It was nearly eight o’clock when carriage-wheels were heard coming up
the graveled drive-way, and Otis Greenough and his associates were
announced. Salome and her aunt were sitting in the music-room, and came
forward at once; the former with an unmistakable air of eagerness.
“Tell me about the strike, Mr. Greenough,” she asked, before he had
fairly seated himself.
“Oh, then, you’d heard of it, eh?” he asked.
“I saw something of it this morning, driving through the town. I could
not help knowing what it was. But why did they do it? What do they
want?”
“They did it,” and Otis Greenough sat up with a judicial air, “because
they are rascally dogs, and do not know when they are well off. And they
want?—well,—the earth—more pay, shorter hours, and the Lord knows what
besides.”
“Well, and why shouldn’t they have it?”
The question fell like a bomb upon her surprised audience.
“To be sure, I know very little of these things, practically, although I
have taken the prescribed doses of social economy in my readings under
Professor Townsend,” she went on; “but it has occurred to me, within a
few days, that the laboring classes have very little control over their
own lives, and are not much more than slaves to us who hold the reins of
power.”
“Bless me!” thought Otis Greenough, staring at her. If his office-door
had suddenly spoken, offering him officious counsel as to his method of
conducting the mills, he could hardly have been more surprised. “Bless
me! No Floyd Shepard about her.”
“If the operatives are poorly paid, and we are making more money than
ever before (I think I understood you so the other day?),” the young
woman was saying, “why shouldn’t their wages be raised? It seems but
fair, to me.”
“Much you know about it, little girl,” Mr. Greenough found voice to say,
addressing her as he used to in by-gone days, when she occasionally
strayed into the mills and teased to be taken through them. “Much any
young lady of the world can know of such matters. We would not have you
turn from being your own charming self, and become a learned
blue-stocking, or bloomered reformer; but there are many, many reasons
which come between the questions of profit and loss, and the petty
details of operatives’ wages, which cannot be explained to you here and
now. They were contented enough until some rascal or other, having
become imbued with the spirit of these labor unions starting up all over
the country, must needs organize one here. By Jove! I’ll employ
detectives and hunt out the disturbing elements and shut them up. I have
offered every mother’s son a chance to go back to work to-morrow
morning, on condition that he drops this union business; but I am told
to-night that not one of them will accept. Ignorant creatures! I’ll show
’em what it means to fight a rich and strong concern like this, in the
vain hope of bringing us to their terms.”
“Meanwhile,” it was Villard who spoke, “we are to go on resisting their
combined ignorance and impatience, and perhaps worse elements, losing
thousands of dollars in the warfare, are we?”
“Yes, rather than give in one inch to them,” answered Mr. Greenough.
“This is the first organized strike and must be made a warning to future
disturbers. It’s those confounded Englishmen trying to transplant their
foreign ideas to American soil. If we give in to them now, we establish
a bad precedent.”
“I must confess,” said Villard, “that I do not see it. I have seen
several strikes, and know that generally both sides lose sight of
reason, and determine to fight it out regardless of cost. I am afraid,
with the course you propose to adopt, sir, that we shall go on until the
losses on our side or the suffering and privation on theirs will become
unbearable; and then one side or the other will be forced to yield. If
it should be they, a smouldering resentment will be left, ready to break
out anew at the first convenient season. If we, they will feel
encouraged to try still more arbitrary measures in the future. Or if a
compromise be effected, it will be one that might as well be made
to-morrow.”
“You talk well for a young man,” admitted Mr. Greenough. “How did you
come by your exceedingly humane and sympathetic views?”
“I began as an employe myself,” answered Villard, “and I know how they
feel to some extent. I know what it is to work at the lowest drudgery of
a mill, and can imagine how it must seem to have no hope of ever rising
to a higher position. Hard, unremitting toil, long hours with endless
years of hopeless work in prospect, the lowest possible wages, a large
and rapidly increasing family, with perhaps an aged parent or invalid
wife to support—I tell you lots of those fellows have all that to bear,
knowing the utter impossibility of ever saving anything, or of raising
their own condition. I say, sir, looking at life from their standpoint,
it’s mighty hard.”
“Well, well,” put in Mr. Greenough, testily, “a great many of them want
nothing better. They would not know what to do with a better chance for
life, as you call it, if they had it.”
“Simply put yourself in their place, sir,” said Villard. “What if you
were forty years younger than you are, and condemned to a life of toil
at the looms, for instance, would you not claim the right to combine
with others of like occupation and interests and ask for a better
chance? These men of ours have taken an unreasonable way of asserting
themselves, but I think they are entitled to our respect, and should be
dealt with as men. An open, fair discussion of the wage question or the
ten-hour law can result in nothing but good for both sides.”
