Chapter VIII: The Mass Meeting

Harry had only been in his office a few minutes next morning when the door opened and Morgan, the manager of the Annex Mine, entered. His face wore a dark look, and Harry almost thought he was to be feloniously assaulted, but he nodded to the man and said courteously:

“Good morning, Mr. Morgan.”

The man did not return the salutation, but said curtly instead: “I want a copy of your paper.”

Harry stepped to the table, took up one of the extra copies of “The Coalville News” and handed it to him. The man threw a dime on the table and turned and walked to the door, then stopped, half-turned toward Harry and said:

“This article in your paper, this ‘protest’, as you call it, has occasioned a good deal of adverse comment toward me.”

“Is that so?” remarked Harry.

“Yes, some of the business men came out to the mine yesterday evening to show me the article and tell me that I had better reconsider and discharge the foreigners and re-employ the home men. They told me they had approved of your printing the article, and for me not to be angry at you individually, as you had interviewed them about it; that it was what might be called ‘a consensus of opinion’ article, that they all stood behind you; and they contended that it was a ‘just and right’ view of the matter that is expressed in the article. I maintained, and still maintain that I have a right to run my business in accordance with my own ideas, but I’m a citizen here myself. I have my home here, and I may decide to reconsider the matter of employing the foreign miners and may discharge them and re-employ the home men. At first I was pretty angry when I saw this article and I told the committee of merchants that I considered it unjustifiable meddling with my business. But there’s the other side to the matter--the way you and the other business men of the town and most of the people, generally speaking look at it, and I have changed my mind to some extent, but not totally. I can see, as you say here in this article and as you told me yourself, that the throwing of the home men out of employment loses trade to the home merchants and that makes it logical for them to protest. I’ll think it over to-day and come to a decision.”

Harry nodded. “I hope you’ll decide to reconsider and re-employ the local men,” he said.

Morgan made no reply, but opened the door and went out. Tommy Warner was just coming to work, and met the man on the stairs. He looked at Harry inquiringly.

“I thought maybe Morgan had come up here to thrash you, Harry,” he said.

Harry smiled and shook his head. “I didn’t quite know about it myself, Tommy, until after he had shown himself as being in a tolerably amicable frame of mind.”

“He wanted a copy of the paper.”

“Yes, he bought a copy,” and Harry picked up the dime and placed it in his pocket.

“Well, I hope it’ll do him some good,” the boy said. “What shall I do first?”

“You can go to work throwing in the type, Tommy. I’ll show you how it is done.”

Harry took a sponge and dampened it and then dabbed it down on top of the type in one of the forms, thus moistening the type. “You can distribute it better when the type is moist, Tommy, as the type sticks together and doesn’t fall to pieces so easily,” he explained. “Come here and I’ll show you how to throw the type in.”

He went to the case and Tommy came and stood beside him. Harry took a word off the top of the type in his hand, a dozen lines or so, that he had picked up out of the form on the imposing-stone and placed it in the palm of his hand. The word that happened to be there was, “difficult.” “It’s done this way, Tommy,” he said. “See, this is the word ‘difficult.’ Now you know where the compartments are, in the case, that contain each of the letters of the alphabet, and all you have to do is this: Reach out your hand and hold it suspended over each compartment that contains the type of the letters in the word you are distributing, and twirl each individual type with your thumb and fingers, and drop them into the proper compartments, one after another.” He reached out his hand and poised it over the compartment holding the type of the letter “d”, and twirling this type with his thumb and fingers, dropped it into that compartment. Then he moved his hand till it was over the compartment containing the letter “i”, and dropped it in like manner, and then on to the compartments, “double-f, i, c, u, l and t,” thus completing the word. “You see, it’s simple as can be, Tommy,” he said, “only it takes practice to enable one to distribute rapidly. That’ll come in time.”

Tommy nodded, and then Harry showed him how to pick up the type out of the form and place it in the palm of his left hand. The boy took only six lines, as Harry told him that would be enough to take at first, as taking too big a handful might result in the type falling apart in his hand, and becoming “pi,” which is the printers’ detestation. He went to the case with Tommy.

“What’s the first word?” Harry asked.

“‘Hearing’,” was the reply.

“Slip it off with your thumb and first two fingers.”

Tommy did so.

“Now do the same as I did. Hold your hand over the letter ‘h’ compartment.”

Tommy did as told.

“Now twirl the ‘h’ type with your thumb and finger and drop it into the compartment.”

Tommy did so, doing it quite well, a little awkwardly of course, but as well as anyone can do at first, for distributing type is even more difficult than setting it, and it takes longer to acquire speed; but when one has acquired the knack of distributing type rapidly it can be distributed about four times as fast as it is possible to set it. The work of composition, as type-setting is called, is tedious and cannot be done very rapidly; slow and careful composition is best, as it can then be set correctly, and no time is lost. The distributing can be done much more rapidly, but it is necessary to be careful in the distributing also, for if the type is thrown into the wrong compartments, these wrongly-distributed letters would be picked up and placed in the stick, more errors thus resulting.

