"I spoke out to him once," said Jeffro. "I said: 'Will you tell me how this is? They can not make me understand. America gives me free all the things that I did not expect: The fire-engine, it takes no pay. My little boy's school costs me not anything. When I come to this state I have no passport to get, and they did not search me at the frontier. All this is very free. But when we want more bread, and we are willing to work for it all day long with our hands, you will not let us have more, even then. Even when we pay with work. Will you tell me how this is?'"
Of all that the man had said to him, kindly enough, Jeffro understood nothing. And he could speak the language, while many of the men in the mines could not say one word of English.
"But they could strike in Russian and Polish and Lithuanian," Jeffro said, "and they did."
Then came the soldiers. Jeffro told me about that.
"Ve vere standing there outside the Angel mine," he said, "to see that nobody vent to vork and spoiled our hopes, ven somebody cried out: 'The soldiers!' Many of the men ran—I did not know vy. Here was some of the United States army. I had never seen any of the army before. I hurried toward them, my cap in my hand. I saw their fine uniforms, their fine horses, this army that was kept to protect me, a citizen, and vich I did not have to pay. I stood bowing. My heart felt good. They had come to help us then—free! And then somebody cried. 'He's one of the damned, disorderly picketers. Arrest him!' And they did; and nothing I could say vould make them understand. I vas in jail four days, but all those days I thought it vas a mistake. I smiled to think how sorry they vould be ven they found out they had arrested von they were paid to protect—free."
He told me how there went on the days, the weeks, of the strike; hunger, cold; the militia everywhere. The little that Jeffro had earned was spent, dime by dime. He stayed on, hoping for the settlement, certain that it would all be right as soon as everybody "understood."
"It vas this vay," he said laboriously. "Mine-owners and money and militia vere here. Over here vere the men. Vrong vas done on both sides—different kinds of vrong. The sides could not speak together clear. No von understood no von."
Then a miner had resisted an officer who tried to arrest him, the officer fired, and Jeffro had the bullet in his shoulder, and had been locked up for being "implicated"—"I don't know yet vat they mean by that long vord," Jeffro said—and had been taken to the courthouse and later to the hospital. On his discharge, eight days ago, he had started to walk home to Friendship Village.
"To-morrow," Jeffro said, "I vill get out from the bank my money—I have not touched that—and send to her vat I have. It may be she has saved a little bit. Somehow she vill come. To-morrow I vill get it, as soon as the bank is open."
I knew I had to tell him—I knew I had to tell him right then. "Mr. Jeffro—Mr. Jeffro," I said, "you can't. You can't get your money. The bank's failed."