THE NIGHT OF THE STRIKE
The locomotive stopped—and there was no crash such as Ralph had
expected. He was only a few yards behind the high step of the great
machine down which the fireman swung himself.
“What’s the matter with those boobs?” demanded the latter. “Blocking
the road like this—huh! Wait till the super gets wise to it. He’s got
just what it costs to stop a train figgered out into cents and mills.”
Ralph grabbed him by the shoulder and shot into his ear: “Muffle down,
Haney! That’s the super himself there, and it is his wife and girl in
the car.”
“Great Glory and Jerusalem!” gasped the fireman. “Thanks, Fairbanks.
He’ll be as sore as a boil over this. And it’s a wonder that we didn’t
smash the thing to splinters, for our brakes don’t work any too well.
The old mill ought to be in the shops right now.”
The fireman slipped back to warn the engineer. Ralph went on to the
crossing. Mrs. Hopkins and Cherry had now got out of the runabout. The
girl was actually keeping the woman from falling, the latter was so
much overcome. But Cherry flashed Ralph an illuminating look. Her eyes
were like stars.
The supervisor knew exactly what to do in the emergency. Already he
had ordered the gate raised and had beckoned to some idlers to come
and lift the car. He did not take hold himself, but he ordered them
what to do. In fact, Ralph helped lift the runabout over the tracks
and out onto Hammerby Street.
“That will do, men. Thanks,” said Mr. Hopkins coldly. He turned to his
daughter. “How did it happen? Your wheels are deflated.”
“I don’t know. I did not understand what had happened until we were on
the crossing, Papa,” Cherry replied.
“Somebody must have done it when the car was standing before the
store,” said Mrs. Hopkins.
“Thank you, Ralph Fairbanks!” whispered Cherry, suddenly seizing the
young fellow’s hand.
Hopkins wheeled and stared coldly at Ralph. “Just what has Mr.
Fairbanks done to be thanked for, Cherry?” the supervisor asked.
“He stopped the train, Papa,” declared the girl firmly.
“Humph! The engineer stopped the train, to be exact,” said her father
and then turned to haul the pump out from under the car seat.
Ralph tipped his hat to the ladies and walked away.
“In my opinion, Barton Hopkins is a pretty small man,” the train
dispatcher thought. “In any case, I may as well make up my mind to one
fact: If he can ‘get’ me he will. He is as cold-blooded as a snake.
And I guess I would better keep away from Miss Cherry, or she will get
into trouble.
“Just the same,” he concluded, “she’s a fine girl. She could not bear
to see the little thing I did for them ignored. But, goodness me, how
the rank and file of the men hate her father!”
He did not tell his mother this time of the happening. He had learned
it was better not to give the widow details of any possible danger
that he stepped into. She only worried the more about him when he was
out from under her eye.
The newspapers had begun to talk of the wildcat strike extending to
this division of the Great Northern, and Mrs. Fairbanks read enough
about it in her favorite evening sheet. Ralph might have told her a
deal more—and much more to the purpose—had he chosen to.
The feeling in the shops was a matter for grave discussion among the
officials. The older employees, and the men in the stronger
Brotherhoods, thought of and talked of little else. If the shopmen and
maintenance of way men went out there was bound to be trouble.
Most railroad systems keep only one jump ahead of disaster in the busy
season. Locomotives and all other rolling stock have to be watched and
inspected just as closely and carefully as a good family doctor
watches his patients. A turn in the shops for the great moguls and
eight-wheelers comes more frequently than the public suspects. This
averts accidents more surely than block-signal systems or perfect
train dispatching.
Of late the shopmen had been lax in their work, just as the section
men had been lax in their department. Disgruntled employees of any
corporation are dangerous. In the railroad business they are
frightfully so.
Every evening when the shifts changed in the shops and yard, groups of
men stood around and talked. Sometimes some “soap-box orator” made a
speech just outside the railroad property. The railway police could
not disturb these meetings, but they worked with the city police and
soon had them stopped.
At once Andy McCarrey and others got up in Beeman Hall and shouted
about the wrongs of the workingman and how the police were governed by
the corporation.
“Hot air! Hot air!” said John, the old timekeeper, to Ralph. “Just the
same, Jim Perrin is doing his dirtiest in the union, too. Mark my
word, Mr. Fairbanks; there’s something going to break—and soon.”
Ralph, however, went on the even tenor of his way and fully believed
that whatever happened, it would not affect him. He would have liked
to see Zeph Dallas again or hear from Bob Adair.
But Zeph had disappeared right after Ralph’s last interview with him
and, day or night, the train dispatcher had seen no sign of the
fellow. He was so troubled over the night schedules, however, that
every evening he went downtown again after supper.
“I never knew you to be so particular about your dispatching, Ralph,”
his mother complained. “Do you really expect trouble?”
