It is true that First Sergeant Barriscale took into serious consideration
the question of an attempt to block the confirmation of his rival’s
election to the first lieutenancy.
But when he consulted with his father about the matter, the elder
Barriscale advised against such action. Not that he had any love for
McCormack. He was against him as bitterly as was his son. But he had
a longer head than had his boy, and he felt that the time was not yet
ripe in which to inaugurate a movement that would do the young officer
the most injury. Hal had not renounced his socialistic leanings, nor
had he forsaken his radical associates. Of that fact the Barriscales
had assured themselves, and with that fact, and what it promised for
the future, they were at present content.
“Give him rope enough, and he’ll hang himself,” was the sententious
comment of the elder Barriscale.
So, in due time, Lieutenant McCormack received his commission and
took the oath required of commissioned officers. It was an oath the
obligation of which stared him in the face many times in the days that
were to come.
“I do solemnly swear that to the best of my knowledge and
ability I will support and defend the Constitution of the
United States, and of the State of Pennsylvania, against
all enemies foreign and domestic; and that I will well and
faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am
about to enter. So help me God.
“HALPERT MCCORMACK,
_First Lieutenant Company E,
----th Regiment, N. G. P.,
Fairweather, Pa._”
“Sworn to and subscribed before me
this 21st day of October, A. D. 1915.
“ELON A. CONYBEARE,
_Major, Staff of_ BRIG.-GEN’L. SAML. A. FINLETTER.”
So, at last, Hal had his shoulder-straps, his officer’s uniform, and
his equipment. Much against his inclination he had been obliged to
accept these things as a gift from his Aunt Sarah Halpert. Not to have
done so would, as she herself declared, have completely broken her
heart.
“I can’t go and fight,” she said to him; “not but what I’d be perfectly
willing to, but they wouldn’t let me. So the next best thing for me to
do was to furnish you with your fighting togs. And you’ll have a chance
to use ’em; take my word for it. Uncle Sam’s soldiers are going to have
some fighting to do before things get settled.”
“I hope not, Aunt Sarah.”
“You hope not! Why, you weak-kneed pacifist! If this government doesn’t
jump in and help France and England smash the Kaiser, I’ll be ashamed
of my flag.”
“It’s not our quarrel.”
“Of course it’s our quarrel. Those stupid German blunderers have made
it our quarrel. They’ve trodden on Uncle Sam’s coat-tails once a week
for a year. They’ll do it about twice more and then something will
drop. Besides, there’s all that hubbub down in Mexico, making life a
nightmare this side the border. Those hoodlums have got to be clubbed
into decency, and I don’t see but what you fellows have got to go down
there and do it. There isn’t enough of the regular army to patrol a
greaser’s cabin. And if you don’t get a taste of war across the seas or
down among the cactus, you may have a chance to show your mettle right
here at home. They say the workmen in the mills are getting impudent
and ugly and threatening a strike that’ll make Ben Barriscale’s hair
stand on end. I mean the old man.”
She paused, not because she had no more to say, but in order to take
fresh breath. The pause gave Hal another chance to break in.
“I wouldn’t mind helping to defend this country against a foreign
foe, if it were necessary,” he said, “or even assisting to suppress a
domestic rebellion against the lawfully organized government. But when
it comes to doing strike duty I protest. That’s a job for the state
police anyway; not for the National Guard.”
“But it _is_ a job for the National Guard when it gets too big for the
police or the state police to handle. I suppose men have a right to
quit work whenever they want to; but they haven’t a right to try to win
a strike with brickbats and torches.”
“If workmen were fairly treated, and given their due proportion of the
product of their labor, there would be no strikes, and no brickbats,
and no torches. Anyway, the idea of workers being awed or shot or
bayoneted by the militia into submission to their capitalist employers’
terms, is so abhorrent to me that I don’t want to think of it.”
“There you go again, you wild-eyed anarchist! A fine militiaman you
are! Threatening to compound felonies and protect criminals! You’d
better----”
“There, now, Aunt Sarah, let’s call quits! We’ll never agree in the
world. You come up to the armory to-morrow night and see me in my new
uniform, and forget that I’m a bomb-throwing, king-killing anarchist.”
