came because I thought, like a lot of other poor fools, that the North
had destroyed my fortunes and it might restore them; but five years of
fruitless struggle in different places out of Dixie have shown me that it
isn’t the place for a man with blood in his veins. I thought that I was
reconstructed; but I’m not. My State didn’t need it, but I did.”
“Where’re you from?”
“Kentucky; and there’s where I’m bound for now. I want to get back where
people have hearts and sympathies.”
The coloured man was silent. After a while he said, and his voice was
tremulous as he thought of the past, “I’m from Kintucky, myself.”
“I knew that you were from some place in the South. There’s no mistaking
our people, black or white, wherever you meet them. Kentucky’s a great
State, sir. She didn’t secede; but there were lots of her sons on the
other side. I was; and I did my duty as clear as I could see it.”
“That’s all any man kin do,” said Nelse; “an’ I ain’t a-blamin’ you. I
lived with as good people as ever was. I know they wouldn’t ’a’ done
nothin’ wrong ef they’d ’a’ knowed it; an’ they was on the other side.”
“You’ve been a slave, then?”
“Oh, yes, I was born a slave; but the War freed me.”
“I reckon you wouldn’t think that my folks ever owned slaves; but they
did. Everybody was good to them except me, and I was young and liked to
show my authority. I had a little black boy that I used to cuff around a
good deal, altho’ he was near to me as a brother. But sometimes he would
turn on me and give me the trouncing that I deserved. He would have been
skinned for it if my father had found it out; but I was always too much
ashamed of being thrashed to tell.”
The speaker laughed, and Nelse joined him. “Bless my soul!” he said, “ef
that ain’t jes’ the way it was with me an’ my Mas’ Tom—”
“Mas’ Tom!” cried the stranger; “man, what’s your name?”
“Nelse Hatton,” replied the Negro.
“Heavens, Nelse! I’m your young Mas’ Tom. I’m Tom Hatton; don’t you know
me, boy?”
“You can’t be—you can’t be!” exclaimed the Negro.
“I am, I tell you. Don’t you remember the scar I got on my head from
falling off old Baldy’s back? Here it is. Can’t you see?” cried the
stranger, lifting the long hair away from one side of his brow. “Doesn’t
this convince you?”
“It’s you—it’s you; ’tain’t nobody else but Mas’ Tom!” and the ex-slave
and his former master rushed joyously into each other’s arms.
There was no distinction of colour or condition there. There was no
thought of superiority on the one hand, or feeling of inferiority on the
other. They were simply two loving friends who had been long parted and
had met again.
After a while the Negro said, “I’m sure the Lord must ’a’ sent you right
here to this house, so’s you wouldn’t be eatin’ off o’ none o’ these poor
white people ’round here.”
“I reckon you’re religious now, Nelse; but I see it ain’t changed your
feeling toward poor white people.”
“I don’t know about that. I used to be purty bad about ’em.”
“Indeed you did. Do you remember the time we stoned the house of old Nat,
the white wood-sawyer?”
“Well, I reckon I do! Wasn’t we awful, them days?” said Nelse, with
forced contrition, but with something almost like a chuckle in his voice.
And yet there was a great struggle going on in the mind of this black
man. Thirty years of freedom and the advantages of a Northern State made
his whole soul revolt at the word “master.” But that fine feeling, that
tender sympathy, which is natural to the real Negro, made him hesitate to
make the poor wreck of former glory conscious of his changed estate by
using a different appellation. His warm sympathies conquered.
“I want you to see my wife and boys, Mas’ Tom,” he said, as he passed out
of the room.
Eliza Hatton sat in her neatly appointed little front room, swelling with
impotent rage.
If this story were chronicling the doings of some fanciful Negro, or
some really rude plantation hand, it might be said that the “front room
was filled with a conglomeration of cheap but pretentious furniture,
and the walls covered with gaudy prints”—this seems to be the usual
phrase. But in it the chronicler too often forgets how many Negroes were
house-servants, and from close contact with their master’s families
imbibed aristocratic notions and quiet but elegant tastes.
This front room was very quiet in its appointments. Everything in it was
subdued except—Mrs. Hatton. She was rocking back and forth in a light
little rocker that screeched the indignation she could not express.
She did not deign to look at Nelse as he came into the room; but an
acceleration of speed on the part of the rocker showed that his presence
was known.
Her husband’s enthusiasm suddenly died out as he looked at her; but he
put on a brave face as he said,—
“’Lizy, I bet a cent you can’t guess who that pore man in there is.”
