Little Red LibraryNUMBER SEVEN

TheDAMNED AGITATOR

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By

MICHAEL GOLD

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The Little Red Library

No. 7

THE DAMNED AGITATOR

F R E E !

THE COAL BREAKER

By Michael Gold.

Published by

The Daily Worker Publishing Co.,1113 W. Washington Blvd.,

Chicago, 111.

Printed in the TJ. S. A.,290

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The Damned Agitator

strike was now smoldering into itsseventh week, and, perhaps, it would soon

be a bitter ash in the mouths of the men. Forfunds were at an ebb, scabs were coming inlike a locust plague, the company officials weregrowing more and more militant in their self-righteousness, and the strikers themselveswere drifting into a settled state of depressionand dangerous self-distrust. Their solidaritywas beginning to show fissures and achingcracks.

All these woeful conditions beat in like "awinter sea on the tired brain of Kurelovitchwith the bleak morning light that waked him.He lifted his throbbing head from the pillow,looked about the dingy bedroom with his blearysleep-glazed eyes, and heaved a long, troubledsigh out of his pain.

At a meeting of company executives onceKurelovitch had been denounced as a danger-ous agitator, whose pathological thirst for vio-lence had created and sustained the strike.

"The man is a menace, a mad dog, whosecareer ought to be stopped before he doesmore mischief," said one venerable director, hiskind, blue eyes developing a pinkish glare thatwould have horrified the women folk of hisfamily.

"The scoundrel's probably pocketing half ofthe strike funds," declared another directorwith plump, rosy gills and a full, bald headthat glittered like a sunset cloud, as he stunnedthe long table with a blow of his balled fist.

But Kurelovitch was not a mad dog, and hewas not waxing fat with industrial spoils, as somany of the directors had. He was really atall, tragic, rough-hewn Pole, who had beensuddenly hammered into leadership by thecrisis of the strike, by reason of his unquench-able integrity and social fire. He had deep,blue, burning eyes, a rugged nose and mous-taches, and his hands and form were ungainly,work-twisted symbols of the life of drudgeryhe had led.

Now he was thinking wearily of all thethorny problems that would be heaped uponhim that day in the course of the strike. Ashe extricated himself from the bedclothes andsat up to dress, the problems writhed and clam-ored in his jaded brain for solution. For sevenweeks now he had risen almost at dawn andhad labored till midnight at the Titan task of

wringing a fifteen per cent increase out of cap-italism for his fellow workers. He had growngaunt and somber and wise in the process;skeptical of man and of god. He had seenplans collapse, heads broken unjustly, sen-tences inflicted by corrupt judges, babies andwomen starving. He had heard himself as-sailed as a monster by the other group, and asa weakling and tool by the more embittered ofhis own side.

His wife heard him sigh, and she called fromthe kitchen, where she was already stirring.

"There ain't no coffee for you this morning,Stanislaw," she announced in a sullen voice, inwhich there was also anger and scorn. "Andthere ain't no nothin' else to eat, only a fewhunks of old bread."

Kurelovitch stumbled wearily to his feet andentered the malodorous kitchen. Greasy pansand platters and sour garbage were strewnabout, and in an opaque cloud of smoke hiswife was hovering over the stove, their fourthchild mewing in the nest of her arms. She washeating all the milk she had for the infant, andwhen her husband came in she turned on himwith swift virulence.

"No, not a taste of food in the house, damnyou," she spat. "And the kids went to bedlast night without hardly any supper."

"But it's not my fault, now, is it, Annie?"the big man returned humbly as he went over

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to her and put an arm over her shoulder. She %cast it off with fierce contempt, and stood him 1off with a volley of words that were like poison-ed arrows, each piercing straight to his vitalparts.

"It is your fault, you clumsy fool, you," shescreamed out of her over-laden heart. "Youwere one of the first men to go out on strike,even though we hadn't a penny in the houseat the time. And last week when the companywanted the men to come back you talked themout of it, and so we're all still starving, thanksto you."

"But, Annie—" the tall man attempted gent-ly.