“Do the same with each of the type in the word, Tommy,” said Harry, and Tommy did so, dropping the letters “e, a, r, i, n and g,” respectively, in the proper compartments.

“That’s the way,” said Harry. “You have the idea, and all you have to do is to keep at it, and you’ll be able to throw in a lot of type in a day, even though you haven’t had much experience at the printing business.”

Harry went down onto the street and into several of the stores to ask their owners’ opinion as to whether Morgan would reconsider employing the foreigners. These business men told him they could not say what the mine manager’s decision would be.

“I’m a little afraid he won’t reconsider,” said Harry to each of these men, “and if he doesn’t, what will you business men do?”

“He’ll have to reconsider,” each of these men had said.

But he didn’t. He came into town that evening and told the business men he would not reconsider, that he had a right to run his business his own way and would not be dictated to. Several of them argued with him, but to no avail, and after making some purchases at one or two of the stores, he went to his home. The business men he had talked to, however, were not satisfied, and went around to all the other business men and talked the matter over with them, with the result that two of them came up to the printing office and told Harry they wanted some posters printed.

“We’re going to call a mass meeting in the town hall this very evening,” they said. “How soon can you have them printed? There won’t be much type to set. Here’s the copy.”

The one that had spoken handed Harry a sheet of paper with some writing on it, and he read the few words written there, which were as follows: “Mass Meeting! At City Hall at 8 o’clock. Everybody come. Discharge of forty of our home men by the manager of the Annex Mine to be discussed. Very important. Come!” This was signed, “Committee.”

“I can set it and print the posters in half an hour,” said Harry. “How many will you want?”

“Five hundred ought to be enough. We want them distributed into all the houses. Can your boy do that?” glancing at Tommy.

“He and three other boys will do it,” was the reply. “He’ll get them to help him, just as they did when they distributed my papers yesterday afternoon.”

“All right. Attend to it, Weston, and charge it to any of us merchants. On second thought, it will be better to charge it to me, and the others will reimburse me.”

“Very well,” said Harry, and the two men hastened out and returned to their stores.

“You go and get the boys,” said Harry, “so they’ll be here, ready to distribute the posters as soon as they are printed.”

Tommy nodded and hurried out while Harry went to work setting the type for the printing of the poster. He had it done by the time Tommy and the other boys arrived, and locking up the form, he put it on the job-press, “made ready,” as it is called, viz., he printed one impression of the type on the tympan sheet, on the platen. This is an iron frame with a smooth, plane surface of steel, with some paper and a sheet of cardboard on this plane surface, sufficiently thick so that it won’t mash the type. It will instead make a nice clean imprint from the type, inked by rollers rolling across the type’s top. The face of the type presses firmly against the paper that is placed on the tympan-sheet, the pressure being automatic, and is between the main body of the press, with the form in it and this platen-portion, which works back and forth. The paper and cardboard on the face of this steel platen are held in place by the tympan-sheet, which is of paper also.

This impression from the type in the form made it possible for Harry to place the gauge-pins properly, so that the poster-sheet would be printed with even margins on its top and bottom and sides. The sheets are placed on the tympan-sheet, against two gauge-pins at the bottom and one at the left-hand side. The gauge-pins are about an inch long, are of thin metal, and have a little flange at the top; they project upward from the surface of the tympan-sheet about a quarter of an inch, and thus keep the paper sheets being printed from slipping out of place or having uneven margins.

Having placed the gauge-pins in the tympan-sheet properly, Harry went right to work printing, and in about twenty-five minutes he had the five hundred posters printed.

“Take them and distribute them, boys,” he said. “Leave one at each house, just as you did with the papers yesterday.”

“Shall we leave one at the home of Mr. Morgan?” asked Tommy.

“Yes. He will want to know about it, and we’ll be fair and not do anything surreptitiously. He may even come to the meeting, and I hope he will.”

“He’d feel a little bit out of place and ill at ease, I expect,” said Tommy, “but he may make up his mind to attend the meeting.”

Then the boys hurried out with the posters, which they distributed in about three-quarters of an hour’s time.

The people were somewhat excited when they read the posters. “A mass meeting!” they exclaimed, and then to one another they said: “We’ll be there. It’s to discuss the discharge of the home men from the Annex Mine. That is such a wrong against our miners that we’ll attend the meeting and do all we can to help get the wrong righted.”

At eight o’clock the town-hall was crowded almost to overflowing, and just after Mr. Holman, the dry goods merchant, who had been appointed chairman by acclamation had called the house to order, Mr. Morgan entered, and walking up the center aisle, sat down on one of the front seats.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman and you people,” he said, looking around at the audience, “but I believe I have a right to be heard in this affair, and that is why I am here. Now go ahead with your meeting.”

“Jinks, he did come!” Tommy Warner whispered to the other three boys who had helped him distribute the posters, and who were seated back by the door. “I thought he would!”