absolutely quiet, and in fact the woman made such a show of sincerity
and motherly anxiety, that I think I should have been satisfied. The
marshal, however, knew his business better--he insisted on opening the
door indicated, and inside, stretched on a dirty pallet, was a poor
creature, evidently ill enough, if not actually at the point of death.
It was not, however, the woman's daughter; but to my unspeakable horror,
I recognized instantly the poor girl I had once rescued from a less
cruel death and had turned over to the Salvation Army. There was no
mistaking her. Her scarred face was stamped indelibly on my memory. She
presently recognized me too; but all she said was, "They got me back. I
knew they would." We turned her over to John Marvel, while awaiting the
ambulance, and continued our search which threatened to prove fruitless
so far as Elsa Loewen was concerned. But at this moment a curious thing
occurred. Dixey, who had been following me all the morning and had,
without my taking notice of him, come not only to the house with us, but
had come in as well, began to nose around and presently stopped at a
door, where he proceeded to whimper as he was accustomed to do when he
wished to be let in at a closed door. I called him off, but though he
came, he went back again and again, until he attracted the officer's
attention. The door was a low one, and appeared to be the entrance only
to a cupboard.
"Have we been in that room?"
The woman declared that we had, but as we all knew it had not been
entered, she changed and said it was not the door of a room at all, but
of a closet.
"Open it!" said the officer.
"The key is lost," said the woman. "We do not use it!"
"Then I will open it," said the marshal, and the next moment the door
was forced open. The woman gave a scream and made a dash at the nearest
man, beside herself with rage, fighting and tearing like a wild animal.
And well she might, for inside, crumpled up on the floor, under a pile
of clothing, lay the girl we were searching for, in a comatose state.
She was lifted carefully and brought out into the light, and I scarcely
knew her, so battered and bruised and dead-alive the poor thing
appeared. Dixey, however, knew, and he testified his affection and
gratitude by stealing in between us as we stood around her and licking
the poor thing's hand. It was a terrible story that was revealed when
the facts came out, and its details were too horrifying and revolting to
be put in print, but that night Madam Snow's hotel was closed. The
lights which had lured so many a frail bark to shipwreck were
extinguished, and Madam Snow and her wretched retinue of slaves, who had
been bound to a servitude more awful than anything which history could
tell or romance could portray, were held in the custody of the marshal
of the United States.
The newspapers next day, with one exception, contained an account of the
"pulling" of Smooth Ally's place. That exception was _The Trumpet_. But
a day or two later John Marvel received a cheque for $200 from Coll
McSheen "for his poor." I had never seen Wolffert show more feeling than
when John, in the innocency of his heart, told him of the gift. "It is
the wedge of Achan!" he exclaimed. "It is hush money. It is blood money.
It is the thirty pieces of silver given for blood. Even Judas returned
it." He made his proof clear, and the money was returned.
XXXII
"DOCTOR CAIAPHAS"
It was the duty of the street-car company under their charter to run
through cars every day or forfeit their charter--a wise provision,
doubtless; but one which did not contemplate that Coll McSheen who was
trying to destroy the company should have control of the police on whose
protection the ability to carry out the charter depended.
Under the compulsion of this requirement to run through cars, the
management of the street-car line, after much trouble, secured a few men
who, for a large price, agreed to operate the cars. But it was several
hours after the regular time before the first car ran out of the shed.