"Don't Annie me, or try to fool me with oneof your speeches. You know the strike's lostas well as I do, and that after it you'll be black-listed in every mill town in New England. But -you don't care if your children starve, do you?You'd be glad to see us all dead, wouldn't you?"

The man had crumpled under the attack, andhe seemed as small almost as his infuriatedwife. But then he straightened in the dustypallor of the kitchen, and moved to the door.

"I'll see that you get a lot of groceries andthings from headquarters this morning," hesaid huskily, as he went out into the dark, bit-ter streets.

Kurelovitch shivered at his contact with thegray, sharp air. A thin ash of snow had fallen

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through the night, and was now a noisomeslush, after its brief experience with the milltown, which degraded everything it touched.The muddy ooze squirmed through the vul-nerable spots in his shoes, and started thegooseflesh along Kurelovitch's spine. Acrossthe river in the drab morning he could see theresidential heights where the rich dwelt, andthey reminded him of the village of his youth,with its girdle of snow-covered hills and peace-ful cottages. He remembered a Polish lullabyhis mother used to sing to him, and shiveredthe more.

From the rough bridge which bound the splithalves of the town he could see the mill, glow-ering and blocking shadows deep as ignoranceon the rotting ice of the river. The resplend-ent emblem of America gleamed and wavedfrom a staff on the low, sprawling structure, asif to sanctify all that went on beneath. Andnow Kurelovitch had traversed a morass of de-caying huts and offal-strewn streets and wasdirectly within the massive shadow of the mill.Two or three of his fellow-workers recognizedhim, and came hurrying forward from thepicket line. Kurelovitch's day had begun.

"The damned gunmen are out for fight thismorning," said a sombre, chunky Pole, swath-ed in old burlap and a tremendous fur cap thathad come from Europe.

"Yes, they must have gotten more booze

than usual last night," said another striker be-tween his chattering teeth.

A young picket with brooding, dark eyesburst out with a hot voice, "Well, we'll givethem any fight they want, the dirty lice. We'renot afraid." Kurelovitch put his hand on theyoung chap, and then the three went with himto where about fifty or more of the strikerswere shifting slowly up and down the lengthof the wide mill gate.

There were men and women in the line, alldark and silent and seeming more like a hostof mourners than anything else in the worldof bitter sky and slush-laden earth. They weremuffled to the chins in grotesque rags, andtheir breaths went up like incense in the chillmorning. A mood of sadness and suspensehung about them, and whenever they passedthe knot of gunmen at the gate they turnedtheir eyes away almost in grief.

Two of the gunmen had detached themselvesfrom the evil-eyed mob huddled, like a curse,at the gate. They carried clubs in their hands,and at their hips could be seen bulging the bad-ges of their mission in life, which was to breakstrikes and to murder.

They came up to Kurelovitch and sneered athim with sadistic eyes. As he walked up anddown in the sluggish picket line, they doggedhim and used their vilest art to taunt him intoresistance.

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About an hour later, as he was departingfrom the line, th.e two gunmen still followedhim. A little group of pickets, therefore, form-ed themselves in-a cordon about Kurelovitchand escorted him to the strike headquarters,burning all the way with repressed rage. Kur-elovitch was a marked man in the strike zone,and his maiming was a subject of much yearn-ing and planning by the gunmen.

The daily meetings of the strikers were heldin a great barn-like structure in the center ofthe tangled streets and alleys of the mill-work-ers' quarters. A burst of oratory smote Kurel-avitch as he entered the great room and a thou-sand faces, staring row on row, orientated tothe leader as he marched in.

"Kurelovitch, Kurelovitch has come," ran amurmur like wind through a forest.

Kurelovitch leaped on the rough stage, whereothers of the strike committee were sitting, andwhispered in consultation with a fellow Pole.He learned that there was nothing of momentthat day—no sign from the bosses nor fundsfrom sympathizers. It was merely another ofthe dark days of the strike.

"But many of the Russians are getting rest-less," the man whispered. "Ravillof has beenat them, and yesterday their priest told themto go back. Give 'em hell, Kurelovitch!"

