"
So they talked of newer plans, while Smillie toiled like a giant to
educate and organize the miners. He had taken hold of them as crude
material, and was slowly shaping them into something like unity. A few
more years and he would win; but the forces against him knew it, too,
and so followed the great fight which lasted for seventeen weeks.
Singularly enough, while there was undoubtedly much privation, there was
not very much real misery, as the strike had started early in a warm,
dry summer.
Communal kitchens were at once established throughout the country.
Everybody did his best, and the womenfolk especially toiled early and
late. A committee was appointed in each village to gather in materials.
Beef at a reasonable price was supplied by a local butcher. A horse and
cart were borrowed, which went round the district gathering a cabbage or
two here; a few carrots or turnips there, parsley at another, and so
on, returning at night invariably laden with vegetables for the next
day's dinner. Sometimes a farmer would give a sheep, and the local
cooperative society provided the bread at half the cost of production.
Those farmers who were hostile gave nothing, but it would have paid them
better had they concealed their hostility, for sometimes, even in a
single night, large portions of a field of potatoes would disappear as
by magic.
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