There are family traditions among the poor just as there are among the
rich. The families of working-men may cling as tenaciously to their
traditions as the descendants of an earl. In certain families the sons
are compelled by tradition to become bakers, in others machinists;
still other lowly family histories urge their members to conduct of one
sort or another. It is inherent in them to hold certain beliefs
regarding themselves. Here is a family whose tradition is loyalty to
another family which has employed the father, son, grandfather; across
the street may live a group whose peculiar religion is to oppose all
constituted authority and to uphold anarchism. Theories and beliefs are
handed down from generation to generation until they assume the dignity
of blood laws.
Bonbright was being wrenched to fit into the Foote tradition. Ruth
Frazer, his secretary, needed no alterations to conform to the
tradition of HER family. This was the leveling tradition; the elevating
of labor and the pulling down of capital until there was a dead level
of equality--or, perhaps, with labor a bit in the saddle. Probably a
remote ancestor of hers had been a member of an ancient guild; perhaps
one had risen with Wat Tyler. Not a man of the family, for time beyond
which the memory of man runneth not, but had been a whole-souled,
single-purposed labor man--trade-union man--extremist--revolutionist.
Her father had been killed in a labor riot--and beatified by her. As
the men of her family had been, so were the women--so was she.
Rights of man, tyranny of capital, class consciousness had been taught
her with her nursery rhymes. She was a zealot. A charming zealot with a
soul that laughed and wanted all mankind to be happy with it--a soul
that translated itself by her famous grin.
When she thought of capital, of moneyed aristocracy in the mass and in
the abstract, she hated it. It was a thing to be uprooted, plotted
against, reviled. When she met a member of it in the body, and face to
face, as she was meeting Bonbright Foote, she could not hate. He was a
man, an individual. She could not withhold from him the heart-warming
flash of her smile, could not wish him harm. Somehow, in the concrete,
he became a part of mankind, and so entitled to happiness.
She was sincere. In her heart she prayed for the revolution. Her keen
brain could plan for the overthrow of the enemy and her soul could
sacrifice her body to help to bring it to pass. She believed. She had
faith. Her actions would be true to her faith even at a martyr cost.
But to an individual whom she saw face to face, let him be the very
head and front of the enemy, and she could not wish him personal harm.
To a psychologist this might have presented a complex problem. To Ruth
it presented no problem at all. It was a simple condition and she lived
it.
She was capable of hero worship, which, after all, is the keystone of
aristocracies. But her heroes were not warriors, adventurers,
conquerors of the world, conquerors of the world's wealth. They were
revolutionists. They were men who gave their lives and their abilities
to laboring for labor.... Already she was inclining to light the fires
of her hero worship at the feet of the man Dulac.
Ruth Frazer's grin has been spoken of. It has been described as a grin.
That term may offend some sensitive eye as an epithet applicable only
to something common, vulgar. To smile is proper, may even be
aristocratic; only small boys and persons of slack breeding are guilty
of the grin.... Ruth Frazer's grin was neither common nor vulgar. It
was warming, encouraging, bright with the flashing of a quick mind, and
withal sweet, womanly, delicious. Yet that it was a grin cannot be
denied. Enemies to the grin must make the most of it.
The grin was to be seen, for Dulac had just entered Ruth's mother's
parlor, and it glowed for him. The man seemed out of place in that
cottage parlor. He seemed out of place in any homelike room, in any
room not filled by an eager, sweating, radical crowd of men assembled
to hang upon his words. That was the place for him, the place nature
had created him to become. To see him standing alone any place, on the
street, in a hotel, affected one with the feeling that he was exotic
there, misplaced. He must be surrounded by his audience to be RIGHT.
Something of this crossed Ruth's mind. No woman, seeing a possible man,
is without her sentimental speculation. She could not conceive of Dulac
in a HOME.
"It's been a day!" he said.
"Yes."
"Every skilled mechanic has struck," he said, with pride, as in a
personal achievement. "And most of the rest. To-night four thousand out
of their five thousand men were with us."
"It came so suddenly. Nobody thought of a strike this morning."
