring and voices spoke to them threatening death if they did not give up the strike. And they received many letters, he and Bonnie and Tom Moore. They addressed Bonnie as “nigger lover” because she worked in Stumptown among the colored people. But Bonnie went right on, for she was strong in knowing that Mary Allen and the others there needed the message as much as her people did. She could not be so selfish as to keep it only for herself and hers. She was not made in that fashion.
Suddenly John became aware that people were walking in the street outside. He realized that for some time he had been hearing the noises some distance away, but they had come into his thoughts as noises come in a dream. He touched Jesse on the shoulder and woke him.
“I think there may be trouble,” he said.
They listened. There were voices outside.
“Had I better call the militia to protect us?” Jesse asked. “They’re not far away.”
“Wait,” John said. He woke the others. They sat sleepy-eyed, huddled together on the floor, and singly on the counters. John stood in the middle of the long room, facing the door. There was a heavy crash on the door, and then another. The butt of a gun came through the splintered boards, and then the head of an ax crashed through. The others were wide awake now. All were standing, waiting for what was coming through the door.
“If I had my gun!” Jesse cried out as if he was in pain.
“Get away from that door,” John called out.
There was no answer, but a hand reached through the splintered part and unlocked the door. It was filled with men. They had on masks which hid the lower part of their faces. The first ones entered, and others followed them. There must have been a hundred altogether, crowding into the room and filling the street outside. They had guns and axes in their hands.
“Get out,” the leader said to the strikers. “Get out of here. If you don’t want to be carried out.”
John looked at the faces of his friends. “Comrades,” he said, using a word that he had not thought of using, “I reckon since they’re armed and we not, hit’s best for us t’ go.”
The men turned slowly without speaking. Together they walked through the back entrance, down the alley between stores, and came out on the other side of the street. There in the dark they watched the mob at its work.
Everything was smashed. The whole wooden structure was made into a heap of wood. As each wall went down a hate like fire came up in John. It was not a hate against the men who were tearing down the building, but against those he knew had sent them, against the Power that was behind the lawlessness. He and the others in the strike had not broken one law since it had begun. And the Power could break every law.
Standing in the dark with the others he saw the masked men go to the relief store. They knocked in the glass windows. The splintering of the glass fell on him as if it was the splintering of his hopes for the union. They knocked in the door and came out carrying the precious bags and boxes of food. These they scattered on the sidewalk and in the mud of the road and stamped on them. Then they went back for more. When everything was finished one of the leaders stood outside the door and fired his revolver three times into the air. As he raised his face the mask fell off and John saw that it was the night superintendent of the mills, Jim Strothers.
The mob moved off to the east, and before they were out of sight the militia came running from the other direction.
John and the others crossed the street to see the wreck that had been made. The militia halted before them with bayonets outstretched. Their commander came up and spoke to John. He did not look at the mob that was still near enough for him to reach.
“What is this?” he asked sternly. John pointed to the smashed union hall.
“You might see,” he said. “That mob you see going up the street did it. A mob from the mill. Jim Strothers, the night Super, was one of them.”
“You can tell that when you come up in court,” the commander told him. He called up some of his men and they surrounded the strikers.
“Where are we going?” John asked.
“To jail,” the commander said.
“What for?”
“For disturbing the peace.”
They marched along the road, surrounded by the militia. John saw Young Frank two rows ahead. Without seeming to hurry he moved forward faster than the others and pulled the militiaman who was holding his arm forward until he was just behind Young Frank.
Young Frank was holding the arm of Henry Sanders.
“How long, Young Frank,” John said to him in a low voice as they walked along, “how long you going t’ fight us?”
“Here,” Young Frank said to the militiaman who had John’s arm. “You take this man and give me yours.” The young militiaman sleepily reached ahead and took Henry’s arm. Young Frank came to John’s side.
“Look here,” he whispered, “we don’t like this kind of work. We want to go home, and told them so. We hope to get away by the end of the week. It’s dirty work. I may be mean . . . but I don’t like dirty work.”
When John was bailed out of jail two days later, he found the militia gone. But something had come in its place. Over a hundred of the worst men in the town and county had been sworn in as deputy sheriffs. They were stationed day and night on every street leading to the mills. And leading them was Sam McEachern, who had lived in the mountains, the one that Minnie had spoken about. Ora picked him out the first day. She remembered him well, though years had passed since he had left the hills with Minnie behind him on his horse.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
AT the north of the Company property there was a high piece of ground with two new houses on it, at some distance from each other. Behind the houses was a large open piece of ground sloping down to a grove of trees. The trees filled a hollow or small valley, which had a spring at one end and a small stream running through the center. It was in this hollow that John had been taken by some of his school mates during his first year in school, when he had knocked down Albert Burnett and run away to the mountains to find Granpap.
The union rented this hollow for the tents, along with a piece of land on the high part of the ground just between the two new houses. There they built, with the help of Mrs. Sevier’s husband who was an excellent carpenter, a small building that was the new union office.
