Read The Coal War for Free Online Page A

happy days were gone; a serpent had crept into this Eden—a serpent of radicalism, which gave a sinister meaning to harmless phrases, and turned the Harrigan song into a taunt. Now when men heard its strains they looked about to see if the Coal King’s son were near; and often he was not near—he had sought refuge in his rooms, to escape some labor agitator denouncing his father!

[11]
    The original seed of this evil had been Morris Lipinsky, the Russian Jew. Prior to coming to Harrigan the only Jews Hal had known had been Jesus and Heinrich Heine; and somehow he had not connected them with the members of their race in Western City—the Abrahams of the clothingtrade and the Isaacs of the “show business”. Lipinsky was under-sized, sharp-faced, and painfully apologetic; it was rumored that his father, the escaped Siberian exile, kept a stationery shop in some obscure quarter. The son labored under a constitutional inability to pronounce the letter w, and without reflecting about the matter especially, Hal had set him down as “impossible”.
    But early in the sophomore year Lipinsky came to Hal’s rooms, and timidly explained that he was making an effort to interest some of the students in the subject of Socialism. Hal was obliged to admit that his ideas of the subject were of the vaguest. Lipinsky began to explain; and Hal was surprised to see a shrinking and apparently inferior little Hebrew become suddenly lighted up with enthusiasm. He was a person with a secret religion, it appeared; and Hal, who was used to this in Judea, hardly knew what to make of it in Harrigan!
    It happened that Hal himself was in a state of transition at this time. He had been brought up a member of St. George’s, but he had ceased to believe the creed of his church, and what was more important, he had come to doubt its practical efficiency. Under Will Wilmerding’s guidance he had taught Sunday-school to a class of urchins, gathered with considerable difficulty from the poorer quarters of Western City. He knew that these urchins were going out to face the temptations of a community in which the vice-interests were in alliance with police and politicians, a “machine” subsidized by the great public service corporations; could he feel that he was giving an adequate equipment for life, teaching about Moses in the bulrushes and Jonah in the whale? On the other hand, he could not very well teach them about graft in Western City, because the heads of the interests which subsidized this graft were the pillars of the church in which he taught!
    Morris Lipinsky had faced such facts as these, and he had a remedy which he was willing to stay up all hours of the night explaining. He mentioned incidentally that there was an organization of college men interested in spreading such ideas, and might it not be a good thing to have a lecturer come to Harrigan? Hal offered the use of his rooms, and there was a meeting attended by some twenty students, who had brought to their attention the neglect of a most fascinating subject in the curricula of American colleges. The lecturer suggested the disturbing possibility that there might be some connection between this neglect, and the source from which the funds of American colleges were derived. And when some of the students wished to go on with this fascinating subject, their project met with a reception which caused them to recall this suggestion of the lecturer. They proposed to organize a “study chapter”, but the chancellor of Harrigan put his foot down; he would not have the name of Harrigan associated with Socialism!
    So throughout the precincts of the college broke out a lively controversy. Young men and women who had had no remotest desire to study Socialism took part in vehement discussions as to whether they had a right to study Socialism if they wished. Even one or two of the professors spoke up. Surely it was an unusual thing to forbid college