Kurelovitch came to the edge of the platformin a hush like that of an operating room, look-ing out over a foam of varied faces. They were

faces that had blown into the golden land onthe twelve winds of the world, though aboutnine-tenths of the faces were the broad-boned,earthy, beautiful faces of mystic Slavdom.Daylight struggled through large, smutty win-dows and dusted the heads and shoulders ofthe strikers with a white, transcendent powder.A huge oilcloth behind Kurelovitch proclaimedin big, battering letters, "We Average $9 aWeek and We Are Demanding 15 Per CentMore. Are You With Us?"

The air tightened as Kurelovitch loomedthere, a sad hero, stooped and gaunt withmany cares. Finger-deep hollows were in hischeeks, and, with his blazing eyes and strongmouth, he seemed like some ascetic follower ofthe warrior Mohammed.

"Fellow workers. . . "In low, thrilling Polish he began by disposing

of the secular details of the strike, as on everyday. Then something would come over Kurel-ovitch, a strange feeling of automatism, as ifhe were indeed only the voice that this simple-hearted horde had created out of their woe.The searing phrases would rush from his lipsin a wild, stormy music, like the voice of a gale,as as mystic and powerful.

With both hands holding his breast, as if itwere bursting with passionate vision, Kurelo-vitch lifted his face in one of his superb mo-ments and flamed up like an Isaiah.

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"Fellow workers," he chanted, giving thewords a value such as cannot be transmittedby mere writing, "we can never be beaten, forwe are the workers on whose shoulders restthe pillars of the world and in whose hands arethe tools by which life is carried on. Life, lib-erty and happiness—let us not rest till we havegotten these for ourselves and our children'schildren! Let us not permit the accidents of astrike to stay us on our journey toward thebeautiful city of freedom, whose grace is oneday to shine on all the world.

"We are beginning to starve, some of us, butlet us starve bravely, for we are soldiers in agreater and nobler war than that which isbleeding Europe. We are soldiers in the classwar which is finally to set mankind free of allwar and all poverty, all bosses and hat.e. Work-ingmen of the world, unite; we have nothing tolose but our chains; we have a world to gain!"

Kurelovitch ended in a great shout, and thenthe handclapping and whistles rose to him inturbulent swirls. He found himself suddenlyweary and limp and melancholy, and his deep-est wish was to go off somewhere alone to waituntil the hollow places inside were refilled. . .

But, with the others of the strike committee,he left the platform and fused into the discus-sions that were raging everywhere. Every-body tried to come near Kurelovitch, to speakco him. He was a common hearth at which

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his people crowded and shouldered for warmth,his starving, wistful people who believed himwhen he said they could wipe out the accumu-lated woe of humanity. . .

He was treated to long recitals of the work-ings of the proletarian soul in this time of wantand panic and anger. He heard a hundred talesof temptation, of desperate hunger, of outragesat the hands of the gunmen. Kurelovitch lis-tened to it all like a grave, kind father confes-sor, untying many a Gordian knot with hisclear-eyed strength and understanding.

And then came to him Raviloff, the leaderof the Russians, a short, black, wrinkled man,with slow eyes that became living coals of firewhen passion breathed on them.

He was angry to impotence now. "You saidin your speech that I was a traitor, Kurelo-vitch," he shouted fiercely. "You lie; I am not.But we Russians think this strike is lost, andthat we'd all better go back before it's too late."

"It's not lost," Kurelovitch replied slowly."The mills can't work full time until we chooseto go back. And, Raviloff, I say again thatyou're a scab and traitor if you go back now."

Raviloff flushed purple with wrath, andrushed upon the tall Pole as if to devour him.But Kurelovitch did not lift his stern, calm gazefrom the other's face, and a light like that ofswords came and went in his blue eyes. TheRussian surged up and touched him, chest to

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chest, and then Kurelovitch intrigued the otherinto a sensible discussion that served to keept&© Russian on the firing line. . .

