THE GLORIOUS FOURTH
A good deal of water ran under the Woodruff District bridges in the weeks
between the school election and the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile
Grove. They were very important weeks to Jim Irwin, though outwardly
uneventful. Great events are often mere imperceptible developments of the
spirit.
Spring, for instance, brought a sort of spiritual crisis to Jim; for he
had to face the accusing glance of the fields as they were plowed and sown
while he lived indoors. As he labored at the tasks of the Woodruff school
he was conscious of a feeling not very easily distinguished from a sense
of guilt. It seemed that there must be something almost wicked in his
failure to be afield with his team in the early spring mornings when the
woolly anemones appeared in their fur coats, the heralds of the later
comers--violets, sweet-williams, puccoons, and the scarlet prairie
lilies.
A moral crisis accompanies the passing of a man from the struggle with the
soil to any occupation, the productiveness of which is not quite so clear.
It requires a keenly sensitive nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim
Irwin possessed such a temperament; and from the beginning of the daily
race with the seasons, which makes the life of a northern farmer an eight
months' Marathon in which to fall behind for a week is to lose much of the
year's reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept uneasily, and heard the
earliest cock-crow as a soldier hears a call to arms to which he has made
up his mind he will not respond.
I think there is a real moral principle involved. I believe that this deep
instinct for labor in and about the soil is a valid one, and that the
gathering together of people in cities has been at the cost of an obscure
but actual moral shock.
I doubt if the people of the cities can ever be at rest in a future full
of moral searchings of conscience until every man has traced definitely
the connection of the work he is doing with the maintenance of his
country's population. Sometimes those vocations whose connection can not
be so traced will be recognized as wicked ones, and people engaged in them
will feel as did Jim--until he worked out the facts in the relation of
school-teaching to the feeding, clothing and sheltering of the world. Most
school-teaching he believed--correctly or incorrectly--has very little to
do with the primary task of the human race; but as far as his teaching was
concerned, even he believed in it. If by teaching school he could not make
a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than
by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could
make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue
between him and the local body politic.
These are some of the waters that ran under the bridges before the Fourth
of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. Few surface indications there were of
any change in the little community in this annual gathering of friends and
neighbors. Wilbur Smythe made the annual address, and was in rather finer
fettle than usual as he paid his fervid tribute to the starry flag, and to
this very place as the most favored spot in the best country of the
greatest state in the most powerful, intellectual, freest and most
progressive nation in the best possible of worlds. Wilbur was going
strong. Jim Irwin read the Declaration rather well, Jennie Woodruff
thought, as she sat on the platform between Deacon Avery, the oldest
settler in the district, and Mrs. Columbus Brown, the sole local
representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonel
Woodruff presided in his Grand Army of the Republic uniform.
The fresh northwest breeze made free with the oaks, elms, hickories and
box-elders of Eight-Mile Grove, and the waters of Pickerel Creek glimmered
a hundred yards away, beyond the flitting figures of the boys who
preferred to shoot off their own fire-crackers and torpedoes and
nigger-chasers, rather than to listen to those of Wilbur Smythe. Still
farther off could be heard the voice of a lone lemonade vender as he
advertised ice-cold lemonade, made in the shade, with a brand-new spade,
by an old maid, as a guaranty that it was the blamedest, coldest lemonade
ever sold. And under the shadiest trees a few incorrigible Marthas were
spreading the snowy tablecloths on which would soon be placed the
bountiful repasts stored in ponderous wicker baskets and hampers. It was a
lovely day, in a lovely spot--a good example of the miniature forests
which grew naturally from time immemorial in favored locations on the Iowa
prairies--half a square mile of woodland, all about which the green
corn-rows stood aslant in the cool breeze, "waist-high and laid by."
They were passing down the rough board steps from the platform after the
exercises had terminated in a rousing rendition of _America_, when Jennie
Woodruff, having slipped by everybody else to reach him, tapped Jim Irwin
on the arm. He looked back at her over his shoulder with his slow gentle
smile.
"Isn't your mother here, Jim?" she asked. "I've been looking all over the
crowd and can't see her."
