"And they were both labor leaders--labor agitators. The first one
proclaimed the brotherhood of man. But he regarded this world as
hopeless and called on the weary and heavy laden masses to look to the
next world for the righting of their wrongs. Then--eighteen centuries
after--came that second Jew"--Selma looked passionate, reverent
admiration at the powerful, bearded face, so masterful, yet so
kind--"and he said: 'No! not in the hereafter, but in the here. Here
and now, my brothers. Let us make this world a heaven. Let us redeem
ourselves and destroy the devil of ignorance who is holding us in this
hell.' It was three hundred years before that first Jew began to
triumph. It won't be so long before there are monuments to Marx in
clean and beautiful and free cities all over the earth."
Jane listened intensely. There was admiring envy in her eyes as she
cried: "How splendid!--to believe in something--and work for it and
live for it--as you do!"
Selma laughed, with a charming little gesture of the shoulders and the
hands that reminded Jane of her foreign parentage. "Nothing else seems
worth while," said she. "Nothing else is worth while. There are only
two entirely great careers--to be a teacher of the right kind and work
to ease men's minds--as those four did--or to be a doctor of the right
kind and work to make mankind healthy. All the suffering, all the
crime, all the wickedness, comes from ignorance or bad health--or both.
Usually it's simply bad health."
Jane felt as if she were devoured of thirst and drinking at a fresh,
sparkling spring. "I never thought of that before," said she.
"If you find out all about any criminal, big or little, you'll discover
that he had bad health--poisons in his blood that goaded him on."
Jane nodded. "Whenever I'm difficult to get on with, I'm always not
quite well."
"I can see that your disposition is perfect, when you are well," said
Selma.
"And yours," said Jane.
"Oh, I'm never out of humor," said Selma. "You see, I'm never
sick--not the least bit."
"You are Miss Gordon, aren't you?"
"Yes--I'm Selma Gordon."
"My name is Jane Hastings." Then as this seemed to convey nothing to
Selma, Jane added: "I'm not like you. I haven't an individuality of
my own--that anybody knows about. So, I'll have to identify myself by
saying that I'm Martin Hastings' daughter."
Jane confidently expected that this announcement would cause some sort
of emotion--perhaps of awe, perhaps of horror, certainly of interest.
She was disappointed. If Selma felt anything she did not show it--and
Jane was of the opinion that it would be well nigh impossible for so
direct and natural a person to conceal. Jane went on:
"I read in your paper about your fund for sick children. I was riding
past your office--saw the sign--and I've come in to give what I happen
to have about me." She drew out the small roll of bills and handed it
to Selma.
The Russian girl--if it is fair thus to characterize one so intensely
American in manner, in accent and in speech--took the money and said:
"We'll acknowledge it in the paper next week."
Jane flushed and a thrill of alarm ran through her. "Oh--please--no,"
she urged. "I'd not like to have my name mentioned. That would look
as if I had done it to seem charitable. Besides, it's such a trifle."
Selma was calm and apparently unsuspicious. "Very well," said she.
"We'll write, telling what we did with the money, so that you can
investigate."
"But I trust you entirely," cried Jane.
Selma shook her head. "But we don't wish to be trusted," said she.
"Only dishonest people wish to be trusted when it's possible to avoid
trusting. And we all need watching. It helps us to keep straight."
"Oh, I don't agree with you," protested Miss Hastings. "Lots of the
time I'd hate to be watched. I don't want everybody to know all I do."
Selma's eyes opened. "Why not?" she said.
Jane cast about for a way to explain what seemed to her a self-evident
truth. "I mean--privacy," she said. "For instance, if you were in
love, you'd not want everybody to know about it?"
"Yes, indeed," declared Selma. "I'd be tremendously proud of it. It
must be wonderful to be in love."
In one of those curious twists of feminine nature, Miss Hastings
suddenly felt the glow of a strong, unreserved liking for this strange,
candid girl.
Selma went on: "But I'm afraid I never shall be. I get no time to
think about myself. From rising till bed time my work pushes at me."
She glanced uneasily at her desk, apologetically at Miss Hastings. "I
ought to be writing this minute. The strike is occupying Victor, and
I'm helping out with his work."
"I'm interrupting," said Jane. "I'll go." She put out her hand with
her best, her sweetest smile. "We're going to be friends--aren't we?"
Selma clasped her hand heartily and said: "We ARE friends. I like
everybody. There's always something to like in everyone--and the bad
part isn't their fault. But it isn't often that I like anyone so much
as I do you. You are so direct and honest--quite different from the
other women of your class that I've met."
Jane felt unaccountably grateful and humble. "I'm afraid you're too
generous. I guess you're not a very good judge of people," she said.
"So Victor--Victor Dorn--says," laughed Selma. "He says I'm too
confiding. Well--why not? And really, he trusts everybody,
too--except with the cause. Then he's--he's"--she glanced from face to
face of the four pictures--"he's like those men."