Down in the hollow they put up the tents, and people who had been evicted—and many more had been put out since the first day—moved in all the furniture they could. They put up a rough shelter for a kitchen, and ate in the open, or if it was raining took the food into their tents. During the day one of the relief workers and some of the women took the old car and drove into the country where they asked farmers for what they were able to give. It was amazing the numbers of poor who were farmers. Yet they were willing, most of them, to share what they had, potatoes, and other vegetables, with those who were striking.
Each day some of the women took charge of the children in the tents while the others worked at various things, going into the country, working in the office, and picketing. Bonnie had brought her furniture and young ones to the tent colony, for she could not pay rent any more, and the children stayed there while she was out working for the union.
Bonnie learned that the word scab has two meanings. She had known it to mean an ugly piece of mattered growth over a wound. But she learned that a scab was also a person who would take the place of another who was fighting in a union. She felt a sympathy for them, since, like her, they were poor and only wanted to make their bread, but she knew they must learn that if they scabbed then they were really cheating themselves in the end, and were also being traitors to their own people.
She had explained this some days before to Mary Allen in her tumble down
cabin in Stumptown. And Mary, who had been asked by the mill to go to work as a weaver, because she had swept the floor in the weave room and knew the process somewhat, spoke with her reasonably about it.
“Well, it’s mighty hard for us not to give in, honey,” she said. “For they have never given us a chance before to do nothing but sweep and work in the opening room, or something like that.”
“But you’ll see,” Bonnie explained anxiously. “They won’t keep you long when they can get somebody else. And if we get a strong union hit means they’ll take back workers, and the union will get better wages for you, too.”
She went further and spoke of the message to Mary. And Mary’s brown eyes stared out of the white eyeballs at her.
“Oh my Lord,” she said. “Could it be? Oh Sweet Jesus.
“I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try to get the others here around the house, and you can speak to them what you’ve told me.”
So Bonnie spoke one morning while Dewey Fayon waited with a truck from the mills to take the colored people. She stood on Mary Allen’s steps and spoke to the black faces that were looking up at her.
“We used t’ live way back in the hills,” she said. “And up there they told us, ‘Come down to the mills and work. Down there money grows on trees.’ Well, I have seen that those trees have produced nothing except what the bosses have gathered for themselves.”
She saw Dewey Fayon leave the truck. He came forward and spoke in a loud, heavy voice that seemed to strike them. Some even winced as if a blow had been struck across their shoulders.
“Hurry up now,” he said. “Whoever’s going has got to hurry. I can’t wait all day.”
He pushed into the crowd and called out again, then he pointed at Bonnie. “Shame yourself, Bonnie Calhoun,” he called out, “for keeping people from making good wages.”
She looked down from the steps on his white face raised up among the black ones. She felt anger at him and a sorrow that pulled her heart down. But her anger was greater.
“Shame yourself, Dewey Fayon,” she called back to him, “for going against your own people. Not so long ago, you was a mill hand yourself. And now you’ve reached a higher place you’ve gone back on your own.”
Then she remembered something John Stevens had said and taking her gaze away from the white face of Dewey Fayon she turned to the black faces.
“Can’t you see,” she spoke to them anxiously, “they look on us as owned cattle? If we die, or our children, hit don’t matter to them, for they know there’s plenty more of us to get. What we must do is show them we’re people that have got pride in ourselves, and won’t be used. If we scab on each other then we’re no better than driven cattle that don’t know any better. Please, good friends, don’t let him take you to the mill.”
It was the best she could do, and not nearly good enough. In the seconds that followed while she waited to see how many would follow Dewey Fayon and his shot gun she held to Mary Allen’s arm, to keep her knees from giving way.
“All right,” Dewey Fayon called out. “This is your last chance.” He turned toward the truck. About ten followed him. When he saw that only a few came he turned back for a moment.
“We’ll get you for this, Bonnie Calhoun,” he said. And many of that company remembered his words afterwards, when people in Stumptown and those in the village were mourning.
When Bonnie reached the union hall the others had just returned from picketing the mill. And she heard with joy that they had persuaded the ten who had gone with Dewey Fayon to go back to their homes. But many had suffered from the deputies. Mrs. Sanders was lying on the plank floor of the hall, and Ora was trying to revive her. Two of the other women bathed her bruised head, for one of the deputies had knocked her in the eyes with his fist. Her dress was torn to shreds by the bayonets.
“Henry was near by,” Ora told Bonnie. “And when they had knocked her on the ground and began twisting her arms he rushed through the crowd. Small as Henry is he would have gone at those men. We had t’ hold him back by main force.”
The union lawyer was in the room sitting at the table. Some had been arrested and carried to jail, and he was getting their names in order to bail them out with money sent by workers and those sympathetic with workers. When Mrs. Sanders was well enough to sit up he went over to her.
