The Coal War by Upton Sinclair Page A

Tommie’s wages as a “trapper-boy” sufficed for his keep, and Mary was sending three dollars a week for Jennie. As for Old Patrick, he was living in the cabin alone, and his drinking harmed no one but himself. Mary had long ago been forced to give him up, so the pain of this did not cut too deeply into her soul.
    Yes, Mary was happy! That sense of fun which is never very deep below the surface of an Irish mind bubbled over when Hal told about Little Jerry’s adventures at the New Year’s party, and about his own adventures with the chancellor of Peter Harrigan’s College. He told about the “social study” nights, and all the interesting things that went on there. As he talked, the thought came to him, How Mary would have liked to go to one of those “social study” nights! And how he would have liked to take her! But he could not take her, he could not even tell his friends about her. He had to keep her a dark secret—more so now than when she had been in North Valley. For a college boy to be interested in a rose in a mining-camp might conceivably be a romance; but for him to be interested in a parlor-maid could not possibly be anything but a scandal!
    Hal ought to have been satisfied, as Mary was, now that she had a good home; but instead he was thinking about this dirty world which drove people to cringing and cowardice, when they had nothing of the kind in their nature. Mary was as fine and straight a girl as you would meet in a life-time; but nevertheless, there would be a line drawn, and Mary would be on the other side of that line. And this canting world would go on calling itself a democracy, a land of equal opportunity!
    Poor Mary! She was so happy in her wonderful new role—so charming with her Irish fun! But let her not make the mistake of thinking that she had really been taken into this world of cleanness and ease! Let her not get the idea that she was dusting Mrs. Wyatt’s bric-a-brac out of love and gratitude! Mrs. Wyatt herself would be as human as she dared, but the ladies who came to her tea-parties would be quick to put a revolutionary parlor-maid in her “place”! Hal was wondering how long it would be before something happened to break “Red Mary’s” bubble of happiness. Suppose it was to occur to her in this new and wonderful prosperity to ask her friend “Joe Smith” to take her to a picture-show!
    Just now, however, Mary did not need picture-shows. She was revelling in a more wonderful world to which she had secured admission—her mistress’s library. Hal had told her what to read, and she had been sitting up half the night to finish “Comrade Yetta”. He was interested to see the effect upon her of this story of a Socialist working-girl. She told him about it with a thrill in her voice. “Joe, I never knew there were such things, so many movements, so many people helpin’ to set free the workin’-class!”
    She saw now what he had meant, when he urged her to get an education. She had thought she knew enough—what did a body need to know, save that the poor were being devoured, and must stand together and put an end to it? But now she was realizing how complicated was the problem; there were many evils, many remedies offered, many courses to choose among. Hal had sent her Socialist papers, and she had read every line of them, and had got her head in, a whirl! “Ye read what one man says and think he’s got it right, and then ye read another man, and he sounds good too—only he says the other man’s all wrong! I read about strikes in South Africa and New Zealand, places I never heard of, so I have to get the geography-book. And there are so many long words—why do they have to have such long words, Joe? Even Mrs. Wyatt don’t always know what they mean!”
    Adelaide put in with a laugh that she was educating herself, as well as Mary. They would be a team of