Mine Seed
by
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"And what was there for us? No, it’s here I came and I’ll stick with the men and do what has to be done. I don’t think there’ll be any shooting though. The soldiers are put here to frighten us is all. But if things gets out of hand, however--well, they might try and provoke us. "Provoke, for God’s sake, will you listen to yourself! That’s their whole game isn’t it? Just looking for an excuse...oh, for the love of God what is it now?" The door pushed opened and Charlie McDonough almost rolled in peering over his shoulder, hunched down and breathless. "Ah, Robert, Daniel," he greeted them with hardly a glance, gasping. "Thanks be to God I’m here," he collapsed into a chair they had not yet offered. "It’s near dead I am with excitement--I near met me Maker in the alley just now! A minute now ‘til I calm meself! If I tell you, you won’t believe me what happened. Some dirty divil of a bastard come up from behind and grabs me, with his great hammy hands, around me throat and near throttles me like. And some of them are on their way to the roundhouse this minute, and soldiers is surely on the way up the Briggs, you can see the fire from here. Some of the men coming from the colliery told me--from the Round Woods--and one of them greenhorn scabs was near beaten to death." His words tumbled out at an exorbitant rate and all the while he fanned himself with a large blue cloth. They could see a dull crimson glow rising near the Briggs shaft. Daniel brought whisky. "Here, take this, Charlie. Are you hurt anyplace?" "No, no, it’s all right I am--but for the fear of God put in me by that dirty divil. Ah, many thanks." He emptied the glass in a gulp and held it out for more. "I’m after getting the wind knocked out of me is all. Like I was saying, we come out of Hogan’s when some of the boys start telling how they was going up the breaker to have a look. I said goodnight peacefully and was coming away, when what do you think but didn’t that son-of-a-bitch come up from behind and grab me. First, I thought he was a thief--well he’d get nothing for his trouble I had the satisfaction of knowing. But then doesn’t he whisper in me ear, ‘This is what you’ll get if you go telling our plans. Get my meaning?’ Then he jabs me in the ribs but good, it’s hurting me yet, and throws me to the ground like an old sack. ‘Remember,’ he says and turns heel and is gone. When I got me wind back I came here directly. I think I know the voice--could be that scrappy beggar Mahon or McGlynn.... "Whoa, slow down, Charlie, you’re going too fast. Start at the beginning. You say you heard some men at the hotel say they were going to the Briggs...." "For the love of God, Dan, making plans thick as thieves they was to go to the colliery and do mischief; and the ringleader was this little bull of a chap Ratsy Mahon, or McGlynn. A laborer at No.4 I think he used to be, now he works in the blacksmith shop or somewhere else on top. It’s him is the spy or my name is mud.... Anyhow I was thinking of you, and there’s talk of arresting men for conspiracy," he lowered his voice with the last word.
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About the Book
ADVANCE PRAISE for MINE SEED: A powerful story--something extraordinary in literature. – Historian Howard Zinn. . . . comes across as an authentic record of what must have been in part a result of personal experience, family tradition and the dramatic events of the late 19th century here in the greater Scranton area--a valuable record. – Richard Rousseau, University of Scranton Secret meetings hidden in the mountains, informants, agents, spies . . . murder . . . in the Lackawanna Valley deep in the coal fields of Pennsylvania. Anthracite coal fueled the industrial revolution. Poor immigrants and their descendants mined it. Follow the tale through the eyes of three miners in the toughest years of coal history: from the Irish Famine, Lincoln’s funeral train, the labor victories Pennsylvania coal miners won – including protecting union members from prosecution under conspiracy laws, to the landmark 1902 anthracite strike in which miners in Scranton, represented by Clarence Darrow, forced industrialists to accept the right of unions to sit at the arbitration table for the first time in United States history.
About the Author
A great-granddaughter of coal miners in northeastern Pennsylvania, Lucia Dailey tells the story in Mine Seed, from the miners’ point of view, of the historically significant and sometimes bloody battle waged by mainly immigrant anthracite coal miners to achieve fair pay and safe working conditions. She holds a BA in modern foreign Languages and an MA in English literature from the University of Scranton. Her other prose works include a study of the feminine archetypes in James Joyce’s, Ulysses. She is currently working on a second novel set in World War One and a volume of poetry.