Promoted to Foreman—Overwork and Eyestrain—Mexican Traits—Amateur
Doctor—A rival Asphalt Company—Its Failure.
I had plenty to attend to when I was promoted to be foreman, but was so
pleased that I tried to do the whole job by myself; I succeeded for some
three or four months, nearly breaking myself down in the attempt, and
later found out that I got no thanks from the company either. I used to
be at the office at 6.30 each morning to lay out the day’s work and to
issue time checks to the men who were to go to work. During the day I
was over the plant and in the pit on practically continuous rounds, and
between times I was in the office attending to my correspondence, making
out reports for the head office, and posting my books, as I had no
office help at all. At 6 P.M., when the day-shift came off duty, I
opened up the commissary, and with the help of a Mexican assistant I
issued to the men the food, &c., they wished to buy. This generally took
till 7.30 P.M., then to supper, and back to the office with a round or
two over the works to see what the night-shift were doing; and then to
bed at 10.30, sometimes midnight. Finally my eyes gave out from doing so
much office work under an electric light, and I practically broke down
from overwork. A man can stand long hours for a short time; I myself
have often stood thirty-six and forty-eight hour shifts in the extractor
house, two such shifts in one week but with a rest between; it is the
long, steady grind that wears one out. I had to get leave and go into
San Antonio to see an oculist, who gave me glasses and fixed me up so
that I could return to work, but under orders to do no reading or
writing at night for some months. The name of the eye trouble I was
suffering from I have forgotten, but it was not the same as that of the
man I heard of who, when the oculist had fitted on a number of different
glasses said, in reply to the question as to how he could see with the
last pair, “Well, the green giraffe I can shee firsh rate, but the red
elephant and the purple trantula still look kinder—kinder blurred.” I
wrote to the company that I either must have assistance, or an immediate
rise of salary to warrant doing the work and taking chances. They
replied that the salary I was receiving was all that the position I held
was worth, but they sent me a man to take charge of the commissary, and
let me get a book-keeper to do the office work, so that I had little
night work to do.
I was practically the law and the prophets among the Mexicans at the
mines, and they soon learned that I would carry out anything I said. Of
course they had to prove this by a course of experiments, for the
Mexicans hate to take anything for granted. I remember, once, two of
them having an argument in the pit as to whether an electric fulminate
cap could be exploded by a blow or only by the electric spark, one of
them must needs experiment by striking the cap with a stone; it took him
the rest of the day to get the pieces of stone out of his hand. I had
issued an order that any man coming drunk on to the work would be
discharged, and my best “hand driller” tried the experiment and went
herding goats for a change. So things went on till they were convinced.
This confidence that I could and would do what I said got me out of a
hole once. There was a young Mexican at the mines who had been
ill-treating his wife, and finally one evening he decided to kill her.
She managed to escape from him, and ran over to the house of the head
fireman, whose wife gave her shelter, the fireman himself turning out
and running the husband off with a rifle. I heard about it the next
morning, and that the husband was still full of threats. So I sent for
him, his wife, and the fireman, and held court. The wife refused to
return to the husband, as she said he would certainly kill her, and the
fireman and his wife also refused to give her up. The husband of course
denied all the charges, and said he could not return to Mexico without
his wife, as suspicion would be aroused. I was in a quandary, for I knew
that unless I could get the young fellow away either he or the fireman
would get killed, and I could not afford to lose the fireman. Finally I
gave the young fellow the alternative of either leaving the place at
once, and leaving his wife in the care of the fireman and his wife, or I
would take him into town and turn him over to the sheriff. It did not
take him long to make up his mind that he did not want to make the
acquaintance of the sheriff, and so he skipped out. The story somehow
leaked out, and the next time I met Henry Burns the sheriff he joked me
unmercifully about my divorce court. On another occasion an old woman,
who ran a sort of restaurant for the bachelor Mexicans at the mines,
came rushing to the office to tell me that two drunken Mexicans had run
her out and were tearing her house to pieces; then just as I started off
she warned me to be careful, as they both had pistols.
