Malcolm Lightener was not a man to send messages nor to depend upon
telephones. He was as direct as a catapult, and was just as regardful
of ceremony. The fact that it was his and everybody else's dinner hour
did not hold him back an instant from having himself driven to the
Foote residence and demanding instant speech with Mr. Foote.
Mr. Foote, knowing Lightener, shrugged his shoulders and motioned
Bonbright to follow him from the table.
"If we asked him to be seated and wait," said he, "Lightener would
burst into the dining room."
They found their visitor not seated, but standing like a granite
monolith in the center of the library.
"Well," he said, observing no formalities of greeting, "you've chucked
a brick into the hornets' nest."
"Won't you be seated?" asked Mr. Foote, with dignified courtesy.
"Seated? No, I've got no time for seats, and neither have you, if you
would wake up to it. Do you know what you've done with your
bullheadedness? You've rammed the automobile manufacturers up against a
crisis they've been dodging for years. Needlessly. There was no more
need for this strike at this time than there is for fur overcoats in
hell. But just when the hornets were stirred up and buzzing, you had to
heave your brick.... And now we've got to back your play."
"I am not aware," said Mr. Foote, icily, "that we have asked
assistance."
"If the house next to mine catches fire the owner doesn't have to
holler to me for help. I've got to help to keep the blaze from
spreading to my own house.... You've never thought beyond the
boundaries of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated--that's what's the matter
with you. You're hidebound. A blind man could see the unions look at
this thing as their entering wedge into the automobile industry. If
they break into you they'll break into us. So we've got to stop 'em
short."
"If we need any help--" Mr. Foote began.
"Whether you need it or whether you want it," said Lightener, "you get
it."
"Let me point out to you," said Mr. Foote, with chilly courtesy, "that
my family has been able to manage its business for several
generations--with some small success.... Our relations with our
employees are our own concern, and we shall tolerate no interference.
... I have placed my son in complete charge of this situation, with
confidence that he will handle it adequately."
"Huh!" grunted Lightener, glancing at Bonbright. "I heard about THAT.
... What I came to say principally was: This thing can be headed off
now if you go at it with common sense. Make concessions. Get to this
Dulac. You can get your men back to work--and break up this union
thing."
"Mr. Lightener, our course is decided on. We shall make no concessions.
My son has retained O'Hagan, the strike breaker. To-morrow morning the
mills start up as usual, with new men. We have them camped in the yards
now. There shall be no compromising. When we have the strikers whipped
into their places we'll talk to them--not before."
"What's the idea of putting up the boy as stalking horse? What do you
expect to get by hiding behind him?"
"My son was indiscreet. He created a misapprehension among the men as
to his attitude toward labor. I am merely setting them right."
"And sewing a fine crop of hatred for the boy to reap."
Mr. Foote shrugged his shoulders "The position of my family has not
been doubtful since the inception of our business. I do not propose
that my son shall make it so. Our traditions must be maintained."
"If you'd junk a few traditions," said Lightener, "and import a little
modern efficiency--and human understanding of human beings--you might
get somewhere. You quit developing with that first ancestor of yours.
If the last hundred years or so haven't been wasted, there's been some
progress. You're wabbling along in a stage coach when other folks use
express trains.... When I met the boy here last night, I thought he was
whittled off a different stick from the rest of you.... I guess he was,
too. But you're tying a string of ancestors around his neck and
squeezing him into their likeness."
"My son knows his duty to his family," said Mr. Foote.
"I didn't have a family to owe duty to, thank God," said Lightener,
"but I spent quite some time figuring out my duty to myself.... You
won't listen to reason, eh? You're going to bull this thing through?"
"My son will act as my son should act," said Mr. Foote.
Lightener turned to where Bonbright stood with set face and eyes that
smoldered, and studied him with an eye accustomed to judging men.
"There'll be rioting," he said. "Probably there'll be bloodshed.
There'll certainly be a devil of a lot of suffering. Your father is
putting the responsibility for it on your shoulders, young fellow. Does
that set comfortably on your mind?"