The rocker suddenly stopped its violent motion with an equally violent
jerk, as the angry woman turned upon her husband.
“No, I can’t guess,” she cried; “an’ I don’t want to. It’s enough to be
settin’ an on’ry ol’ tramp down to my clean table, without havin’ me
spend my time guessin’ who he is.”
“But look a-here, ’Lizy, this is all different; an’ you don’t understand.”
“Don’t care how different it is, I do’ want to understand.”
“You’ll be mighty su’prised, I tell you.”
“I ’low I will; I’m su’prised already at you puttin’ yourself on a level
with tramps.” This with fine scorn.
“Be careful, ’Lizy, be careful; you don’t know who a tramp may turn out
to be.”
“That ol’ humbug in there has been tellin’ you some big tale, an’ you
ain’t got no more sense ’an to believe it; I ’spect he’s crammin’ his
pockets full of my things now. Ef you don’t care, I do.”
The woman rose and started toward the door, but her husband stopped her.
“You mustn’t go out there that way,” he said. “I want you to go out, you
an’ the childern; but I want you to go right—that man is the son of my
ol’ master, my young Mas’ Tom, as I used to call him.”
She fell back suddenly and stared at him with wide-open eyes.
“Your master!”
“Yes, it’s young Mas’ Tom Hatton.”
“An’ you want me an’ the childern to see him, do you?”
“Why, yes, I thought—”
“Humph! that’s the slave in you yet,” she interrupted. “I thought thirty
years had made you free! Ain’t that the man you told me used to knock you
’round so?”
“Yes, ’Lizy; but—”
“Ain’t he the one that made you haul him in the wheelbar’, an’ whipped
you because you couldn’t go fast enough?”
“Yes, yes; but that—”
“Ain’t he the one that lef’ that scar there?” she cried, with a sudden
motion of her hand toward his neck.
“Yes,” said Nelse, very quietly; but he put his hand up and felt the
long, cruel scar that the lash of a whip had left, and a hard light came
into his eyes.
His wife went on: “An’ you want to take me an’ the childern in to see
that man? No!” The word came with almost a snarl. “Me an’ my childern are
free born, an’, ef I kin help it, they sha’n’t never look at the man that
laid the lash to their father’s back! Shame on you, Nelse, shame on you,
to want your childern, that you’re tryin’ to raise independent,—to want
’em to see the man that you had to call ‘master’!”
The man’s lips quivered, and his hand opened and shut with a convulsive
motion; but he said nothing.
“What did you tell me?” she asked. “Didn’t you say that if you ever met
him again in this world you’d—”
“Kill him!” burst forth the man; and all the old, gentle look had gone
out of his face, and there was nothing but fierceness and bitterness
there, as his mind went back to his many wrongs.
“Go on away from the house, ’Lizy,” he said hoarsely; “if anything
happens, I do’ want you an’ the childern around.”
“I do’ want you to kill him, Nelse, so you’ll git into trouble; but jes’
give him one good whippin’ for those he used to give you.”
“Go on away from the house;” and the man’s lips were tightly closed. She
threw a thin shawl over her head and went out.
As soon as she had gone Nelse’s intense feeling got the better of him,
and, falling down with his face in a chair, he cried, in the language
which the Sunday sermons had taught him, “Lord, Lord, thou hast delivered
mine enemy into my hands!”
But it was not a prayer; it was rather a cry of anger and anguish from
an overburdened heart. He rose, with the same hard gleam in his eyes,
and went back toward the kitchen. One hand was tightly clinched till
the muscles and veins stood out like cords, and with the other he
unconsciously fingered the lash’s scar.
“Couldn’t find your folks, eh, Nelse?” said the white Hatton.
“No,” growled Nelse; and continued hurriedly, “Do you remember that scar?”
“Well enough—well enough,” answered the other, sadly; “and it must have
hurt you, Nelse.”
“Hurt me! yes,” cried the Negro.
“Ay,” said Tom Hatton, as he rose and put his hand softly on the black
scar; “and it has hurt me many a day since, though time and time again
I have suffered pains that were as cruel as this must have been to you.
Think of it, Nelse; there have been times when I, a Hatton, have asked
bread of the very people whom a few years ago I scorned. Since the War
everything has gone against me. You do not know how I have suffered. For
thirty years life has been a curse to me; but I am going back to Kentucky
now, and when I get there I’ll lay it down without a regret.”
All the anger had melted from the Negro’s face, and there were tears in
his eyes as he cried, “You sha’n’t do it, Mas’ Tom,—you sha’n’t do it.”
