The Coal War

Read The Coal War for Free Online

Book: Read The Coal War for Free Online
Authors: Upton Sinclair
enemy decided it would pay them, they would find a way to get a transcript for themselves.”

[10]
    Hal Warner went back to finish his senior year at Harrigan. He had given his word to Jessie that he would “behave himself”; but alas, the story of his sojourn in the coal-camps was known, and there was no way he could avoid being a storm-center. Discussions would start in the most unforeseen manner; a perfectly innocent conversation would take a turn, perhaps through some “joshing” remark; and the first thing one knew, there on the campus would be a group of vehement young men and women, determining the basis of property rights and the moral validity of watered securities. “Cut it out! Cut it out, you fellows!” the crowd would say; but all the crowd could accomplish was to drive the disputants to their own rooms, where they would go on, perhaps until midnight.
    There were some who took Hal’s side: a Russian Jew named Lipinsky, whose father had escaped from Siberia; a tow-headed ranch-boy who was earning his way tending furnaces; a son of a “copper-man” who had been put out of business by the trust. On the other hand there developed a party of angry conservatives, gathered round Percy Harrigan, defending him in spite of himself. One of these was Laurence Arthur, Jessie’s youngest brother, and another was “Dicky” Everson, who had been in Percy’s car at North Valley. These men, Hal’s boyhood friends, were not slow to tell him what they thought of him for casting in his lot with “roughnecks” and “goats”. If he chose to mix with that element it was his right, but he could hardly expect his old friends to follow him. —So the class-war crept into the classic halls of Harrigan, to the great distress of the chancellor and the faculty’s wives.
    There were even two or three of the professors who showed traces of leaning to Hal’s side. The professor of economics, instead of lecturing on the labor problem, spent a whole hour arguing with the ex-miner. The news of this made a sensation, even a scandal. Imagine Percy Harrigan having to sit in a classroom and listen to talk about conditions in the properties of the “G.F.C.”! What would the newspapers say to a thing like that? What would Old Peter say?
    It was amazing, the rate at which radical ideas were making headway in American colleges; most disconcerting to men who had the financing of the institutions to provide for. The students of Harrigan of course knew upon whose bounty their culture was nourished. They had a song about it, which they had sung for years—a typical college-song, full of gay nonsense, mingled with good-natured “joshing”. They had been wont to sing it even in Old Peter’s presence, and he had laughed, and thought it as funny as anyone—
    â€œOld King Coal was a merry old soul,
    And a merry old soul was he;
    He made him a college all full of knowledge—
    Hurrah for you and me!
    â€œOh Liza-Ann, come out with me,
    The moon is a-shinin’ in the monkey-puzzle tree;
    Oh Liza-Ann, I have began
    To sing you the song of Harrigan!
    â€œHe keeps them a-roll, this merry old soul—
    The wheels of industree;
    A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl
    And his college facultee!
    â€œOh, Mary-Jane, come out in the lane,
    The moon is a-shinin’ in the old pecan;
    Oh, Mary-Jane, don’t you hear me a-sayin’
    I’ll sing you the song of Harrigan!
    â€œSo hurrah for King Coal, and his fat pay-roll,
    And his wheels of industree!
    Hurrah for his pipe, and hurrah for his bowl—
    And hurrah for you and me!
    â€œOh, Liza-Ann, come out with me—”
    And so on—like Tennyson’s brook, this song went on forever. Tradition had it that on one June evening it had been sung until midnight without a halt, inspired composers springing up and “spelling” one another with new verses. By now such

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