There was a chance that a specialist, a professional, might find traces
of Ruth where Bonbright's untrained eyes missed them altogether. So,
convinced that he could do nothing, that he did not in the least know
how to go about the search, he retained a firm of discreet,
well-recommended searchers for missing persons. With that he had to be
content. He still searched, but it was because he had to search; he had
to feel that he was trying, doing something, but no one realized the
uselessness of it more than himself. He was always looking for her,
scanned every face in the crowd, looked up at every window.
In a day or two he was able to force himself to work steadily,
unremittingly again. The formula of his patent medicine, with which he
was to cure the ills of capital-labor, was taking definite shape, and
the professor was enthusiastic. Not that the professor felt any
certainty of effecting a permanent cure; he was enthusiastic over it as
a huge, splendid experiment. He wanted to see it working and how men
would react to it. He had even planned to write a book about it when it
should have been in operation long enough to show what its results
would be.
Bonbright was sure. He felt that it would bridge the gulf between him
and his employees--that gulf which seemed now to be growing wider and
deeper instead of disappearing. Mershon's talk was full of labor
troubles, of threatened strikes, of consequent delays.
"We can finish thirty days ahead of schedule," he said to Bonbright,
"if the unions leave us alone."
"You think I ought to recognize them," Bonbright said. "Well, Mr.
Mershon, if labor wants to cut its own throat by striking--let it
strike. I'm giving it work. I'm giving it wages that equal or are
higher than union scale. They've no excuse for a strike. I'm willing to
do anything within reason, but I'm going to run my own concern. Before
I'll let this plant be unionized I'll shut it down. If I can't finish
the new shops without recognizing the unions, then they'll stand as
they are."
"You're the boss," said Mershon, with a shrug. "Do you know there's to
be a mass meeting in the armory to-night? I think the agitator people
are going to try to work the men up to starting trouble."
"You think they'll strike?"
"I KNOW they will."
"All the men, or just the steel workers and bricklayers and temporary
employees on the new buildings?"
"I don't know.... But if any of them go out it's going to make things
mighty bad."
"I'll see what can be done," said Bonbright.
The strike must be headed off if possible. It would mean a monstrously
costly delay; it might mean a forfeiture of his contract with
Lightener. It might mean that he had gone into this new project and
expended hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip for the manufacture
of engines in vain.... The men must not strike.
There seemed no way to avert it but to surrender, and that Bonbright
did not even consider.... He called in the professor.
"The plan is practically complete, isn't it?" he asked.
"I'd call it so. The skeleton is there and it's covered with flesh.
Some of the joints creak a little and maybe there's an ear or an
eyebrow missing.... But those are details."
Bonbright nodded. "We'll try it out," he said. "To-night there's a mass
meeting--to stir our men up to strike. They mustn't strike, and I'm
going to stop them--with the plan."
"Eh?" said the professor.
"I'm going to the meeting," said Bonbright.
"You're--young man, you're crazy."
"I'm going to head off that strike. I'm going there and I'm going to
announce the plan."
"They won't let you speak."
"I think they will.... Curiosity will make them."
The young man did understand something of human nature, thought the
professor. Curiosity would, most likely, get a hearing for him.
"It's dangerous," said he. "The men aren't in a good humor. There might
be some fanatic there--"
"It's a chance," said Bonbright, "but I've got to take it."
"I'll go with you," said the professor.
"No. I want to be there alone. This thing is between my men and me.
It's personal. We've got to settle it between ourselves."
The professor argued, pleaded; but Bonbright was stubborn, and the
professor had previous acquaintance with Bonbright's stubbornness. Its
quality was that of tool steel. Bonbright had made up his mind to go
and to go alone. Nobody could argue him out of it.
Bonbright did go alone. He went early in order to obtain a good
position in the hall, a mammoth gathering place capable of seating
three thousand people. He entered quietly, unostentatiously, and walked
to a place well toward the front, and he entered unobserved. The street
before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were
other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place.