His destructive instinct had turned to one of preservation.
“But, Nelse, I have no further hopes,” said the dejected man.
“You have, and you shall have. You’re goin’ back to Kintucky, an’ you’re
goin’ back a gentleman. I kin he’p you, an’ I will; you’re welcome to the
last I have.”
“God bless you, Nelse—”
“Mas’ Tom, you used to be jes’ about my size, but you’re slimmer now;
but—but I hope you won’t be mad ef I ask you to put on a suit o’ mine.
It’s put’ nigh brand-new, an’—”
“Nelse, I can’t do it! Is this the way you pay me for the blows—”
“Heish your mouth; ef you don’t I’ll slap you down!” Nelse said it with
mock solemnity, but there was an ominous quiver about his lips.
“Come in this room, suh;” and the master obeyed. He came out arrayed in
Nelse’s best and newest suit. The coloured man went to a drawer, over
which he bent laboriously. Then he turned and said: “This’ll pay your
passage to Kintucky, an’ leave somethin’ in your pocket besides. Go
home, Mas’ Tom,—go home!”
“Nelse, I can’t do it; this is too much!”
“Doggone my cats, ef you don’t go on—”
The white man stood bowed for a moment; then, straightening up, he threw
his head back. “I’ll take it, Nelse; but you shall have every cent back,
even if I have to sell my body to a medical college and use a gun to
deliver the goods! Good-bye, Nelse, God bless you! good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mas’ Tom, but don’t talk that way; go home. The South is
changed, an’ you’ll find somethin’ to suit you. Go home—go home; an’ ef
there’s any of the folks a-livin’, give ’em my love, Mas’ Tom—give ’em my
love—good-bye—good-bye!”
The Negro leaned over the proffered hand, and his tears dropped upon it.
His master passed out, and he sat with his head bowed in his hands.
After a long while Eliza came creeping in.
“Wha’ ’d you do to him, Nelse—wha’ ’d you do to him?” There was no
answer. “Lawd, I hope you ain’t killed him,” she said, looking fearfully
around. “I don’t see no blood.”
“I ain’t killed him,” said Nelse. “I sent him home—back to the ol’ place.”
“You sent him home! how’d you send him, huh?”
“I give him my Sunday suit and that money—don’t git mad, ’Lizy, don’t git
mad—that money I was savin’ for your cloak. I couldn’t help it, to save
my life. He’s goin’ back home among my people, an’ I sent ’em my love.
Don’t git mad an’ I’ll git you a cloak anyhow.”
“Pleggone the cloak!” said Mrs. Hatton, suddenly, all the woman in
her rising in her eyes. “I was so ’fraid you’d take my advice an’ do
somethin’ wrong. Ef you’re happy, Nelse, I am too. I don’t grudge
your master nothin’—the ol’ devil! But you’re jes’ a good-natured,
big-hearted, weak-headed ol’ fool!” And she took his head in her arms.
Great tears rolled down the man’s cheeks, and he said: “Bless God, ’Lizy,
I feel as good as a young convert.”
AT SHAFT 11
AT SHAFT 11
Night falls early over the miners’ huts that cluster at the foot of
the West Virginia mountains. The great hills that give the vales their
shelter also force upon them their shadow. Twilight lingers a short time,
and then gives way to that black darkness which is possible only to
regions in the vicinity of high and heavily wooded hills.
Through the fast-gathering gloom of a mid-spring evening, Jason Andrews,
standing in his door, peered out into the open. It was a sight of rugged
beauty that met his eyes as they swept the broken horizon. All about the
mountains raised their huge forms,—here bare, sharp, and rocky; there
undulating, and covered with wood and verdure, whose various shades
melted into one dull, blurred, dark green, hardly distinguishable in the
thick twilight. At the foot of the hills all was in shadow, but their
summits were bathed in the golden and crimson glory of departing day.
Jason Andrews, erstwhile foreman of Shaft 11, gazed about him with an eye
not wholly unappreciative of the beauty of the scene. Then, shading his
eyes with one brawny hand, an act made wholly unnecessary by the absence
of the sun, he projected his vision far down into the valley.
His hut, set a little way up the mountain-side, commanded an extended
view of the road, which, leaving the slope, ran tortuously through the
lower land. Evidently something that he saw down the road failed to
please the miner, for he gave a low whistle and re-entered the house with
a frown on his face.
“I’ll be goin’ down the road a minute, Kate,” he said to his wife,
throwing on his coat and pausing at the door. “There’s a crowd gathered
down toward the settlement. Somethin’ ’s goin’ on, an’ I want to see
what’s up.” He slammed the door and strode away.
