The anthracite region, unlike the bituminous, is a stronghold of union labor. The United Mine Workers of America is the strongest single force in the anthracite region, and under it the anthracite miner lives a civilized life compared with that of the miner in the soft coal regions about Pittsburgh, West Virginia, and the western states. The “coal and iron” police in the anthracite region have been so unimportant since the unionization of the mines that they seldom are mentioned. A candidate for governor of Pennsylvania cannot be elected without the support of the U.M.W.A., and the Pennsylvania State Police never are called “black cossacks” in the anthracite region. A candidate for any political office in the anthracite counties would not think of having anything printed without getting the typesetters’ union label on his cards and billboards. The union is responsible for the Pennsylvania mining laws, which are the best in the world (although not yet the best there could be), and labor conditions, so far as labor strife was concerned, were all right in 1930, and had been all right since the disastrous strike of 1925. At that time the union called a strike which lasted 110 days, the longest strike in anthracite history. There was no violence beyond the small squabble, and there was no starvation among the miners. But anthracite markets disappeared. Domestic sales were hurt permanently; the oil burner was installed in thousands of homes. Anthracite is practically smokeless, and was satisfactory to home owners, but they could not get anthracite during the strike, and when the oil burner was installed there was no point in going back to coal. And so, as a result of the 1925 strike, the anthracite industry went back to work without nearly the demand for the product that there had been when the strike was called 110 days before. There had been another long strike in 1922, and the two strikes taught consumers that the industry was not dependable. The feeling was that any time the union felt like it, it would call a strike, shutting off the supply of anthracite.
Thus what were boom times for the rest of the country were something less for Gibbsville. The year of Our Lord 1929 saw many of the mines near Gibbsville working on a three-day-a-week basis. The blasts of the giant whistles at the collieries, more powerful than those of any steamship, were not heard rolling down the valleys as they had been before the 1925 strike, every morning at five and six o’clock. The anthracite industry was just about licked.
Still there were a great many people in Gibbsville who had money in 1930. The very rich, who always had money, still had a lot of money. And the merchants and bankers, doctors and lawyers and dentists who had money to play the market continued to spend their principal. Mr. Hoover was an engineer, and in a mining country engineers are respected. Gibbsville men and women who were in the market trusted that cold fat pinched face as they had trusted the cold thin pinched face of Mr. Coolidge, and in 1930 the good day’s work of October 29, 1929, continued to be known as a strong technical reaction.
II
William Dilworth English (B.S., Lafayette College; M.D., University of Pennsylvania), father of Julian McHenry English, had a salary of $12,000 a year as chief of staff of the Gibbsville Hospital. He lived within that salary, almost to the dollar. His income from private practice was about $10,000, and this totaled up to more than he could spend in a year, without being foolish. In addition to that his wife, Elizabeth McHenry English, had an income which in 1930 was about $6,000. In other years it had been more than that, but Dr. English, in investing his wife’s money, had been no wiser than a lot of other men whose wives had money to invest.
Dr. English came from one of the oldest families in Gibbsville. He was of Revolutionary stock. He wore a ring with an indistinguishable crest (he took it off when he operated). Adam English, one of his ancestors, had come to Gibbsville in 1804, two years after Gibbsville was refounded (Gibbsville was founded by Swedes in 1750, as nearly anyone could make out; the Swedes had been massacred by the Leni Lenape Indians, and the Swedish name of the original settlement has been lost). Old Adam English, as Dr. English called him, who certainly would have been old if he had lived till 1930, was a Philadelphian. It was not old Adam’s father, but his father who had fought in the Revolution.
The Englishes were not exactly coal people. They were more in the railroad, the Philadelphia & Reading. But of course the railroad and the coal and iron once had been all one company. It was much better in those days, Dr. English said, because you could get passes on the railroad if someone in your family happened to be connected with either the railroad or the coal company. But Dr. English did not desire a return to those days, the days when he was in college and at The University (whenever a Gibbsvillian speaks of The University he means Pennsylvania and nowhere else). He rarely spoke of those days, for, as he said, a dark and bitter cloud had been drawn over what should have been remembered as the happiest days of his life. He referred, of course, to the fact that the summer after he got his M.D., his father, George English, stuck a shotgun in his mouth and blew his head all over the hayloft of the English stable. Dr. English thought of his father as a coward. Two or three times in their married life the doctor had said to his wife: “If George English had been anything but a coward he would have gone to the directors like a man and said, ‘Gentlemen, I have been using the bank’s funds for my own uses. I am willing to work hard and make it up.’ And I know the directors would have admired that stand, and they would have given him a chance to make good. But…” And his wife would sympathize with him and try to comfort him, although she knew that her father, for one, would have tried to send George English to jail. As it was, he opposed her marriage to Billy English. Her father had said: “He may be all right. I don’t know. But his education was paid for out of stolen money. That’s enough for me.” But how was Billy to know that? she argued. “He knows it now,” said her father. Yes, he knew it, she went on, and he was anxious to start private practice so he could make good every penny. And he had. Within ten years of his graduation Billy English had paid off the money his father had taken from the bank. It had been a struggle, in a way; what with young Julian’s arrival in the world. Still, Julian had not been deprived of anything, thanks to her own income. Despite the dark, bitter cloud that hung over Dr. English’s college days, Julian, who wanted to go to Yale, was sent to Lafayette. And, probably out of spite, Julian did not accept the invitation to join Phi Delta Theta, his father’s fraternity, but had joined Delta Kappa Epsilon. By that time his father had given up hope that Julian would study medicine. He had pointed out to Julian that “when I die, you’ll have this practice that I’ve been years building up. I don’t understand it. Plenty of boys in this town would give their right arm for just this chance.” Poor Dr. English, people would say; starting out that way, with that handicap, and then his only son not taking advantage of that wonderful opportunity. No wonder the doctor was such a stern-looking man. He’d had his troubles.