The choleric agent’s blood was fairly up, and he now set himself to plan
for the coming warfare. When the committee from the labor union made its
appearance at four o’clock, the agent refused to treat directly with
them. He retired to his inner office, whence issued a moment later an
“open letter to the employes of the Shawsheen Mills.” The circular was
composed and written entirely by himself, and was quite characteristic
of his high-handed authority. It stated that “as the control of an owner
over his property was guaranteed by the law of the land, and was of such
unquestionable character as ought not to be meddled with by any other
individual or combination of individuals, the agent of the Shawsheen
Mills, acting for their owner, would brook no such interference as had
been attempted.” But, in bombastic language, he went on to say that, on
account of the pressure of work, he offered to take back into the mills
such operatives as, after a day’s idleness and a night’s calm
reflection, might decide to come back peacefully, and accept the old
conditions. The circular closed by adding that all returning operatives
must renounce their connection with the new Labor Union, and stating
that the Shawsheen Mills would be immediately re-opened.
This letter, as might have been expected, only served to fan the
smouldering embers of discord. It was taken at once to the quarters of
the new Union, and angrily discussed. A stormy meeting was held that
evening, and scores of new members were added to the organization, all
unanimously agreeing, not only to keep away from the mills themselves,
but to prevent other operatives from entering them. The trouble which
might have been met at the outset and subdued by candid discussion and a
fair acknowledgment on each side of the claims of the other, was changed
into a barricade of danger between labor and capital over which a battle
was to be fought, involving money and credit and losses on one side, and
daily bread for two thousand people on the other.
“Come,” said Otis Greenough, emerging from his “den” after the committee
had left the office. “I want you, Villard, and you, too, Burnham,” he
added, turning to the other superintendent, “to go with me this evening,
to the owner of these mills, and lay before her the proceedings of the
day, and our reasons for taking a firm stand. Although, precious little
difference it will make with her, I imagine, how many strikes we have,
until her income is affected! Will you be so good as to state, Villard,
what you are smiling at.”
“I was thinking, sir, that it is a queer state of affairs, when a person
owning large and influential mills like these, need not know of the
strike or be consulted with regard to it, until it is half over,”
answered Villard. He had no fear of the agent, with whom he was a
favorite, in spite of his seeming harshness. “It seems to me, if I were
a young woman, with unlimited leisure and wealth, I should care to know
something of so tremendous an interest as the Shawsheen Mills
represent—that is, if I owned them.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the agent, “that shows how much of a ladies’ man you
are, John. Much you know about the things that interest and amuse the
young ladies. By Jove! I should laugh to see the daughter of Floyd
Shepard meddling with the details of the great business he left her. She
could discuss French and Italian literature, or the different schools of
music and art, by the hour, and fairly inundate you with a flood of
learning; but when it comes to mills—why, she don’t know a loom from a
spinning-jenny—and don’t want to. I’m only going up there as a matter of
form. As for advice, she knows I wouldn’t take it, even if she has any
to offer. But courtesy—proper courtesy,” and Otis Greenough drew himself
up to his fullest height, “and the respect we owe her as the owner of
this property, demand that we go there this evening. I will call for you
in my carriage at half-past seven.”
And, so saying, he left the office.
“I reckon the old man is about right,” said Burnham, when they were
alone. “Miss Shepard knows no more about the practical affairs of her
mill, than that little white kitten over there does. She’ll meet us with
a listless, half-bored air, pretending to listen to the statements of
our chief, and all the time be wishing us at the antipodes.”
“Do you know,” interrupted John Villard, locking the door to the office
as they left it together, “I’ve very little patience with women of that
sort. Think, with her youth and health and money, what a directing,
reforming force in bringing together the conflicting interests of labor
and capital she might be! Great Heavens! I wish I had her opportunity.
I’d make something of it.”
“Oh, you are too Utopian,” replied Burnham. “It is fortunate she isn’t
that kind. We should be overwhelmed with Schemes for the Amelioration of
the Condition of This, That, and The Other Thing, until there would be
nothing left but bankruptcy for all of us. No. I want no reformers in
petticoats at the head of the Shawsheen Mills. But here I am at my
street. Good-bye, till evening.”
Salome Shepard passed a dull afternoon. Although a young woman of
resources she found herself in no mood to enjoy any of them after lunch.
The newest volume of essays seemed insufferably dull, and she turned for
relief to the latest novel; but, in spite of the fact that this book was
talked about throughout the country, she soon threw it aside with a
wearied air and sat gazing into the blazing hickory fire.
