Black Diamonds: A Novel

by Mór Jókai

It was high time Ivan returned to his coal-mine; he was needed there. While he was fighting duels in Pesth, strange things were happening in Bondathal. Not far from his workmen's colony there arose enormous buildings with almost miraculous quickness. As often happens when no difficulty is made as to price, the only question asked is, how soon shall the work be finished? The shares had not yet been issued, and the company had already spent in the interest of the undertaking a million of money. Everything was pressed forward at fever-heat. Here was a new invention for making tiles by machinery, there a donkey-engine supplied the materials for building the walls. The earthworks were in a most advanced condition, the chimneys smoked, the roofs were covered, a whole street was already built, a new town was rising as if by magic.

Of all this activity Ivan had been kept in ignorance by his assistant, Rauné, who had, likewise, been silent as to another disturbing element which had made its appearance for the first time among the workmen, and which disputed the palm with "choke-damp" and "foul air," and was quite as fatal as either. This new element was "a strike." A portion of Ivan's workmen struck for higher wages, otherwise they would join the new coal-mine, which was called "The Gentleman's Colony." It offered nearly double the wages, certainly more than the half again, of what Ivan paid. This happened after Rauné had explained to the men that he had accepted the office of director, which had been offered to him by the new company, and he naturally wished to take with him the best and cleverest among Ivan's men, so that they, too, might profit by the higher wages. Who could resist such advantageous offers? Miners are like all other men; they have their price.

Ivan now gnawed the bitter bread of self-reproach. He saw the folly he had committed in taking into his service and admitting into the secrets of the business the paid director of a company created to bring about his own ruin.

A scientific man is not a good business man. While he was making investigations as to the probability of animal life existing in the antediluvian strata of coal-mines, he was blind to the danger of a rival company close to his own factory. Nay, more; he had allowed himself to be hoodwinked by an inferior intelligence, and had fallen into the trap set for him by his old friend Felix. Ivan was philosopher enough to accommodate himself to circumstances. There was little use, he told himself, in crying over spilt milk; he had broad shoulders, and they should, if it were possible, push the wheel of fortune. But though he said this, he had little hope of succeeding.

On his return, and when he got, as he thought, to the bottom of the evil, he called his workmen together.

"Comrades," he said, "a great undertaking has risen up beside us; the company of the new coal-mines offers you wages which I give you my word of honor it is impossible to pay without considerable loss to themselves. Up to the present I have worked my mines with a certain amount of profit; I offer you to-day, in addition to your usual wages, a share out of this profit. For the future we shall divide with one another what we earn. At the end of the year I shall lay my accounts before you; one of your number, chosen by yourselves, shall examine and audit them, and according to the wages of each man and the work he has done he shall receive his share. If you agree to this fair offer I shall continue the work. If, however, you think it better for your interests to take the higher wages offered by the company, I shall not enter into competition with men who have millions to spend; it would be a folly on my part. I shall, therefore, sell them my mine, and you may then be certain of one thing, that when they have both mines in their own hands, and find that no rivalry is possible, the rate of wages will be lowered. To those who stand by me I offer a contract for life; the profits of this mine, so long as I live, shall be divided between myself and my workmen."

This was an excellent stroke, especially as the company could not imitate it. More than half the men closed with Ivan's offer, and undertook to remain with him. A great number, however, influenced by paid agents, who were sent about to stir them up, went over to the "Gentleman's Colony."

Those who remained had a great deal to suffer from the ones who left. Not a Sunday passed without fights taking place between the two parties.

Ivan soon heard that his powerful rival had found a way of checkmating him. His customers, to whom he sent large consignments not only of coal but also of copper and iron bars, wrote to him that the new Bondavara Coal Company had offered the same class of goods at fifty per cent. less, and that therefore, unless he was prepared to make a similar reduction, they could not deal with him. Fifty per cent. higher wages and fifty per cent. less profit means working for nothing. Rauné had Ivan's business in the hollow of his hand; he could ruin it, and he meant to do so. Ivan saw this quite clearly, but he did not lose heart. He wrote to all his former customers that it was not possible to give either the coal or the iron a farthing cheaper, not if it hung round his neck as a dead weight. The consequence was his coal and his iron accumulated in his warehouses; scarcely a wagon with his name was to be seen in the streets of Bondathal. He had to work the mine and the foundry for himself alone.

For the men who had remained true to him there was, indeed, a bad outlook. Their former comrades jeered at them in the open street. "Where is the profit?" was a popular cry. Ivan tried to quiet the disappointed men; he asked them to wait patiently. By the end of the year, he prophesied, they would be on the right side. To give things for nothing was not trade, and if the company chose to do it he wasn't going to follow such a suicidal example.