Power (22 page)

“By the way, I gave fifty dollars to Gus Acuda.”

“What for?” Golden demanded.

“What for? His kid's got a case of acute appendicitis, and he has to get her admitted to the hospital or she'll die.”

“Why didn't you let him put in a plea and application to the emergency medical fund?”

“Because the kid would be dead by then.”

Golden wrote out a voucher, handed it to Ben, and said, “You can't go on doing this, Ben. You can't dispense charity whenever the mood takes you. You're not God and you're not Morgan.”

“God damn it, what should I do?” Ben roared at him. “Let the kid die?”

“How many other kids die? How many die from pneumonia, from t.b., from pellagra, from scarlet fever and diphtheria—how many? You make me sick with this kind of sentimental paternalism! It's as unbecoming to you as to Andrew Carnegie. I've told you a hundred times that we need a medical program. We got ten thousand miners in this union spitting blood morning, noon, and night, and we don't have a doctor on our payroll or a hospital we can call our own—”

I had never heard anyone talk to Ben Holt like that before; I had never watched him listen to anyone begin to talk that way. Now he listened. His face became red with fury, but he listened, and when Golden had finished, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard behind him that bits of plaster fell from around the frame. Golden said to me, quietly, almost in a whisper,

“Sit down, Cutter. We'll be through here in a few minutes, and then we'll talk.”

 

10

During all this, Lena Kuscow had watched me, her face expressionless, her attitude seemingly indifferent, her interest almost clinical. She might have been bored by the whole thing. Golden finished his dictating, apparently an answer to injunction proceedings of some kind, and then asked me whether I would like some coffee. I nodded, and he said to Lena,

“Honey, would you?”

She rose slowly, her motion surprisingly graceful, and left the room. Golden then turned to me and smiled and asked me,

“You got in today, didn't you, Cutter?”

“At three o'clock.”

“And now it's a quarter to ten—so you've had a bellyful already, and hardly enough time to change your clothes. Ben took you home for dinner?”

“That's right.”

“And now you're asking yourself what ever brought you here in the first place and what kind of a lunatic asylum is this.” He had an easy, ingratiating manner about him, and he was as prepared to like you as he was to judge you. For the first time since I had arrived at Pomax, I had the feeling that I might make a friend here and not spend my days talking to walls. Everything I felt was boiling up inside of me, and I had no desire to talk to anyone or confide in anyone; yet I found myself talking to Mark Golden. Then Lena Kuscow came back with three tin cups of black coffee. As she handed me my cup, she said,

“Poor kid. What in hell ever brought you to Egypt?”

Since I was certain that I was older than she, I resented the “poor kid.” “I came here to do a job,” I said. “I was hired.”

Golden nodded and sipped his coffee. “And you walked into a strike. It's not always exactly like this—well, more or less—but not exactly like this. I guess trade-union people use their heads as much as any other kind. But a lot of them, when they hear the word ‘strike,' they stop thinking. They're overcome by a need for action and they get excited. I'm as bad as the next one. I had no business talking to Ben like that, and he had no business acting as a one-man welfare agency. I hate it when he thinks like a slob—I don't like it when anyone does. Now about you, Cutter—I don't want you to pour out your guts to me, but I would like you to tell me what you see out here. All I know about you is that Ben likes you and trusts you and thinks highly of you. Ben is a pretty good judge of people—but he also has some axes of his own to grind. You come into this situation and, unless I miss my guess, people like Fulton Grove and Jack Mullen treat you like poison. No one welcomes you with open arms. Am I right?”

“You're right,” I agreed.

