had picked up here and there by one means or another. The red card was the one I wanted. It identified my as Henry F. Brannan (a lie), member in good standing of Industrial Workers of the World, Seaman's No.----. I passed it to Bill Quint. He read it carefully, front and back, returned it to me, and looked me over from hat to shoes—not trustfully.
"He's not going to die again," he said. "Which way are you going?"
"Any."
We walked down the street together, turned a corner, strolled along—aimlessly so far as I knew.
"What brought you in here, if you're a sailor?" he asked casually.
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"There's the card."
"Yeah. I got another that proves I'm a timber-beast. If you want me to be a miner I'll get one for that tomorrow."
"No, you won't. I run 'em here."
"Suppose you got a wire from Chi?" I asked.
"To hell with Chi. I run 'em here. Drink?"
"Only when I can get it."
We went through a restaurant, up a flight of stairs, and into a narrow room with a long bar and a row of tables. Bill Quint nodded and said, "Hello," to some of the boys and girls at the tables and bar and guided me into one of the booths that line the opposite wall. We spent. the next two hours drinking whiskey and talking.
The gray man didn't think I was a good Wobbly, didn't think I had any right to the red card I had shown him and the other one I had mentioned. As chief muckademuck of the I. W. W. in Personville he considered it his duty to find out how-come, and not to let himself be pumped about radical affairs while he was doing it. That was all right with me. I was more interested in Personville affairs. He didn't mind discussing them. They were something he could hide behind between casual pokings into my business with the red cards, my radical status.
What I got out of him amounted to this:
For forty years old Elihu Willsson had owned Personville heart, skin, guts and soul. He was president and majority stockholder of the Personville Mining Corporation, ditto of the First National Bank, owner of the Morning Herald and the Evening Herald, the city's only newspapers, and at least part owner of nearly every other enterprise of any importance in the city. Along with this other property he owned a United States Senator, a couple of Representatives and most of the State Legislature. Elihu Willsson was Personville, and he was almost the whole state.
Back in the war days, when the I. W. W. was blooming, they had lined up a lot of the Personville Mining Corporation's help. The help hadn't been pampered, and they used their new strength to demand the things they wanted. Old Elihu gave in to them and bided his time. In 1919 it came. Business was slack. He didn't care whether he head to shut down for a while or not. He cut wages, lengthened hours, generally kicked the help back into their old place.
Of course the help had yelled for action. Bill Quint had been sent out from Chicago to give it to them. He had been against a strike—a walk-out. What he advised was the old sabotage racket, staying on the job and gumming things up from the inside. But the Personville crew wouldn't listen to him. They wanted to put themselves on the map, make labor history. So they struck.
The strike lasted eight months. Both sides bled plenty. The Wobblies had to do their own bleeding. Old Elihu could hire strike-breakers, gunmen, National Guardsmen and even parts of the regular army to do his. When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker.