It made its way for some distance without encountering any difficulty or
even attracting any attention beyond a few comments by men and women
walking along the streets or standing in their doors. A little further
along there were a few jeers, but presently it turned a corner and
reached a point in a street where a number of boys were playing, as
usual, and a number of men out of work were standing about smoking their
pipes and discussing with some acrimony the action of the meeting which
had called the strike, and with some foreboding the future. As the car
stopped for a moment to take on a woman who had been waiting, a number
of the boys playing in the street began to jeer and hoot the motorman,
who was evidently somewhat unaccustomed to handling his car, and when he
attempted to loosen his brake, and showed therein his unskilfulness,
jeers turned into taunts, and the next moment a few handfuls of rubbish
picked up in a gutter were flung at him. In a twinkling, as if by magic
the street filled, and vegetables taken from in front of a neighboring
shop, mingled with a few stones, began to rattle against the car,
smashing the windows with much noise. The rattling glass quickly
attracted attention. It was like a bugle call, and in a minute more the
road was blocked and a dozen youths sprang upon the car and a fierce
fight ensued between them and the motorman and conductor, both of whom
were soundly beaten and might have been killed but for their promise to
give up their job and the somewhat tardy arrival of the police who had
been promised, but had appeared on the scene only after the riot had
taken place. This collision, which was begun by a lot of irresponsible
boys, was described under glaring headlines in all of the afternoon
papers as a riot of vast dimension. The effect of the riot, great or
small, was instantaneous and far-reaching throughout the entire section.
That evening the entire population of that section had changed from an
attitude of reasonable neutrality to one of unequivocal hostility. It
was a psychological moment. The spark had been dropped in the powder.
Next day it was as if war had been declared. There were no neutrals. All
had taken sides.
Before many days were out the strike had progressed so far that, instead
of its being a small body of men engaged in cessation of work, with
pacific methods of attempting to dissuade others who wished to continue
their work from doing so, or, by some more positive form of argument
known as picketing, of preventing newcomers from taking the places of
those who had struck, it had developed into an active force whose frank
object was to render it impossible for any man to take or hold a
position as an employee of the railway company. It was not so much that
meetings were frequently held and the measures advocated constantly grew
more and more violent, nor that occasional outbreaks occurred, as that
the whole temper of the people was becoming inflamed, and the conditions
of life affected thereby were becoming almost intolerable. The call of
the company on the mayor, as the representative of the public, to grant
them protection, was promptly, if somewhat evasively, replied to. No man
knew better than Coll McSheen how to express himself so that he might be
understood differently by different men. It had been one of his strong
cards in climbing to the altitude which he had reached. But the idea
that the police would render efficient aid to the company was openly and
generally scoffed at in the quarters where the strike prevailed. It was
boldly declared that the police were in sympathy with the strikers. This
report appeared to have some foundation, when one cold night, with the
thermometer at zero, a fire broke out in the mills owned by Mr. Leigh's
company, and they were gutted from foundation to roof. It was charged
on the strikers; but an investigation showed that this charge, like many
others, was unfounded; at least, as it alleged a direct and intentional
act. The evidence proved conclusively to my mind that the fire, while of
incendiary origin, was started by a gang of reckless and dissolute
youths who had no relation whatever to the strikers, but whose purpose
was to exhibit their enmity against a company which was held in such
disfavor generally. This was the contention of Wolffert in his papers on
the incident, and the view which Mr. Leigh afterward adopted.
It was only an expression of the general feeling that had grown up in
the city under the influence of the strike--one of the baleful offspring
of the condition which McSheen and Wringman and their like had been able
to produce from the conflict which they had projected and fostered. The
wretched youths who were arrested, told under the sweating process a
series of wholly conflicting and incredible lies, and in time two of
them were convicted on their own confessions and sent to the State
prison, and the strikers who had not yet resorted to extreme measures of
violence got the credit of the crime.
The continued spread of the strike and of sympathy with it had already
reached large proportions. The losses to business and to business men
and the inconvenience to even the well-to-do classes were immense and
when calculated in figures were quite staggering. The winter had set in
with sudden severity. The suffering among the poor was incalculable.