And thus it went. So Kurelovitch passedhis day, moving frpm the swooning brink ofone crisis to another. He sat with the strikecommittee for many hours in a smoky roomand agonized over ways and means. He ad-dressed another large meeting at headquartersin the afternoon. He went out on the picketline and was singled out for threats and tauntsagain by the gunmen, so that he felt murderboiling in his deeps and left. Then he had toreturn later to the picket line because wordwas rushed to him that five of the pickets hadbeen arrested in a fight finally precipitated bythe gunmen. Kurelovitch spent the rest of theafternoon scurrying about and finding bail forthe five.

Toward night he had a supper of ham sand-wiches and coffee, and then he and three ofthe strike committee went to a meeting of sym-pathizers about fifteen miles away. Kurelovitchmade his third passioned address of the day,and stirred up a large collection. The long,dull, wrenching ride home followed.

He got off the trolley car near his houseabout midnight, his brain whirling and hot, hisheart acrid and despairing. The urgency ofthe fight was passed, and nothing was left tobuoy him against his weariness. He walked

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in a stupor; the day had sucked every atom ofhis valor and strength. He wished dumbly fordeath; he was the cold ashes of the flamingKurelovitch of the day. Had gunmen comenow and threatened him he would have cringedand then-wept.

There was a feeble light waning and waver-ing in the window of his little three-room flat,and when he had fumbled with the lock andopened the dilapidated door he found some onebrooding with folded arms near the stove. Itstood up awfully and turned on him with bale-ful eyes, like a wild beast in its cave.

"You rotten dog!" his wife screamed at Ku-relovitch in the vast quiet of the night. "Youmean and dirty pig!"

"Annie, dear—""To go away in the morning and leave us

to starve! To send food to other's families andthen to forget us! Oh, you'd be glad if we alldied of starvation! You'd laugh to see us alldead, you murderer!"

Kurelovitch was too sorrowful to attempt ananswer. He went to the bedroom where heand two of the children slept and shut the doorbehind him. His wife took this for a gestureof contempt, and her frenzy mounted to ablood-curdling crescendo that ran up and downthe neighborhood like a ravaging blight. Headspopped out of windows and bawled to her tostop for Christ's sake. And, finally she broke

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down of sheer exhaustion and Kurelovitchheard her shuffling into bed.

There was anguished silence, and then Ku-relovitch heard his poor, overburdened drudgeof a wife weeping terribly, with gulping sobsthat hurt him like knives . . . .

And now he could not sleep at all, even afterher sobbing had merged into ugly snoring. Hetossed as in a fever, as he had on so manyother nights of the seven frantic weeks of thestrike.

He went blindly for relief to the window,beyond which reigned the cold, inimical night.The shabby slum street dwindled to an ob-scure horizon, and the mass of the mill build-ing could be seen dominating over the raggedhouses. No being was abroad in the desolatedark; he saw a chain of weak lanterns castingmorbid shadows, and the vicious wind whip-ping up the litter of the streets. The starswere white and high overhead, as distant asbeauty from the place where Kurelovitchburned with sleeplessness. He heard therattling gurgling snore of his wife.

Kurelovitch ached with his great need offorgetfulness. As he twitched on his humidbed the days that had gone and the darkerdays to come ranged about and taunted himlike fiends. The feeling that he held the fateof the strike in his hand rested on him mon-strously, and his .starving children made himgasp and cry like one drowning.

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In dumb anguish he prayed unconsciously tothe power of the righteousness, to God orwhatever fate it was that had brought him in-to the world. But no relief came that way, and,finally, after a struggle, he groped with all hispangs to a little dresser in the room, wherehe searched out a brandy bottle. This he tookto bed with him, and drank and drank anddrank again, till the past and the more ter-rible future were blurred in kindly night, andthe great dark wings of peace folded over himand he sank into the maternal arms of ob-livion.

On the morrow he would wake and find thering of problems haunting him again, and hewould grapple them again in his big, tragicfashion till his soul bled with many freshwounds as he stumbled home in the night. Andthus he would go on and on till he was brokenor dead, for Kurelovitch had dared to spit intothe face of the beast that reigns mankind, andnever for this sin would he be permitted toknow sweetness or rest under the wide shin-ing range of the heavens.

