Newspapers had come in, with accounts of the disaster, and Hal and his friends read these. It was evident that the company had been at pains to have the accounts written from its own point of view. There existed some public sensitiveness on the subject of mine-disasters in this state. The death-rate from accidents was seen to be mounting steadily; the reports of the state mine inspector showed six per thousand in one year, eight and a half in the next, and twenty-one and a half in the next. When fifty or a hundred men were killed in a single accident, and when such accidents kept happening, one on the heels of another, even the most callous public could not help asking questions. So in this case the “G. F. C.” had been careful to minimise the loss of life, and to make excuses. The accident had been owing to no fault of the company’s; the mine had been regularly sprinkled, both with water and adobe dust, and so the cause of the explosion must have been the carelessness of the men in handling powder. In Jack David’s cabin one night there arose a discussion as to the number of men entombed in the mine. The company’s estimate of the number was forty, but Minetti and Olson and David agreed that this was absurd. Any man who went about in the crowds could satisfy himself that there were two or three times as many unaccounted for. And this falsification was deliberate, for the company had a checking system, whereby it knew the name of every man in the mine. But most of these names were unpronounceable Slavish, and the owners of the names had no friends to mention them--at least not in any language understood by American newspaper editors. It was all a part of the system, declared Jack David: its purpose and effect being to enable the company to go on killing men without paying for them, either in money or in prestige. It occurred to Hal that it might be worth while to contradict these false statements--almost as worth while as to save the men who were at this moment entombed. Any one who came forward to make such a contradiction would of course be giving himself up to the black-list; but then, Hal regarded himself as a man already condemned to that penalty. Tom Olson spoke up. “What would you do with your contradiction?” “Give it to the papers,” Hal answered. “But what papers would print it?” “There are two rival papers in Pedro, aren’t there?” “One owned by Alf Raymond, the sheriff-emperor, and the other by Vagleman, counsel for the ‘G. F. C.’ Which one would you try?” “Well then, the outside papers--those in Western City. There are reporters here now, and some one of them would surely take it.” Olson answered, declaring that they would not get any but labour and Socialist papers to print such news. But even that was well worth doing. And Jack David, who was strong for unions and all their activities, put in, “The thing to do is to take a regular census, so as to know exactly how many are in the mine.”