There was not a house or shop in the poorer districts where the pinch of
poverty was not beginning to be felt. The wolf, which ever stands beside
the door of the poor, had long since entered and cleaned out many of the
small dwellings which the summer before had been the abode of hope and
of reasonable content. Only the human wolves who prey on misfortune
battened and fattened; the stock-brokers who organized raids on "the
market," the usurers who robbed the poor more directly, but not more
effectively, the thieves of one kind or another alone prospered. The cry
of hunger increased while bitterness without and within had long since
begun to be universal, so long as to be scarcely heeded throughout the
poor quarters. The efforts of philanthropy, individual and organized,
were exercised to the utmost, but the trouble was too vast to be more
than touched on the outer fringe. The evil which Mr. Leigh had predicted
had come to pass and his prophecy had been far more than verified. Many
of the young women, turned from their factories, had disappeared from
the places which knew them before and found their way to haunts like Mel
Gallagin's "Gallery" and others less splendid, but not more wicked. Only
in the sphere in which persons of extraordinary accumulation moved, like
the Canters and the Argands, was there apparently no diminution in their
expenditure and display. Young Canter and his comrades still flaunted
their vast wealth in undisguised and irresponsible display--still
gambled on the stock boards in commodities that touched the lives of
pining thousands--still multiplied their horses and automobiles, and
drove them recklessly through crowded streets, heedless of the pinched
and scowling faces of unemployed multitudes. But older and saner heads
were beginning to shake when the future was mentioned. The reefing of
sails for a storm whose forerunners were on the horizon was already
taking place, and every reef meant that some part of the crew which had
sailed the ship so far was dropped overboard.
The devil is credited with the power to raise a tempest. Certainly
tempests are raised, but sometimes even the devil cannot quiet them.
Such was the case with the strike. McSheen, Wringman and Co. had been
completely successful in getting the strike of the Leigh employees under
way: when it started, they privately took much pride in their work.
Wringman received his wage and gratified his feeling of revenge for Mr.
Leigh's cool contempt of him on the occasion when he called to demand
terms of him. McSheen had a score of longer standing to settle. It dated
back to the time when Mr. Leigh, looking with clear and scornful eyes at
his work, gave him to feel that at least one man knew him to the bottom
of his scoundrelly soul. For a while it appeared as though Mr. Leigh
would be irretrievably ruined and McSheen and his friends and secret
backers like Canter would secure easy possession of the properties his
power of organization had built up; but suddenly an unlooked-for ally
with abundant resources had come to Mr. Leigh's assistance in the person
of an old friend, and the ripened fruit of their labors had been
plucked from their hands outstretched to grasp it. And now having raised
the tempest, these gamblers could not calm it. In other words, having
started a strike among Mr. Leigh's operatives for a specific purpose, it
had spread like a conflagration and now threatened to destroy
everything. The whole laboring population were getting into a state of
ferment. Demands were made by their leaders such as had never been
dreamed of before. The leaders were working them for their own purposes,
and were after a temporary raise of wages. But there was a graver
danger. The people were becoming trained. A new leader was coming
forward, and his writings were having a profound influence. He could not
be bullied, and he could not be bought, this Jew, Wolffert. He was
opening the eyes of the People. Unless the thing were stopped, there
would be a catastrophe which would ruin them all. This was the judgment
that McSheen and Canter and Co. arrived at. And this was the conclusion
that Mr. Canter, Sr., announced to his son and heir, Mr. Canter, Jr., at
the close of an interview in which he had discussed his affairs with
more openness than he usually employed with that audacious young
operator. "The fact is," he said, "that we have failed in the object of
our move. We have not got hold of Leigh's lines--and his men are
returning to work while ours are just beginning to fight--and instead of
getting his properties, we stand a blessed good show of losing our own.
McSheen couldn't deliver the goods and there is the devil to pay. Why
don't you stop your ---- nonsense and settle down and marry that girl?
She's the prettiest girl in town and--Well, you might go a good deal
further and fare worse. There is a good property there if we don't
destroy it fighting for it. If you are ever going to do it, now is the
time, and we are bound to have it, if possible, to save our own."
Mr. Canter, Jr., shrugged his shoulders. "How do you know she would have
me?" he asked with a sort of grin which was not altogether mirthful. He
did not feel it necessary to impart to his parent the fact that he was
beginning to have strong doubts himself on the subject. But Canter, Jr.,
was no fool.
