Produced by Charles Aldarondo
JIMMIE HIGGINS
By Upton Sinclair
London
CONTENTS
I. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE CANDIDATE
II. JIMMIE HIGGINS HEARS A SPEECH
III. JIMMIE HIGGINS DEBATES THE ISSUE
IV. JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH
V. JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER
VI. JIMMIE HIGGINS GOES TO JAIL
VII. JIMMIE HIGGINS DALLIES WITH CUPID
VIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT
IX. JIMMIE HIGGINS RETURNS TO NATURE
X. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE OWNER
XI. JIMMIE HIGGINS FACES THE WAR
XII. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS A PATRIOT
XIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS DODGES TROUBLE
XIV. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE ROAD
XV. JIMMIE HIGGINS TURNS BOLSHEVIK
XVI. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE TEMPTER
XVII. JIMMIE HIGGINS WRESTLES WITH THE TEMPTER
XVIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE PLUNGE
XIX. JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS ON KHAKI
XX. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES A SWIM
XXI. JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS SOCIETY
XXII. JIMMIE HIGGINS WORKS FOR HIS UNCLE
XXIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE HUN
XXIV. JIMMIE HIGGINS SEES THE OTHER SIDE
XXV. JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS INTO DANGER
XXVI. JIMMIE HIGGINS DISCOVERS HIS SOUL
XXVII. JIMMIE HIGGINS VOTES FOR DEMOCRACY
JIMMIE HIGGINS
CHAPTER I
JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE CANDIDATE
I
“Jimmie,” said Lizzie, “couldn't we go see the pictures?”
And Jimmie set down the saucer of hot coffee which he was in the act
of adjusting to his mouth, and stared at his wife. He did not say
anything; in three years and a half as a married man he had learned
that one does not always say everything that comes into one's mind.
But he meditated on the abysses that lie between the masculine and
feminine intellects. That it should be possible for anyone to wish
to see a movie idol leaping into second-story windows, or being
pulled from beneath flying express trains, on this day of destiny,
this greatest crisis in history!
“You know, Lizzie,” he said, patiently, “I've got to help at the
Opera-house.”
“But you've got all morning!”
“I know; but it'll take all day.”
And Lizzie fell silent; for she too had learned much in three years
and a half of married life. She had learned that working men's wives
seldom get all they would like in this world; also that to have a
propagandist for a husband is not the worst fate that may befall.
After all, he might have been giving his time and money to drink, or
to other women; he might have been dying of a cough, like the man
next door. If one could not have a bit of pleasure on a Sunday
afternoon--well, one might sigh, but not too loud.
Jimmie began telling all the things that had to be done that Sunday
morning and afternoon. They seemed to Lizzie exactly like the things
that were done on other occasions before meetings. To be sure, this
was bigger--it was in the Opera-house, and all the stores had cards
in the windows, with a picture of the Candidate who was to be the
orator of the occasion. But it was hard for Lizzie to understand the
difference between this Candidate and other candidates--none of whom
ever got elected! Lizzie would truly rather have stayed at home, for
she did not understand English very well when it was shouted from a
platform, and with a lot of long words; but she knew that Jimmie was
trying to educate her, and being a woman, she was educated to this
extent--she knew the way to hold on to her man.
Jimmie had just discovered a new solution of the problem of getting
the babies to meetings; and Lizzie knew that he was tremendously
proud of this discovery. So long as there had been only one baby,
Jimmie had carried it. When there had come a second, Lizzie had
helped. But now there were three, the total weight of them something
over sixty pounds; and the street-car line was some distance away,
and also it hurt Jimmie in his class-consciousness to pay twenty
cents to a predatory corporation. They had tried the plan of paying
something to a neighbour to stay with the babies; but the first they
tried was a young girl who got tired and went away, leaving the
little ones to howl their heads off; and the second was a Polish
lady whom they found in a drunken stupor on their return.
But Jimmie was determined to go to meetings, and determined that
Lizzie should go along. It was one of the curses of the system, he
said, that it deprived working-class women of all chance for
self-improvement. So he had paid a visit to the “Industrial Store”,
a junk-shop maintained by the Salvation Army, and for fifteen cents
he had obtained a marvellous broad baby-carriage for twins, all
finished in shiny black enamel. One side of it was busted, but
Jimmie had fixed that with some wire, and by careful packing had
shown that it was possible to stow the youngsters in it--Jimmie and
Pete side by side, and the new baby at the foot.
The one trouble was that Jimmie Junior couldn't keep his feet still.
