Corporations did not become large and prosperous through good deeds and a gentle approach to the populous. No, they ground the people under the heels of their boots, stripped away as many rights as they could, and proceeded to rule us with an iron fist. Take, for instance, this poor immigrant whose only “crime” was picking up a few pieces of coal from the ground after they fell from a train. The coal company dropped the basic trespass charge against the man and jumped to a larceny charge to thoroughly punish him and to frighten off anyone else who might think of picking a bit of coal up from off the ground.
A Crime According to Law
For picking up pieces of coal from the railroad tracks in Portland, Oregon, Henry Nigent, 52 years old, unable to speak English, and earning only $2 per day to support his family, was arrested and is to be charged with larceny.
Nigent is German and cannot understand or speak the English language. He has a wife and two children.
While passing the Edlefson Fuel yards a train of loaded coal cars backed into the yards. The old man saw several small pieces of coal fall from the cars. He says he didn’t think it was stealing when he picked up a bucketful of coal.
But Henry was grabbed by an officer, hauled to the jail, and locked up with vagabonds and criminals.
His little wife, old and bent with hard work, her face seamed with lines of suffering and long years of battling with starvation, wept tearfully when Henry was forced to stay in jail all night.
Later the charge of trespass placed against Henry was dismissed by the coal company and the more serious charge of larceny placed against his name.
Henry will have to stay in jail perhaps many more nights, if the corporation succeeds in convicting him, while the little wife, miserable and ashamed, must stay at home through the long nights and weep alone.
Source: (1912, February 13). A Crime According to Law. The Day Book.