In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on
the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less
emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the
real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of
tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright could feel it. It made him tingle;
it gave him a sensation of vibrating emptiness resembling that of a man
descending in a swift elevator.
Bonbright was not accustomed to public speaking, but, somehow, he did
not regard what he was about to say as a public speech. He did not
think of it as being kindred to oratory. He was there to talk business
with a gathering of his men, that was all. He knew what he was going to
say, and he was going to say it clearly, succinctly, as briefly as
possible.
In half an hour the chairs on the platform were occupied by chairman,
speakers, union officials. The great hall was jammed, and hundreds
packed about the doors in the street without, unable to gain
admission.... The chairman opened the meeting briefly. Behind him
Bonbright saw Dulac, saw the members of the committee that had waited
on him, saw other men known to him only because he had seen their
pictures from time to time in the press. It was an imposing gathering
of labor thought.
Bonbright had planned what he would do. It was best, he believed, to
catch the meeting before it had been excited by oratory, before it had
been lashed to anger. It was calmer, more reasonable now than it would
be again. He arose to his feet.
"Mr. Chairman," he said, distinctly.
The chairman paused; Bonbright's neighbors turned to stare; men all
over the hall rose and craned their necks to have a view of the
interrupter.
"Sit down!...Shut up!" came cries from here and there. Then other
cries, angry cries. "It's Foote!... It's the boss! Out with him!... Out
with him!"
"Mr. Chairman," said Bonbright, "I realize this is unusual, but I hope
you will allow me to be heard. Every man here must admit that I am
vitally interested in what takes place here to-night.... I come in a
friendly spirit, and I have something to say which is important to me
and to you. I ask you to hear me. I will be brief..."
"Out with him!... No!... Throw him out!" came yells from the floor. The
house was on its feet, jostling, surging. Men near to Bonbright
hesitated. One man reached over the shoulders of his fellows and struck
at Bonbright. Another shoved him back.
"Let him talk.... Let's hear him," arose counter-cries. The meeting
threatened to get beyond control, to become a mob.
The chairman, familiar with the men he dealt with, acted quickly. He
turned to Dulac and whispered, then faced the hall with hands upheld.
"Mr. Foote is here uninvited," he said. "He requests to be heard. Let
us show him that we are reasonable, that we are patient.... Mr. Dulac
agrees to surrender a portion of his time to Mr. Foote. Let us hear
what he has to say."
Bonbright pushed his way toward the aisle and moved forward. Once he
stumbled, and almost fell, as a man thrust out a foot to trip him--and
the hall laughed.
"Speak your piece. Speak it nice," somebody called, and there was
another laugh. This was healthier, safer.
Bonbright mounted the platform and advanced to its edge.
"Every man here," he said, "is an employee of mine. I have tried to
make you feel that your interests are my interests, but I seem to have
failed--or you would not be here. I have tried to prove that I want to
be something more than merely your employer, but you would not believe
me."
"Your record's bad," shouted a man, and there was another laugh.
"My record is bad," said Bonbright. "I could discuss that, but it
wouldn't change things. Since I have owned the mills my record has not
been bad. There are men here who could testify for me. All of you can
testify that conditions have been improved.... But I am not here to
discuss that. I am here to lay before you a plan I have been working
on. It is not perfect, but as it stands it is complete enough, so that
you can see what I am aiming at. This plan goes into effect the day the
new plant starts to operate."
"Does it recognize the unions?" came from the floor.
"No," said Bonbright. "Please listen carefully.... First it establishes
a minimum wage of five dollars a day. No man or woman in the plant, in
any capacity, shall be paid less than five dollars a day. Labor helps
to earn our profits and labor should share in them. That is fair. I
have set an arbitrary minimum of five dollars because there must be
some basis to work from...."
The meeting was silent. It was nonplused. It was listening to the
impossible. Every man, every employee, should be paid five dollars a
day!
"Does that mean common labor?"
