The Coal War by Upton Sinclair Read Free Book Online

outrage on college dignity. The college had barely escaped a hideous calamity; the Western City “Herald” had got hold of the story, and it had required the influence of one of the wealthiest of the trustees, exercised over the telephone at midnight, to avert this horror from the classic shades of Harrigan. There would be no more stuff about “free speech” in colleges; this undignified and unacademic propaganda would come to an end forthwith!
    Nor was this all for Hal. He was summoned to Western City by telephone, and made to listen to a discourse from his brother Edward.
    Two years previously Hal’s father had suffered a paralytic stroke, and his doctors declared that excitement of any sort might cost him his life; so Edward had taken over the affairs of the Warner Company—and incidentally, the duty of lecturing his younger brother. Hal was free; he had all the money he wanted, and only one thing in the world was asked of him, that he should not bring disgrace upon the family name. Did he realize that the one-eyed old ruffian whom he had received in his rooms and invited to supper in a college dining-hall had barely escaped hanging for a cowardly assassination?
    â€œI know that,” said Hal. “I know also that a jury found him not guilty.”
    â€œStuff and nonsense!” cried Edward. “Let’s talk straight to each other. Are there any of Hogan’s own followers who don’t believe that he did the murder?”
    â€œI don’t know as to that,” said Hal. “I haven’t had a chance to meet his followers. Have you?”
    Edward scorned this attempt at repartee. All the world knew that Hogan’s organization was carrying on a campaign of terrorism and blackmail, and that Hogan was the driving will of it. Hal might talk about the sufferings of miners, but Edward could answer by picturing the desolation in one American home. He knew the family of Dan Hogan’s victim; the son was a member of their college fraternity, a class-mate of their cousin, Appleton Harding. How would Edward feel, how would Harding feel, having to meet this young man in business and social life—and he knowing that Hal Warner had been publicly giving aid and support to the man who had blown up his father with a dynamite bomb?
    Hal thought about these complicated problems when he should have been thinking about Greek and trigonometry. In his mind the matter boiled itself down to one question—was modern industry lifting the worker, or was it degrading him? Was it disciplining him and fitting him for wider responsibilities, or was it beating him down, making him unfit for citizenship? There was the heart of the controversy, and upon the answer depended the attitude one should take.
    And Hal saw that however much both sides might differ, they were in agreement on the point which concerned him . Dan Hogan’s scornful words were burned into his brain: “You, living easy lives, getting the pretty thing you call culture—what do you know about the slaves of your mills and mines? You belong to some higher order of beings, who have the right to eat your fellows!” And on the other hand were the men of affairs—his brother, Jessie Arthur’s brothers, his cousin, “Appie” Harding—all calling him a theorist and a dreamer, taunting him because he was raised on books. What did he know about the cares of employers, the difficulty of handling large bodies of ignorant and jealous men?
    Hal saw that whatever position he took, he could not maintain it until he could say that he knew something of his own knowledge. And so little by little there formed itself in his mind the concept of his Great Adventure. He would devote his summer’s vacation to a course in practical sociology—“field-work”, as it was called. He would put behind him his comfortable home and his leisure-class friends; he would take the clothes of a workingman, the name,