"She isn't here," answered Jim. "I was in hopes that when she broke loose
and went to your Christmas dinner she would stay loose--but she went home
and settled back into her rut."
"Too bad," said Jennie. "She'd have had a nice time if she had come."
"Yes," said Jim, "I believe she would."
"I want help," said Jennie. "Our hamper is terribly heavy. Please!"
It was rather obvious to Mrs. Bonner that Jennie was throwing herself at
Jim's head; but that was an article of the Bonner family creed since the
decision which closed the hearing at the court-house. It must be admitted
that the young county superintendent found tasks which kept the
schoolmaster very close to her side. He carried the hamper, helped Jennie
to spread the cloth on the grass, went with her to the well for water and
cracked ice wherewith to cool it. In fact, he quite cut Wilbur Smythe out
when that gentleman made ponderous efforts to obtain a share of the favor
implied in these permissions.
"Sit down, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "you've earned a bite of what we've
got. It's good enough, what there is of it, and there's enough of it, such
as it is!"
"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but I've a prior engagement."
"Why, Jim!" protested Jennie. "I've been counting on you. Don't desert
me!"
"I'm awfully sorry," said Jim, "but I promised. I'll see you later."
One might have thought, judging by the colonel's quizzical smile, that he
was pleased at Jennie's loss of her former swain.
"We'll have to invite Jim longer ahead of time," said he. "He's getting to
be in demand."
He seemed to be in demand--a fact that Jennie confirmed by observation as
she chatted with Deacon Avery, Mrs. Columbus Brown and her husband, and
the Orator of the Day, at the table set apart for the guests and notables.
Jim received a dozen invitations as he passed the groups seated on the
grass--one of them from Mrs. Cornelius Bonner, who saw no particular point
in advertising disgruntlement. The children ran to him and clung to his
hands; young girls gave him sisterly smiles and such trifles as chicken
drumsticks, pieces of cake and like tidbits. His passage to the numerous
groups at a square table under a big burr-oak was quite an ovation--an
ovation of the significance of which he was himself quite unaware. The
people were just friendly, that was all--to his mind.
But Jennie--the daughter of a politician and a promising one
herself--Jennie sensed the fact that Jim Irwin had won something from the
people of the Woodruff District in the way of deference. Still he was the
gangling, Lincolnian, ill-dressed, poverty-stricken Jim Irwin of old, but
Jennie had no longer the feeling that one's standing was somewhat
compromised by association with him. He had begun to put on something more
significant than clothes, something which he had possessed all the time,
but which became valid only as it was publicly apprehended. There was a
slight air of command in his down-sitting and up-rising at the picnic. He
was clearly the central figure of his group, in which she recognized the
Bronsons, those queer children from Tennessee, the Simmses, the Talcotts,
the Hansens, the Hamms and Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, whose other
name is not recorded.
Jim sat down between Bettina Hansen, a flaxen-haired young Brunhilde of
seventeen, and Calista Simms--Jennie saw him do it, while listening to
Wilbur Smythe's account of the exacting nature of the big law practise he
was building up,--and would have been glad to exchange places with Calista
or Bettina.
The repast drew to a close; and over by the burr-oak the crowd had grown
to a circle surrounding Jim Irwin.
"He seems to be making an address," said Wilbur Smythe.
"Well, Wilbur," replied the colonel, "you had the first shot at us.
Suppose we move over and see what's under discussion."
As they approached the group, they heard Jim Irwin answering something
which Ezra Bronson had said.
"You think so, Ezra," said he, "and it seems reasonable that big
creameries like those at Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other
centralizer points can make butter cheaper than we would do here--but
we've the figures that show that they aren't economical."
"They can't make good butter, for one thing," said Newton Bronson
cockily.
"Why can't they?" asked Olaf Hansen, the father of Bettina.
"Well," said Newton, "they have to have so much cream that they've got to
ship it so far that it gets rotten on the way, and they have to renovate
it with lime and other ingredients before they can churn it."
"Well," said Raymond Simms, "I reckon they sell their butter fo' all it's
wuth; an' they cain't get within from foah to seven cents a pound as much
fo' it as the farmers' creameries in Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo'
theirs."
"That's a fact, Olaf," said Jim.
