SOWING AND REAPING by Helen A. Raines

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 14, 1897

“SOWING AND REAPING.”

By Helen A. Raines

“I wish you would go into some other business,” said Mrs. Guthrie to her husband at the dinner table. “I am tired of feeling that we are a menace to this community.”

“A menace to the community! How absurd you talk, Emily!” said her husband, his brow darkening. “I thought you understood when we came to this mining town I came here with the avowed purpose of furnishing supplies to the miners.”

“I certainly did not understand, Carl, that furnishing supplies meant beer and ale, as well as provision for their families—tea, coffee, sugar, and such like.”

“Probably not. You may not know that I sell six glasses of beer to one sack of flour or one package of coffee. But I do, thereby doubling my money. I call myself a provident man, and expect to look out for my own household. I would like to know where the luxuries you and Blanche have always been used to would come from if I didn’t.”

“I don’t care for them purchased in that way,” said Mrs. Guthrie, sighing; “and I am sure Blanche does not. It was only yesterday that she came home sobbing from school and begged me to let her go dressed as the children of the miners do, saying that her clothing was made a jest and byword of, as the result of your iniquitous business.”

“Iniquitous business, indeed!” said Carl, reddening. “It is sanctioned by government. I will call around upon the school board this very evening and see if my child has got to be criticized and ridiculed by these coal miners’ children.”

“And what is worse,” said Mrs. Guthrie, a bright spot appearing on either cheek; “it has been thrown up to her that her father was the means of Tom McCarthy’s going to the penitentiary.”

Carl got up from the table hastily and went out, slamming the door after him, thereby putting a stop to the conversation.

The winter set in early in this little mining town, and owing to the “hard times” the mines were all closed for the season. Then suffering

commenced in earnest. But few had the money to buy the necessities of life, and many were actually on the verge of starvation.

“You see now what we would have come to if I had heard to you,” said Carl in a boastful manner to his wife one day. “I have a nice little bank account, and groceries enough to supply the spring demand, whenever the mines are in operation again.”

“The end is not yet,” said Mrs. Guthrie prophetically. “But it is sure to come.”

“Nonsense,” said Carl laughingly; “why will you croak?”

A little later in the day she said, “Carl, did you refuse to let Ed Winthrop have a sack of flour yesterday?”

“I did. He had no money. I can not let my goods out on time.”

“But they have a very sick child there, one of the neighbors told me this afternoon, and the family is in a suffering condition.”

“I can not help that,” said Carl. “He would spend his money for whisky last summer. He should have looked out for his family as I did for mine, then there would have been no suffering.”

“Carl,” said Mrs. Guthrie solemnly, “who took his money for that which was not food and raiment? Can you make answer to an offended God for that?”

But Carl was beyond hearing, and the rattle of the glasses in the front end of the building, where he sold his “supplies,” told too plainly that he had not gone out of the business.

The winter deepened in intensity as it advanced. The winds raved and the snow drifted, and the miners’ wives and children crowded around their meager embers in their little shanties, cursing those who had robbed them of their sustenance. Carl came in from the store one evening very much disturbed, and took his revolver from the drawer.

“There is going to be trouble, I fear,” he said, glancing at his wife and daughter. “It seems that that man Winthrop buried his child yesterday, and threatens vengeance upon us all. Keep indoors, both of you. There is no telling what an enraged set of miners may do.”

Those who have watched the approach of a storm that is to leave death and devastation in its wake, who have listened to the tread of a mighty army, slow, solemn, impressive, every step bringing them nearer and nearer to their work of destruction, know how those felt who watched the seething mass of human beings that night, slowly advancing to its goal.

“Give us bread! We will have bread!” echoed far and near over the frozen hills and down the wind-swept valleys. Carl, craven that he was, crouched shivering behind one of his counters, praying for mercy, while the little handful of policemen stood at the door with their Winchesters, endeavoring to keep the infuriated mob at bay. Mrs. Guthrie knelt praying, with her arms extended, in her own room, while Blanche—little fair-haired Blanche—slipped out unseen into the night, no one knew whither.

No one knew when or how it happened, but a shot was fired, and when the store had been stripped of its contents, and the mob had at last been quelled and dispersed for the night, Blanche was found lying upon the floor of the upper balcony unconscious, with a bullet wound in her shoulder.

She recovered in course of time, but will be a cripple to the end of her days. Carl Guthrie moved to another town, and went into “other business.” He had realized most fully that “God is not mocked,” and he “who sows to the wind will reap the whirlwind.”—Helen A. Raines, in Sabbath Recorder.