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Eventually, the billboards and congestion gave way to farmland, a filling station here and there, and even a log cabin tucked into the hills as if modernity were just a passing phase it hoped to ride out. Mabel could hear the mine before she saw it: The gunfire retort of the drills and the rumble of a mine train carrying its load on the tracks were loud even from this distance. As the truck rounded a corner, the mine at last came into view. Three smokestacks belched sooty black plumes into the blue sky. Rocks chugged along on a conveyor belt. Behind it lay a group of modest shotgun-style houses, a school for the workers’ children, and a company store. Mabel knew from her parents that the miners were paid in company scrip, which would buy them goods only at the company store, where the prices were often high. It was a vicious cycle that made it nearly impossible for the workers to ever get ahead.
In front of the mine itself was a gate that was patrolled by armed guards.
About a hundred feet from the mine across a muddy field lay the tent city where the striking workers lived. Some of the wives cooked over meager fires while trying to corral their children. Mabel could only imagine how hard it was.
“There are the machine guns,” Luis said, nodding toward the trucks with Gatling guns mounted on the back.
“And those look like militiamen,” Gloria said, pointing through the dusty windshield at a group of men drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, their rifles slung across their shoulders.
They parked the truck in the tent city. Arthur looked around. “Let’s film the tents to show the conditions here.”
Mabel noticed a woman huddling in the cold with her children. “That’s what you should film, if you really want to arouse sympathy.”
Luis spoke with the mothers and returned with their blessing. Mabel experimented with the camera until the mechanics were second nature to her. Then she peered through the lens, adjusting until one mother’s worried face came into focus, the camera capturing the desperation and worry in her eyes. Mabel had observed people most of her life. She’d learned to be invisible. And right now, that was an advantage. She was the ghost behind the all-seeing camera, shaping pictures into a story. That part was surprisingly instinctual.
Despite the conditions in the camp, the children ran around, playing with sticks and a doll they shared, and Mabel marveled at how resilient they were. She made sure to show them. Surely, people had to feel for the hungry children. But there was something more. Something ephemeral she hoped to catch. She raised the camera again, and this time, she captured the workers coming over the land in a collective joyful spirit—men hoisting children on their shoulders, women in their aprons marching side by side, sons standing with their fathers, girls Mabel’s age holding hands and singing a labor song of solidarity. She wished the camera could record the sound of their singing, but at least it captured their pride, their hope. Her camera found one young girl of perhaps nine or ten. The girl’s hair gleamed in the sunlight. Her eyes were bright. Mabel kept the camera on the child’s smiling face. This, Mabel’s gut told her, was what the country needed to see—a future of possibility shining out from a new, young American. Hope. Wasn’t that American?
Wasn’t that America?
At last, Mabel lowered the camera. Her arms were exhausted, but she’d never been more certain of her purpose. Across the field, a new crew of scabs reported for work. Aron spat into the field. “Traitors.”
“They’re afraid,” Mabel said. “They’re worried they won’t be able to feed their children, that they’ll be deported. You can’t blame them for being afraid. Come on. Let’s do some good.”
Mabel and the rest of the Six moved among the workers. With each tin of beans or blanket they handed out, they heard the miners’ stories.
“At night, the men with guns drive circles around the camp. They fire rifles into the sky to frighten us. It makes the children cry,” a man with a thick Polish accent said. “Inside our tents, we dig tunnels to hide our wives and children in case.”
“In case?” Arthur said.
“In case they decide to no longer shoot at only the sky.”
“Sometimes, they give us tests,” the man’s son said. He looked to be about Mabel’s age.
“What sorts of tests?” Mabel asked.
“There is a doctor, thin, with glasses. We call him Dr. Scarecrow. No one likes him. He asks us about gifts—can we read cards or see into the future, do we have the healing gift?”
Mabel immediately thought of Maria Provenza’s story, but before she could follow up with more questions, everyone’s attention was drawn to the sight of a beautiful Stutz Bearcat bobbling over the rutted road, followed by a small fleet of other, less expensive cars.
“Well, I’ll be. It’s the great man himself,” Arthur said, yanking his cap down tight on his head. “It’s Marlowe.”
Everyone crowded to the limit of the camp line to watch as America’s prince stepped out of his luxurious automobile and shook hands with the guards and militiamen. Several reporters filed out of the other cars. Marlowe had cider doughnuts brought out to them, which the reporters dug into heartily.
“That snake!” Mabel grumbled. “He’s buying them!”
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Marlowe posed for pictures with the smiling guards. “Apparently, some of my miners don’t like the idea of an honest day’s work for honest pay,” Marlowe announced with a paternal shake of his bright head. “I pay a fair wage for fair work. Ask anybody. Then these union rabble-rousers come in and upend things. Why, they’re holding American industry hostage, like a bunch of thugs and bullies! By golly, I say, if you come here looking for a better life and the opportunities this great country offers, you have to work for it the American way, and the American way is not union. But as you boys can see, there are always people ready to work.”
The newsboys ate Marlowe’s doughnuts and took down his every word. Not one of them bothered to talk to the workers themselves.
“He’s treating this like some nuisance he wants to scrape off his shoe when there are kids with hungry bellies right here!” Mabel said, furious.
She hopped up onto a tree stump. Her voice soared on the March wind. “Do you remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Do you remember the bodies of those girls lying on Greene Street?” Beside Mabel, the miners removed their caps. The mothers held their children tight. “Those girls came here looking for a better way of life, too. They had families. They were loved. They had dreams, too! But the men who ran the factory didn’t think of them that way. They thought those girls would try to steal scraps of cloth from them. Those men cared more about their profits than they did about the workers making them rich. So they locked them inside for twelve hours a day. When the fire broke out, those poor girls were trapped with no way out. Many jumped to their deaths. The others screamed as they burned. And what happened to the owners, to the men who had sealed their fate?” Mabel paused. She had the reporters’ attention now. “Nothing!”
A clamor went up among the workers. They were cheering Mabel on.
“Is that the American way? It would be wonderful if we could depend upon the kindness and fairness of men, Mr. Marlowe, but we can’t. Without unions, there is no protection.” Mabel raised her fist high in the air and shouted, “Union!”