It was true, as Aunt Sarah had said, that there was uneasiness among
the workmen employed in the Barriscale plant. The factory had never
before been so busy. The company was not engaged directly in the
manufacture of munitions for use by the entente allies, but it was
engaged in the manufacture of implements and machinery for the making
of such munitions. Among the men the rumor was current that the profits
of the concern were enormous, and that the Barriscales and their
associates were reaping great harvests of gold. They knew of no reason
why they, in view of the sharp advance in the general cost of living,
should not share in this prosperity. Wages had indeed been advanced
twice since the advent of the European War, but these advances were
merely a pittance in comparison to what they were entitled to receive
if stories of the company’s profits were true.
However, the winter came and brought no strike. Men are not apt, in
severe weather, to look complacently on disappearing jobs.
But when the late March days gave promise of an early spring, and new
life began to stir the pulses of men as it stirred the heart of nature,
the spirit of discontent awoke and crystallized into a demand on the
officers of the Barriscale Company for much higher wages, shorter hours
and better conditions of labor. The demand was refused. Next in order
was an ultimatum to the effect that unless, by the following Tuesday
night, the requirements of the men were substantially complied with,
not a union man would be found at his post on Wednesday morning.
Benjamin Barriscale, Sr., shut his square jaws together, and told his
board of directors that so far as he was concerned he would scrap the
entire plant and go out of business before he would be black-jacked
into submission to a lot of irresponsible union officials. And since
he dominated the board and no one cared to dispute his judgment, the
ultimatum was ignored and the strike was declared.
Both sides claimed to be confident of victory, and, as the contest
lengthened, there was less talk of compromise, and the farther away
appeared to be the day of settlement.
In the fifth week of the struggle a new element entered into the
situation. Hitherto the management of the strike had been in the
hands of labor union officials. They had held their men well in
check, there had been little disorder and no rioting. But, from the
inception of the trouble, organizers and leaders of the radical wing
of the workers had labored among the idle men, quietly, insidiously,
persistently, successfully. Now, having gained a firm foothold, they
assumed management of the strike, and dictated to the company their
own terms for reëmployment regardless of the demands made by union
officials. Not only at the Barriscale works, but throughout the city,
they made proselytes, and trouble. The discontented, the unthinking,
the reckless, the foreign-born and unnaturalized, gathered under their
leadership. Their logic was convincing, their philosophy alluring,
their promises glittering; indeed, if they were to be believed, the
day of labor’s redemption in Fairweather was at hand. The workers had
only to persist in their demands and to block all resumption of work by
any one until those demands were met, and victory was sure to rest on
their banners.
Into this new, more aggressive, more bitter campaign, Hugo Donatello
plunged with all of his accustomed vigor and enthusiasm. He believed
in his cause. He did not see the ugly side of his propaganda. He was
not at heart a criminal, he was a dreamer. And he dreamed that if the
principle of the solidarity of labor, the international brotherhood
of all who toiled, the distribution of all wealth to those who earned
it by their toil, could once be established in this inland city of
America, the benefit and glory of it would spread from this as a
center, across the continent, across the ocean to bring peace to
war-torn Europe; and the name of Hugo Donatello as chief propagandist
of the new-old philosophy would be acclaimed throughout the civilized
world.
He had not yet made a complete convert of Halpert McCormack. For while
the young lieutenant sympathized deeply with his humanitarian motives,
and, in a general way, with his philosophy of economics, he was not yet
ready to approve of the methods by which the economic millennium was to
be ushered in. Complete disarmament, confiscation of private property,
abolition of restraining laws, sabotage and violence, these things were
not to Hal’s liking; in his view the end did not quite justify the
means. But, under the eloquence of Donatello’s logic, under the power
of his persuasion, under the magic force of his enthusiasm, this young
dreamer and reformer was drifting ever and ever nearer to the rocks
and shoals of that radicalism upon which, if finally and completely
stranded, he was sure to be wrecked.