“You are young,” Mr. Greenough replied, “and believe everything in this
world can be made to run exactly as you want it. When you are older,
you’ll realize better the indifference and general mulishness of the
world, and of operatives in particular. I do not believe in meeting and
deferring to them as equals. They are not worth our efforts, and so long
as they are under the influence of hot-headed devils who pose as labor
reformers, just so long we are going to see trouble.”
“If we were to make a fair compromise with them,” Mr. Burnham was
speaking for the first time, “and let them see that we, as humane
employers, have a greater desire for their interest than any foreigner
can have, wouldn’t it work a reaction in our favor? From a strictly
business point of view, perhaps it would be money in our pockets.”
“Yes,” urged Villard, “if we were to show ourselves willing to consider
an intimate knowledge of their needs and thus prove ourselves their best
friends, it would be only a case of practical philanthropy, and one
which would raise our profits every year, I believe. It is only the
first step that costs, you know.”
“I don’t believe it,” stoutly maintained the agent. “In my day there has
been very little talk of managers and owners deferring to their help. I
hire my own operatives and reserve the right to raise, or lower, their
wages as I please.”
“But, Mr. Greenough,” broke in Salome eagerly, “don’t you consider their
circumstances at all? Don’t you, for instance, in a driving time, pay
them any higher wages than in dull times? I think there would be nothing
but fairness in that.”
“My dear young lady,” was the answer in patronizing tones, “don’t bother
your brains with such things. You cannot understand them. Why try?”
“Imagine our Salome posing as a philanthropist or a social economist,”
interrupted Mrs. Soule’s mellifluous tones. “We had a great laugh over
the idea this afternoon.”
Salome bit her lip and said nothing.
“I think,” continued her aunt in the same smooth accents, “that we have
talked business long enough. I am sure, Mr. Greenough, that Salome is,
and will be perfectly satisfied with any course you may see fit to adopt
with regard to the strikers. Women, you know, ladies at least, have no
heads for business, and we, certainly,” with an indescribable turn of
voice on the “we”—“we, certainly, have had no training to fit us for
reformers. And now shall we not have some music? Salome, dear, will you
play that delightful little suite of Moscowzki’s that I like so well?”
The young woman rose and, going to the piano, did as she was bid,
although somewhat mechanically. Then Mr. Greenough proposed a song from
Mr. Burnham, who possessed a fine baritone voice, and the evening wore
away with music and light conversation.
When the three men went home, the elder was in fine spirits, in spite of
having been shocked and discomfited to an unusual degree, by the
unexpected disclosure of views which he termed “strong-minded” on the
part of the fair owner of the Shawsheen Mills.
“If there should come to be hard times and perhaps destitution among the
operatives before this difficulty is settled,” Salome said to John
Villard as he was preparing to go, “such destitution as we read of in
foreign countries in times of labor disturbances, I hope you will let me
do something to relieve it. Strange as it may seem, I have a much better
idea of such a state of affairs there than here—among my own mills.”
“There will be no such state of affairs, I trust,” was his reply, “as is
pictured in English novels.”
“You have guessed accurately as to the sources of my information,” she
laughed.
He smiled too, and continued,
“Meanwhile, if we pursue the policy proposed,” and he glanced at Mr.
Greenough, who was making gallant speeches to Mrs. Soule, “you might
keep a watchful eye on the help. You could tell, you know, by the women,
if they came to absolute distress. Of course, there is no knowing how
long this thing may last.”
“Me! You look to me for such a thing,” and it was hard to tell whether
her tone was amused or sarcastic only. “Why, Mr. Villard, I do not know
one of the operatives in the mills—not even by sight. If I were to meet
them on the main thoroughfare to-morrow I should not know them from
other women of their class.”
John Villard raised his eyebrows and turned to put on his coat without
another word. The situation was incomprehensible to him.
Salome saw this, and winced under it. She made no further attempt at
conversation, but said good-night graciously to Mr. Greenough and the
older superintendent, recognizing Villard’s parting nod at the door.
“There,” said her aunt, as they went back into the firelight, “I hope
they won’t feel it necessary to come here and consult with us again so
long as the strike is on. As though you knew or cared anything for it,
my dear! But, of course, they had to come as a matter of form. Any way,
I’m glad it is over. Play something.”
Salome complied, playing the first thing which came to her mind—the
opening bars of the _Sonata Pathetique_.
“I wish,” she said to herself as she disrobed for the night, “that I
were a capable woman of affairs—and that John Villard were my agent.”