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“But not a Pittsburgh dodo,” said Isaac Bell.
BOOK TWO
FIRE
18
Brother,” said Mary Higgins. “I am going back to Pittsburgh.”
Jim had been worrying about this and here it was. Back in West Virginia, a thousand miners had been evicted from their Gleason company shanties. Some were huddling in a tent city, their usual fate while a strike dragged on and scabs dug the coal. Some, however, had begun a march to Pittsburgh in hopes that newspaper stories about men, women, and children marching in cold rain would raise the nation’s sympathy. It might. It might even give President Roosevelt courage to intervene.
A thousand marching up the coal-rich Monongahela Valley stood a good chance of doubling their ranks and doubling them again and again as workers struck the hundreds of mines along the way to join the march. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand arriving in Pittsburgh might well spark the general strike Higgins dreamed of. But he hesitated to join it.
The murder of Black Jack Gleason had turned the mood violent. Governors were threatening to call up troops. Prosecutors were staging trials. And the coal mine owners had dropped even pretenses of restraint.
“There’s plenty to keep us busy here. Plenty. The smelters’ strike is a disaster.”
“Read this!” She thrust the Denver Post in his face and pulled a carpetbag from under her cot. Jim read quickly. “What is this? We know Gleason got blown up.”
“Keep reading. Do you see what happened next?”
Jim read to the end where it was reported that the barges that sank at Gleasonburg had blocked the river for four days.
Mary asked, “The rivers are not deep at Pittsburgh, are they?”
“Not very. The Mon’s about eight or ten feet. Shallower in many places, depending on rain. About the same for the Allegheny.”
“And the Ohio?”
“About the same… Why?”
Mary’s eyes were burning.
“Why?” Jim repeated sharply.
“Even scab coal has to reach Pittsburgh to be shipped by trains to the eastern cities and by barge to the west.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jim. He understood fully, but he didn’t want to hear it.
Mary said, “The barges that sunk at Gleasonburg blocked the river for four days. One tow’s worth of barges, brother, a single fleet. What would happen at Pittsburgh if many, many, many barges sank and blocked the river?”
“No coal would move,” said Jim Higgins.
“No coal to the Pittsburgh mills,” said Mary. “No coal trained east to the cities. No coal barged west down the Ohio.”
“But the miners are already marching. What about the march? A peaceful march.”
“The marchers will need all the help they can get. This will help them.”
“Sabotage is war, Mary.”
“Coal is the lifeblood of the capitalist class.”
“War means death.”
“Precisely, brother. Without coal, the capitalist class will die.”
* * *