Jane's glance followed Selma's. She said: "Yes--I should imagine
so--from what I've heard." She startled, flushed, hid behind a
somewhat constrained manner. "Will you come up to my house to lunch?"
"If I can find time," said Selma. "But I'd rather come and take you
for a walk. I have to walk two hours every day. It's the only thing
that'll keep my head clear."
"When will you come?--to-morrow?"
"Is nine o'clock too early?"
Jane reflected that her father left for business at half-past eight.
"Nine to-morrow," she said. "Good-by again."
As she was mounting her horse, she saw "the Cossack girl," as she was
calling her, writing away at the window hardly three feet above the
level of Jane's head when she was mounted, so low was the first story
of the battered old frame house. But Selma did not see her; she was
all intent upon the writing. "She's forgotten me already," thought
Jane with a pang of jealous vanity. She added: "But SHE has SOMETHING
to think about--she and Victor Dorn."
She was so preoccupied that she rode away with only an absent thank you
for the small boy, in an older and much larger and wider brother's
cast-off shirt, suspenders and trousers. At the corner of the avenue
she remembered and turned her horse. There stood the boy gazing after
her with a hypnotic intensity that made her smile. She rode back
fumbling in her pockets. "I beg your pardon," said she to the boy.
Then she called up to Selma Gordon:
"Miss Gordon--please--will you lend me a quarter until to-morrow?"
Selma looked up, stared dazedly at her, smiled absently at Miss
Hastings--and Miss Hastings had the strongest confirmation of her
suspicion that Selma had forgotten her and her visit the instant she
vanished from the threshold of the office. Said Selma: "A
quarter?--oh, yes--certainly." She seemed to be searching a drawer or
a purse out of sight. "I haven't anything but a five dollar bill. I'm
so sorry"--this in an absent manner, with most of her thoughts
evidently still upon her work. She rose, leaned from the window,
glanced up the street, then down. She went on:
"There comes Victor Dorn. He'll lend it to you."
Along the ragged brick walk at a quick pace the man who had in such
abrupt fashion stormed Jane Hasting's fancy and taken possession of her
curiosity was advancing with a basket on his arm. He was indeed a man
of small stature--about the medium height for a woman--about the height
of Jane Hastings. But his figure was so well put together and his walk
so easy and free from self-consciousness that the question of stature
no sooner arose than it was dismissed. His head commanded all the
attention--its poise and the remarkable face that fronted it. The
features were bold, the skin was clear and healthy and rather fair.
His eyes--gray or green blue and set neither prominently nor
retreatedly--seemed to be seeing and understanding all that was going
on about him. He had a strong, rather relentless mouth--the mouth of
men who make and compel sacrifices for their ambitions.
"Victor," cried Selma as soon as he was within easy range of her voice,
"please lend Miss Hastings a quarter." And she immediately sat down
and went to work again, with the incident dismissed from mind.
The young man--for he was plainly not far beyond thirty--halted and
regarded the young woman on the horse.
"I wish to give this young gentleman here a quarter," said Jane. "He
was very good about holding my horse."
The words were not spoken before the young gentleman darted across the
narrow street and into a yard hidden by masses of clematis, morning
glory and sweet peas. And Jane realized that she had wholly mistaken
the meaning of that hypnotic stare.
Victor laughed--the small figure, the vast clothes, the bare feet with
voluminous trousers about them made a ludicrous sight. "He doesn't
want it," said Victor. "Thank you just the same."
"But I want him to have it," said Jane.
With a significant unconscious glance at her costume Dorn said: "Those
costumes haven't reached our town yet."
"He did some work for me. I owe it to him."
"He's my sister's little boy," said Dorn, with his amiable, friendly
smile. "We mustn't start him in the bad way of expecting pay for
politeness."
Jane colored as if she had been rebuked, when in fact his tone forbade
the suggestion of rebuke. There was an unpleasant sparkle in her eyes
as she regarded the young man in the baggy suit, with the basket on his
arm. "I beg your pardon," said she coldly. "I naturally didn't know
your peculiar point of view."
"That's all right," said Dorn carelessly. "Thank you, and good day."
And with a polite raising of the hat and a manner of good humored
friendliness that showed how utterly unconscious he was of her being
offended at him, he hastened across the street and went in at the gate
where the boy had vanished. And Jane had the sense that he had
forgotten her. She glanced nervously up at the window to see whether
Selma Gordon was witnessing her humiliation--for so she regarded it.
But Selma was evidently lost in a world of her own. "She doesn't love
him," Jane decided. "For, even though she is a strange kind of person,
she's a woman--and if she had loved him she couldn't have helped
watching while he talked with another woman--especially with one of my
appearance and class."
Jane rode slowly away. At the corner--it was a long block--she glanced
toward the scene she had just quitted. Involuntarily she drew rein.
Victor and the boy had come out into the street and were playing
catches. The game did not last long. Dorn let the boy corner him and
seize him, then gave him a great toss into the air, catching him as he
came down and giving him a hug and a kiss. The boy ran shouting
merrily into the yard; Victor disappeared in the entrance to the
offices of the New Day.