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Free!

morning was spent unwinding the yardsof red tape that are woven into the steel

chains of a prison. The four I. W. W. prison-ers were checked thru several offices, the war-den spoke to them a moment or two, thenthey turned in their gray prison clothes andreceived in exchange their own forgottencreased clothes, stale after five years' reposein a bag. Then they were searched twice forcontraband letters, then they were given theirrailroad tickets to Chicago, the city wherethey had been tried.

"So long, boys/' one of the guards at thelast steel door leading to the world said joy-fully to them. He was a tall, portly, sereneIrishman, with gray walrus moustaches, andhe had seen hundreds of released men standblinking like these four in the strange sun-light, dazed as if they had been fetched fromthe bottom of the sea. "So long, -boys; drop inagain some time when you're lonesome; weenjoyed your visit."

The men smiled awkwardly at him, stifflyand with the show of prison deference to a

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guard. They were still deferential and cau-tious like prisoners; in their minds they werenot yet free.

They walked silently down the flat dustyroad leading from the penitentiary to the high-road, their jaws set, their pale faces appearingunfamiliar and haggard to each other as theireyes glanced from side to side.

"So this is America!" said little BlackieDoan, heaving a deep sigh and spitting hardand far into the road to display his nonchal-ance. Blackie was more nervous and trem-bling inside than any of the other men; buthe could never forget that a gentleman swag-gers and grins and spits with a tough air whenhe is in a difficult situation. This blow ofsudden freedom and sunlight after five yearsin prison fell harder upon Blackie than uponthe other men. He had just come, the daybefore, from five month's of solitary confine-ment in a black, damp underground cell,where he had been expiating the worst ofprison offenses. He had battered with fistsand feet a guard more than half a foot hisheight for the reason that his guard had beenbeating with fist and blackjack and keys aweak, half-witted boy of nineteen who neverseemed to remember his place in the line—another enormous prison crime.

"The land of the free and the home of thebrave!" John Brown, a tall, lankly English-man, with gray hair, hawk nose, and steady

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blue eyes added monotonously, as in a litany,"Wish I had a chew of tobacco!"

The other two I. W. W. prisoners just re-leased after their five years' punishment forthe crime of having opposed a world war didnot say a word, but stumbled along dumbly,as if waiting for something more interestingto happen. One was Hill Jones, a husky youngwestern American, with the face and physiqueof a college football player, and with largeluminous green eyes that stared at the worldlike those of an unspolied child's. The otherI. W. W. was Ramon Gonzales, a young, slim,dark American-Mexican, the second genera-tion of those hard-working Mexican peons whobuild the railroads of our western country.

"Wish I had a chew of tobacco!" repeatedBrown, licking his dry lips with his tongue, andsweeping the brown drab prairie with his eyes."Feel as if I could spit cotton!"

The truth was, he wanted the tobacco tosteady his nerves. Like the others, he wasquivering internally with a rout of weird emo-tions. He had lived for five years in a steelhouse, behind steel bars, in a routine that wasenforced by men with blackjacks and shot-guns, and that was inhuman and perfect assteel. Now he was free. No one was watch-ing him; he was strolling down a hot countryroad, under the immense yellow sky. He wasback in the word of free men and free women;and he, and the others with him should have

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breathed deeply, kissed the earth and rejoiced;instead they seemed tense and worried, a littledisappointed.

What had they expected? They could nothave said, but like all prioners, they had builtup, without knowing it, fantastic and exag-gerated notions of the world outside. Itseemed a little ordinary to them now. The skywas a dun yellowish waste with a sun shiningthru it. The wide dull prairie stretched onevery hand like the floor of some empty barn,with shocks of gray rattling corn stacked indreary rows, file after file to the horizon. Adog was barking somewhere. Smoke was ris-ing from a score of farm-houses, and theyheard .the whistle of a distant freight train.There was dull burning silence on everything,the silence of the sun. The world of free-dom seemed dull; but prisons are tense withsleepless emotions of hope and fear.