"How do you kids know so darned much about it?" queried Pete.
"Huh!" sniffed Bettina. "We've been reading about it, and writing letters
about it, and figuring percentages on it in school all winter. We've done
arithmetic and geography and grammar and I don't know what else on it."
"Well, I'm agin' any schoolin'," said Pete, "that makes kids smarter in
farmin' than their parents and their parents' hired men. Gi' me another
swig o' that lemonade, Jim!"
"You see," said Jim to his audience, meanwhile pouring the lemonade, "the
centralizer creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It has to pay
excessive transportation charges. It has to pay excessive commissions to
its cream buyers. It has to accept cream without proper inspection, and
mixes the good with the bad. It makes such long shipments that the cream
spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the butter. It can't make the
best use of the buttermilk. All these losses and leaks the farmers have to
stand. I can prove--and so can the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff
school who have been working on the cream question this winter--that we
could make at least six cents a pound on our butter if we had a
cooperative creamery and all sent our cream to it."
"Well," said Ezra Bronson, "let's start one."
"I'll go in," said Olaf Hansen.
"Me, too," said Con Bonner.
There was a general chorus of assent. Jim had convinced his audience.
"He's got the jury," said Wilbur Smythe to Colonel Woodruff.
"Yes," said the colonel, "and right here is where he runs into danger. Can
he handle the crowd when it's with him?"
"Well," said Jim, "I think we ought to organize one, but I've another
proposition first. Let's get together and pool our cream. By that, I mean
that we'll all sell to the same creamery, and get the best we can out of
the centralizers by the cooperative method. We can save two cents a pound
in that way, and we'll learn to cooperate. When we have found just how
well we can hang together, we'll be able to take up the cooperative
creamery, with less danger of falling apart and failing."
"Who'll handle the pool?" inquired Mr. Hansen.
"We'll handle it in the school," answered Jim.
"School's about done," objected Mr. Bronson.
"Won't the cream pool pretty near pay the expenses of running the school
all summer?" asked Bonner.
"We ought to run the school plant all the time," said Jim. "It's the only
way to get full value out of the investment. And we've corn-club work,
pig-club work, poultry work and canning-club work which make it very
desirable to keep in session with only a week's vacation. If you'll add
the cream pool, it will make the school the hardest working crowd in the
district and doing actual farm work, too. I like Mr. Bonner's
suggestion."
"Well," said Haakon Peterson, who had joined the group, "Ay tank we better
have a meeting of the board and discuss it."
"Well, darn it," said Columbus Brown, "I want in on this cream pool--and I
live outside the district!"
"We'll let you in, Clumb," said the colonel.
"Sure!" said Pete. "We hain't no more sense than to let any one in, Clumb.
Come in, the water's fine. We ain't proud!"
"Well," said Clumb, "if this feller is goin' to do school work of this
kind, I want in the district, too."
"We'll come to that one of these days," said Jim. "The district is too
small."
Wilbur Smythe's car stopped at the distant gate and honked for him--a
signal which broke up the party. Haakon Peterson passed the word to the
colonel and Mr. Bronson for a board meeting the next evening. The picnic
broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples to their homes, and
young folks in top buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in the
surrounding villages. Jim walked across the fields to his home--neither
old nor young, having neither sweetheart with whom to dance nor farm to
demand labor in its inexorable chores. He turned after crawling through a
wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as she was suavely assisted into
the car by the frock-coated lawyer.
"You saw what he did?" said the colonel interrogatively, as he and his
daughter sat on the Woodruff veranda that evening. "Who taught him the
supreme wisdom of holding back his troops when they grew too wild for
attack?"
"He may lose them," said Jennie.
"Not so," said the colonel. "Individuals of the Brown Mouse type always
succeed when they find their environment. And I believe Jim has found
his."
"Well," said Jennie, "I wish his environment would find him some clothes.
It's a shame the way he has to go looking. He'd be nice-appearing if he
was dressed anyway."
"Would he?" queried the colonel. "I wonder, now! Well, Jennie, as his
oldest friend having any knowledge of clothes, I think it's up to you to
act as a committee of one on Jim's apparel."