"Well, of course, she won't, if you go spreeing around with a lot of
blanked hussies. No decent woman would. But why the deuce don't you drop
that business? You are getting old enough now to know better. And you
can't keep hitting it up as you have been doing. There's a new system
coming in in this town, and you'll get in trouble if you don't look out.
You came precious near it the other night. Those young men mean
business. Get rid of that woman."
Young Canter for once came near disclosing to his father the whole
situation and telling him the truth. He however contented himself with
his usual half-light assurance that he was all right--and that he was
going to settle down. He could not bring himself to tell him that he
found himself bound with a chain which he could not break, and that
"that woman" would not be gotten rid of. She, in fact, threatened not
only to make a terrible scandal if he attempted to leave her, but
actually menaced his life.
However, he determined to act on his father's advice. He would break off
from her and if he could carry through his plans he would marry and go
abroad and remain until the storm had blown over and "that woman" had
consoled herself with some other soft young millionaire.
Among all the people affected by the strike none suffered more, I
believe, than John Marvel and Wolffert. I never saw any one more
distressed by the suffering about them than these two men. Others
suffered physically, they mentally, and in the reflexive way which comes
from over-wrought sympathies. Where gloom and dull hate scowled from the
brows of the working class, sadness and sorrow shadowed John's brow,
though at need he always had a smile and a cheery word for every one. He
was soon reduced to his last suit of clothes, and as the cold increased,
he went about overcoatless and gloveless, walking like fury and beating
his arms to keep himself from freezing, his worn overcoat and gloves
having long since gone with everything else he had to help some one
needier than himself. "Take a long, deep breath," he used to say, "and
it will warm you up like a fire. What does a young man need with an
overcoat?" What, indeed, with the thermometer at zero, and rapidly
slipping still lower! "Those I grieve for are the old and the sick and
the young children."
However this was, he was busier than ever--going in and out among his
poor; writing letters, making calls, appealing to those able to give,
and distributing what he could collect, which, indeed, was no little,
for the people at large were sympathetic with suffering and generous to
poverty. And his ablest assistant in the work was Wolffert, if, indeed,
he was not the leader. I never knew before what one man's intellect and
zeal consecrated to a work could accomplish. The great morass of
poverty, wide and profound at all times, extending through the city,
sapping the foundations and emitting its exhalations, became now
bottomless and boundless. Into this morass Wolffert flung himself with
the earnestness of a zealot. He worked day and night, organizing relief
associations; looking after individual cases; writing letters to the
press and picturing conditions with a vividness which began to make an
impression on all sides. He counselled patience and moderation on the
part of the poor, but made no secret of his sympathy with them, and
where he dealt with the injustice shown them it was with a pen of flame.
The conservative papers charged that his letters added fuel to the
flames already blazing. It was possibly true. Certainly, the flames were
spreading.
As the strike proceeded and violence increased, those evidences of
sympathy which came in the form of contributions grew less, and at last
they began to fail perceptibly. In the commotion the foulest dregs of
the seething community were thrown up, the vilest scum rose to the top.
As in the case of Mr. Leigh's fire, whatever outrages were committed
were charged to the strikers. The press, which had begun with
expressions of sympathy with the strikers, had, under the impending
shadow, changed its tone and was now calling on the authorities to put
down lawlessness with a strong hand; demanding that the police should be
ordered to protect the property and lives of citizens, and calling on
the mayor to bestir himself and call on the governor for aid.