"It means everyone," said Bonbright. "It means the man who sweeps out
the office, the man who runs the elevator, the man who digs a ditch.
Every man does his share and every man shall have his share.
"I want every man to live in decent comfort, and I want his wife and
babies to live in comfort. With these wages no man's wife need take in
washing nor work out by the day to help support the family. No man will
need to ask his wife to keep a boarder to add to the family's
earnings...."
The men listened now. Bonbright's voice carried to every corner and
cranny of the hall. Even the men on the platform listened breathlessly
as he went on detailing the plan and its workings. Nothing like this
had ever happened before in the world's history. No such offer had ever
been made to workingmen by an employer capable of carrying out his
promises.... He told them what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do
it. He told them what he wanted them to do to co-operate with him--of
an advisory board to be elected by the men, sharing in deliberations
that affected the employees, of means to be instituted to help the men
to save and to take care of their savings, of a strict eight-hour
day.... No union had ever dreamed of asking such terms of an employer.
"How do we know you'll do it?" yelled a man.
"You have my word," said Bonbright.
"Rats!"
"Shut up... shut up!" the objector was admonished.
"That's all, men," Bonbright said. "Think it over. This plan is going
into effect. If you want to share in it you can do so, every one of
you.... Thank you for listening."
Bonbright turned and sat down in a chair on the platform, anxious,
watching that sea of faces, waiting to see what would happen.
Dulac leaped to his feet. "It's a bribe," he shouted. "It's nothing but
an attempt to buy your manhood for five dollars a day. We're righting
for a principle--not for money.... We're--"
But his voice was drowned out. The meeting had taken charge of itself.
It wanted to listen to no oratory, but to talk over this thing that had
happened, to realize it, to weigh it, to determine what it meant to
them. Abstract principle must always give way to concrete fact. The men
who fight for principle are few. The fight is to live, to earn, to
continue to exist. Men who had never hoped to earn a hundred dollars a
month; men who had for a score of years wielded pick and shovel for two
dollars a day or less, saw, with eyes that could hardly believe, thirty
dollars a week. It was wealth! It was that thirty dollars that gripped
them now, not the other things. Appreciation of them would come later,
but now it was the voice of money that was in their ears. What could a
man do with five dollars a day? He could live--not merely exist.... The
thing that could not be had come to pass.
Dulac shouted, demanded their attention. He might as well have tried to
still the breakers that roared upon a rocky shore. Dulac did not care
for money. He was a revolutionist, a thinker, a man whose work lay with
conditions, not with individuals. Here every man was thinking as an
individual; applying that five dollars a day to his own peculiar,
personal affairs.... Already men were hurrying out of the hall to carry
the amazing tidings home to their wives.
Dulac stormed on.
One thing was apparent to Bonbright. The men believed him. They
believed he had spoken the truth. He had known they would believe him;
somehow he had known that. The thing had swept them off their feet. In
all that multitude was not a man whose life was not to be made easier,
whose wife and children were not to be happier, more comfortable,
removed from worry. It was a moving sight to see those thousands react.
They were drunk with it.
An old man detached himself from the mass and rushed upon the platform.
"It's true?... It's true?" he said, with tears running down his face.
"It's true," said Bonbright, standing up and offering his hand.
That was the first of hundreds. Some one shouted, hoarsely, "Hurrah for
Foote!" and the armory trembled with the shout.
The thing was done. The thing he had come to do was accomplished. There
would be no strike.
Dulac had fallen silent, was sitting in his chair with his face hidden.
For him this was a defeat, a bitter blow.
Bonbright made his way to him.
"Mr. Dulac," he said, "have you found her?"
"You've bribed them.... You've bought them," Dulac said, bitterly.
"I've given them what is theirs fairly.... Have you found any trace of
her?" Even in this moment, which would have thrilled, exalted another,
which would have made another man drunk with achievement, Bonbright
could think of Ruth. Even now Ruth was uppermost in his mind. All this
mattered nothing beside her. "Have you got any trace?" he asked.
"No," said Dulac.