It goes without saying that Donatello’s weekly Journal, _The
Disinherited_, took up the cause of the more radical element among
the striking workmen with vigor and enthusiasm. The attitude of the
Barriscale corporation, and other manufacturers whose workmen were
out, was characterized as selfish, obstinate and cruel. One issue of
the paper, published some weeks after the inauguration of the strike,
contained an editorial a portion of which ran as follows:
“Still the situation does not change. Still is justice
denied to those men by whose labors these very purse-proud
owners of the mills have become so rich. Now they say that
strike-breakers will be coming to take the places of those
honest working-men, and that state soldiery will protect these
scabs, and that the military company of Fairweather will be
marched to the mills and ordered by the capitalist employers
to turn the points of their bayonets against the hearts of
laborers looking for their own. But all of those members of the
military company do not have sympathy with these plutocrats and
hired thugs. What then will be? Will honest and free soldiers
obey orders to shoot down fellow-toilers, those neighbors and
friends? Is it for this the military is? Then what young man
of spirit, of heart-kindness, would join himself with that
militia, and become the tool of the capitalist class, and
forced to obey their orders, even to the shedding of the blood
of fellow-workers?”
On the evening of the day on which the paper containing this article
made its appearance, General Chick entered the drill-hall at the armory
to find a group of militiamen reading, and discussing with some heat,
the editorial in _The Disinherited_.
As the boy approached the crowd, one of the fun-loving members of it
called out to him:
“Here’s a drive at you, Chick. Donatello says that no honest man will
try to join Company E. Where’s that paper? Let Chick read it for
himself.”
The paper was thrust into Chick’s hands and the article pointed out to
him. He took it to the nearest electric sidelight, and slowly, and not
without some difficulty, read it through.
When he returned to the group the young fellow who had spoken to him
said:
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“I think,” replied the boy, “that he’s way off. I got no use for them
dogs in the manger, anyway.”
The humorous soldier turned to his companions. “There’s no doubt,”
he said, “but that Donatello had General Chick in mind when he wrote
that article. He doesn’t want Chick to join Company E, and he’s trying
to bluff him out in advance by assailing his honor and aspersing his
motives. Chick, old boy, I wouldn’t stand for it if I were you.”
Chick never quite knew, when the boys talked to him, whether he was
being addressed in jest or in earnest; and he didn’t know on this
occasion. But he had usually found it safe to assume that those who
gave him information or advice were treating him seriously and he
proceeded now on that assumption.
“It don’t make no difference to me what he says,” replied Chick. “He
can’t scare me out. When I git a chance to jine, I’ll jine.”
“That’s right! and I’d tell him so. I’d put it up to him squarely that
his threats and warnings fall off of you like water off of a duck’s
back.”
“Oh, maybe I’ll see him some time an’ have it out with him.”
“Good! But I wouldn’t wait. ‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’ I say. I’d
tackle him to-morrow about it if I were you.”
But Chick was already shuffling away toward the stack-room and did not
reply. The thing stayed on his mind, however, and the more he thought
of it the more indignant he became. He was not satisfied that Donatello
had had him in mind while writing the editorial. Probably that idea
originated in the minds of the boys; it was not material anyway.
The serious part of it was that, through his newspaper, Donatello had
been making an effort to prevent young men generally from joining the
National Guard; and that, in Chick’s estimation, was an offense which
fell little short of actual treason. He wondered if Donatello did not
know that it was the duty of every young man who was able to do so, to
become a soldier of the State; that it was a patriotic privilege; that
some of the very finest young men in town were members of Company E.
If he didn’t know it, some one ought to tell him. And perhaps no one
was better fitted for the task of telling him than was General Chick,
himself. Perhaps from no one else in the city could the information so
appropriately come.
Many times that night Chick thought about it, and when morning came
he had finally decided to call upon the editor of _The Disinherited_
and enlighten his mind upon this important subject. It was toward
noon, however, before, having finished the performance of the various
tasks which usually occupied his mornings, he found time to make the
visit he had determined upon. When he mounted the rickety stairs
and entered the one large room which was used alike for press-room,
mailing-room and office, he found Donatello there alone, sitting at
a case and setting type. The man recognized him at once and called
him by his name. It was not the first time they had met each other.