"We were better organized than they thought," he said, running his hand
through his thick, black hair, and throwing back his head. "Better than
I thought myself.... I've always said fool employers were the best
friends we organizers have. The placard that young booby slapped the
men in the face with--that did it....That and his spying on us last
night."
"I'm sure he wasn't spying last night."
"Bosh! He was mighty quick to try to get our necks under his heel this
morning."
"I don't know what happened this morning," she said, slowly. "I'm his
secretary, you know. Something happened about that placard. I don't
believe he wanted it to go up."
"You're defending him? Of course. You're a girl and you're close to the
throne with a soft job. He's a good-looking kid in his namby-pamby
Harvard way, too."
"Mr. Dulac!...My job--I was going to ask you what I should do. I want
to help the men. I want them to feel that I'm with them, working for
them and praying for them. Ought I to quit, too--to join the strike?"
Dulac looked at her sharply, calculatingly. "No," he said, presently,
"you can do a lot more good where you are."
"Will there be trouble? I dread to think of rioting and maybe
bloodshed. It will be bad enough, anyhow--if it lasts long. The poor
women and children!"
"There'll be trouble if they try to turn a wheel or bring in scab
labor." He laughed, so that his white teeth showed. "The first thing
they did was to telephone for the police. I suppose this kid with a
whole day's experience in the business will be calling in strike
breakers and strong-arms and gunmen....Well, let him bring it down on
himself if he wants to. We're in this thing to win. It means unionism
breaking into this automobile game. This is just the entering wedge."
"Won't the automobile manufacturers see that, too?" she asked. "Won't
the men have all their power and wealth to fight?"
Dulac shrugged his shoulders. "I guess the automobile world knows who
Dulac is to-night," he said, with gleaming eyes.
Somehow the boast became the man. It was perfectly in character with
his appearance, with his bearing. It did not impress Ruth as a brag; it
seemed a natural and ordinary thing for him to say.
"You've been here just two weeks," she said, a trifle breathlessly; for
he loomed big to her girlish eyes. "You've done all this in two weeks."
He received the compliment indifferently. Perhaps that was a pose;
perhaps the ego of the man made him impervious even to compliments.
There are men so confident in their powers that a compliment always
falls short of their own estimate of themselves.
"It's a start--but all our work is only a start. It's preliminary," His
voice became oratorical. "First we must unionize the world. Now there
are strong unions and weak unions--both arrayed against a capital
better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history.
Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its
power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and
when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a
state, of a country, but the unions of the world...hundreds of millions
of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for
generations. Then we shall have such an overturning as shall make the
French Revolution look like child's play....A World's Republic--that's
our aim; a World's Republic ruled by labor!"
Her eyes glistened as he talked; she could visualize his vision, could
see a united world, cleansed of wars, of boundary lines; a world where
every man's chance of happiness was the equal of every other man's
chance; where wealth and poverty were abolished, from which slums,
degradation, starvation, the sordid wickednesses compelled by poverty,
should have vanished. She could see a world of peace, plenty, beauty.
It was for this high aim that Dulac worked. His stature increased. She
marveled that such a man could waste his thoughts upon her. She
idealized him; her soul prostrated itself before him.
So much of accomplishment lay behind him--and he not yet thirty years
old! The confidence reposed in him by labor was eloquently testified to
by the sending of him to this important post on the battle line.
Already he had justified that confidence. With years and experience
what heights might he not climb!...This was Ruth's thought. Beside
Dulac's belief in himself and his future it was colorless.
Dulac had been an inmate of the Frazer cottage two weeks. In that time
he had not once stepped out of his character. If his attitude toward
the world were a pose it had become so habitual as to require no
objective prompting or effort to maintain. This character was that of
the leader of men, the zealot for the cause of the under dog. It held
him aloof from personal concerns. Individual affairs did not touch him,
but functioned unnoticed on a plane below his clouds. Not for an
instant had he sought the friendship of Ruth and her mother, not to
establish relations of friendship with them. He was devoted to a cause,
and the cause left no room in his life for smaller matters. He was a
man apart.
