The Coal War by Upton Sinclair Page B

they’d have fed him at least,” said Hal. “Or don’t they take miners into the poor-house?”
    â€œI never heard,” said Mary. “When a miner gets too old to work, he generally drifts away to some other job. Mr. Edstrom says that cold weather’s coming, and he’s hoping to earn a bit tendin’ furnaces. He’s sure paid for the help he gave us at North Valley!”
    Hal went away with the thought—how many thousands of other men there were all over the country, obscure, unheeded men, paying the same desperate price for loyalty to their class! And all the comfortable, kindly people Hal knew, who went about their affairs of pleasure and profit, leaving these obscure, unheeded ones to be rolled down by Peter Harrigan’s machine of greed! Comfortable, kindly people, who had no revolutionary parlor-maids, but who had formulas, whereby they justified themselves in leaving the world as it was. Religious formulas—they were having the poor always with them, they were rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s! And economic formulas—they were maintaining the beneficent system of freedom of contract, laissez faire and the “open shop”—while eleven thousand men, with thrice as many women and children dependent upon them, were bracing themselves in anguish and despair for a struggle against annihilation!

[5]
    Hal did what one man could. He sought out the comfortable, kindly people he knew, arguing, pleading, adding to the reputation he had won as a fanatic. He went out to Harrigan; but the professor of economics to whom he appealed was reading the proofs of a book on the theory of value. He listened politely while his former student told him that he knew nothing at first hand about industry; but for some reason he did not feel inclined to drop his book and complete his education in Peter Harrigan’s coal-camps.
    Hal went to St. George’s. Will Wilmerding, the assistant, was away; and Dr. Penniman, the rector, had no patience whatever with “agitators”. White-haired and dignified, polished and urbane Dr. Penniman was on the surface, but when you dug below you discovered a zealot out of the seventeenth century. There was a ritual and a system of salvation, and these were the things that mattered to erring and mortal man; if the ritual and the system were right, it made little difference what wages a man got, or what kind of house he lived in. It was obvious, of course, that Dr. Penniman did not apply that doctrine to the clergy; his check came regularly the first of each month, and his house was warm and sanitary. But if you should venture, in the most tactful way imaginable, to point out that aspect of the matter, you would stir what seemed an unchristian set of emotions in the bosom of the white-haired and dignified rector.
    Everywhere Hal went, these same unchristian emotions seemed to rise to meet him; at his club, at his father’s office, on the street. Arguments would be started, and people would show exasperation at the connecting of their ideas with their pocket-books. “Appie” Harding, Hal’s cousin, for example—a rising young lawyer who disliked labor leaders, and took coal-company cases when they came along! And if “Appie’s” angry dignity annoyed Hal, he might get his comfort from the cynical good-humor of “Bob” Creston, who grinned cheerfully when Hal suggested that his indifference to conditions in coal-camps might be influenced by his engagement to Betty Gunnison, Percy Harrigan’s pretty cousin.
    Hal happened to run into Miss Betty, coming out of a confectioner’s; and what a snapping of black eyes there was! She could not quite refuse to speak to him, and he thought it proper to make friendly inquiry after Percy; he was very anxious for a chat with Percy!
    â€œPercy’s where you can’t get hold of him!” was Miss Betty’s