That evening, as she pretended to listen to Hull on national politics,
and while dressing the following morning Jane reflected upon her
adventure. She decided that Dorn and the "wild girl" were a low,
ill-mannered pair with whom she had nothing in common, that her
fantastic, impulsive interest in them had been killed, that for the
future she would avoid "all that sort of cattle." She would receive
Selma Gordon politely, of course--would plead headache as an excuse for
not walking, would get rid of her as soon as possible. "No doubt,"
thought Jane, with the familiar, though indignantly denied, complacence
of her class, "as soon as she gets in here she'll want to hang on. She
played it very well, but she must have been crazy with delight at my
noticing her and offering to take her up."
The postman came as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note
from Selma--a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet of printer's copy paper:
"Dear Miss Hastings: For the present I'm too busy to take my walks.
So, I'll not be there to-morrow. With best regards, S.G."
Such a fury rose up in Jane that the undigested breakfast went wrong
and put her in condition to give such exhibition as chance might tempt
of that ugliness of disposition which appears from time to time in all
of us not of the meek and worm-like class, and which we usually
attribute to any cause under the sun but the vulgar right one. "The
impertinence!" muttered Jane, with a second glance at the note which
conveyed; among other humiliating things, an impression of her own
absolute lack of importance to Selma Gordon. "Serves me right for
lowering myself to such people. If I wanted to try to do anything for
the working class I'd have to keep away from them. They're so
unattractive to look at and to associate with--not like those shrewd,
respectful, interesting peasants one finds on the other side. They're
better in the East. They know their place in a way. But out here
they're insufferable."
And she spent the morning quarrelling with her maid and the other
servants, issuing orders right and left, working herself into a
horrible mood dominated by a headache that was anything but a pretense.
As she wandered about the house and gardens, she trailed a beautiful
negligee with that carelessness which in a woman of clean and orderly
habits invariably indicates the possession of many clothes and of a
maid who can be counted on to freshen things up before they shall be
used again. Her father came home to lunch in high good humor.
"I'll not go down town again for a few days," said he. "I reckon I'd
best keep out of the way. That scoundrelly Victor Dorn has done so
much lying and inciting these last four or five years that it ain't
safe for a man like me to go about when there's trouble with the hands."
"Isn't it outrageous!" exclaimed Jane. "He ought to be stopped."
Hastings chuckled and nodded. "And he will be," said he. "Wait till
this strike's over."
"When will that be?" asked Jane.
"Mighty soon," replied her father. "I was ready for 'em this
time--good and ready. I've sent word to the governor that I want the
militia down here tomorrow----"
"Has there been a riot?" cried Jane anxiously.
"Not yet," said Hastings. He was laughing to himself. "But there will
be to-night. Then the governor'll send the troops in to-morrow
afternoon."
"But maybe the men'll be quiet, and then----" began Jane, sick inside
and trembling.
"When I say a thing'll happen, it'll happen," interrupted her father.
"We've made up our minds it's time to give these fellows a lesson.
It's got to be done. A milder lesson'll serve now, where later on it'd
have to be hard. I tell you these things because I want you to
remember 'em. They'll come in handy--when you'll have to look after
your own property."
She knew how her father hated the thought of his own death; this was
the nearest he had ever come to speaking of it. "Of course, there's
your brother William," he went on. "William's a good boy--and a mighty
good business man--though he does take risks I'd never 'a took--not
even when I was young and had nothing to lose. Yes--and Billy's
honest. BUT"--the big head shook impressively--"William's human,
Jenny--don't ever forget that. The love of money's an awful thing." A
lustful glitter like the shine of an inextinguishable fire made his
eyes fascinating and terrible. "It takes hold of a man and never lets
go. To see the money pile up--and up--and up."
The girl turned away her gaze. She did not wish to see so far into her
father's soul. It seemed a hideous indecency.
"So, Jenny--don't trust William, but look after your own property."
"Oh, I don't care anything about it, popsy," she cried, fighting to
think of him and to speak to him as simply the living father she had
always insisted on seeing.
"Yes--you do care," said Hastings sharply. "You've got to have your
money, because that's your foundation--what you're built on. And I'm
going to train you. This here strike's a good time to begin."
After a long silence she said: "Yes, money's what I'm built on. I
might as well recognize the truth and act accordingly. I want you to
teach me, father."
"I've got to educate you so as, when you get control, you won't go and
do fool sentimental things like some women--and some men that warn't
trained practically--men like that Davy Hull you think so well of.
Things that'd do no good and 'd make you smaller and weaker."
"I understand," said the girl. "About this strike--WHY won't you give
the men shorter hours and better pay?"
"Because the company can't afford it. As things are now, there's only
enough left for a three per cent dividend after the interest on the
bonds is paid."