Chick looked around him with some curiosity. He had never before been
in a press-room. This one was doubtless the humblest of its type, but
newspapers were printed here, and that fact in itself made the place
important.
Donatello paused in his work and looked at his visitor inquiringly.
“I ain’t never be’n in a printin’ shop before,” said Chick, “and I kind
o’ wanted to see what it looked like.”
“Well,” replied the man, “it is not so much on the looks. But here it
is from which great ideas have gone forth in print.”
“Do you write ’em all?” asked the boy abruptly.
Donatello laughed a little. “I do not write all that which appears in
my paper,” he replied. “But the editorial; yes, that I write.”
Chick drew from his pocket a copy of _The Disinherited_ and pointed to
the article which had disturbed him.
“Did you write that?” he demanded.
The editor laughed again. “Yes, that have I written. Do you like it?
No?”
“No,” replied the boy. “I don’t like it. That’s what I’ve come for;
to tell you I don’t like it. Them fellows ain’t no tools of nobody.
They’re jest soldiers. They obey orders. If them strikers don’t want to
get hurt, let ’em behave theirselves. That’s all they is to it.”
Donatello swung himself around on his stool and stared at General Chick
in amazement. Then his look of surprise gave way to one of amusement.
He clasped his hands over his knee and smiled.
“You champion the cause of militarism?” he asked.
“I don’t know what that is,” replied the boy. “But I b’lieve in the
National Guard, and I b’lieve in Company E, and I expect to jine it
myself the first chance I git.”
“So! you would also the soldier be?”
“Sure I’d be a soldier. Why, the best fellows in town belong to Company
E. Don’t you know that?”
“Some good fellows which I know, they belong; that’s true. And when it
is that you also have belonged, there will be yet one more. Your first
lieutenant, him, in all the city there is no choicer man. Brains he
has. Heart he has. Wisdom he has. What else would you?”
Donatello flung his hands into the air, as though the last word had
been said in the way of encomium, slid down from his stool, went over
and sat in a chair by a littered table, and motioned to Chick to occupy
another chair near by which long ago had lost all semblance of a back.
“Now you’ve said somethin’,” replied Chick, seating himself. “Ain’t no
finer young man in Fairweather ’n what Lieutenant ’Cormack is. Him an’
me’s been friends sence the first day he come into the comp’ny.”
“And he and I, we have been friends since the first day we have met
with each other. Ha! Since we have the mutual friend, you and I, we
also should be friends. Is it not so?”
If Chick had ever felt any real animosity toward the editor of _The
Disinherited_ he found himself now suddenly bereft of it. He could
not look into the frank, friendly eyes of this young man, or note his
winning smile, and harbor any grievance against him.
“Sure!” he said; “I ain’t got nothin’ ag’inst you, ’cept what you put
in the paper ’bout the Guard, and I guess you know now that you was on
the wrong track, don’t you?”
Donatello did not answer the question. A new thought seemed to have
come to him.
“Where is it that you work?” he asked.
“Oh,” replied the boy, “I do odd chores around mornin’s. I ain’t got no
stiddy, all-day job.”
“How would you like it; an all-day job?”
“Doin’ what?”
“Working here with me.”
“Printin’ the paper?”
“Yes. Running the press. Washing the type. Sweeping the room. Going on
the errand, peddling the paper. Oh, a what you call the general utility
man. A man of all the work.”
Chick threw a comprehensive glance around the room, as if to take in
the situation.
“You want a man?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How much you want to pay?”
“For the all-day job?”
“No, for half a day. I got customers I can’t give up mornin’s.”
“Well, let me see! I pay you forty cents for the half day.”
“’Tain’t enough,” replied Chick promptly.
“Fifty cents.”
“That’s more like it; but you’ll have to stretch it a little furder.”
“Fifty-five. I will not pay more.”
“All right! I’m your huckleberry.”
