Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

Now, miners on strike are persons of no very marked refinement, neither are they given to logic. What Tennyson says of the Light Brigade is finely applicable here—"Theirs not to reason why."

When you meet real strikers nothing counts. You may do everything which instinct, invention or despair can suggest, except descending to vulgar invective, yet without the slightest tangible result. No matter how soothly their employer may speak to them, they are suspicious of him or her. The intervention must always come from a third party. These men are the latter-day exponents of the old rule laid down by Dean Swift for the better direction of servants: "Quarrel with each other as much as you please, only always bear in mind that you have a common enemy which is your Master and Lady."

To find yourself facing a square of irate strikers is to feel yourself very thin, very colourless, and amazingly inexperienced. It is to wonder at the rudeness of their speech, the largeness of their mouths, and to speculate in a Christianly way as to just what screw is loose in their mental make-up. I know this to be the way of it, for once we had a strike in a mine which I, with a strutting but misguided assurance, imagined to be the property of our family. Owing to a former superintendent having entered into an agreement with the union, I learned we were holding the mine co-operatively, and that I could not dismiss the men either individually or collectively.

The trouble happened in this wise: the president being absent for several months, it fell to me, as vice-president, to hold the reins. By reason of the facts that the seam of coal was pinching thin; that the miners were receiving one-third more than any others in the locality, and that we were producing on a falling market, we found we were losing nearly one hundred dollars a day. The superintendent invited the miners to discuss the matter without prejudice. They did not disallow the correctness of his contention but refused to consider a reduction of their wages. They were content to stand by their side of the agreement and would see to it that the company did the same.

And here I showed a lack of discretion in allowing this matter to be discussed, for, while failing to deduce that it was highly preposterous to kill the goose who laid the golden egg, they still had the penetration to see that in closing down the mine because of lack of orders, my primary object was to nullify the agreement. Nothing could express their unmeasured contempt of the vice-president, and they left me under no misapprehension as to their opinion of me. They accused me of playing them, and being guilty of the offence, I was naturally offended at the accusation. Still, I declined to be led into further discussion, or to recriminate in kind, so that ultimately I came to feel strong as one does who is intentionally weak before her enemy. There was nothing for it. The miners had to walk out, all except the engineers who pumped the water from the sump. Now, the night engineer had a face so wicked that he might all his life have been stoking furnaces in the underworld, and he it was who permitted the men to enter the shaft and put a stick in the valve of the pulsometer so that the mine became flooded and several entries caved in.

I was quite as angry as my temperament allowed, and it would have given me much satisfaction to have killed them, for, after all, this is a most effective method of getting rid of your enemies. It was, nevertheless, no small satisfaction when the superintendent, a tight-built muscular Englishman, gave the engineer a touch or two that reminded the onlooker of a piston-rod in action. If might and right are not the same thing, they ought to be. Two weeks later, the works were re-opened with other workmen on a new wage scale. On arriving at the mine the following day, I found our former employees were picketing it. They had a crow to pluck with me, I could see that. The very air was portentous. Those workmen were like the horses of Phoebus Apollo in that their breasts were full of fire and they breathed it forth from their nostrils and mouths. But while the men were abusive and loud-voiced, they were never insulting, for even Satan finds it hard to forge a weapon against a smile and an unwavering courtesy. And, after all, what can strikers do with a vice-president who is a woman? It seemed like taking an unfair advantage of them. It was only when we met the miner's wives that I learned my exceeding limitations; that the power fell out of my elbow and the stiffening out of my collar-bone.

When I say "we" I mean William and myself. Now, William was my driver, and he spent fourteen years in the British cavalry. He had served in Egypt and South Africa; he had fought his way through a screaming death at Omdurman and yes, I will say it—William was "a nob" and handsome as a circus horse. His deference as he lifted me down off the high seat, his manifest concern for my comfort, and his superb arrogance as he bade the women "Give over there!" were too much, for even these raging furies to reckon with. His coolness under a withering fire of invective restored me to normal and enabled me to stand pat.

To shorten the story, we had to engage three successive gangs before we won out. By that time the strikers had become divided, some having accepted work in other mines, while the remainder became discouraged and gradually gave up the picket.

I have dwelt at some length on this matter of strikes because, as yet, no actual operator has expressed his view point or his feeling under the ordeal, whereas the strikers have made the street corners vibrant concerning the villainies of their employers whom they designate as Capital. In dismissing this phase of mining, I would say a strike is to be avoided at almost any cost, for, apart from its factor as a somewhat strenuous builder of character, it is a victory which costs the operator too dearly both in the expenditure of nerves and of money.

... Before being led into the discussion of finances and strikes, I had started to tell you about an Albertan mine and its workings. The theme is worth picking up again. Before you go down, it is well to have a look around the machinery-room where the engines pump up the water and pump down the air. You will also be interested in the great spool or drum which unwinds the long steel cables by which the cage is lowered or hoisted in the shaft. One man stands beside it and controls it with a lever. The man behind the lever needs to be equally as steady and effective a worker as the man behind the gun, for it is by this cage the men enter and leave the mine, although they may, if so disposed, ascend or descend by the escapement or ladder-shaft beside it.