She had read in the New Day that by a series of tricks the "traction
ring" had quadrupled the bonded indebtedness of the roads and
multiplied the stock by six, and had pocketed the proceeds of the
steal; that three per cent on the enormously inflated capital was in
fact eighteen per cent on the actual stock value; that seven per cent
on the bonds was in fact twenty-eight per cent on the actual bonded
indebtedness; that this traction steal was a fair illustration of how
in a score of ways in Remsen City, in a thousand and one ways in all
parts of the country, the upper class was draining away the substance
of the masses, was swindling them out of their just wages, was forcing
them to pay many times the just prices for every article of civilized
use. She had read these things--she had thought about them--she had
realized that they were true.
She did not put to her father the question that was on her lips--the
next logical question after his answer that the company could not
afford to cut the hours lower than fourteen or to raise wages to what
was necessary for a man to have if he and his family were to live, not
in decency and comfort, but in something less than squalor. She did
not put the question because she wished to spare her father--to spare
herself the shame of hearing his tricky answer--to spare herself the
discomfort of squarely facing a nasty truth.
Instead she said: "I understand. And you have got to look out for the
rights of the people who have invested their money."
"If I didn't I'd be cheating them," said Hastings. "And if the men
don't like their jobs, why, they can quit and get jobs they do like."
He added, in absolute unconsciousness of his inconsistency, in absolute
belief in his own honesty and goodness, "The truth is our company pays
as high wages as can be got anywhere. As for them hours--when _I_ was
working my way up, _I_ used to put in sixteen and eighteen hours a day,
and was mighty glad to do it. This lazy talk of cutting down hours
makes me sick. And these fellows that're always kicking on their jobs,
I'd like to know what'd become of them and their families if I and men
like me didn't provide work for 'em."
"Yes, indeed!" cried Jane, eagerly seizing upon this attractive view of
the situation--and resolutely accepting it without question.
In came one of the maids, saying: "There's a man wants to see you, Mr.
Hastings."
"What's his name? What does he want?" inquired Hastings, while Jane
made a mental note that she must try to inject at least a little order
and form into the manners of announcing visitors.
"He didn't give a name. He just said, 'Tell the old man I want to see
him.' I ain't sure, but I think it's Dick Kelly."
As Lizzie was an ardent Democrat, she spoke the name
contemptuously--for Dick Kelly was the Republican boss. If it had been
House, the Democratic boss and Kelly's secret dependent and henchman,
she would have said "Mr. Joseph House" in a tone of deep respect.
"Kelly," said Hastings. "Must be something important or he'd 'a
telephoned or asked me to see him at my office or at the Lincoln Club.
He never came out here before. Bring him in, Lizzie."
A moment and there appeared in the doorway a man of perhaps forty years
who looked like a prosperous contractor who had risen from the ranks.
His figure was notable for its solidity and for the power of the
shoulders; but already there were indications that the solidity, come
of hard manual labor in early life, was soon to soften into fat under
the melting influence of prosperity and the dissipation it put within
too easy reach. The striking features of his face were a pair of keen,
hard, greenish eyes and a jaw that protruded uglily--the jaw of
aggressiveness, not the too prominent jaw of weakness. At sight of
Jane he halted awkwardly.
"How're you, Mr. Hastings?" said he.
"Hello, Dick," said the old man. "This is my daughter Jane."
Jane smiled a pleasant recognition of the introduction. Kelly said
stiffly, "How're you, ma'am?"
"Want to see me alone, I suppose?" Hastings went on. "You go out on
the porch, Jenny."
As soon as Jane disappeared Kelly's stiffness and clumsiness vanished.
To head off Hastings' coming offer of a cigar, he drew one from his
pocket and lighted it. "There's hell to pay, Mr. Hastings," he began,
seating himself near the old man, tilting back in his chair and
crossing his legs.
"Well, I reckon you can take care of it," said Hastings calmly.
"Oh, yes, we kin take care of it, all right. Only, I don't want to do
nothing without consulting you."
In these two statements Mr. Kelly summed up the whole of politics in
Remsen City, in any city anywhere, in the country at large.
Kelly had started life as a blacksmith. But he soon tired of the
dullness and toil and started forth to find some path up to where men
live by making others work for them instead of plodding along at the
hand-to-mouth existence that is the lot of those who live by their own
labors alone. He was a safe blower for a while, but wisely soon
abandoned that fascinating but precarious and unremunerative career.
From card sharp following the circus and sheet-writer to a bookmaker he
graduated into bartender, into proprietor of a doggery. As every
saloon is a political club, every saloon-keeper is of necessity a
politician. Kelly's woodbox happened to be a convenient place for
directing the floaters and the repeaters. Kelly's political importance
grew apace. His respectability grew more slowly. But it had grown and
was growing.
If you had asked Lizzie, the maid, why she was a Democrat, she would
have given no such foolish reason as the average man gives.
