The two of them went back to the pit-mouth. It had been two days since
the disaster, and still the fan had not been started, and there was no
sign of its being started. The hysteria of the women was growing, and
there was a tension in the crowds. Jeff Cotton had brought in a force of
men to assist him in keeping order. They had built a fence of barbed
wire about the pit-mouth and its approaches, and behind this wire they
walked--hard-looking citizens with policemen’s “billies,” and the bulge
of revolvers plainly visible on their hips.
During this long period of waiting, Hal had talks with members of his
check-weighman group. They told what had happened while he was in jail,
and this reminded him of something which had been driven from his mind
by the explosion. Poor old John Edstrom was down in Pedro, perhaps in
dire need. Hal went to the old Swede’s cabin that night, climbed through
a window, and dug up the buried money. There were five five-dollar
bills, and he put them in an envelope, addressed them in care of General
Delivery, Pedro, and had Mary Burke take them to the post office and
register them.
The hours dragged on, and still there was no sign of the pit-mouth being
opened. There began to be secret gatherings of the miners and their
wives to complain at the conduct of the company; and it was natural that
Hal’s friends who had started the check-weighman movement, should take
the lead in these. They were among the most intelligent of the workers,
and saw farther into the meaning of events. They thought, not merely of
the men who were trapped under ground at this moment, but of thousands
of others who would be trapped through years to come. Hal, especially,
was pondering how he could accomplish something definite before he left
the camp; for of course he would have to leave soon--Jeff Cotton would
remember him, and carry out his threat to get rid of him.
Newspapers had come in, with accounts of the disaster, and Hal and his
friends read these. It was evident that the company had been at pains to
have the accounts written from its own point of view. There existed some
public sensitiveness on the subject of mine-disasters in this state. The
death-rate from accidents was seen to be mounting steadily; the reports
of the state mine inspector showed six per thousand in one year, eight
and a half in the next, and twenty-one and a half in the next. When
fifty or a hundred men were killed in a single accident, and when such
accidents kept happening, one on the heels of another, even the most
callous public could not help asking questions. So in this case the “G.
F. C.” had been careful to minimise the loss of life, and to make
excuses. The accident had been owing to no fault of the company’s; the
mine had been regularly sprinkled, both with water and adobe dust, and
so the cause of the explosion must have been the carelessness of the men
in handling powder.
In Jack David’s cabin one night there arose a discussion as to the
number of men entombed in the mine. The company’s estimate of the number
was forty, but Minetti and Olson and David agreed that this was absurd.
Any man who went about in the crowds could satisfy himself that there
were two or three times as many unaccounted for. And this falsification
was deliberate, for the company had a checking system, whereby it knew
the name of every man in the mine. But most of these names were
unpronounceable Slavish, and the owners of the names had no friends to
mention them--at least not in any language understood by American
newspaper editors.
It was all a part of the system, declared Jack David: its purpose and
effect being to enable the company to go on killing men without paying
for them, either in money or in prestige. It occurred to Hal that it
might be worth while to contradict these false statements--almost as
worth while as to save the men who were at this moment entombed. Any one
who came forward to make such a contradiction would of course be giving
himself up to the black-list; but then, Hal regarded himself as a man
already condemned to that penalty.
Tom Olson spoke up. “What would you do with your contradiction?”
“Give it to the papers,” Hal answered.
“But what papers would print it?”
“There are two rival papers in Pedro, aren’t there?”
“One owned by Alf Raymond, the sheriff-emperor, and the other by
Vagleman, counsel for the ‘G. F. C.’ Which one would you try?”
“Well then, the outside papers--those in Western City. There are
reporters here now, and some one of them would surely take it.”
Olson answered, declaring that they would not get any but labour and
Socialist papers to print such news. But even that was well worth doing.
And Jack David, who was strong for unions and all their activities, put
in, “The thing to do is to take a regular census, so as to know exactly
how many are in the mine.”
The suggestion struck fire, and they agreed to set to work that same
evening. It would be a relief to do something, to have something in
their minds but despair. They passed the word to Mary Burke, to Rovetta,
Klowoski, and others; and at eleven o’clock the next morning they met
again, and the lists were put together, and it was found that no less
than a hundred and seven men and boys were positively known to be inside
Number One.