Chick’s eyes snapped, and a flush came into his cheeks. Here was a
steady job facing him on his own terms. He did not doubt his ability to
handle it. He felt that the employment would be congenial. He accepted
the place without question. There was more discussion concerning
the nature of the duties which the new employee was to perform, his
hours of labor, and the day on which he should begin work. But these
matters were easily settled, and when Chick rose to go the bargain was
complete. He felt now that he had taken his proper place in the army
of workers. He had what he had long wanted, a regular job. Moreover,
the nature of his task, that of assisting in the preparation and
publication of a weekly journal, was such as to justify him in assuming
an air of importance commensurate with the character of his duties.
When he reached the head of the stairs on his way out a thought came to
him and he turned back.
“I want it understood,” he said to Donatello, “that, so long as I’m
helpin’ to git out this paper, they mustn’t be no jumpin’ on the
National Guard, nor on Company E. I won’t stand for it.”
“And if it should be so that there is?” Donatello’s voice was smooth
and musical.
“I’ll resign my position,” declared Chick.
“Very well! That bridge we will cross when we have reached it.”
The next day General Chick was added to the working staff of _The
Disinherited_.
On a day late in April, Hal received a note from Donatello asking him
to call that evening at the printing-room of _The Disinherited_. It was
not an unusual request, nor was it the first time that Hal had visited
the quarters of the social radical.
At the street door he found General Chick who was looking up and down
the walk and apparently waiting for him. Chick had been for some months
now in Donatello’s employ. He did miscellaneous work about the place,
went on errands, washed type, delivered papers, put his hands to almost
every task that a boy with a lop-shoulder and a crooked back could be
expected to do. He was not overworked. Donatello treated him kindly,
paid him living wages, and made a friend of him. All in all it was the
best job Chick had ever had.
When he let McCormack in he closed and locked the street door before
going with him down the dimly lighted hall to the printing-room. It was
in this room that Hal found, in Donatello’s company, two men whom he
knew by sight, but whom he had not before personally met. One of them
was distinctly a foreigner; big, muscular, shrewd-eyed, with black hair
hanging to his shoulders, and a large, loose, black tie floating from
his throat down onto his breast. He was introduced simply as Gabriel.
The other man, so far as appearance and accent went, was a well-to-do
American. His name was given as Kranich. Donatello explained that they
had come in from a neighboring city to assist the local leaders in
bringing the strike to a successful conclusion. They wanted to know
from Lieutenant McCormack what the attitude of the soldiers of the
National Guard would be in the event of their being called out on
strike duty. More specifically they wanted to know what the attitude of
Lieutenant McCormack himself would be, in the not impossible event of
his being in command of Company E on such an occasion.
Donatello interrupted the conversation at this point by asking Chick
to go and lock the door leading into the hall. This was an important
conference, he said, and it was not worth while to run the risk of
interruption.
So Chick locked the door, and came back and sat down on a wobbly stool,
by a dilapidated case, and listened, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to the
discussion.
“You know it is our theory,” explained Kranich, “that the workmen are
as much owners of their jobs as the employers are owners of their
plants; and that they have as much right to prevent other men from
taking those jobs away from them as the mill owners would have to
prevent other capitalists from seizing their mills by force. What we
want to know is, in case of an attempt by our men to resume their jobs,
or to prevent other men from appropriating them, what your personal
attitude would be if you were called out, as an officer of the National
Guard, to prevent disorder. Would your guns be pointed toward us or
toward our enemies?”
“I would,” replied Hal, “obey the orders of my superior officer.”
“Suppose you, yourself, were in command of the company?”
“I would do my duty as a Guardsman.”
“Exactly! And, what would be your duty? to protect honest workmen in
their efforts to obtain possession of the tools of their employment, or
to bayonet and shoot us at the behest of capitalists and scabs?”
Before Hal could reply Donatello interrupted. He feared that McCormack
might be antagonized by such blunt and embarrassing questions. He knew,
from long experience, that persuasion, not bluff, was the weapon with
which to fight the prejudices of the young Guardsman.
“You do not need so closely to question him!” he exclaimed. “I know
him. He is safe. He believes in the solidarity of labor the world over.
His sympathies, they are with our men in this struggle for the human
rights. Is it not so, Lieutenant?”
“It is decidedly so,” replied Hal.
“And he will that way interpret his duty as officer to do least injury
to us, his brothers. Is it not so, Lieutenant?”