She would not have twaddled about principles--when everyone with
eyeteeth cut ought to know that principles have departed from politics,
now that both parties have been harmonized and organized into agencies
of the plutocracy. She would not have said she was a Democrat because
her father was, or because all her friends and associates were. She
would have replied--in pleasantly Americanized Irish:
"I'm a Democrat because when my father got too old to work, Mr. House,
the Democrat leader, gave him a job on the elevator at the Court
House--though that dirty thief and scoundrel, Kelly, the Republican
boss, owned all the judges and county officers. And when my brother
lost his place as porter because he took a drink too many, Mr. House
gave him a card to the foreman of the gas company, and he went to work
at eight a week and is there yet."
Mr. Kelly and Mr. House belong to a maligned and much misunderstood
class. Whenever you find anywhere in nature an activity of any kind,
however pestiferous its activity may seem to you--or however good--you
may be sure that if you look deep enough you will find that that
activity has a use, arises from a need. The "robber trusts" and the
political bosses are interesting examples of this basic truth. They
have arisen because science, revolutionizing human society, has
compelled it to organize. The organization is crude and clumsy and
stupid, as yet, because men are ignorant, are experimenting, are
working in the dark. So, the organizing forces are necessarily crude
and clumsy and stupid.
Mr. Hastings was--all unconsciously--organizing society industrially.
Mr. Kelly--equally unconscious of the true nature of his
activities--was organizing society politically. And as industry and
politics are--and ever have been--at bottom two names for identically
the same thing, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Kelly were bound sooner or later
to get together.
Remsen City was organized like every other large or largish community.
There were two clubs--the Lincoln and the Jefferson--which well enough
represented the "respectable elements"--that is, those citizens who
were of the upper class. There were two other clubs--the Blaine and the
Tilden--which were similarly representative of the "rank and file" and,
rather, of the petty officers who managed the rank and file and voted
it and told it what to think and what not to think, in exchange taking
care of the needy sick, of the aged, of those out of work and so on.
Martin Hastings--the leading Republican citizen of Remsen City, though
for obvious reasons his political activities were wholly secret and
stealthy--was the leading spirit in the Lincoln Club. Jared
Olds--Remsen City's richest and most influential Democrat, the head of
the gas company and the water company--was foremost in the Jefferson
Club. At the Lincoln and the Jefferson you rarely saw any but
"gentlemen"--men of established position and fortune, deacons and
vestrymen, judges, corporation lawyers and the like. The Blaine and
the Tilden housed a livelier and a far less select class--the
"boys"--the active politicians, the big saloon keepers, the criminal
lawyers, the gamblers, the chaps who knew how to round up floaters and
to handle gangs of repeaters, the active young sports working for
political position, by pitching and carrying for the political leaders,
by doing their errands of charity or crookedness or what not. Joe
House was the "big shout" at the Tilden; Dick Kelly could be found
every evening on the third--or "wine," or plotting--floor of the
Blaine--found holding court. And very respectful indeed were even the
most eminent of Lincoln, or Jefferson, respectabilities who sought him
out there to ask favors of him.
The bosses tend more and more to become mere flunkeys of the
plutocrats. Kelly belonged to the old school of boss, dating from the
days when social organization was in the early stages, when the
political organizer was feared and even served by the industrial
organizer, the embryo plutocrats. He realized how necessary he was to
his plutocratic master, and he made that master treat him almost as an
equal. He was exacting ever larger pay for taking care of the voters
and keeping them fooled; he was getting rich, and had as yet vague
aspirations to respectability and fashion. He had stopped drinking,
had "cut out the women," had made a beginning toward a less inelegant
way of speaking the language. His view of life was what is called
cynical. That is, he regarded himself as morally the equal of the
respectable rulers of society--or of the preachers who attended to the
religious part of the grand industry of "keeping the cow quiet while it
was being milked."
But Mr. Kelly was explaining to Martin Hastings what he meant when he
said that there was "hell to pay":
"That infernal little cuss, Victor Dorn," said he "made a speech in the
Court House Square to-day. Of course, none of the decent papers--and
they're all decent except his'n--will publish any of it. Still, there
was about a thousand people there before he got through--and the
thing'll spread."
"Speech?--what about?" said Hastings. "He's always shooting off his
mouth. He'd better stop talking and go to work at some honest
business."
"He's got on to the fact that this strike is a put-up job--that the
company hired labor detectives in Chicago last winter to come down here
and get hold of the union. He gave names--amounts paid--the whole damn
thing."
"Um," said Hastings, rubbing his skinny hands along the shiny
pantaloons over his meagre legs. "Um."
"But that ain't all," pursued Kelly. "He read out a list of the men
told off to pretend to set fire to the car barns and start the
riot--those Chicago chaps, you know."
"I don't know anything about it," said Hastings sharply.
Kelly smiled slightly--amused scorn. It seemed absurd to him for the
old man to keep up the pretense of ignorance. In fact, Hastings was
ignorant--of the details. He was not quite the aloof plutocrat of the
modern school, who permits himself to know nothing of details beyond
the dividend rate and similar innocent looking results of causes at
which sometimes hell itself would shudder. But, while he was more
active than the conscience-easing devices now working smoothly made
necessary, he never permitted himself to know any unnecessary criminal
or wicked fact about his enterprises.
