day watchman at the iron-works, had opened the great yard gates, and the
men began to gather by twos and threes and in little caucusing knots on
the sand floor of the huge, iron-roofed foundry building. Some of the
more heedful set to work making seats of the wooden flask frames and
bottom boards; and in the pouring space fronting one of the cupolas they
built a rough-and-ready platform out of the same materials.
As the numbers increased the men fell into groups, dividing first on the
color-line, and then by trades, with the white miners in the majority
and doing most of the talking.
"What's all this buzzin' round about young Tom?" queried one of the men
in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was,
'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n
knee-high to a hop-toad!"
"Well, you bet your life he's a heap higher'n that now," said another,
who had chanced to be at the station when the Gordons, father and son,
left the train together. "He's a half a head taller than the old man,
an' built like one o' Maje' Dabney's thoroughbreds. But I reckon he
ain't nothin' but a school-boy, for all o' that."
"Gar-r-r!" spat a third. "We've had one kid too many in this outfit, all
along. I'll bet, if the truth was knowed, th't that young Farley'd skin
a louse for the hide and tallow."
"Yes," chimed in a fourth, a "huckleberry" miner from the Bald Mountain
district, "and I reckon whar thar's sich a hell of a smoke, thar's a
right smart heap o' fire, ef it could on'y be onkivered."
But all of this was in a manner beside the mark, and there were many to
inquire what the Gordons were going to do. Ludlow, check weigher in
Number Two entry, and the head of the local union, took it on himself to
reply.
"B'gosh! I don't b'lieve the old man knows, himself. He fit around and
fit around, talkin' to me, and never said nothin' more'n that there was
goin' to be a meetin' here at two o'clock, and Tom--his son Tom--was
goin' to speak to it."
"All right; we're a-waitin' on son Tom right now," said a grizzled old
coal-digger on the outer edge of the group. "And ef he's got anything to
say, he cayn't say hit none too sudden. My ol' woman told me this
mornin' she was a-hittin' the bottom o' the meal bar'l, kerchuck! ever'
time she was dippin' into hit. Hit's erbout time there was somepin
doin', ez I allow."
"Saw it off!" warned Ludlow. "Here they come, both of 'em."
Tom and his father had entered the building from the cupola side, and
Tom mounted the flask-built platform while the men were scattering to
find seats. He made a goodly figure of young manhood, standing at ease
on the pile of frames until quiet should prevail, and the glances flung
up from the throng of workmen were friendly rather than critical. When
the time came, he began to speak quietly, but with a certain masterful
quality in his voice that unmistakably constrained attention.
"I suppose you have all been told why the works are shut down--why you
are out of a job in the middle of summer; and I understand you are not
fully satisfied with the reason that was given--hard times. You have
been saying among yourselves that if the president and the treasurer
could go off on a holiday trip to Europe, the situation couldn't be so
very desperate. Isn't that so?"
"That's so; you've hit it in the head first crack out o' the box," was
the swift reply from a score of the men.
"Good; then we'll settle that point before we go any further. I want to
tell you men that the hard times are here, sure enough. We are all
hoping that they won't last very long; but the fact remains that the
wheels have stopped. Let me tell you: I've just come down from the
North, and the streets of the cities up there are full of idle men. All
the way down here I didn't see a single iron-furnace in blast, and those
of you who have been over to South Tredegar know what the conditions are
there. Mr. Farley has gone to Europe because he believes there is
nothing to be done here, and the facts are on his side. For anybody with
money enough to live on, this is a mighty good time to take a vacation."
There was a murmur of protest, voicing itself generally in a denial of
the possibility for men who wrought with their hands and ate in the
sweat of their brows.
"I know that," was Tom's rejoinder. "Some of us can't afford to take a
lay-off; I can't, for one. And that's why we are here this afternoon.
Chiawassee can blow in again and stay in blast if we've all got nerve
enough to hang on. If we start up and go on making pig, it'll be on a
dead market and we'll have to sell it at a loss or stack it in the
yards. We can't do the first, and I needn't tell you that it is going to
take a mighty long purse to do the stacking. It will be all outgo and no
income. If--"
"Spit it out," called Ludlow, from the forefront of the miners'
division. "I reckon we all know what's comin'."