“I’ll tell you, Mother,” he said, trying to smile. “When we have to
crowd the trains so close I naturally feel anxiety. I’ve got good men
on the job. But some night I expect that Midnight Flyer or some other
important train to stall and ball up the entire schedule.
“These wheat trains clutter up the east-bound tracks all night long.
We have had two breakdowns within forty-eight hours this week. The
yard was not cleared of west-bound freight this morning until nine
o’clock. We’re in a mess!”
“But they cannot hold you responsible for any of the trouble,” his
mother declared loyally.
“I don’t know. The way the super looks at me when we meet—— Humph! But
of course, Mother, I feel responsibility. I want the trains to get in
and out on time. The reports going back to main headquarters aren’t
encouraging. Although Mr. Glidden is mighty nice about it.”
“He would be,” declared Mrs. Fairbanks. “He understands.”
Just the same, her confidence did not greatly encourage Ralph. The day
schedule did not much trouble him, but at night it grew worse and
worse. As he had feared, with the increased number of wheat trains
trying to get through, there being a big movement of grain to Europe
at this time, most other freight was side-tracked. The passenger
trains, too, were displaced.
Two mornings in succession the Midnight Flyer got to Hammerfest so
late that the Boise City connection was lost. Passengers had to wait
two hours. Yet the train could not be started earlier than midnight
from Rockton because the connection from the east could not be made.
“Old Byron Marks is a has-been,” the master mechanic said to Ralph on
one occasion. “But what can _I_ do? It is out of my hands. The old man
can’t make the time, and he knows it. But he doesn’t want to fall down
on the run, either. You know what that would mean.”
“It would give the super a chance to demand his withdrawal,” said
Ralph.
“You bet. And Bart Hopkins is only waiting for that. If he had his
way, and if it wasn’t for the Brotherhoods, he’d scrap every man with
gray hair on the division.”
“Can’t anybody talk with Byron and show him how to get out
gracefully?”
“He’s as touchy as a hen with a brood of chicks. I’d like to send him
back to a switch engine. We need on that Flyer somebody like you,
Ralph. Yes, sir, it’s a run that calls for young blood!”
But Ralph raised both hands and gestured him away from his desk. “No,
no! Tempt me not!” he cried. “Haven’t I trouble enough of my own right
here and now?”
“But if I have to take Byron off for incompetency, and that certainly
will kill the old man, whom shall I put in his place? Every good man
is needed. This blamed new eight hour rule—well, it’s good in some
ways, of course; but it makes us short-handed.”
The official went away grumbling. He, too, had his troubles. He had to
take his orders from the supervisor and some of them were not to his
taste.
It is said that only the weight of the last straw broke the camel’s
back. It needed some particular event to start the conflagration that
promised to overwhelm the division, if not the whole Great Northern
system. It was as small a thing as the idea of the change in the style
of the men’s working caps that Ralph had put before the general
manager some weeks before.
A new order was pasted on the shop board one evening—an order
promulgated by the supervisor and from his office. It was a notice to
the effect that the call boys, or others, were not to be sent out to
the lunch places near the shops to purchase lunches for the men who
wanted them, save in the men’s own time.
That meant that nobody could send for anything to eat and drink until
the whistle blew for recess. As the lunch places and delicatessen
stores were sure to be crowded at those particular hours, either all
the workmen would have to bring cans, or those that did not must wait
half or three-quarters of an hour before they ate.
The boys who did these errands for the shop-men were paid so meagerly
that their time cost the company but little. It was certainly a
picayune piece of business. But probably Mr. Hopkins had figured it
out to his own satisfaction that several dollars a year might be saved
to the Great Northern.
Somebody read the inconspicuous notice on the board soon after the
night crew started working in the shops. Ralph chanced to be in the
train dispatchers’ offices when he heard the roar of the machinery in
the nearest shop subside and finally cease entirely. He went to the
window and looked out.
“What’s happened, Chief?” asked his assistant, sitting at the
telegraph instrument.
“I can’t make it out. Why! there goes Benson, the stationary engineer.
He’s shut down the power! Why, Johnny, they are crowding out of the
shop!”
“Strike!” ejaculated the operator, and opened his key.
“Wait! Let me be sure,” cried Ralph, and darted to the door and down
the stairs to the yard.
It was only a few rods to the first shop. He saw the men, angry and
blusterous, crowding out of the doors like disturbed ants. He found
one coherent man whom he knew, and got the story of the supervisor’s
latest order.
“Hold on! What are you fellows going to do?” Ralph demanded of this
man.
“We’re going to hold a meeting. Beeman’s Hall. We’ll stand no more of
this blamed foolishness. Anyhow, we won’t stand for that cut in wages
they say is coming. I tell you, Fairbanks; the whole road is going to
the dogs.”
“And you propose to help it go there, do you?” Ralph demanded.
But he knew it was useless to argue the matter. The men were red hot.
They were discarding the advice and the orders of their own union
officials. Andy McCarrey was about to see his cherished plans come to
fruition.