"I don't know," he repeated. "And I don't want to know."
"Anyhow, Dorn gave away the whole thing. He even read a copy of your
letter of introduction to the governor--the one you--according to
Dorn--gave Fillmore when you sent him up to the Capitol to arrange for
the invitation to come after the riot."
Hastings knew that the boss was deliberately "rubbing it in" because
Hastings--that is, Hastings' agents had not invited Kelly to assist in
the project for "teaching the labor element a much needed lesson." But
knowledge of Kelly's motive did not make the truth he was telling any
less true--the absurd mismanagement of the whole affair, with the
result that Dorn seemed in the way to change it from a lesson to labor
on the folly of revolt against their kind and generous but firm
employers into a provoker of fresh and fiercer revolt--effective
revolt--political revolt. So, as Kelly "rubbed," Hastings visibly
winced and writhed.
Kelly ended his recital with: "The speech created a hell of a
sensation, Mr. Hastings. That young chap can talk."
"Yes," snapped Hastings. "But he can't do anything else."
"I'm not so sure of that," replied Kelly, who was wise enough to
realize the value of a bogey like Dorn--its usefulness for purposes of
"throwing a scare into the silk-stocking crowd." "Dorn's getting mighty
strong with the people."
"Stuff and nonsense!" retorted Hastings. "They'll listen to any slick
tongued rascal that roasts those that are more prosperous than they
are. But when it comes to doing anything, they know better. They envy
and hate those that give them jobs, but they need the jobs."
"There's a good deal of truth in that, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly, who
was nothing if not judicial. "But Dorn's mighty plausible. I hear
sensible men saying there's something more'n hot air in his facts and
figgures." Kelly paused, and made the pause significant.
"About that last block of traction stock, Mr. Hastings. I thought you
were going to let me in on the ground floor. But I ain't heard
nothing."
"You ARE in," said Hastings, who knew when to yield. "Hasn't Barker
been to see you? I'll attend to it, myself."
"Thank you, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly--dry and brief as always when
receipting with a polite phrase for pay for services rendered. "I've
been a good friend to your people."
"Yes, you have, Dick," said the old man heartily. "And I want you to
jump in and take charge."
Hastings more than suspected that Kelly, to bring him to terms and to
force him to employ directly the high-priced Kelly or
Republico-Democratic machine as well as the State Republico-Democratic
machine, which was cheaper, had got together the inside information and
had ordered one of his henchmen to convey it to Dorn. But of what use
to quarrel with Kelly? Of course, he could depose him; but that would
simply mean putting another boss in his place--perhaps one more
expensive and less efficient. The time had been when he--and the
plutocracy generally--were compelled to come to the political bosses
almost hat in hand. That time was past, never to return. But still a
competent political agent was even harder to find than a competent
business manager--and was far more necessary; for, while a big business
might stagger along under poor financial or organizing management
within, it could not live at all without political favors, immunities,
and licenses. A band of pickpockets might as well try to work a town
without having first "squared" the police. Not that Mr. Hastings and
his friends THEMSELVES compared themselves to a band of pickpockets.
No, indeed. It was simply legitimate business to blackjack your
competitors, corner a supply, create a monopoly and fix prices and
wages to suit your own notions of what was your due for taking the
"hazardous risks of business enterprise."
"Leave everything to me," said Kelly briskly. "I can put the thing
through. Just tell your lawyer to apply late this afternoon to Judge
Lansing for an injunction forbidding the strikers to assemble anywhere
within the county. We don't want no more of this speechifying. This
is a peaceable community, and it won't stand for no agitators."
"Hadn't the lawyers better go to Judge Freilig?" said Hastings.
"He's shown himself to be a man of sound ideas."
"No--Lansing," said Kelly. "He don't come up for re-election for five
years. Freilig comes up next fall, and we'll have hard work to pull
him through, though House is going to put him on the ticket, too.
Dorn's going to make a hot campaign--concentrate on judges."
"There's nothing in that Dorn talk," said Hastings. "You can't scare
me again, Dick, as you did with that Populist mare's nest ten years
ago."
That had been Kelly's first "big killing" by working on the fears of
the plutocracy. Its success had put him in a position to buy a
carriage and a diamond necklace for Mrs. Kelly and to make first
payments on a large block of real estate. "It was no mare's nest, Mr.
Hastings," gravely declared the boss. "If I hadn't 'a knowed just how
to use the money we collected, there'd 'a been a crowd in office for
four years that wouldn't 'a been easy to manage, I can tell you. But
they was nothing to this here Dorn crowd. Dorn is----"
"We must get rid of him, Dick," interrupted Hastings.
The two men looked at each other--a curious glance--telegraphy. No
method was suggested, no price was offered or accepted. But in the
circumstances those matters became details that would settle
themselves; the bargain was struck.
"He certainly ought to be stopped," said Kelly carelessly. "He's the
worst enemy the labor element has had in my time." He rose. "Well, Mr.