He could never keep any part of him still, the little
jack-in-the-box. Here he was now, tearing about the kitchen,
pursuing the ever-receding tail of the newest addition to the
family, a half-starved cur who had followed Jimmie in from the
street, and had been fed into a semblance of reality. From this
treasure a bare, round tail hung out behind in tantalizing fashion;
Jimmie Junior, always imagining he could catch it, was toddling
round and round and round the kitchen-table, clutching out in front
of him, laughing so that after a while he sat down from sheer
exhaustion.
And Jimmie Senior watched enraptured. Say, but he was a buster! Did
you ever see a twenty-seven months' old kid that could get over the
ground like that? Or make a louder noise? This last because Jimmie
Junior had tried to take a short cut through the kitchen range and
failed. Lizzie swooped down, clasping him to her broad bosom, and
pouring out words of comfort in Bohemian. As Jimmie Senior did not
understand any of these words, he took advantage of the confusion to
get his coat and cap and hustle off to the Opera-house, full of
fresh determination. For, you see, whenever a Socialist looks at his
son, or even thinks of his son, he is hotter for his job of
propagandist. Let the world be changed soon, so that the little
fellows may be spared those sufferings and humiliations which have
fallen to the lot of their parents!
II
“Comrade Higgins, have you got a hammer?” It was Comrade Schneider
who spoke, and he did not take the trouble to come down from the
ladder, where he was holding up a streamer of bunting, but waited
comfortably for the hammer to be fetched to him. And scarcely had
the fetcher started to climb before there came the voice of a woman
from across the stage: “Comrade Higgins, has the Ypsel banner come?”
And from the rear part of the hall came the rotund voice of fat
Comrade Rapinsky: “Comrade Higgins, will you bring up an extra table
for the literature?” And from the second tier box Comrade Mary Allen
spoke: “While you're downstairs, Comrade Higgins, would you mind
telephoning and making sure the Reception Committee knows about the
change in the train-time?”
So it went; and Jimmie ran about the big hall with his face red and
perspiring; for this was midsummer, and no breeze came through the
windows of the Leesville Opera-house, and when you got high up on
the walls to tie the streamers of red bunting, you felt as if you
were being baked. But the streamers had to be tied, and likewise the
big red flag over the stage, and the banner of the Karl Marx Verein,
and the banner of the Ypsels, or Young People's Socialist League of
Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and
of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers'
Co-operative Society. And because Comrade Higgins never questioned
anybody's right to give him orders, and always did everything with a
cheerful grin, people had got into the habit of regarding him as the
proper person for tedious and disagreeable tasks.
He had all the more on his hands at present, because the members of
this usually efficient local were half-distracted, like a nest of
ants that have been dug out with a shovel. The most faithful ones
showed a tendency to forget what they were doing, and to gather in
knots to talk about the news which had come over the cables and had
been published in that morning's paper. Jimmie Higgins would have
liked to hear what the rest had to say; but somebody had to keep at
work, for the local was in the hole nearly three hundred dollars for
to-night's affair, and it must succeed, even though half the
civilized world had gone suddenly insane. So Jimmie continued to
climb step-ladders and tie bunting.
When it came to lunch-time, and the members of the Decorations
Committee were going out, it suddenly occurred to one of them that
the drayman who was to bring the literature might arrive while there
was nobody to receive it. So Comrade Higgins was allowed to wait
during the lunch hour. There was a plausible excuse--he was on the
Literature Committee; indeed, he was on every committee where hard
work was involved--the committee to distribute leaflets announcing
the meeting, the committee to interview the labour unions and urge
them to sell tickets, the committee to take up a collection at the
meeting. He was not on those committees which involved honour and
edification, such as, for example, the committee to meet the
Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then
it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such
a committee; for he was just an ignorant fellow, a machinist,
undersized and undernourished, with bad teeth and roughened hands,
and no gifts or graces of any sort to recommend him; while on the
Reception Committee were a lawyer and a prosperous doctor and the
secretary of the Carpet-weavers' Union, all people who wore good
clothes and had education, and knew how to talk to a Candidate.
So Jimmie waited; and when the drayman came, he opened up the
packages of books and pamphlets and laid them out in neat piles on
the literature tables, and hung several of the more attractive ones
on the walls behind the tables; so, of course, Comrade Mabel Smith,
who was chairman of the Literature Committee, was greatly pleased
when she came back from lunch. And then came the members of the
German Liederkranz, to rehearse the programme they were to give; and
Comrade Higgins would have liked first rate to sit and listen, but
somebody discovered the need of glue, and he chased out to find a
drug-store that was open on Sunday.