Strange! but the red-hot coals formed themselves into a group against
the dull back-log like the groups of miserable, excited men and women of
the morning against a background of rain and fog and muddy streets. It
was an uncomfortable picture, and she rose suddenly, and, going into the
music-room, seated herself at the piano. Chopin’s Nocturnes stood open
on the rack, but she tossed them aside and began some stormy Liszt
music, breaking off when half done and going to the window.
The rain had begun to fall again and the fog had settled like a pall
over everything farther off than the arched gateway. She wondered if all
those people were still standing in the mud and rain.
An elderly lady, with soft white hair and exquisite laces, came in.
Salome ran forward, pushed her aunt’s favorite chair into the position
she liked best, and put her into it.
“Why did you stop playing? And why did you attempt that brilliant
thing?” said Mrs. Soule. “You are so dreadfully out of practice, you
know.”
“It wasn’t that,” answered the younger woman; “I’m not in the mood for
playing anything. I doubt if I could get through with ‘Bounding Billows’
or the ‘Fifteenth Amusement’ to-day. Did you know, aunty, there is a
strike down at the mills?”
“A strike! Mercy, who has struck?” responded the elder in shocked tones.
“Why, the operatives, of course. I don’t know why, or anything about it.
I have never shown any interest in the mills,” she went on eagerly and
half-apologetically, “but I should like to know what it is all about—why
they did it—what they want, and all that. I should think Mr. Greenough
would come up here.”
“He will come as soon as he deems it proper.” Mrs. Soule’s voice was
calmness and precision itself. “It is not nice for young ladies to mix
themselves up in such common things.”
“But, aunty,” laughed Salome, “strikes are not common things here. We
never had one before. And I am not so very young a lady as to need the
same careful guardianship I had when I was sixteen. I am twenty-seven
years old.”
“There is no need of saying so upon all occasions, if you are,” replied
her aunt with some asperity. “A strike, like all things connected with,
or originated by the ignorant laboring class, is common in the sense of
being vulgar. Any woman, young or old, brought up as delicately and
carefully as you have been, demeans herself by connection with such
things. You have an agent—a manly and capable one; leave the settlement
of such things to him.”
“Oh, I’m not going to meddle with the strike. The very suggestion that I
would wish to have anything to do with settling the difficulty makes me
laugh.”
Salome rose and began to pace the room. “But sometimes, lately, aunty,
it has occurred to me that a young woman of average talent, with a great
business on her hands which employs two thousand people, may have
something to do in life more than to seek her own selfish enjoyment—a
pursuit which, after all, is not elevating and leaves but a restless,
unsatisfied spirit in its wake. I came across some of grandfather’s
manuscripts two or three weeks ago and have been reading them. He wasn’t
like papa. The mills were a part of his very self. The operatives were
almost like so many children to him. I’ve read in his, and in other
books, about the mill-girls of his day. Girls whose working days began
at daylight in winter and ended at half-past seven in the evening; who
had only two dresses to their backs, and those of Merrimack print; whose
profits for a week, after their board was paid, were only two dollars.
But girls who could discuss Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton at their
looms; who read Locke and Abercrombie and Pollock and Young (something I
can’t do!); who sent petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery;
who helped build churches from their pitiful savings; who wrote essays
and poems and stories, even while running their looms; who spent their
evenings in the study of German and French and botany; and who went out,
at last, to become teachers and mothers and missionaries, and, above
all, noble, self-sacrificing, helpful women. And I tell you that, with
all my money and my polished education, I envy them.”
“Salome, really, you surprise me,” exclaimed the excellent lady who was
listening to her. “Calm yourself, my dear.”
“Look at the girls in this mill—in my grandfather’s mill to-day—in my
mill,” she went on. “Beings of bangs and bangles and cheap jewelry, of
low aspirations, and correspondingly low morals! They are not to blame
for their penny-dreadful lives, because they know no better. They dream
of nothing higher than their looms and their face-powder, and their
cheap satins and false hair—why should they? They see rich and educated
women like us wrapped entirely in ourselves, each anxious to outshine
the rest, and all seemingly lost in the mad race after fashionable
attire. They do not know, poor things, that we ever think or talk of
higher subjects. I tell you, I feel that I am, somehow, responsible for
them. And yet, I don’t know how to help them. My grandfather could, but
I can’t.”
“I know nothing of such things,” coldly replied her aunt. “It is not
ladylike to fly into a passion over the fancied wrongs of a lower order
of beings. I beg that you will recollect that you are the daughter of
Cora Le Bourdillon and Floyd Shepard.”
“And more than that,” Salome whispered to herself as she sought the
quiet of her own room, “I am afraid I am the grand-daughter of Newbern
Shepard.”