“Jason, Jason,” his wife called after him, “don’t you have nothin’ to do
with their goin’s-on, neither one way nor the other. Do you hear?”
“Oh, I’ll take care o’ myself.” The answer came back out of the darkness.
“I do wish things would settle down some way or other,” mused Mrs.
Andrews. “I don’t see why it is men can’t behave themselves an’ go ’long
about their business, lettin’ well enough alone. It’s all on account o’
that pesky walkin’ delegate too. I wisht he’d ’a’ kept walkin’. If all
the rest o’ the men had had the common-sense that Jason has, he wouldn’t
never ’a’ took no effect on them. But most of ’em must set with their
mouths open like a lot o’ ninnies takin’ in everything that come their
way, and now here’s all this trouble on our hands.”
There were indeed troublous times at the little mining settlement. The
men who made up the community were all employees, in one capacity or
another, of the great Crofton West Virginia Mining Co. They had been
working on, contented and happy, at fair wages and on good terms with
their employers, until the advent among them of one who called himself,
alternately, a benefactor of humanity and a labour agitator. He proceeded
to show the men how they were oppressed, how they were withheld from due
compensation for their labours, while the employers rolled in the wealth
which the workers’ hands had produced. With great adroitness of argument
and elaboration of phrase, he contrived to show them that they were
altogether the most ill-treated men in America. There was only one remedy
for the misery of their condition, and that was to pay him two dollars
and immediately organise a local branch of the Miners’ Labour Union. The
men listened. He was so perfectly plausible, so smooth, and so clear. He
found converts among them. Some few combated the man’s ideas, and none
among these more forcibly than did Jason Andrews, the foreman of Shaft
11. But the heresy grew, and the opposition was soon overwhelmed. There
are always fifty fools for every fallacy. Of course, the thing to do was
to organise against oppression, and accordingly, amid great enthusiasm,
the union was formed. With the exception of Jason Andrews, most of the
men, cowed by the majority opposed to them, yielded their ground and
joined. But not so he. It was sturdy, stubborn old Scotch blood that
coursed through his veins. He stayed out of the society even at the
expense of the friendship of some of the men who had been his friends.
Taunt upon taunt was thrown into his face.
“He’s on the side of the rich. He’s for capital against labour. He’s
in favour of supporting a grinding monopoly.” All this they said in the
ready, pat parlance of their class; but the foreman went his way unmoved,
and kept his own counsel.
Then, like the falling of a thunderbolt, had come the visit of the
“walking-delegate” for the district, and his command to the men to “go
out.” For a little time the men demurred; but the word of the delegate
was law. Some other company had failed to pay its employees a proper
price, and the whole district was to be made an example of. Even while
the men were asking what it was all about, the strike was declared on.
The usual committee, awkward, shambling, hat in hand, and uncomfortable
in their best Sunday clothes, called upon their employers to attempt
to explain the grievances which had brought about the present state of
affairs. The “walking-delegate” had carefully prepared it all for them,
with the new schedule of wages based upon the company’s earnings.
The three men who had the local affairs of the company in charge heard
them through quietly. Then young Harold Crofton, acting as spokesman,
said, “Will you tell us how long since you discovered that your wages
were unfair?”
The committee severally fumbled its hat and looked confused. Finally
Grierson, who had been speaking for them, said: “Well, we’ve been
thinkin’ about it fur a good while. Especially ever sence, ahem—”
“Yes,” went on Crofton, “to be plain and more definite, ever since the
appearance among you of Mr. Tom Daly, the agitator, the destroyer of
confidence between employer and employed, the weasel who sucks your blood
and tells you that he is doing you a service. You have discovered the
unfairness of your compensation since making his acquaintance.”
“Well, I guess he told us the truth,” growled Grierson.
“That is a matter of opinion.”
“But look what you all are earnin’.”
“That’s what we’re in the business for. We haven’t left comfortable homes
in the cities to come down to this hole in the mountains for our health.
We have a right to earn. We brought capital, enterprise, and energy here.
We give you work and pay you decent wages. It is none of your business
what we earn.” The young man’s voice rose a little, and a light came
into his calm gray eyes. “Have you not been comfortable? Have you not
lived well and been able to save something? Have you not been treated
like men? What more do you want? What real grievance have you? None. A
scoundrel and a sneak has come here, and for his own purposes aroused
your covetousness. But it is unavailing, and,” turning to his colleagues,
“these gentlemen will bear me out in what I say,—we will not raise your
wages one-tenth of one penny above what they are. We will not be made to
suffer for the laxity of other owners, and if within three hours the men
are not back at work, they may consider themselves discharged.” His voice
was cold, clear, and ringing.