“So you feel rotten. Are you an idealist, Cutter? Are you one of these dedicated young men out to help labor fight the good fight, and to show labor the proper way to do it?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if you are, give it up. You'll hurt yourself and maybe the union too. This isn't the Carpenters Union or the Cigar Makers—and maybe it isn't even a union. It's an attempt, a crazy hope, a lost cause led by some people too thickheaded to know that it's lost. It's a pack of ignorant diggers who had the temerity to get tired of choking and dying in the belly of the earth for three or four dollars a day. This strike isn't the end of anything; it's the beginning. It's like the beginning of a war. Ben Holt has three hundred thousand members on the union books and six hundred thousand dollars in the treasury. It sounds good, doesn't it, but it doesn't mean a damn thing. Half of the membership is out of work, and the other half doesn't make enough wages to keep body and soul together. The whole country is booming, but you only have to look at those diggers outside and the rags that constitute their apology for clothing to know what the boom means here in Egypt. So we're going into a strike, and we've as much chance of winning as a snowball in hell, and we need someone like you desperately. But not someone with stars in his eyes. Someone with guts. Do you have guts, Cutter?”

“That's a hell of a question, Mr. Golden, and beside the point. I was a reporter on the
Daily Mail
in New York. I gave up the job to take a job out here. To take a job out here—that's all.”

“Why? Why?”

“I don't know why,” I shrugged. “I have some ideas, and when I put them all together, I'll bring them to you. If you're still interested.”

He smiled at me then. He had a warm, pleasant smile. He took out a pipe and stuffed it and lit it. I got my cigarettes and offered them to Lena Kuscow. She accepted one, and Golden held a match to our cigarettes. We smoked and sipped our coffee, and Golden said to me,

“What about it, Cutter? Are you staying?”

“I'm staying.”

“For how long?”

“Until I'm fired. I got too much pride to go back to the
Mail
and ask for my job again.”

Golden looked at Lena Kuscow, and she nodded and said, “I think he'll make it, Mark. He's fancy, but you can't tell about anyone these days. Can you?”

“Lena's a pretty good judge of people too,” Golden nodded. “All right, Cutter. You have three jobs. We all have—three, five, ten—reach in the hat and pick a title. This is the kind of operation we are trying to run. I'm the union lawyer. I'm also comptroller. Also some other things. Eventually, you'll be in charge of research, when we have some time for research. You'll head up a legislative staff when we get around to creating one—and providing you're still with it. Right now, the pressing need is the kind of propaganda that reaches the public. We need press notices that make sense, that are simply and directly written, and that allow for the smallest margin of error. We need to win some friends. You say you were a reporter—well, this place will soon be swarming with reporters, and it's up to you to know them and blunt their fangs when you can—not only here, but in Pittsburgh and Scranton as well. As soon as the strike deadline is past, Ben will take off for Pittsburgh, and he'll want you with him. We have to state our cause and keep stating it—which means that you must live and breathe this industry's life. We'll help as much as we can, but most of it is up to you. No one's going to be kind to you here—and no one's going to give you a break.”

“And what about information?” I demanded. “Do I just guess what this union and this strike is all about, or am I permitted to talk to people?”

“I know, I know. You should have had at least a few weeks to study this situation, but now there simply isn't time. You'll just have to bone up as best you can. Questions? Sure, ask questions. Some people will be snotty and others won't. Read the releases and information bulletins on file in the mimeograph room. Most of them were put together by Lena and myself and Ben and his wife, and they're not very professional. Ben said that you were with him in West Virginia in 1920, so you know something about miners.”

“Very little.”

“It's a beginning—”

At that moment, the door opened, and a young man said that Ben wanted us in his office. Golden led the way. We crossed the main office, still full of people and a babble of talk and excitement, and went through a door that opened from the rear of this large room.

Ben Holt's private office was as unadorned as the other rooms in the building. It was furnished with a desk, eight or nine chairs, a bookcase, a filing cabinet, and a clothes tree. As we entered, a bitter argument was in progress between Ben Holt and two men I had not seen before. Jack Mullen and Fulton Grove stood at one side of the room. The two strangers faced Ben. One of them, short, fat, a bullet head on a thick, red neck, was—as I learned later—Gus Empek, president of the Associated Miners Union, a small, independent union that numbered some ten thousand middle-western miners at its high point of membership. The other man, Joseph Brady, was vice-president of the Associated Miners. Supposedly a onetime miner, Brady looked more like a corporation executive, impeccably dressed in dark blue serge, white shirt, silk tie, his shoes shined to a mirrorlike glow.