Gordon thrust out his square jaw and gave them the fact bluntly.
"It's a case of half a loaf or no bread. If Chiawassee blows in again,
it will be on borrowed money. If you men will take half-pay in cash and
half in promises, the promised half to be paid when we can sell the
stacked pig, we go on. If not, we don't. Talk it over among yourselves
and let us have your decision."
There was hot caucusing and a fair imitation of pandemonium on the
foundry floor following this bomb-hurling, and Tom sat down on the edge
of the platform to give the men time. Caleb Gordon sat within arm's
reach, nursing his knee, diligently saying nothing. It was Tom,
undoubtedly, but a Tom who had become a citizen of another world, a
newer world than the one the ex-artilleryman knew and lived in.
He--Caleb--had freely predicted a riot as the result of the half-pay
proposal; yet Tom had applied the match and there was no explosion. The
buzzing, arguing groups were not riotous--only fiercely questioning.
It was Ludlow, hammering clamorously for silence on the shell of the big
crane ladle, who acted as spokesman when the uproar was quelled.
"You're all right, Tom Gordon--you and your daddy. But you've hit us
plum' 'twixt dinner and supper. If you two was the company--"
Tom stood up and interrupted.
"We are the company. While Mr. Farley is away we're the bosses; what we
say, goes."
"All right," Ludlow went on. "That's a little better. But we've got a
kick or two comin'. Is this half-pay goin' to be in orders on the
company's store?"
"I said cash," said Tom briefly.
"Good enough. But I s'pose we'd have to spend it at the company's store,
jest the same, 'r get fired."
"No!"--emphatically. "I'm not even sure that we should reopen the store.
We shall not reopen it unless you men want it. If you do want it, we'll
make it strictly coöperative, dividing the profits with every employee
according to his purchases."
"Well, by gol, that's white, anyway," commented one of the coke burners.
"Be a mighty col' day in July when old man Farley'd talk as straight as
that."
"Ag'in," said Ludlow, "what's this half-pay to be figured on--the
reg'lar scale?"
"Of course."
"And what security do we have that t'other half 'll be paid, some time?"
"My father's word, and mine."
"And if old man Farley says no?"
"Mr. Farley is out of it for the present, and he has nothing to say
about it. You are making this deal with Gordon and Gordon."
"Well, now, that's a heap more like it." Ludlow turned to the miners.
"What d'ye say, boys? Fish or cut bait? Hands up!"
There was a good showing of hands among the white miners and the coke
burners, but the negro foundry men did not vote. Patty, the mulatto
foreman who was Helgerson's second, explained the reason.
"You ain't said nuttin' 'bout de foundry, Boss Tom. W-w-w-w-we-all boys
been wukkin' short ti-ti-time, and m-m-m-makin' pig ain't gwine give
we-all n-n-nuttin' ter do." Patty had a painful impediment in his
speech, and the strain of the public occasion doubled it.
"We are going to run the foundry, too, Patty, and on full time. There
will be work for all of you on the terms I have named."
Caleb Gordon closed his eyes and put his face in his hands. For weeks
before the shut-down the foundry had been run on short time, because
there was no market for its miscellaneous output. Surely Tom must be
losing his mind!
But the negro foundry men were taking his word for it, as the miners
had. "Pup-pup-put up yo' hands, boys!" said Patty, and again the ayes
had it.
Tom looked vastly relieved.
"Well, that was a short horse soon curried," he said bruskly. "The power
goes on to-morrow morning, and we'll blow in as soon as the furnaces are
relined. Ludlow, you come to the office at five o'clock and I'll list
the shifts with you. Patty, you report to Mr. Helgerson, and you and the
pattern-maker show up at half-past five. I want to talk over some new
work with you. Anybody else got anything to say? If not, we'll adjourn."
Caleb followed his son out and across the yard to the old log homestead
which still served as the superintendent's office and laboratory. When
the door was shut, he dropped heavily into a chair.