Hastings, I must be going." He extended his heavy, strong hand, which
Hastings rose to grasp. "I'm glad we're working together again without
any hitches. You won't forget about that there stock?"
"I'll telephone about it right away, Dick--and about Judge Lansing.
You're sure Lansing's all right? I didn't like those decisions of his
last year--the railway cases, I mean."
"That was all right, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly with a wave of the hand.
"I had to have 'em in the interests of the party. I knowed the upper
court'd reverse. No, Lansing's a good party man--a good, sound man in
every way."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Hastings.
Before going into his private room to think and plan and telephone, he
looked out on the west veranda. There sat his daughter; and a few feet
away was David Hull, his long form stretched in a hammock while he
discoursed of his projects for a career as a political reformer. The
sight immensely pleased the old man. When he was a boy David Hull's
grandfather, Brainerd Hull, had been the great man of that region; and
Martin Hastings, a farm hand and the son of a farm hand, had looked up
at him as the embodiment of all that was grand and aristocratic. As
Hastings had never travelled, his notions of rank and position all
centred about Remsen City. Had he realized the extent of the world, he
would have regarded his ambition for a match between the daughter and
granddaughter of a farm hand and the son and grandson of a Remsen City
aristocrat as small and ridiculous. But he did not realize.
Davy saw him and sprang to his feet.
"No--no--don't disturb yourselves," cried the old man. "I've got some
things to 'tend to. You and Jenny go right ahead."
And he was off to his own little room where he conducted his own
business in his own primitive but highly efficacious way. A corps of
expert accountants could not have disentangled those crabbed,
criss-crossed figures; no solver of puzzles could have unravelled the
mystery of those strange hieroglyphics. But to the old man there
wasn't a difficult--or a dull--mark in that entire set of dirty,
dog-eared little account books. He spent hours in poring over them.
Just to turn the pages gave him keen pleasure; to read, and to
reconstruct from those hints the whole story of some agitating and
profitable operation, made in comparison the delight of an imaginative
boy in Monte Cristo or Crusoe seem a cold and tame emotion.
David talked on and on, fancying that Jane was listening and admiring,
when in fact she was busy with her own entirely different train of
thought. She kept the young man going because she did not wish to be
bored with her own solitude, because a man about always made life at
least a little more interesting than if she were alone or with a woman,
and because Davy was good to look at and had an agreeable voice.
"Why, who's that?" she suddenly exclaimed, gazing off to the right.
Davy turned and looked. "I don't know her," he said. "Isn't she queer
looking--yet I don't know just why."
"It's Selma Gordon," said Jane, who had recognized Selma the instant
her eyes caught a figure moving across the lawn.
"The girl that helps Victor Dorn?" said Davy, astonished. "What's SHE
coming HERE for? You don't know her--do you?"
"Don't you?" evaded Jane. "I thought you and Mr. Dorn were such pals."
"Pals?" laughed Hull. "Hardly that. We meet now and then at a
workingman's club I'm interested in--and at a cafe' where I go to get
in touch with the people occasionally--and in the street. But I never
go to his office. I couldn't afford to do that. And I've never seen
Miss Gordon."
"Well, she's worth seeing," said Jane. "You'll never see another like
her."
They rose and watched her advancing. To the usual person, acutely
conscious of self, walking is not easy in such circumstances. But
Selma, who never bothered about herself, came on with that matchless
steady grace which peasant girls often get through carrying burdens on
the head. Jane called out:
"So, you've come, after all."
Selma smiled gravely. Not until she was within a few feet of the steps
did she answer: "Yes--but on business." She was wearing the same
linen dress. On her head was a sailor hat, beneath the brim of which
her amazingly thick hair stood out in a kind of defiance. This hat,
this further article of Western civilization's dress, added to the
suggestion of the absurdity of such a person in such clothing. But in
her strange Cossack way she certainly was beautiful--and as healthy and
hardy as if she had never before been away from the high, wind-swept
plateaus where disease is unknown and where nothing is thought of
living to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five. Both before and
after the introduction Davy Hull gazed at her with fascinated curiosity
too plainly written upon his long, sallow, serious face. She, intent
upon her mission, ignored him as the arrow ignores the other birds of
the flock in its flight to the one at which it is aimed.
"You'll give me a minute or two alone?" she said to Jane. "We can walk
on the lawn here."
Hull caught up his hat. "I was just going," said he. Then he
hesitated, looked at Selma, stammered: "I'll go to the edge of the
lawn and inspect the view."
Neither girl noted this abrupt and absurd change of plan. He departed.
As soon as he had gone half a dozen steps, Selma said in her quick,
direct fashion:
"I've come to see you about the strike."
Jane tried to look cool and reserved. But that sort of expression
seemed foolish in face of the simplicity and candor of Selma Gordon.
Also, Jane was not now so well pleased with her father's ideas and
those of her own interest as she had been while she was talking with
him. The most exasperating thing about the truth is that, once one has
begun to see it--has begun to see what is for him the truth--the honest
truth--he can not hide from it ever again. So, instead of looking cold
and repellant, Jane looked uneasy and guilty. "Oh, yes--the strike,"
she murmured.