“Mrs. Sanders,” he said. “I want you to put that dress away.” He pointed to her clothes that had been torn by the bayonets. “We should have that for evidence.”
“I couldn’t put it away,” Mrs. Sanders told him, but she would not give the reason and was too weak for him to urge her. Later she told Ora, “Hit’s the only dress I’ve got. I couldn’t give it up.”
When Ora came back from helping Mrs. Sanders down to the tents she spoke to Bonnie.
“They chased us like rats. Hit was good you were not there, for you always get mad, like Henry, and want to light into them.”
Bonnie had been in jail several times already.
“Hit’s something I can’t help,” Bonnie said. “When I see them stomping down people . . .”
“Do ye know who’s living in the house to the right?” Ora asked her.
“The Coxeys.”
“And who else?”
“No.”
“Minnie Hawkins. She’s got a room there. I saw her to-day at noon talking with Sam McEachern, right out in broad daylight on the porch.”
“I reckon she’s got a right there, if the Coxeys will have her.”
“Yes. But hit looks funny. For on the same day she comes t’ stay on one side of us, Lessie Hampton takes a room on the other. Lessie has got a job now working in the office of the mill at a big wage.”
“Listen to this,” John said to them. He was reading a newspaper the lawyer had left in the office.
“The Governor has written something about us. He says Tom Moore and the others from the North have gone about ‘bedeviling the issue’—and that we all have got in the way of a ‘dis-passionate approach to the problem.’ ”
“Maybe he means a dis-passionate approach is them approaching our union hall on Railroad Avenue and throwing our food into the streets,” Jesse McDonald said. “Only we didn’t seem to prevent hit.”
Frank spoke up from his place in the corner where the sun could come in on him, as it could not come down in the shady hollow. “Maybe he means that the deputy sheriffs twisting women’s arms and tearing their dresses, and beating us in the faces, and sticking us with bayonets and stomping us on the ground—is a dis-passionate approach. We have certainly got in the way of those things—though we didn’t mean to.”
“Once,” Ed Thatcher told them, “up in the hills a man stole my hog. I recognized my hog in his pen by a crotch in the right ear. So I told him. ‘Give me back my hog!’ And he said, ‘Now look. Here’s fifty cents. If you’ll go on your way and leave the hog, there won’t be any trouble.’ I reckon that might be what the Governor means by a dis-passionate approach.”
They spoke lightly, but thoughts were beneath their words. John was thinking, “There is a spy among us,” and he searched the faces before him. His eyes dwelt longest on one of the younger strikers. Fred Tate was a weakly young man who had never been much good at working. It was a wonder the mill kept him on when they had dismissed so many. He had seemed well disposed toward the union, and had come to live in the tent colony. His wife and baby were staying with an aunt in the country, but Carrie Tate had written that there was not a dry place in the house when it rained, and Fred had asked if he might bring them to the tents. Tom Moore said, yes, though he and John suspected Fred of being a spy.
As John looked Fred Tate turned his eyes away. Then John heard some words spoken that drew his attention from Fred.
Someone said, “It’s time we used our guns!” and there was no joking in the voice.
Everyone in the room, men and women, looked at John intently, questioningly. And he had no answer for them. He knew as they did that hate surrounded them. It was in the a
ir, in the gaze of people from the town. The newspapers were full of hate in the day, and at night while they slept or tried to sleep down in the hollow they heard men walking in the brush around the tents, and hushed voices. One night some shots were fired.
Robert Phillips, John’s old friend, who was Captain Phillips now, from having been in the war, and was a lawyer for the mill, would not speak to John on the street: and Albert Burnett who had never known him well, but who had spoken to him pleasantly before, passed him on the street and spoke a name that was hard to leave unchallenged. “And him a government lawyer,” John said to himself, and spat on the ground to take the bitter taste from himself, that he could not, since they were all together, think of personal revenge.
John knew all this. Yet he had to keep silent before the eyes that looked at him questioningly asking him how long they could go without defending themselves.
While they all sat in the room, quiet, thinking about what had been said, a young girl walked into the office.
“Is Tom Moore here?” she asked.
“No, Helen,” John answered, for he recognized Mrs. Sevier’s daughter.
“You are John McClure?” She spoke to him, as if she had recognized him, too.
“Yes.”
She held out a letter to him. “One of our boarders, the one named Jackson, sent a suit to Reskowitz to be pressed,” she said. “Mr. Reskowitz found this in the pocket. He said, give it to you or Tom Moore.”
“Was there anything else,” John asked.
“I was to say they are watching our house.”
“Thank ye.” John said to her.
He opened the letter. It was addressed to no name but to a number, V-500. At the top was the name of a detective agency in the North. The person who wrote the letter said that V-500—who was Jackson of course—must always report to the clients, the mill management. Jackson had been trying to sell washing machines in the village. The letter went on:
To Make My Bread Page 39