"Son," he said brokenly, "you're--you're crazy--plum' crazy. Don't you
know you can't do the first one o' these things you've been promisin'?"
Tom was already busy at the desk, emptying the pigeonholes one after
another and rapidly scanning their contents.
"If I believed that, I'd be taking to the high grass and the tall
timber. But don't you worry, pappy; we're going to do them--all of
them."
"But, Buddy, you can't sell a pound of foundry product! We may be able
to make pig cheaper than some others, but when it comes to the foundry
floor, South Tredegar can choke us off in less'n a week."
"Wait," said Tom, still rummaging. "There is one thing we can make--and
sell."
"I'd like tolerable well to know what it is," was the hopeless
rejoinder.
"You ought to know, better than any one else. It's cast-iron
pipe--water-pipe. Where are the plans of that invention of yours that
Farley wouldn't let you install?"
Caleb found the blue-prints, and his hands were trembling. The
invention, a pit machine process for molding and casting water-and
gas-pipe at a cost that would put all other makers of the commodity out
of the field, had been wrought out and perfected in Tom's second Boston
year. It was Caleb's one ewe lamb, and he had nursed it by hand through
a long preparatory period.
Tom took the blue-prints and spread them on the desk, absorbing the
details as his father leaned over him and pointed them out. He saw
clearly that the invention would revolutionize pipe-making. The accepted
method was to cast each piece separately in a floor flask made in two
parts, rammed by hand, once for the drag and again for the cope, with
reversings, crane-handlings and all the manipulations necessary for the
molding of any heavy casting. But the new process substituted machinery.
A cistern-like pit; a circular table pivoted over it, with a hundred or
more iron flasks suspended upright from its edges; a huge crane carrying
a mechanical ram, these were the main points of the machine which, with
a single small gang of men, would do the work of an entire foundry
floor.
"It's great!" said Tom enthusiastically. "I got your idea pretty well
from your letters, but you've improved on it since then. I wonder Farley
didn't snap at it."
"He was willin' to," said Caleb grimly. "Only he wanted me to transfer
the patents to the company; in other words, to make him a present of the
controlling interest. I bucked at that, and we come near havin' a
fall-out. If there was any market for pipe now--"
"There is a market," said Tom hopefully. "I got a pointer on that before
I left Boston. Did I tell you I had a little talk with Mr. Clarkson the
day I came away?"
"No."
"Well, I did. I told him the conditions and asked his advice. Among
other things, I spoke of this pipe pit of yours, and he said at once,
'There is your chance. Cast-iron water-pipe is like bread, or sugar, or
butcher's meat--it's a necessity, in good times or bad. If that machine
is practicable, you can make pipe for less than half the present labor
cost.' Then we talked ways and means. Money is tighter than a shut
fist--up East as well as everywhere else. But men with money to invest
will still bet on a sure thing. Mr. Clarkson advised me to try our own
banks first. Failing with them, he authorized me to call on him. Now you
know where I'm digging my sand."
The old iron-master sat back in his chair with his hands locked over one
knee, once more taking the measure of this new creation calling itself
Tom Gordon and purporting to be his son.
"Say, Buddy," he said at length, "are there many more like you out
yonder in the big road?--young fellows that can walk right out o' school
and tell their daddies how to run things?"
Tom's laugh was boyishly hearty.
"Plenty of 'em, pappy; lots of 'em! The old world is moving right along;
it would be a pity if it didn't, don't you think? But about this pipe
business: I want you to make over these patents to me."
"They're yours now, Tom; everything I've got will be yours in a little
while," said the father; but his voice betrayed the depth of that
thrust. Was the new Tom beginning so soon to grasp and reach out
avariciously for the fruit of the old tree?
"You ought to know I don't mean it that way," said Tom, frowning a
little. "But here is the way it sizes up. There is money in this
pipe-making; some money now, and big money later on. Farley has refused
to go into it unless you make it a company proposition; as president and
a controlling stock-holder you can't very well go into it now without
making it in some sort a company proposition. But you can transfer the
patents to me, and I can contract with Chiawassee Consolidated to make
pipe for me."