Although I had some vague impression that there was a small union challenging the International Miners Union in the fields, I knew nothing very much about it at this time. The only factor that gave the Associated Miners importance was their strength in one part of Egypt and their potential danger as strikebreakers. Altogether, they were a dubious lot, and eventually it turned out that Joseph Brady had been, for years, on the payroll of the Coal Institute, the organization of the operators.

But at this moment, I knew nothing of these two men or what they represented. I entered the room and saw Ben Holt standing behind his desk, one arm directed toward Empek, his hand flat and menacing as he shouted,

“No! God damn it, no! Your men will not work! What in hell do you think we're doing—playing a game of tiddly-winks?”

“Just take it easy, Ben,” Brady said.

“Say that once more—once more, and I'll come around this desk and belt you the hell out of here, Brady! I don't want to talk to you, so keep your trap shut! I'm talking to Gus Empek. Gus came here to see me. I opened my door to him because it was Gus Empek. If it was you, Brady, I would have had you thrown out of here on your ass.”

Brady's pale, good-looking face contorted and began to twitch, but he kept quiet and maintained his control. Empek said wearily, “I wish you wouldn't get so excited, Ben.”

“Don't I have reason? We're all being starved to death by that rotten southern coal undercutting prices and rates. It keeps on and this will be West Virginia all over again. We'll be paying the operators for the privilege of digging coal. So we're trying to do something about it, and you tell me you're going to cut our hearts out?”

“It's not that simple, Ben,” Empek protested. “I can't just tell my membership that they're on strike. We got to discuss it and take a vote.”

“Don't make me laugh!” Ben snorted.

“All right—so you're laughing. Where does that leave me?”

“I'll tell you just where. We got three hundred thousand members in the International. Day after tomorrow, we go out on strike. Day after tomorrow, your ten thousand mem bers go out on strike. You don't break our strike and you don't scab. I'm not arguing about it. I'm telling you.”

“It's easy to tell me,” Empek nodded. And turning to Brady, he said, “Come on, Joe. There's nothing to talk about here. They talk and we listen. They don't want to listen.”

They left then. Fulton Grove sat down, his face creased with trouble and unhappiness. Jack Mullen whistled a bar or two, and then stopped abruptly and shook his head. “What I like about the trade-union movement,” Golden said, “is the sense of brotherhood that pervades it.” And Grove asked querulously, “What's in it for them? That's what I don't get.”

“They got a little pie and they want a big pie,” Mullen answered. And Ben Holt spread his hands and said,

“Forget it. Gus Empek's nothing and Brady's less than nothing. The time comes and they make trouble, why we'll take care of it. Meanwhile, it's late and I want to get out of here. The six of us are together now, and there's a lot of things coming up. This is Cutter's first day in Pomax, and it's been quite a day. I know that no one rates in this union, especially where Jack Mullen's concerned, unless he can show three generations of miners behind him. You know, that kind of an attitude makes me sick. Personally, I think Cutter's an idiot to take my offer of a job and come out here; but he's here. So let's shake hands all around and get down to work.”

Mullen looked at me and nodded. “All right, Cutter.” He smiled slowly and grudgingly.

“Unless you want to run the union all alone, Jack,” Ben Holt said.

 

11

It was almost midnight when I left the Union Building to walk back to the hotel. I was just closing the door of the building, when a voice said, “Hold up a moment, Al. I'll go along with you.” It was Lena Kuscow. She asked me whether I minded the first name, which struck me as rather peculiar. I would have said that she would call anyone anything she pleased and not think twice about it. She fell into step with me, and wondered if I was too tired to walk home with her. Four blocks there, four blocks back to the hotel. “Only for the pleasure of your company,” she assured me. “Pomax is a dangerous place, but not for girls who walk home at night.”