Our particular destination was “Muckers Camp” at Readers.  A group of three buildings on the brow of a hill—­the hill where the blacks live.  The first of these buildings is a kitchen and dining room, the second is a big dormitory and the third is a wash-house.  This was our new home.  The dormitory was originally intended for a series of small rooms but the work was arrested before completion.  The uprights marking the divisions of the rooms were still standing—­bare and uncovered.  The floor of the big dormitory was littered with rubbish—­miners’ cast-off clothing, shoes, broken lamps, and in a corner there was a junk-heap of broken bedsteads, slats, army blankets and sodden mattresses.  We were told to make ourselves “at home.”  There was room enough and plenty of bedding.  All we had to do was to fish for what we needed and put it in order.  Everything was red—­red with ore that men carried out of the mines on their bodies.

The junk heap in the corner played an important part in the movements of my gang.  The thought of having to sleep in the sodden stuff chilled me to the bones, but I kept silent.  Whatever the previous condition of the men had been, they felt as I did as they pulled their bedding out piece by piece.  They had gone to spend the winter in the mines of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; they knew the work, conditions and pay; they had refused to be bribed on the way down, but as they tugged at the junk, a change came over them!  They swore in half a dozen languages—­they gritted their teeth and vowed that they wouldn’t be treated like pigs.

[Illustration:  In a Mucker’s Camp in Alabama]

[Illustration:  Irvine and Three Other Muckers as They Left Greenwich Street for the South]

We went to the wash-house and the outlook was less encouraging.  There was a long, narrow trough in the centre.  It was half full of red ore.  The floor was wet and covered with ore, rags, old papers and other rubbish.  There were compartments intended for shower-baths, but there again the work had been arrested and was incomplete.  We washed, made our beds, ate dinner and proceeded to the company store to be fitted out.

Each man was furnished with a number.  By that number he was to be known while in the company’s employ.  Each man showed his number and drew what he needed—­overalls, lamps, and heavy boots.  There was nothing niggardly in the credit.  The deeper the debt the tighter the grip on the debtor.  The goods cost just one hundred per cent. more than anywhere else.  The company paid wages once a month.  If a labourer borrowed of his own within that time, he paid ten per cent. on the loan.

As we came back from the store, the miners were just leaving the mines and it was interesting to see them gaze into our faces and address us in Russian, Hungarian, Swedish and various other languages.  It was one of the excitements of camp life—­to inspect and classify the newcomers.