Later on there was a lull, and Jimmie realized that he was hungry.
He examined the contents of his pockets and found that he had
seventeen cents. It was a long way to his home, so he would step
round the corner and have a cup of coffee and a couple of “sinkers”
at “Tom's”. He first conscientiously asked if anybody needed
anything, and Comrade Mabel Smith told him to hurry back to help her
put out the leaflets on the seats, and Comrade Meissner would need
help in arranging the chairs on the stage.
III
When you went from the Leesville Opera-house and turned West in Main
Street, you passed Heinz's Cafe, which was a “swell” eating-place,
and not for Jimmie; and then the “Bijou Nickelodeon”, with a
mechanical piano in the entrance; and the “Bon Marche Shoe Store”,
which was always having a fire-sale or a removal sale or a
bankruptcy clearing-out; and then Lipsky's “Picture Palace”, with a
brown and yellow cowboy galloping away with a red and yellow maiden
in his arms; then Harrod's “Fancy Grocery” on the corner. And in
each of these places there was a show-card in the window, with a
picture of the Candidate, and the announcement that on Sunday
evening, at eight o'clock, he would speak at the Leesville
Opera-house on “War, the Reason and the Remedy”. Jimmie Higgins
looked at the cards, and a dignified yet joyful pride stirred in his
bosom; for all of them were there because he, Jimmie, had
interviewed the proprietors and obtained their more or less
reluctant consent.
Jimmie knew that on this Sunday, in cities all over Germany,
Austria, Belgium, France and England, the workers were gathering by
millions and tens of millions, to protest against the red horror of
war being let loose over their heads. And in America too--a call
would go from the new world to the old, that the workers should rise
and carry out their pledge to prevent this crime against mankind.
He, Jimmie Higgins, had no voice that anybody would heed; but he had
helped to bring the people of his city to hear a man who had a
voice, and who would show the meaning of this world-crisis to the
working-people.
It was the party's Candidate for President. At this time only
congressional elections were pending, but this man had been
Candidate for President so often that every one thought of him in
that role. You might say that each of his campaigns lasted four
years; he travelled from one end of the land to the other, and
counted by the millions those who heard his burning, bitter message.
It had chanced that the day which the War-lords and Money-lords of
Europe had chosen to drive their slaves to slaughter was the day on
which the Candidate had been scheduled to speak in the Leesville
Opera-house. No wonder the Socialists of the little inland city were
stirred!
Jimmie Higgins turned into “Tom's Buffeteria”, and greeted the
proprietor, and seated himself on a stool in front of the counter,
and called for coffee, and helped himself to “sinkers”--which might
have been called “life-preservers”, they were blown so full of air.
He filled his mouth, at the same time looking up to make sure that
Tom had not removed the card announcing the meeting; for Tom was a
Catholic, and one of the reasons that Jimmie went to his place was
to involve him and his patrons in arguments over exploitation,
unearned increment and surplus value.
But before a discussion could be started, it chanced that Jimmie
glanced about. In the back part of the room were four little tables,
covered with oil-cloth, where “short orders” were served; and at one
of those tables a man was seated. Jimmie took a glance at him, and
started so that he almost spilled his coffee. Impossible; and
yet--surely--who could mistake that face? The face of a medieval
churchman, lean, ascetic, but with a modern touch of kindliness, and
a bald dome on top like a moon rising over the prairie. Jimmie
started, then stared at the picture of the Candidate which crowned
the shelf of pies. He turned to the man again; and the man glanced
up, and his eyes met Jimmie's, with their expression of amazement
and awe. The whole story was there, not to be misread--especially by
a Candidate who travels about the country making speeches, and being
recognized every hour or so from his pictures which have preceded
him. A smile came to his face, and Jimmie set down the coffee-cup
from one trembling hand and the “sinker” from the other, and rose
from his stool.
IV
Jimmie would not have had the courage to advance, save for the other
man's smile--a smile that was weary, but candid and welcoming.
“Howdy do, Comrade?” said the man. He held out his hand, and the
moment of this clasp was the nearest to heaven that Jimmie Higgins
had ever known.
When he was able to find his voice, it was only to exclaim, “You
wasn't due till five-forty-two!”
As if the Candidate had not known that! He explained that he had
missed his sleep the night before, and had come on ahead so as to
snatch a bit during the day. “I see,” said Jimmie; and then, “I
knowed you by your picture.”
