A Gnome there was

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Tim Crockett should never have sneaked into the mine on Dornsef Mountain. What is winked at in California may have disastrous results in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Especially when gnomes are in­volved.

Not that Tim Crockett knew about the gnomes. He was just inves­tigating conditions among the lower classes, to use his own rather ill-chosen words. He was one of a group of southern Californians who had decided that labor needed them. They were wrong. They needed labor—at least eight hours of it a day.

Crockett, like his colleagues, considered the laborer a combination of a gorilla and The Man with the Hoe, probably numbering the Kalli­kaks among his ancestors. He spoke fierily of down-trodden minorities, wrote incendiary articles for the group’s organ, Earth, and deftly ma­neuvered himself out of entering his father’s law office as a clerk. He had, he said, a mission. Unfortunately, he got little sympathy from either the workers or their oppressors.

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