Caleb Gordon's frown matched that of his son.
"That would certainly be givin' Colonel Duxbury a dose of his own
medicine; but I don't like it, Tom. It looks as if we were taking
advantage of him."
"No. I'd make the proposition to him, personally, if he were here, and
the boss; and he'd be a fool if he didn't jump at it," said Tom
earnestly. "But there is more to it than that. If we make a go of this,
and don't protect ourselves, the two Farleys will come back and put the
whole thing in their pockets. I won't go into it on any such terms. When
they do come back, I'm going to have money to fight them with, and this
is our one little ghost of a chance. Ring up Judge Bates and get him to
come over here and make a legal transfer of these patents to me."
The thing was done, though not without some misgivings on Caleb's part.
Honesty and fair dealing, even with a known enemy, had been the rule of
his life; and while he could not put his finger on the equivocal thing
in Tom's plan, he was vaguely troubled. Analyzed after the fact, the
trouble was vicarious, and for Tom. It defined itself more clearly when
they went together to South Tredegar to have an attorney draw up the
agreement under which Tom's pipe venture was to be conducted. Tom, as
the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but
he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the
attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be
equitable as well as legal.
At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in
the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him.
He could not tell what it was; but he missed it. The kindly Gordon
nature was intact, or he hoped it was, but the neighbor-love, which was
his father's rule of life, seemed not to have come down to him in its
largeness. Ruth for the Farleys was not to be expected of him, he
argued; but behind this was a vaster ruthlessness, arming him to win the
industrial battle, making him a hard man as he had suddenly become a
strong one.
And the experiences of the summer were all hardening. He plunged
headlong into the world of business, into a panic-time competition which
was in grim reality a fight for life, and there seemed to be little to
choose between trampling or being trampled. By early autumn the iron
industries of the country were gasping, and the stacks of pig in the
Chiawassee yards, kept down a little during the summer by a few meager
orders, grew and spread until they covered acres. As long as money could
be had, the iron was bonded as fast as it was made, and the proceeds
were turned into wages to make more. But when money was no longer
obtainable from this source, the pipe venture was the only hope.
With the entire foundry force at the Chiawassee making pipe, Tom had
gone early into the market with his low-priced product. But the
commercial side of the struggle was fire-new to him, and he found
himself matched against men who knew buying and selling as he knew
smelting and casting. They routed him, easily at first, with increasing
difficulty as he learned the new trade, but always with certainty. It
was Norman, the correspondence man, transformed now into a sales agent,
who gave him his first hint of the inwardnesses.
"We're too straight, Mr. Gordon; that's at the bottom of it," he said to
Tom, over a grill-room luncheon at the Marlboro one day. "It takes money
to make money."
Tom's eyebrows went up and his ears were open. The battle had grown
desperate.
"Our prices are right," he said. "Isn't that enough?"
"No," said Norman, looking down. Like all the others, he stood a little
in awe of the young boss.
"Why?"
"Four times out of five we have to sell to a municipal committee, and
the other time we have to monkey with the purchasing agent of a
corporation. In either case it takes money--other money besides the
difference in price."
Tom wagged his head in a slow affirmative. "It's rotten!" he said.
Norman smiled.
"It's our privilege to cuss it out; but it's a condition."
Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to
Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city
forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out
water-mains. He made a pencil computation on the back of an envelope.
The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was
lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave
a margin of profit. Before he took the train he went to the bank, and,
when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure
the "wheel-horse" member of the municipal purchasing board that he was
ready to talk business on a modern business basis.
Notwithstanding, he lost the contract. Other people were growing
desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough. One
member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts. A check had
been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without
trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the
month's pay-roll at Gordonia.
"You sent a boy to mill," said the loyal one. "And now it's all over, I
don't mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that.
Bullinger's a hog."
"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively.
"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something."
Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way
home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more
pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one
contract would have saved the day, and it was lost.