They were passing a farmer in a flannelshirt, plodding behind a team of huge horsesin a field of stubble. His lean, brown facewas covered with sweat and fixed in grim,unsmiling lines as he held down the buckingplow and left a path of rich black soil behindhim.

"Looks like a guy in for life, doesn't he?"said Brown, pointing to him with his thumb."Looks like that murderer cell-mate of yours,doesn't he, Ramon?"

The little Mexican cast a swift, worried

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glance with his black eyes at the dull fanaticbehind the plow.

"Yes," he said sharply, and stared backat the road behind his feet,

"Same old goddamn corn," said Blackie,grinning, .as he kicked a tin can out of theroad, and spat, all in the same moment. "Sameold goddamn Hoosiers, raising the goddamncorn! Corn and Hoosiers—God, why don'tthey raise carrots once in a while?"

The others offered no answer to this Amer-ican conundrum. They were moving on tofresh sights in this new world they had beenthrust into—they were staring at the bendin the highroad where the town street began,two miles away from the prison. The uglyframe houses of the middle west set amongtrees and smooth lawns, the trolley tracks,the stone pavements, then the stores and shopwindows when they came nearer the heart ofthe town—that was what they saw. Up anddown the streets men and women walked inthe humdrum routine of life. A grocer wasweighing out sugar in a dark window. Theypassed the little shop of an Italian cobbler.They passed a white sdhool Obuilding, fromwhich came the sound of fresh young voicessinging. There was a line of Fords standing atthe curb near the railroad depot. There weremore women and men walking slowly aboutthe square near the depot, discussing house-work, and the election for sheriff and the price

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of corn and the price of hogs. This was theworld.

"I don't see no brass bands out to meet ushome," said Blackie, with his irrepressible grin."How do you account for that, Hill? Ain'tthey heard we're coming?"

Hill, the young husky quarterback with thelarge green eyes, seemed unable to say a word.He scowled at Blackie, it seemed, and shookhis head.

"What's the matter, Hill?" that worthyqueried, with an insolent grin, "ain't we asgood as they boys who fought to make theworld safe for* democracy?"

"Aw, shut up!" Hill Jones muttered, "youget as talkative as a parrot sometimes!"

"I'm an agitator, that's why I talk," Blackiejeered and would have said more, but that theEnglishman Brown put his hand on Blackie'sarm. There was a policeman loitering on thenext corner, and for some strange reason,known only to ex-prisoners, the impassiveEnglishman was suddenly shaken to his soul.

"Let's get some coffee and," he said, leadingthem in the door of a cheap restaurant shadedby a wide brown maple tree. The four sat onstools against a broad counter loaded withplates of dessert, and looked into a mirror attheir pale prison faces.

"Coffee and crullers," ordered the English-man, naming the diet of all those who wanderalong the roads of America, and pick up their

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food like the sparrows where they can find it."Ham and eggs/' said Hill."Ham and eggs and French friend and cof-

fee," said Blackie."Ham and eggs," said Ramon, in a muffled

voice.The restaurant proprietor, a fat, cheerful

man in a white apron, had been counting billsat his cash register and talking crops with ayoung farm hand in overalls. He locked theregister with a sharp snap and took their or-ders leisurely, the while guessing their statuswith his shrewd eyes. He repeated the ordersinto the little cubby hole leading to the kitchen.

"Solitary confinement, eh, what?" Blackiesaid to the Englishman, pointing at the for-lorn, middle-aged face of the cook that peeredout of the cubby hole and repeated t)he ordersas if in a voice from the tomb.

Neither Brown nor the others answered, butwaited with grim patience for their food. Whenit came, they wolfed it down rapidly, as ifsomeone were watching over them. Blackiecould not be still, however.

"This is better than the damn beans androtten stew every day at the other hotel," hemuttered. "Real ham and eggs! Oh, Boy!!"

Brown looked at the clock. It was just noon."I guess the boys are having their grub now,"he said. "Yes, there goes the whistle. Gosh,you can hear it all the way over here!"