“Yes?” said the other, patiently.
And Jimmie groped round in his addled head for something really
worth while. “You'll want to see the Committee?”
“No,” said the other, “I want to finish this first.” And he took a
sip from a glass of milk, and a bite out of a sandwich, and chewed.
So utterly rattled was Jimmie he sat there like a num-skull, unable
to find a word, while the man finished his repast. When it was over,
Jimmie said again--he could do no better--“You want to see the
Committee?”
“No,” was the reply, “I want to sit here--and perhaps talk to you,
Comrade--Comrade--?”
“Higgins,” said Jimmie.
“Comrade Higgins--that is, if you have time.”
“Oh, sure!” exclaimed Jimmie. “I got all the time there is. But the
Committee--”
“Never mind the Committee, Comrade. Do you know how many Committees
I have met on this trip?”
Jimmie did not know; nor did he have the courage to ask.
“Probably you never thought how it is to be a Candidate,” continued
the other. “You go from place to place, and make the same speech
every night, and it seems as if you slept in the same hotel every
night, and almost as if you met the same Committee. But you have to
remember that your speech is new to each audience, and you have to
make it as if you had never made it before; also you have to
remember that the Committee is made up of devoted comrades who are
giving everything for the cause, so you don't tell them that they
are just like every other committee, or that you are tired to death,
or maybe have a headache--”
Jimmie sat, gazing in awe-stricken silence. Not being a man of
reading, he had never heard of “the head that wears a crown”. This
was his first glimpse into the soul of greatness.
The Candidate went on: “And then, too, Comrade, there's the news
from Europe. I want a little time. I can't bring myself to face it!”
His voice had grown sombre, and to Jimmie, gazing at him, it seemed
that all the sorrows of the world were in his tired grey eyes.
“Perhaps I'd better go,” said Jimmie.
“No no,” replied the other, with quick self-recovery. He looked and
saw that Jimmie had forgotten his meal. “Bring your things over
here,” he said; and the other fetched his cup and saucer and plate,
and gulped the rest of his “sinkers” under the Candidate's eyes.
“I oughtn't to talk,” said the latter. “You see how hoarse I am. But
you talk. Tell me about the local, and how things are going here.”
So Jimmie summoned his courage. It was the one thing he could really
talk about, the thing of which his mind and soul were full.
Leesville was a typical small manufacturing city, with a glass
bottle works, a brewery, a carpet-factory, and the big Empire
Machine Shops, at which Jimmie himself spent sixty-three hours of
his life each week. The workers were asleep, of course; but still
you couldn't complain, the movement was growing. The local boasted
of a hundred and twenty members, though of course, only about thirty
of them could be counted on for real work. That was the case
everywhere, the Candidate put in--it was always a few who made the
sacrifice and kept things alive.
Then Jimmie went on to tell about to-night's meeting, the
preparations they had made, the troubles they had had. The police
had suddenly decided to enforce the law against delivering circulars
from house to house; though they allowed Isaac's “Emporium” to use
this method of announcement. The Leesville Herald and Evening
Courier were enthusiastic for the police action; if you couldn't
give out circulars, obviously you would have to advertise in these
papers. The Candidate smiled--he knew about American police
officials, and also about American journalism.
Jimmie had been laid off for a couple of days at the shop, and he
told how he had put this time to good use, getting announcements of
the meeting into the stores. There was an old Scotchman in a real
estate office just across the way. “Git oot!” he said. “So I thought
I'd better git oot!” said Jimmie. And then, taking his life into his
hands, he had gone into the First National Bank. There was a
gentleman walking across the floor, and Jimmie went up to him and
held out one of the placards with the picture of the Candidate.
“Would you be so good as to put this in your window?” he inquired;
and the other looked at it coldly. Then he smiled--he was a good
sort, apparently. “I don't think my customers would patronize your
business,” he said; but Jimmie went at him to take some tickets and
learn about Socialism--and would you believe it, he had actually
shelled out a dollar! “I found out afterwards that it was Ashton
Charmers, the president of the bank!” said Jimmie. “I'd a' been
scared, if I'd a' known.”
He had not meant to talk about himself; he was just trying to
entertain a tired Candidate, to keep him from brooding over a world
going to war. But the Candidate, listening, found tears trying to
steal into his eyes. He watched the figure before him--a bowed,
undernourished little man, with one shoulder lower than the other, a
straggly brown moustache stained with coffee, and stumpy black
teeth, and gnarled hands into which the dirt and grease were ground
so deeply that washing them would obviously be a waste of time. His
clothes were worn and shapeless, his celluloid collar was cracked
and his necktie was almost a rag. You would never have looked at
such a man twice on the street--and yet the Candidate saw in him one
of those obscure heroes who are making a movement which is to
transform the world.