The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him
down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station
to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald
to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time,
the big plant was silent and deserted.
Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the
Woodlawn porch.
"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung
himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this
morning."
"What was in the papers?"
"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the
business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm
brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday."
Tom started as if he had been stung.
"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to
Louisville!"
"Yes, I know you did. When Dyckman didn't come out with the pay-rolls
yesterday evening I telephoned him. He said Vint Farley, as treasurer of
the company, had made a draft on him and taken it all."
Tom sprang out of his chair and the bitter oaths upbubbled and choked
him. But he stifled them long enough to say: "And the men?"
"The miners went out at ten o'clock this morning. The blacks would have
stood by us, but Ludlow's men drove 'em out--made 'em quit. We're done,
Buddy."
Tom dashed his hat on the floor, and the Gordon rage, slow to fire and
fierce to scorch and burn when once it was aflame, made for the moment a
yelling, cursing maniac of him. In the midst of it he turned, and the
tempest of imprecation spent itself in a gasp of dismay. His mother was
standing in the doorway, thin, frail, with the sorrow in her eyes that
had been there since the long night of chastenings three years agone.
As he looked he saw the growing pallor in her face, the growing
speechless horror in her gaze. Then she put out her hands as one groping
in darkness and fell before he could reach her.
It was her stalwart son who carried Martha Gordon to her room and laid
her gently on the bed, with the husband to follow helplessly behind.
Also, it was Tom, tender and loving now as a woman, who sat upon the
edge of the bed, chafing the bloodless hands and striving as he could to
revive her.
"I'm afeard you've killed her for sure, this time, son!" groaned the
man.
But Tom saw the pale lips move and bent low to catch their whisperings.
What he heard was only the echo of the despairing cry of the broken
heart: "_Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son_!"
XXI
GILGAL
In these days of slowing wheels and silenced anvils South Tredegar had
its own troubles, and when some one telephoned the editor of the
_Morning Tribune_ that Chiawassee Consolidated had succumbed at last, he
did not deem it worth while to inquire whether the strike at Gordonia
was the cause or the consequence of the sudden shut-down.
But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to
trickle in over the telephone wires, a _Tribune_ man called, in passing,
at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to
sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of his own, was quite
willing to conceal the true state of affairs. Yes, there was a
suspension of active operations at Gordonia, and he believed there had
been some hot-headed talk among the miners. But there would be no
trouble. Mr. Farley was at present in London negotiating for English
capital. When he should return, the capital stock of the company would
be increased, and the plant would probably be removed to South Tredegar
and enlarged.
All of which was duly jotted down to be passed into the _Tribune's_
archives; and the following morning Tom, doing guard duty with his
father, the two Helgersons and a squad of the yard men at the threatened
plant, read a pointless editorial in which misstatement of fact and
sympathy for the absent and struggling Farleys were equally and
impartially blended.
"Look at that!" he growled wrathfully, handing the paper across the
office desk to Caleb. "One of these fine days I'm going to land that
fellow Dyckman in the penitentiary."
The iron-master put on his spectacles and plodded slowly and
conscientiously through the editorial, turning the paper, at length, to
glance over the headings on the telegraphic page. In the middle of it he
looked up suddenly to say:
"Son, what was the name o' that Indiany town with the big water-pipe
contract?"
Tom gave it in a word, and Caleb passed the paper back, with his thumb
on one of the press despatches.
"Read that," he said.
Tom read, and the wrathful scowl evoked by the foolish editorial gave
place to a flitting smile of triumph. There was trouble in the Indiana
city over the awarding of the pipe contract. In some way unknown to the
press reporter, it had leaked out that a much lower bid than the one
accepted had been ignored by the purchasing committee. A municipal
election was pending, and the people were up in arms. Rumors of a
wholesale indictment of the suspected officials were rife, and the city
offices were in a state of siege.
Tom put the paper down and smote on the desk.
"Damn them!" he said; "I thought perhaps I could give them a run for
their money."
"You?" said Caleb, removing his glasses. "How's that?"
The new recruit in the army of business chicane nodded his head.