Читать книгу The Transgressors - Francis Alexandre Adams - Страница 8

Harvey Trueman steps from the County Clerk's office into the corridor, on the second floor of the Court House at Wilkes-Barre, with the absolute knowledge that the case in hand is won.

As he pushes his way down the stairway to the first floor where the courtroom is located, he elbows through a throng of rough dressed miners—Polaks, Magyars, and here and there a man of half-Irish parentage, whose Irish name is all that is left from the Molly Maguire days to indicate the one-time ascendency of that race in the lands of the coal region.

Certain victory within his grasp—a minor victory in the long line of legal fights he has conducted for the Paradise Coal Company—he does not smile. It is a cruel thing he is about to do. Cruel? He asks himself if the sanctity of the law does not make the contemplated move right. Harvey Trueman has a code of morals, an austere code, that has made him enemies even among the people whose champion he has grown to be in three years' practice of the law in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

He is a tall, slender, square-jawed man of thirty-six. His forehead is high and broad and his hair is worn longer than that of other young men—parted on the side and brushed back. He has thin lips and a mouth of unusual width. His mouth-line is as straight as a bowstring, and when he speaks, which is often, or smiles, which is not so frequent, he shows an even line of large white teeth.

There is something very earnest in the expression of Harvey Trueman's face—a soberness that is seldom found in men under fifty. A straight, strong nose, large nostrils and clean shaven upper lip that is abnormally long; cheek bones that stand out prominently; gray eyes set rather deep in his head for so young a man; a square chin protruding slightly; and wearing a frock coat that falls to his knees in limp folds, Trueman is a commanding figure, full of character.

He is an inch over six feet in height. Among the miners who look straight into the eye to read character, Harvey Trueman has been pronounced an unflinching tool of the coal barons—one whose unbending will means the ultimate accomplishment of any undertaking.

Not one of the miners employed by the Paradise Coal Company has ever known the young lawyer to take an unfair advantage. But he has upheld the law for the proprietors of the mines when the men have made a fight against the "company stores," where they are forced to spend the wages made by the sweat of their brows down in the mines or on the breakers.

Trueman is looked upon by all the miners of the region as a part and parcel of the law, and all law is regarded by them as a thing made to oppress the poor and aggrandize the wealthy.

A simple investigation on the eve of the present battle has placed in the hands of the young lawyer ammunition which will rout the enemy on the first volley.

But such an enemy! Above all things, Harvey Trueman is a magnanimous foe. Now that he has his case won, he feels half humiliated. In the court room, occupying a front seat while she awaits the arrival of her lawyer, sits the widow of Marcus Braun, the Magyar miner.

The miner was killed in Shaft Fifteen of the Paradise Company, which is three miles down the river from the wagon bridge at Wilkes-Barre. Standing at the bottom of the shaft when an elevator cage fell, upon which were two loaded coal cars, he was crushed to a pulp. His widow is suing for damages for the death of her husband. In the front seat with her, in the court room, is her five-year-old boy, whom she must support, perhaps by taking boarders at the mines, if the mine superintendent will permit her to go in debt for the rent of a house in case her litigation against the company is not successful.

True, the rope by which the cage had been lifted and lowered had worn thin, and the foreman had warned the superintendent the morning of the accident that a new one was needed. But the poor Magyar at the bottom of the shaft did not know it. He had in no way contributed to the negligence which brought about his death. He knew his work was perilous. In the law, it is a question whether or not the case can be successfully defended by the coal company.

Trueman's trip to the Clerk's office has been for the purpose of ascertaining the miner's standing with reference to his citizenship at the time of his death. With his experience in the practice, the lawyer surmised that the Magyar was never naturalized. If he was not naturalized, his widow has no standing in the court where the suit has been brought. In that case, it belongs to the Federal Court, and his widow and orphan, as well as the impecunious lawyer who has taken the widow's case on a contingent fee, will not have the means nor the fortitude to begin action in the higher court.

Trueman discovers after a few moments of investigation in the Clerk's office that his suspicion is well founded. The miner had never taken out naturalization papers.

Cruel? In the concrete, perhaps. The law is made for the multitude.

"It is a legitimate defense!" Trueman murmurs to himself, as he passes

down the stairs. "The Magyar bore none of the burdens of citizenship.

Neither should he or his, share in the protection which the State of

Pennsylvania affords her citizens."

"Will the Magyar's widow get anything?" asks O'Connor, one of the half-Irish, half-Italian miners, whose elbow Trueman brushes as he walks towards the court room.

Trueman befriended O'Connor once in the matter of rent.

"No. He was not naturalized!"

"His blood be on old Purdy's head, then!" says O'Connor. "The mine boss has said he will put her out in the street. She's already months back in her rent."

Trueman passes on as if he has not heard O'Connor, who is at the Court

House as one of the witnesses.

As the young lawyer pushes his way into the court room his quick glance catches the bent form of the woman in the front seat, clad in the cheapest of black, and the open-eyed boy at her side.

The proceedings are short. Trueman sits down at one of the tables inside the bar enclosure and hastily dashes off an affidavit containing the facts he has discovered, and a formal motion to dismiss. The Judge hears the motion, which is opposed to in a half-hearted way by the lawyer on the other side. The suit is dismissed.

When she is finally made to understand what has happened, the widow burst into tears. The boy, at sight of his mother's distress, sets up a wailing that echoes through the whole Court House. In the hallway, the bunch of miners from Shaft Fifteen gather about the weeping woman as she comes out. One more instance of the heartlessness of the law which is made by the men elected by the Coal Barons, is brought home to them.

To these ignorant men, to whom the first principle of self-preservation is that limit of erudition set by the coal barons themselves, whose first and last lessons in life are to read correctly the checks of the time-keeper and the figures on the "company store" checks which they receive in payment for their work, what difference does it make that the dead miner was a Magyar—not a full fledged American?

He lost his life down in a coal mine where he went to dig coal that some American, way off beyond the hills, might toast his toes on a winter's evening. His life's work was to help keep the American public warm. In return, all he asked was very poor food, a straw bed in a hovel, and a crust for his wife should he be killed in the undertaking.

There is much grumbling already on account of the company stores. The walking delegate of the miners' union has ordered a strike in Carbon County, adjoining, unless the Paradise Company shall reduce the price of blasting powder sold to the miners, fifteen cents a pound.

The miners leave the Court House grumbling. Soothing the Magyar's widow in their rough way, they form a grim procession and trudge back over the dusty road to the breaker and the row of hovels on either side of it.