V
“Comrade Higgins,” said the Candidate, after a bit, “let's you and
me run away.”
Jimmie looked startled. “How?”
“I mean from the Committee, and from the meeting, and from
everything.” And then, seeing the dismay in the other's face: “I
mean, let's take a walk in the country.”
“Oh!” said Jimmie.
“I see it through the windows of the railroad-cars, but I don't set
foot on it for months at a time. And I was brought up in the
country. Were you?”
“I was brought up everywhere,” said the little machinist.
They got up, and paid each their ten cents to the proprietor of the
“Buffeteria.” Jimmie could not resist the temptation to introduce
his hero, and show a pious Catholic that a Socialist Candidate had
neither hoofs nor horns. The Candidate was used to being introduced
for that purpose and had certain spontaneous and cordial words which
he had said not less than ten thousand times before; with the result
that the pious Catholic gave his promise to come to the meeting that
night.
They went out; and because some member of the Committee might be
passing on Main Street, Jimmie took his hero by an alley into a back
street; and they walked past the glass-factory, which to the
outsider was a long board fence, and across the Atlantic Western
railroad tracks, and past the carpet-factory, a huge four-story box
made of bricks; after which the rows of wooden shacks began to thin
out, and there were vacant lots and ash-heaps, and at last the
beginning of farms.
The Candidate's legs were long, and Jimmie's, alas, were short, so
he had almost to run. The sun blazed down on them, and sweat,
starting from the Candidate's bald head stole under the band of his
straw hat and down to his wilting collar; so he took off his coat
and hung it over his arm, and went on, faster than ever. Jimmie
raced beside him, afraid to speak, for he divined that the Candidate
was brooding over the world-calamity, the millions of young men
marching out to slaughter. On the placards which Jimmie had been
distributing in Leesville, there were two lines about the Candidate,
written by America's favourite poet:
As warm heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and judgement seat.
So they went on for perhaps an hour, by which time they were really
in the country. They came to a bridge which crossed the river Lee,
and there the Candidate suddenly stopped, and stood looking at the
water sliding below him, and at the vista through which it wound, an
avenue of green trees with stretches of pasture and cattle grazing.
“That looks fine,” he said. “Let's go down.” So they climbed a
fence, and made their way along the river for a distance, until a
turn of the stream took them out of sight of the road.
There they sat on a shelving bank, and mopped the perspiration from
their foreheads and necks, and gazed into the rippling current. You
couldn't exactly say it was crystal clear, for when there is a town
every ten miles or so along a stream, with factories pouring various
kinds of chemicals into it, the job becomes too much for the
restoring forces of Mother Nature. But it would take a dirty stream
indeed not to look inviting in midsummer after a four-mile walk. So
presently the Candidate turned to Jimmie, with a mischievous look
upon his face. “Comrade Higgins, were you ever in a swimmin' hole?”
“Sure I was!” said Jimmie.
“Where?”
“Everywhere. I was on the road off an' on ten years--till I got
married.”
“Well,” said the Candidate, still smiling, “what do you say?”
“I say sure!” replied Jimmie.
He was almost beside himself with awe, at this unbelieveable strange
fortune, this real comradeship with the hero of his dreams. To
Jimmie this man had been a disembodied intelligence, a dispenser of
proletarian inspiration, a supernatural being who went about the
country standing upon platforms and swaying the souls of multitudes.
It had never occurred to Jimmie that he might have a bare body, and
might enjoy splashing about in cool water like a boy playing
“hookey” from school. The saying is that familiarity breeds
contempt, but for Jimmie it bred rapture.
VI
They walked home again, more slowly. The Candidate asked Jimmie
about his life, and Jimmie told the story of a Socialist--not one of
the leaders, the “intellectuals”, but of the “rank and file”.
Jimmie's father was a working man out of a job, who had left his
family before Jimmie had joined it; Jimmie's mother had died three
years later, so he did not remember her, nor could he recall a word
of the foreign language he had spoken at home, nor did he even know
what the language was. He had been taken in charge by the city, and
farmed out to a negro woman who had eight miserable starvelings
under her care, feeding them on gruel and water, and not even giving
them a blanket in winter. You might not think that possible--
“I know America,” put in the Candidate.