“That is correct,” replied Hal. “I do not intend to fail in the
performance of my duty in any quarter.”
Donatello turned toward his guests with a wide sweep of his hands.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “with that we must be content.”
But it was an hour later, after much discussion of economic problems,
and the methods by which they were to be solved, that Chick unlocked
the door and let Lieutenant McCormack out into the street. And neither
of them saw the figure of a man patiently waiting in a dark recess two
doors away, a man who had seen all of Donatello’s guests arrive, and
who was waiting to see them all depart.
Later on, as Hal thought over his visit to the printing shop, he felt
that he had said nothing that he did not fully believe, that he had
made no promise either of action or inaction that he did not stand
ready to fulfil. It was very true that his sympathies were with the
working class of men. He seconded all their efforts for their own
betterment. He felt that some day labor, united, harmonious, acting in
concert, under one leadership the world over, would move its enormous
body, would rise, tremble, stretch itself like some great giant, and
in the process would upheave society; and that out of the tumult and
confusion and wreckage would arise a new social order in which every
man would be the equal of every other man in all things material and
immaterial with which a beneficent Creator had endowed them. It was a
dream, perhaps. Donatello had dreamed it. His two visitors had dreamed
it. A hundred thousand men with toil-hardened hands, under the shadow
of the Stars and Stripes, had dreamed it. Countless millions in the old
world, under the iron heel of autocracy, had died dreaming it. Yet,
some day, notwithstanding the natural perverseness of the human heart,
the dream was bound to come true. So the dreamers believed; so they
taught, and to that end they struggled and fought.
But the question of immediate moment to Halpert McCormack, a question
that pressed ever more and more persistently into his heart and
conscience, was, whether he, with opinions and beliefs so radically
at variance with those of the governing class of his country, had a
moral right to belong to, much less to be an officer in, the National
Guard. And the more he pondered upon this question, the more imperative
it seemed to him to be that he should put an end to a situation so
anomalous, a situation which in certain contingencies that might at any
moment arise, would become awkward, acute and impossible. His military
connection was the only link that still held him to the world of
conservatism; he might as well snap it and be entirely free.
So, without consultation with any one, for he had no friend with whom
he felt that it would be profitable for him to consult, he prepared
for the final step.
He entered the office of Captain Murray on an afternoon preceding
the weekly drill, and asked for a private interview. His request was
granted. The captain looked worried and apprehensive.
“I have been expecting you to come,” he said. “If you hadn’t done so I
should have sent for you. But I’ll hear your errand first. What is it?”
“It is nothing of great importance,” replied Hal. “I simply want to
show you this paper which I have decided to send to-day to Colonel
Wagstaff.”
Captain Murray took the paper, unfolded it slowly, and read it aloud:
“_To the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania_:
(_Through Intermediate Headquarters_)
“Now holding the office of First Lieutenant in Company E, of
the ----th Infantry, Third Brigade, of the National Guard
of Pennsylvania, in consequence of holding certain economic
views and opinions inconsistent with such position, I hereby
tender my resignation of said office, and request an honorable
discharge therefrom.
“I am not under arrest, nor returned to court martial, nor the
subject of any charges for any deficiency or delinquency, and
I am ready to deliver over or account for all monies, books or
other property of the State in my possession, and for which I
am accountable, to the officer authorized by law to receive the
same, and my accounts for money or public property are correct,
and I am not indebted to the State.
“HALPERT MCCORMACK,
_First Lieutenant_.”
Captain Murray finished reading the paper and looked up wearily and
anxiously at Hal.
“I have been expecting this,” he said. “I am not greatly surprised.
But--it comes too late.”
“Why too late, Captain?”
“Because charges have already been filed against you, and a court
martial demanded. I suppose you would not want to retire under fire
even though you should be permitted to do so.”
“I don’t know. It would depend on the nature of the charges. May I see
a copy of the complaint?”
“Certainly!”
Captain Murray turned to his desk, drew a long envelope from a
pigeonhole, removed a formal-looking document therefrom, and handed the
document to Lieutenant McCormack to read.