In this state of the case John Marvel, wishing to see what could be done
to ameliorate the conditions about him, called a meeting of his
congregation at his church one evening just before Christmas, and when
the time came the little chapel was crowded to suffocation. It was a
sombre and depressing-looking crowd that thronged the aisles of the
little building. Poverty and want were in every face. A hopeless, sullen
misery sat on every brow. The people thought that somehow some good
would come of it, and many who had never been inside the walls before
were on hand. I went in consequence of a talk I had with Marvel, who had
casually mentioned Miss Eleanor Leigh's name in connection with the
first suggestion of the call. And I was rewarded, for seated back in the
crowd, with her face a little more pallid than usual and her eyes filled
with the light of expectancy and kindness, sat Eleanor Leigh. She was
dressed with great simplicity; but her appearance was not the less
attractive, at least to me. She smiled from time to time to some
acquaintance in the sad-looking throng, but I had a pang of jealousy to
see how her gaze followed John Marvel, and one other member of the
assembly, whose presence rather surprised me, Wolffert.
After a brief service John Marvel, in a few touching and singularly apt
words, explained the reason for having called them together,
irrespective of their church relation, and urged that, as the blessed
season which was accepted by Christendom as the time of peace on earth
and good-will to all men was drawing near, they should all try to lay
aside personal feeling and hates and grievances, and try what effect
kindness and good-will would accomplish. He asked that all would try to
help each other as formerly, and trust to the Divine and Merciful Master
to right their wrongs and inspire compassion for their sufferings. He
referred to the terrible development that had just been made among
them--the discovery of Elsa and the other poor girl who had been found
at the Snow house--to the sudden arousing of the law after years of
praying and working, and with a word of compassion for the poor
creatures who had been misled and enslaved, he urged patience and prayer
as the means to secure God's all-powerful help in their distress. His
words and manner were simple and touching, and I do not attempt to give
any idea of them or of their effect. But I somehow felt as though I were
hearing the very teaching of Christ. He would call on one who was their
friend as they knew, the friend of all who needed a friend, to say a few
words to them. He turned to Wolffert. Wolffert walked forward a few
steps and turned, made a brief but powerful statement of the situation,
and counselled patience and forbearance. He knew their sufferings, he
said--he knew their fortitude. He knew their wrongs, but patience and
fortitude would in time bring a realization of it all in the minds of
the public. What was needed was to make known to the world the truth,
not as changed and distorted by ignorance or evil design, but as it
existed in fact. They had a more powerful weapon than bullets or
bayonets, the power of truth and justice. His own people had been
preserved by Jehovah through the ages by the patience and fortitude He
had given them, and God's arm was not shortened that He could not save
nor His ear dulled that He could not hear. He used the same illustration
that John Marvel had used: the unexpected arousing of the law to defend
and save poor ignorant girls, who were being dragged down to the
bottomless pit by organized infamy under the protection of men who had
made themselves more powerful than the law. For these he had a few
scathing words. He told of John Marvel's going to find Elsa, and
referred to the aid he had received from others, those connected with
the railway line on which the strike existed; and he counselled them to
protect themselves, obey the law, keep the peace, and await with
patience the justice of God. Efforts were being made to furnish them
with fuel.
It may have been Wolffert's deep, flashing eyes, his earnest manner and
vibrant voice, which affected them, for, though he held himself under
strong restraint, he was deeply affected himself; but when John Marvel,
after a brief prayer, dismissed them with the benediction, the people,
men and women, passed out in almost silence and dispersed to their
homes, and their murmured talk was all in a new key of resignation and
even of distant hope. I felt as though I had shaken off the trammels of
selfishness that had hitherto bound me, and was getting a glimpse of
what the world might become in the future. This simple follower of
Christ among his poor, threadbare like them, like them fireless and
hungry and poor, illustrated his master's teaching in a way which I had
never seen before, and it gave me a new insight into his power. I should
have liked to go up to Eleanor Leigh and make peace with her; but while
I deliberated Wolffert joined her and I walked home alone and
thoughtful.
The press next morning had a fairly full notice of the meeting--the
first that had ever been given to the work done through the chapel and
its minister. The chief notices in it were the connection of the
minister with the case of Elsa Loewen and the attack on the system made
by a Jew. One paper had the heading:
"JEW AND CHRISTIAN."
Another's headline ran:
"PREACHER MARVEL VISITS A BAGNIO."