Yet, it was the prison whistle, the high

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whining blast like the cry of some cruel hun-gry beast of prey, rising and falling over thelittle town and all the flat corn-lands, thevoice of the master of life, the voice of thegod of the corn-lands. The four prisoners inthis restaurant knew that call well; and every-one in the town and everyone living on thecorn-lands knew it as thoroly as they did.

"Look," said Blackie, pointing thru a win-dow behind them, "you can just see the top ofthe prison walls from here. Who would havethunk you could see it so far?"

The men turned from their food to staregloomily, while the fat proprietor hid a know-ing smile behind his curled moustaches.

"Two thousand men in hell,' said Jonesquietly, "and all these Hoosiers know is cornand hogs. God, is it worth while? Twenty-five of our boys still in there, ninety-six stillin Leaven worth—God, why do we let ourselvesbe crucified for these Hoosiers?"

"Jim Downey's got fifteen more years to go;so has Frank Varrochek, Harry Ely, RalphSnellins and four more," said John Brownquietly, piercing with his deep blue eyes thruall the distance. "And Jack Small has con-sumption; and George Mulvane is going crazy—Hill, do you think we'll ever get 'em outalive?"

Ramon suddenly became hysterical.He stood up with brandished fists and shook

them at the distant prison, quivering with the

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rage of five years of silence. His olive facedarkened with blood, and locks of his longraven-black hair fell in his eyes, so that hecould not see. He flamed into sudden Latineloquence,

"Beasts!" he cried, in a choked, furiousvoice, "robbers of the poor, murderers of theyoung; hangmen, capitalists, patriots; youthink you have punished us! You think wewill ibe silent now, and not speak of yourcrimes! You dirty fools, you can never si-lence us! You can torture us, you can keepus in prison for all our lives—"

"Oh, Ramon," Blackie cried, pushing himback into his seat, and patting him soothinglyon the shoulder. "Easy, easy! We all feel assore as you do, Ramon, and we hate just ashard. By God, we hate them. But easy now,old-timer, easy!"

The others helped quiet the nerve-wrackedyoung Mexican, and he finally subsided andsat there with his face between his hands untilthey had finished their food. Then the fourpaid their check to the discreet but amusedfat proprietor, and went into the street ontheir way to the railroad station, trying againto appear casual and unconcerned.

At the next corner another policeman waslounging against a store window, and it waswith an effort that each of the freed menpassed his vacant eye. They braced up andwalked by bravely, but they still found it hard

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to believe that they were really free.It would take them some months to become

accustomed to the greater prison house knownas the world.

26

The Coal Breaker

ALWAYS between the sky and their earththe miners saw the unhallowed, grim, irreg-

ular mass of the coal-breaker, a tall structureblack with dust and ugly as a giant toad. Itdominated the whole valley.

There were green trees in that valley, mead-ows and flowers for the light to kindle in thesummer days. The spring brot a soft flushthere, much as in other parts of the world.There were stars and 'moon at night, the sunby day.

There was beauty, but it lived furtively un-der a shadow. A great sombre coal mine wasin that valley. It had dragged its black, slimytrail across the clear brightness of nature. Atown of dirty, sad houses was heaped aboutlike stacks of filth on the grass of the valleylevel. Huge hills of slag stood about the mine'smouth, mounds of darkness from which spurt-ed over jets of diabolical flame.

The humble men of all the races lived inthe shambling houses of the town. They shuf-

2?

fled in the raw morning thru the muddystreets toward the mine pit, and returned inthe dusk with their emptied dinner pails, theirfaces black as sinister masks, /their bodiesdripping sweat and stooped in weary curves.

Saturday nights there was one brief candleof romance lit in this dark reality of toil. Theminers drew their pay then, and spent someof it on liquor. They danced, they sang, theyfought and grew sentimental, they rememberedfor a moment their human heritage of play.

I was in Miduvski's general store on a nightsuch as this. The place was dimly lit bylamps, and Miduvski, a big, bald-headed,shrewd speculator, stood plotting behind hiscounter. There were a few odd customerslounging about. Nothing happened for an houror so; then some of the miners came troopingin.