I went over to Mexico (as we called the Mexican part of the camp), and
as I approached the old woman’s house, I saw the two men standing
outside the door, but as soon as they saw me they went inside. It scared
me for a minute, for I expected they would take a shot at me from some
crack or other, but, just as I reached the door, they both stepped out
again. I then searched them and found neither of them armed, and they
denied that they had done anything or bothered the old woman, though
they were both pretty drunk, so I let them go, thinking the old hen had
lied. Then as I started to go back to the office I thought I would take
a look in the house and see if any damage had been done, and there in a
corner lay the two pistols. I had no real authority either to make
arrests or even carry a pistol, as I was not a deputy-sheriff, nor could
I be made one, as I was not an American citizen; but Henry Burns had
told me to carry a gun and try and keep the peace unofficially, which I
did to the best of my ability. Once a Mexican came running to tell me
that a man and a woman were lying dead on the road from the mines to
Uvalde, about half a mile from the mine. I hurried over and found the
woman sure enough dead, shot through the heart from behind, but the man
was still alive, though a horrible sight to see. I used to keep a
medicine chest and plenty of lint and bandages, as, having no doctor
nearer than eighteen miles, I used to attend to all hurts, and even
prescribed remedies in simple cases, till my wife protested at the
string of sick babies that used to be brought up for my inspection. As
was proved at the subsequent trial, the man had killed the woman and
then attempted suicide. He had stuck his Winchester under his chin and
kicked the trigger. The bullet broke his jawbone and came out over his
right eye. I washed out the wound and tied his face back into place, and
just then Henry Burns arrived on the scene and I turned the whole
business over to him. He was on his way over to the mines about another
case. They carted the Mexican over to his house and put a guard over
him; just as they were laying him on the bed he mumbled something,
turned over, and pulled a pistol out of the back of his waistband, that
was hurting him as he lay. Henry laughed at me for not searching my
prisoner. The man was a poor half-witted chopper working for our
firewood contractor. He got a ten-year sentence, and died later in the
penitentiary.
A rival asphalt company started to open up another deposit two miles
below our mine, and began to haul their product to the Cline station
through our land. Under orders from the head office I went out, took
down all gates, and fenced all roads up solid, so that they could not
haul through the company’s pasture.
The law in the State of Texas makes it a felony to cut a man’s pasture
fence, and the punishment is up to five years in the penitentiary. A
couple of days after I had fixed the fences the station agent at Cline
telephoned me that the wagons were up there again unloading. I got on my
horse, and soon found where they had torn down the fence and come
through. I wired the sheriff to send me out a deputy at once, and on his
arrival went out with him and a gang of men, rebuilt the fence, and the
lot of us sat down to await results. Soon the wagons arrived, and on the
first one sat the president of the rival company and his lawyer. The
former, whom I knew, called out to me and asked me why I had built the
fences so strong, as it only gave his men unnecessary trouble. The
deputy then warned him that he was breaking the law in touching the
fence, but he gave his men orders to pull it down, and they came on
through. I wanted the deputy to arrest him, and I and my men would help,
but he refused, for fear, as he said, of trouble; but his real reason, I
found out later, was that his orders from Henry Burns were not to make
any arrests. The case came up for trial, and Henry Bums turned us down,
getting an unfriendly jury who threw the case out of court. He had been
bought by the opposition, and this was the main ground on which I fought
him later at elections. We got an injunction in the federal court,
prohibiting them from crossing our grounds, and they had to haul to
Uvalde, twenty miles, instead of Cline, eight miles. The whole thing,
however, had been a bluff, as their deposit was worthless, and they were
simply trying to scare us into selling our product at a low price to
them. Their bluff not working, they finally had to buy material from us
at our own price, as they had a large paving contract to fill and
nothing to fill it with. The way these bluffs are worked in some of the
States, regardless of law, is simply astounding.