Surprised, disappointed, and abashed, the committee heard the ultimatum,
and then shuffled out of the office in embarrassed silence. It was all so
different from what they had expected. They thought that they had only to
demand and their employers would accede rather than have the work stop.
Labour had but to make a show of resistance and capital would yield. So
they had been told. But here they were, the chosen representatives of
labour, skulking away from the presence of capital like felons detected.
Truly this was a change. Embarrassment gave way to anger, and the miners
who waited the report of their committee received a highly coloured
account of the stand-offish way in which they had been met. If there had
been anything lacking to inflame the rising feelings of the labourers,
this new evidence of the arrogance of plutocrats supplied it, and with
one voice the strike was confirmed.
Soon after the three hours’ grace had passed, Jason Andrews received a
summons to the company’s office.
“Andrews,” said young Crofton, “we have noticed your conduct with
gratitude since this trouble has been brewing. The other foremen have
joined the strikers and gone out. We know where you stand and thank you
for your kindness. But we don’t want it to end with thanks. It is well to
give the men a lesson and bring them to their senses, but the just must
not suffer with the unjust. In less than two days the mine will be manned
by Negroes with their own foreman. We wish to offer you a place in the
office here at the same wages you got in the mine.”
The foreman raised his hand in a gesture of protest. “No, no, Mr.
Crofton. That would look like I was profiting by the folly of the men. I
can’t do it. I am not in their union, but I will take my chances as they
take theirs.”
“That’s foolish, Andrews. You don’t know how long this thing may last.”
“Well, I’ve got a snug bit laid by, and if things don’t brighten in time,
why, I’ll go somewhere else.”
“We’d be sorry to lose you, but I want you to do as you think best. This
change may cause trouble, and if it does, we shall hope for your aid.”
“I am with you as long as you are in the right.”
The miner gave the young man’s hand a hearty grip and passed out.
“Steel,” said Crofton the younger.
“Gold,” replied his partner.
“Well, as true as one and as good as the other, and we are both right.”
As the young manager had said, so matters turned out. Within two days
several car-loads of Negroes came in and began to build their huts.
With the true racial instinct of colonisation, they all flocked to one
part of the settlement. With a wisdom that was not entirely instinctive,
though it may have had its origin in the Negro’s social inclination, they
built one large eating-room a little way from their cabin and up the
mountain-side. The back of the place was the bare wall of a sheer cliff.
Here their breakfasts and suppers were to be taken, the midday meal being
eaten in the mine.
The Negro who held Jason Andrews’ place as foreman of Shaft 11, the best
yielding of all the mines, and the man who seemed to be the acknowledged
leader of all the blacks, was known as big Sam Bowles. He was a great
black fellow, with a hand like a sledge-hammer, but with an open, kindly
face and a voice as musical as a lute.
On the first morning that they went in a body to work in the mines, they
were assailed by the jeers and curses of the strikers, while now and then
a rock from the hand of some ambushed foe fell among them. But they did
not heed these things, for they were expected.
For several days nothing more serious than this happened, but ominous
mutterings foretold the coming storm. So matters stood on the night that
Jason Andrews left his cabin to find out what was “up.”
He went on down the road until he reached the outskirts of the crowd,
which he saw to be gathered about a man who was haranguing them. The
speaker proved to be “Red” Cleary, one of Daly’s first and most ardent
converts. He had worked the men up to a high pitch of excitement, and
there were cries of, “Go it, Red, you’re on the right track!” “What’s
the matter with Cleary? He’s all right!” and, “Run the niggers out.
That’s it!” On the edge of the throng, half in the shadow, Jason Andrews
listened in silence, and his just anger grew.
The speaker was saying, “What are we white men goin’ to do? Set still
an’ let niggers steal the bread out of our mouths? Ain’t it our duty
to rise up like free Americans an’ drive ’em from the place? Who dares
say no to that?” Cleary made the usual pause for dramatic effect and to
let the incontrovertibility of his argument sink into the minds of his
hearers. The pause was fatal. A voice broke the stillness that followed
his question, “I do!” and Andrews pushed his way through the crowd to the
front. “There ain’t anybody stealin’ the bread out of our mouths, niggers
ner nobody else. If men throw away their bread, why, a dog has the right
to pick it up.”