Jimmie went on. At nine he had been boarded with a woodsaw man, who
worked him sixteen hours a day and beat him in addition; so Jimmie
had skipped out, and for ten years had lived the life of a street
waif in the cities and a hobo on the road. He had learned a bit
about machinery, helping in a garage, and then, in a rush-time, he
had got a job in the Empire Machine Shops. He had stayed in
Leesville, because he had got married; he had met his wife in a
brothel, and she had wanted to quit the life, and they had taken a
chance together.
“I don't tell that to everybody,” said Jimmie. “You know--they
mightn't understand. But I don't mind you knowin'.”
“Thank you,” replied the Candidate, and put his hand on Jimmie's
shoulder. “Tell me how you became a Socialist.”
There was nothing special about that, was the answer. There had been
a fellow in the shop who was always “chewing the rag”; Jimmie had
laughed at him--for his life had made him suspicious of everybody,
and if there was any sort of politician, it was just another scheme
of somebody to wear a white collar and live off the workers. But the
fellow had kept pegging away; and once Jimmie had been laid off for
a couple of months, and the family had near starved, and that had
given him time to think, and also the inclination. The fellow had
come along with some papers, and Jimmie had read them, and it dawned
upon him that here was a movement of his fellow-workers to put an
end to their torments.
“How long ago was that?” asked the Candidate, and Jimmie answered
three years. “And you haven't lost your enthusiasm?” This with an
intensity that surprised Jimmie. No, he answered, he was not that
kind. Whatever happened, he would keep pegging away at the task of
freeing labour. He would not see the New Day, perhaps, but his
children would see it; and a fellow would work like the devil to
save his children.
So they came to the city; and the Candidate pressed Jimmie's arm.
“Comrade,” he said, “I want to tell you how much good this little
trip has done me. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Me?” exclaimed Jimmie.
“You have given me fresh hope and courage, and at a time when I felt
beaten. I got into town this morning, and I'd had no sleep, and I
tried to get some in the hotel and couldn't, because of the horror
that's happening. I wrote a dozen telegrams and sent them off, and
then I was afraid to go back to the hotel-room, because I knew I'd
only lie awake all afternoon. But now--I remember that our movement
is rooted in the hearts of the people!”
Jimmie was trembling. But all he could say was: “I wish I could do
it every Sunday.”
“So do I,” said the Candidate.
VII
They walked down Main Street, and some way ahead they saw a crowd
gathered, filling the pavement beyond the kerb. “What is that?”
asked the Candidate, and Jimmie answered that it was the office of
the Herald. There must be some news.
The other hastened his steps; and Jimmie, striding alongside, fell
silent again, knowing that the gigantic burden and woe of the world
was falling upon his hero's shoulders once more. They came to the
edge of the crowd, and saw a bulletin in front of the newspaper
office. But it was too far away for them to read. “What is it?” they
asked.
“It says the Germans are going to march into Belgium. And they've
shot a lot of Socialists in Germany.”
“WHAT?” And the Candidate's hand clutched Jimmie's arm.
“That's what it says.”
“My God!” exclaimed the man. And he began pushing his way into the
crowd, with Jimmie in his wake. They got to the bulletin, and stood
reading the typewritten words--a bare announcement that more than a
hundred leading German Socialists had been executed for efforts to
prevent mobilization. They continued staring, until people pushing
behind them caused them to draw back. Outside the throng they stood,
the Candidate gazing into space, and Jimmie gazing at the Candidate,
both of them dumb. It was a fact that they could not have been more
shocked if the news had referred to the members of Local Leesville
of the Socialist Party of America.
The pain in the Candidate's face was so evident that Jimmie groped
about in his head for something comforting to say. “At least they
done what they could,” he whispered.
The other suddenly burst forth: “They are heroes! They have made the
name Socialist sacred for ever!” He rushed on, as if he were making
a speech-so strong becomes a life-time habit. “They have written
their names at the very top of humanity's roll of honour! It doesn't
make any difference what happens after this, Comrade--the movement
had vindicated itself! All the future will be changed because of
this event!”
He began to walk down the street, talking more to himself than to
Jimmie. He was borne away on the wings of his vision; and his
companion was so thrilled that he honestly did not know where he
was. Afterwards, when he looked back upon this scene, it remained
the most wonderful event of his life; he told the story, sooner or
later, to every Socialist he met.
Presently the Candidate stopped. “Comrade,” he said, “I must go to
the hotel. I want to write some telegrams. You explain to the
Committee--I'd rather not see anyone till time for the meeting. I'll
find the way myself.”