There were about eight of them, .and a fewboys who worked in the coaljbreaker trailedadmiringly in the rear. The miners weredressed in overalls and black caps with tinylamps fastened on them, and these lampsseemed like the horns of a group of wild-faceddevils. The men were of all races, most ofthem short and squarly built. Their whiteteeth flashed out of the gloom of their facesas they laughed uproariously, for they wereall a little drunk.

"Set 'em up, Miduvski!" shouted one, astout powerful man with a merry black face

28

and little Chinese eyes. "The kid here is treat-ing!"

He dragged forward a youngster who wasno more than ten years old, and who wasdressed in ragged overalls too long for him,and a miner's cap that came over his ears.The boy had high cheek bones, and coal dustdarkened his straight nose and sandy hair ofa young Slav.

"The little Hunkie is goin' to treat!" roaredthe stout miner again. "This is his first weekin the breaker, and he's celebratin'. Ainchyer,kid?"

"Yeh!" the boy said, laughing mirthlesslyand staring at them all with big, dazed eyes."I'm a man now!"

At this there was a general outbreak oflaughter, and one of the men clapped the boyapprovingly on the shoulder. Miduvski filledthe glasses with whiskey, which they gulpeddown "with great smacking of lips and long"Ah-h-hs!"

"Give the kid a hooker too!" shouted a tall,reckless Irishman, pounding on the counter."He's one of us now, by gory!"

"Yes, yes!" cried the other men, and thestorekeeper poured another glass of the red,fiery stuff, which they boy swallowed mechan-ically.

"Yah!" shouted the men admriingly, "that'sthe idea!"

They watched the boy take out his pay enve-

29

lope and extract a dollar bill which he laid onthe counter,

"Game to the core!" the Irishman said, slap-ping the boy on the back again. "Let's haveanother now! My treat!"

The boy leaned against the counter, andlooked about him foolishly. "I ain't goinj tobe a miner all my life," he announced, witha superior air. ''Ton goin' to be a doctor!"

"Hooray for Jansy!" the men shouted, reach-ing out for the newly-filled glasses.

The boy drank with them again, with a care-less pride on his young face. But the next mo-ment the wide store with its shadows of lamp-light and its dark, deep corners and ladenshelves grew dim and whirling to his eyes. Hefelt like rushing out into the fragrant countrynight, to fling himself down on the cool grasssomewhere, and to breathe pure air. A mineroffered him a chew of tobacco, and the boythot it necessary to stuff the vile brown plugin his mouth, and to munch it busily. But hewas sick to the pit of h'is stomach.

A small boy had crept shyly into the place,and was looking at the scene with fear. Hecame over finally and plucked the youngyoung worker by the sleeve.

"Jansy," he said, "Mommer's lookin' for yeeverywhere, and she says she'll give ye anawful lickin' if ye don't come right home. She'swaitin' fer yer pay!"

The breaker-boy pushed his young brother

30

away with a silly smile. "Beat it!" he saidhaughtily, tho reeling and sick with the to-bacco and rot-gut whiskey. "I'm a man now.Just tell Mommer I'm a man now!"

The little boy drew back in fright, and stoodstaring at his brother from the doorway, doubt-ful as to what to do.

"Hooray for Jansy!" the men shouted inglee, lifting the boy on their shoulders. "Gameto the core!"

"We'll have to get him a girl tonight!" theIrishman cried waving his glass of whiskeyrecklessly. "He's a real man now, the littlePolak, workdn', drinkin', chewin', and whorinj!"

The boy grinned wearily. Outside in thenight could be seen the monstrous form of thebreaker in whose black bowels gangs of chil-dren slaved in fierce silence ten hours each day,sorting the slag from the coal with raw fin-gers. The coal breaker dominated the town,it Wotted out the night and stars from humaneyes. Its dust darkened all the houses andrested heavily on the weeds struggling aboutthe mine's mouth, and in that valley even

| childhood was fouled and withered by theI black, black dust of the breaker.

31

IV

Volume /In the

LENINLIBRARY

21'.

Lenin on Organization.

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The Awakeningof China

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