Now he was awkwardly tugging something from his pocket. Almost
diffidently he offered it to Ruth. It was a small box of candy.
"Here..." he said, clumsily.
"For me!" Ruth was overpowered. This demigod had brought HER a gift. He
had thought about her--insignificant her! True, she had talked with
him, had even taken walks with him, but those things had not been
significant. It had seemed he merely condescended to the daughter of a
martyr to his cause. He had been paying a tribute to her father. But a
gift--a personal gift such as any young man might make to a girl whose
favor he sought! Could it mean...?
Then she saw that he was embarrassed, actually embarrassed before her,
and she was ashamed of herself for it. But she saw, too, that in him
was a human man, a man with fears and sensations and desires and
weaknesses like other men. After all, a demigod is only half of Olympus.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you SO much."
"You're not--offended?"
He was recovering himself. In an instant he was back again in character.
"We men," he said, "who are devoted to the Cause have little time in
our lives for such things. The Cause demands all. When we go into it we
give up much that other men enjoy. We are wanderers. We have no homes.
We can't AFFORD to have homes....I," he said, it proudly, "have been in
jail more than once. A man cannot ask a woman to share such a life. A
man who leads such a life has no place in it for a woman."
"I should think," she said, "that women would be proud to share such a
life. To know they were helping a little! To know they were making one
comfortable spot for you to come to and rest when you were tired or
discouraged...."
"Comforts are not for us," he said, theatrically, yet he did not seem
theatrical to her, only nobly self-sacrificing.
"It isn't right," she said, passionately. "The poorest laborer has more
than you. He has his home and his family. No matter how poor he is, no
matter what he suffers, he has some compensations....And you--you're
giving your life and everything in life that's bright and beautiful for
that laborer."
"The happiness of one man buying the happiness of millions," he said,
his black eyes glowing. "Yet sometimes we have our weak moments. We see
and we desire."
"And are entitled to possess," she said.
His eyes glowed upon her hungrily--she read the hunger in them, hunger
for HER! It frightened her, yet it made her heart leap with pride. To
be looked upon with favor by such a man!
"Some women," he said, slowly, "might live through it. There are women
big enough and strong enough--a few, maybe. Big enough to endure
neglect and loneliness; to live and not know if their husbands would
sleep at home that night or in a jail or be in the middle of a riot on
the other side of the world! They could not even depend on their
husbands for support....A few might not complain, might be able to
endure....You, Miss Ruth--I believe you are one of them!"
Her cheeks paled. Was he--could he be about to ask her to share his
life? It was impossible! Yet what else could he mean? To what else
could his words be tending? She was awed, frightened--yet warmed by a
surge of pride. She thought of her father....If he could see and know!
If knowledge could only pass to him that his daughter had been thought
worthy by such a man to play her part for the Cause!...She waited
tensely, hand pressed to her bosom.
Dulac stepped toward her, barbarically handsome. She felt the force,
the magnetism of him. It called to her, compelled her....She could not
lift her eyes.
Slowly he approached another step. It was as though he were forced to
her against his will. The silence in the room was the tense silence of
a human crisis....Then it was broken ruthlessly. There came a pounding
on the door that was not a knock, but an alarm. It was imperative,
excited, ominous.
"Oh..." Ruth cried.
Her mother was opening the door.
"Dulac! Where's Dulac?" a man's voice demanded.
"Here," he replied. "What is it?"
"O'Hagan's in town," the man panted, rushing into the room. "They've
brought in O'Hagan and his gang of bullies."
O'Hagan, king of strike breakers! Ruth knew that name well, and what
the arrival of the man of evil omen foretold. It promised violence,
riot, bloodshed, suffering.
"They're going to try to run, then," said Dulac, calmly.
"The police have escorted a mob of scabs into the mill yards. They've
tried to drive away our pickets. They've locked up Higgins and Bowen.
Got Mason, too, but the crowd took him away from the police."
"It's on their own heads," said Dulac, solemnly. "I'll come with you."
He turned to Ruth and took her hand. "You see," he said, "it calls me
away--even from a moment like that...."