Bonbright was slow to answer. His position was difficult, for it seemed
to him he was being asked by a stranger to criticize his father and his
family. His own unrest under the conditions which were forced upon him
was not to be mentioned. The major point--the conflict between capital
as represented by Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, and labor--as
represented by the striking employees--he did not understand. He had
wanted to understand it; he had felt a human interest in the men, but
this was forbidden to him.... Whatever he felt, whatever he thought,
whatever dread he might have of the future as it impended over
himself--he must be loyal to his name. So when he spoke it was to say
in a singularly unboyish voice:
"My father has spoken for me, Mr. Lightener."
For the first time Lightener smiled. He laid a heavy hand on
Bonbright's shoulder. "That was well done, my boy," he said. Bonbright
was grateful for his understanding.
A servant appeared. "Mr. Bonbright is wanted on the telephone," she
said.
It was Rangar. "There's rioting at the plant," the man said,
unemotionally. "I have notified the police and taken the necessary
steps."
"Very well," said Bonbright. He walked to the library, and, standing in
the door, stirred by excitement so that his knees quivered and a great
emptiness was within him, he said to his father, "There's rioting at
the plant, sir."
Then he turned, put on his coat and hat, and quietly left the house.
There was rioting at the mills! Bonbright was going to see what rioting
was like, what it meant. It was no impulse, no boyish spirit of
adventure or curiosity, that was taking him, but a command. No sooner
had Rangar spoken the words over the telephone than Bonbright knew he
must go.
"Whatever is happening," he said to himself, "I'm going to be blamed
for it."
With some vague juvenile notion of making himself unrecognizable he
turned up the collar of his coat and pulled down his cap....
When still some blocks from the mills a patrol wagon filled with
officers careened past him, its gong emitting a staccato, exciting
alarm. Here was reality. Bonbright quickened his step; began to run.
Presently he entered the street that lay before the face of the
factory--a street lighted by arc lamps so that the scene was adequately
visible. As far as the main gates into the factory yards the street was
in the possession of the police; beyond them surged and clamored the
mob, not yet wrought to the pitch of attack. Bonbright thought of a
gate around the corner. He would enter this and ascend to his office,
whence he could watch the street from his window.
Before the gate a man sat on a soap box, a short club dangling by a
thong from his wrist. As Bonbright approached he arose.
"What you want?" he demanded, taking a businesslike grip on his weapon.
"I want to go in," said Bonbright. "I'm Mr. Foote."
The man grinned. "To be sure, Mr. Foote. Howdy, Mr. Foote. You'll be
glad to meet me. I'm Santa Claus."
"I tell you I'm Mr. Foote. I want to go inside."
"And I tell you," said the man, suddenly dropping his grin, "to beat
it--while you're able."
Youthful rage sent its instant heat through Bonbright. For an instant
he meditated jerking the man from that gate by the nape of the neck and
teaching him a lesson with his athletic foot.... It was not fear of the
result that deterred him; it was the thought that this man was his own
employee, placed there by him for this very purpose. If the guard made
HIM bristle with rage, how would the sight of the man and his club
affect the strikers? He was a challenge and an insult, an invitation to
violence. Bonbright turned and walked away, followed by a derisive
guffaw from the strike breaker.
Bonbright retraced his steps and approached the rear of the police.
Here he was stopped by an officer.
"Where you goin'?"
"I'm Mr. Foote," said Bonbright. "I want to see what's happening."
"I can't help it if you're Mr. Roosevelt, you can't go any farther than
this.... Now GIT." He gave Bonbright a violent and unexpected shove,
which almost sent the young man off his feet. He staggered, recovered
himself, and stood glowering at the officer. "Move!" came the short
command, and once more burning with indignation, he obeyed. Here was
another man acting in his behalf, summoned to his help. It was thus the
police behaved, roughly, intolerantly, neither asking nor accepting
explanations. It did not seem to Bonbright this could be the right way
to meet the emergency. It seemed to him calculated only to aggravate
it. The application of brute force might conquer a mob or stifle a
riot, but it would leave unquenched fires of animosity. A violent
operation may be necessary to remove a malignant growth. It may be the
only possible cure; but no physician would hope to cure typhoid fever
by knocking the patient insensible with a club. True, the delirium
would cease for a time, but the deep-seated ailment would remain and
the patient only be the worse for the treatment.... Here the disease
was disagreement, misunderstanding, suspicion, bitterness of heart
between employer and employees. Neither hired strike breaker nor
policeman's baton could get to the root of it.... Yet he, Bonbright
Foote VII, was the man held out to all the world as favoring this
treatment, as authorizing it, as ordering it!
