A brakeman stuck his head in the end window of the box car and shouted
at me:
“Where're you going?”
“Birmingham,” I answered.
“What have you got to go on?”
I had some money in my belt, but I would need that for the
boarding-house keeper in the Alabama iron town. So I drew something from
my vest pocket and said:
“This is all I've got left.”
The trainman examined it by the dim light at the window. His eye told
him that it was a fine gold watch. “All right,” he said as he pocketed
it and went away. I never knew whether I cheated the brakeman or the
brakeman cheated me. The watch wasn't worth as much as the ride, but the
ride wasn't his to sell.
I had bought the watch in Cincinnati. A fake auction in a pawnshop
attracted my attention as I walked along a street near the depot. The
auctioneer was offering a “solid gold, Swiss movement, eighteen jeweled
watch” to the highest bidder. “This watch belongs to my friend Joe
Coupling,” he said, “a brakeman on the B. & O. He was in a wreck and
is now in the hospital. Everybody knows that one of the best things a
railroader has is his watch. He only parts with it as a matter of life
and death. Joe has got to sell his watch and somebody is going to get
a bargain. This watch cost eighty-five dollars and you couldn't buy the
like of it to-day for one hundred. How much am I offered?” Some one bid
five dollars, and the bidding continued until it was up to twenty-five
dollars. At that price the watch was declared sold, and I strolled on,
thinking the matter over. I figured that the story of Joe the injured
brakeman must be false. If he had an eighty-five-dollar watch he could
borrow forty on it. Why should his “friend” have sold it outright for
twenty-five? The fakery of it was plain to any one who stopped to think.
Who then would be fool enough to pay twenty-five dollars for a fake
watch at a side auction? Not I. I was too wise. “How easy it is,” I said
to myself, “to solve a skin game.”
The next day I happened to pass the place again and they were selling
the same watch. I listened for the second time to the sad story of
Joe the brakeman. He was still in the hospital and still willing to
sacrifice his eighty-five-dollar gold watch to the highest bidder. Just
for fun I started off the bidding at two dollars. The auctioneer at once
knocked down the watch to me and took my money. The speed of it dazed
me, and I stumbled along the street like a fool. What was the game? I
held the glittering watch in my hand and gazed at it like a hypnotized
bird. I came to another pawnshop and went in. “What will you give me on
this watch?” I asked. The pawnbroker glanced at it and said he couldn't
give me anything but advice.
“I can buy these watches for three dollars a dozen. They are made to be
sold at auction. The case is not gold and the works won't run.”
I had been caught in the game after all. The whole show had been put on
for me. The men who did the bidding the first day were “with the show.”
Their scheme was to get a real bid from me. When I failed to bite, they
rung down the curtain and waited for the next come-on. The show was
staged again for me the following day, and that time they got me. I had
the “brakeman's watch” and he had the laugh on me. In the next wreck
that Brakeman Joe got into I wished him the same luck Comrade Bannerman
wished for the trainload of plutocrats. “If I should meet Joe now,” I
said, “I'd gladly give him back the timepiece that he prizes so.” Let us
hope that the brakeman I gave the watch to down in Alabama was Brakeman
Joe.
There was much to think of in that auction incident. Experience will
often give the lie to theory. My theory of the game was good enough for
me. I acted on my theory, and they got my money. Perhaps the theory of
Bannerman was wrong. He claimed he knew just how the capitalists were
robbing labor. Suppose we backed his theory with some money and got
stung? I was now theory shy and I have stayed away from theories ever
since.
If you know the facts, no swindle can deceive you. I spend my life in
getting facts. I now have seen enough to know that capitalism is not a
swindle. If all hands labored hard and honestly the system would enrich
us all. Some workers are dishonest and they gouge the employers. Some
employers are dishonest and they gouge the workers. But whether employer
or employee does the robbing, the public is the one that's robbed. And
they are both members of the public. In making the world poorer they are
rendering a sorry service to the world.
Dishonesty is the thing that does the trick. And it is not confined to
any class. It was not a capitalist but a slick wind worker who robbed
me by the watch swindle. He had to swing his jaw for hours every day in
order to steal a few dollars.