Power by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

in the great Serpo mine disaster. Thereby, his early experience at Ringman was duplicated with himself as one of the victims.
    As he was in the group nearest to the cage, he was one of the seven men rescued alive, and during the next twenty-four hours, he worked to exhaustion with the crew that attempted unsuccessfully to save the miners who perished. Once again, the tragedy that flows from bad working conditions and insufficient safety measures put its stamp upon Benjamin R. Holt.
    In the winter of 1915, Benjamin R. Holt returned to Ringman, where he once again entered the mines. A few months later, he married Dorothy Aimesley.
    In 1916, Benjamin R. Holt was elected president of the Ringman local of the International Miners Union. The following year, he was elected as the International Union’s representative with the National Confederation of Labor, and during the two years he held that post, he worked incessantly to promote legislation, both state and federal, in defense of the coal miners.
    His election to the presidency of the International Miners Union was with the largest majority gained by any candidate during the past decade.

    Â 
    12
    I was up early the following morning, and at work in my room by seven-thirty. The Mail , which was among the several good New York City newspapers that did not survive the twenties, was an afternoon paper, and in those days the first edition of an afternoon paper was about an hour later than today. If I could put my story through on the wire at nine o’clock, I would be in time for the presses. I worked in my room, sitting by the window, and I had a clear view across the street to the station. The morning train had brought in another contingent of armed guards, almost a hundred of them by quick count; and they were being served breakfast from a truck converted into a short-order lunch counter of sorts.
    My interview story was finished well before nine, and without stopping for breakfast, I filed it at the Western Union office. On my way back to the hotel, I stopped to speak to some of the new batch of detectives, as they termed themselves. But before I could get more than a few words in, a foreman type shouldered me away and demanded to know what in hell I thought I was doing. When I explained who I was, his apology took the form of an assurance that there was no news to be found here.
    I objected to that. “When you bring hundreds of armed men into a town like Clinton, it’s bound to make news.”
    â€œWho said they’re armed?”
    I shrugged and shook my head, but he was firm on refusing to allow me to talk to them. “Twelve damn good detectives were murdered here yesterday, mister,” he said to me. “Do you want us to subject ourselves to the same thing? Not on your life. You want to talk—talk to these sonovabitch miners!”
    Only there were no miners. The day before, the day I arrived, the streets of Clinton had been full of miners and their wives and their kids, but today not one of them was in sight, not a soul on the streets anywhere except the hard-eyed operatives who had been pouring into town. They were everywhere. They sat on the curbstones, swarmed over the hotel veranda, and pressed into the lunchroom and the drugstore; but there were no miners to be seen anywhere.
    There was a garage in Clinton, and I walked over to it now. It was at the end of the business street, a ramshackle shed where a single mechanic was working under a car. He crawled out when I said “Good morning” to him, and eyed me without pleasure. He was a boy of eighteen or nineteen or so.
    â€œI want to rent a car,” I said to him.
    No comment, no reaction.
    â€œYou have a car for hire? Or a taxi service? Suppose I want to go somewhere. Could you drive me?”
    â€œI got my work,” he muttered, turning away.
    I told him that I was a reporter, and that made him pause. Then I got out my press card for him to look at. I pointed out to him