He walked quite around the block, approaching again on a side street
that brought him back again just ahead of the police. This street was
blocked by excited, restless, crowding, jeering men, but Bonbright
wormed his way through and climbed upon a porch from which he could see
over the heads of the foremost to where a line of police and the front
rank of strikers faced each other across a vacant space of pavement,
the square at the intersection of the streets.
Behind him a hatless man in a high state of excitement was making an
inflammatory speech from a doorstep. He was urging the mob to charge
the police, to trample them under.... Bonbright leaned far over the
railing so he could look down the street where the main body of the mob
was assembled. There was another speaker. Bonbright recognized
Dulac--and Dulac, with all his eloquence, was urging the men to
disperse to their homes in quiet. Bonbright listened. The man was
talking sense! He was pointing out the folly of mob violence! He was
showing them that it achieved nothing.... But the mob was beyond the
control of wise counsel. Possibly the feet of many had pressed brass
rails while elbows crooked. Certainly there was present a leaven of
toughs, idlers, in no way connected with the business, but sent by the
devil to add to the horror of it.
One of these, discreetly distant from the front, hurled half a brick
into the line of police. It was a vicious suggestion. Other bricks and
missiles followed, while the crowd surged forward. Suddenly the line of
patrolmen opened to let through a squad of mounted police, who charged
the mob.... It was a thing requiring courage, but a thing ordered by an
imbecile.
Horses and men plunged into that dammed river of men.... It was a scene
Bonbright could never erase from his memory, yet never could have
described. It was a nightmare, a sensation of dread rather than a scene
of fierce, implacable action.
The police drew back. The strikers hesitated.... Between them, on the
square of pavement, lay quiet, or writhing in pain, half a dozen human
forms.... Bonbright, his face colorless as those who lay below, stared
at the bodies. For this that he saw he would be held responsible by the
world....
He ran down the steps and began struggling through the mob. "Let me
through.... Let me through," he panted.
He broke through to the front, not moved by reason, but quivering with
the horror of the sight of men needlessly slain or maimed.... He must
do something. He must stop it!
Then he Was recognized. "It's young Foote," a man shouted, and snatched
at his shoulder. He shook the man off, but the cry was taken up. "It's
Foote--young Foote.... Spying again."
Men sprang upon him, but he turned furiously and hurled them back. They
must not stop him. He must not be interfered with, because he had to
put an end to this thing. The mob surged about him, striking,
threatening, so that he had to turn his face toward them, to strike out
with his fists. More than one man went down under his blows before he
could break away and run toward the police.
"See what you've done," he shouted in their faces. "This must stop." He
advanced another step, as if to force the mounted officers to retreat.
"Grab him," ordered a sergeant.
Bonbright was promptly grabbed and hauled through the line of mounted
police, to be thrown into the arms of waiting patrolmen. He fought as
strength was given him to fight, but they carried him ungently and
hurled him asprawl upon the floor of a patrol wagon, already well
occupied by arrests from the mob.
"Git 'em to the station," the driver was ordered, and off lurched the
patrol wagon.
That rapid ride brought cooling to Bonbright's head. He had made a fool
of himself. He was ashamed, humiliated, and to be humiliated is no
minor torture to a young man.
Instead of giving his name to the lieutenant on the desk he refused to
give a name, and was entered as John Doe. It was his confused thought
to save his family from publicity and disgrace.... So he knew what it
was to have barred doors shut upon him, to be alone in a square cell
whose only furnishing was a sort of bench across one end. He sank upon
this apathetically and waited for what morning should bring.