Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [22]
slope of Point Mountain, but not on the south side, and at the eastern face of Point Mountain is found Gibbsville Conglomerate. The richest veins of anthracite in the world are within a thirty-mile sector from Gibbsville, and when those veins are being worked, Gibbsville prospers. When the mines are idle, Gibbsville puts on a long face and begins to think in terms of soup kitchens. The anthracite region, unlike the bituminous, is a strong hold 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