"It is over," said Selma. "The union met a half hour ago and revoked
its action--on Victor Dorn's advice. He showed the men that they had
been trapped into striking by the company--that a riot was to be
started and blamed upon them--that the militia was to be called in and
they were to be shot down."
"Oh, no--not that!" cried Jane eagerly. "It wouldn't have gone as far
as that."
"Yes--as far as that," said Selma calmly. "That sort of thing is an
old story. It's been done so often--and worse. You see, the
respectable gentlemen who run things hire disreputable creatures. They
don't tell them what to do. They don't need to. The poor wretches
understand what's expected of them--and they do it. So, the
respectable gentlemen can hold up white hands and say quite truthfully,
'No blood-no filth on these--see!"' Selma was laughing drearily. Her
superb, primitive eyes, set ever so little aslant, were flashing with
an intensity of emotion that gave Jane Hastings a sensation of
terror-much as if a man who has always lived where there were no
storms, but such gentle little rains with restrained and refined
thunder as usually visit the British Isles, were to find himself in the
midst of one of those awful convulsions that come crashing down the
gorges of the Rockies. She marveled that one so small of body could
contain such big emotions.
"You mustn't be unjust," she pleaded. "WE aren't THAT wicked, my dear."
Selma looked at her. "No matter," she said. "I am not trying to
convert you--or to denounce your friends to you. I'll explain what
I've come for. In his speech to-day and in inducing the union to
change, Victor has shown how much power he has. The men whose plans he
has upset will be hating him as men hate only those whom they fear."
"Yes--I believe that," said Jane. "So, you see, I'm not blindly
prejudiced."
"For a long time there have been rumors that they might kill him----"
"Absurd!" cried Jane angrily. "Miss Gordon, no matter how prejudiced
you may be--and I'll admit there are many things to justify you in
feeling strongly--but no matter how you may feel, your good sense must
tell you that men like my father don't commit murder."
"I understand perfectly," replied Selma. "They don't commit murder,
and they don't order murder. I'll even say that I don't think they
would tolerate murder, even for their benefit. But you don't know how
things are done in business nowadays. The men like your father have to
use men of the Kelly and the House sort--you know who they are?"
"Yes," said Jane.
"The Kellys and the Houses give general orders to their lieutenants.
The lieutenants pass the orders along--and down. And so on, until all
sorts of men are engaged in doing all sorts of work. Dirty, clean,
criminal--all sorts. Some of these men, baffled in what they are
trying to do to earn their pay--baffled by Victor Dorn--plot against
him." Again that sad, bitter laugh. "My dear Miss Hastings, to kill a
cat there are a thousand ways besides skinning it alive."
"You are prejudiced," said Jane, in the manner of one who could not be
convinced.
Selma made an impatient gesture. "Again I say, no matter. Victor
laughs at our fears----"
"I knew it," said Jane triumphantly. "He is less foolish than his
followers."
"He simply does not think about himself," replied Selma. "And he is
right. But it is our business to think about him, because we need him.
Where could we find another like him?"
"Yes, I suppose your movement WOULD die out, if he were not behind it."
Selma smiled peculiarly. "I think you don't quite understand what we
are about," said she. "You've accepted the ignorant notion of your
class that we are a lot of silly roosters trying to crow one sun out of
the heavens and another into it. The facts are somewhat different.
Your class is saying, 'To-day will last forever,' while we are saying,
'No, to-day will run its course--will be succeeded by to-morrow. Let
us not live like the fool who thinks only of the day. Let us be
sensible, intelligent, let us realize that there will be to-morrow and
that it, too, must be lived. Let us get ready to live it sensibly. Let
us build our social system so that it will stand the wear and tear of
another day and will not fall in ruins about our heads.'"
"I am terribly ignorant about all these things," said Jane. "What a
ridiculous thing my education has been!"
"But it hasn't spoiled your heart," cried Selma. And all at once her
eyes were wonderfully soft and tender, and into her voice came a tone
so sweet that Jane's eyes filled with tears. "It was to your heart that
I came to appeal," she went on. "Oh, Miss Hastings--we will do all we
can to protect Victor Dorn--and we guard him day and night without his
knowing it. But I am afraid--afraid! And I want you to help. Will
you?"
"I'll do anything I can," said Jane--a Jane very different from the
various Janes Miss Hastings knew--a Jane who seemed to be conjuring of
Selma Gordon's enchantments.
"I want you to ask your father to give him a fair show. We don't ask
any favors--for ourselves--for him. But we don't want to see him--"
Selma shuddered and covered her eyes with her hands "--lying dead in
some alley, shot or stabbed by some unknown thug!"
Selma made it so vivid that Jane saw the whole tragedy before her very
eyes.
"The real reason why they hate him," Selma went on, "is because he
preaches up education and preaches down violence--and is building his
party on intelligence instead of on force. The masters want the
workingman who burns and kills and riots. They can shoot him down.
They can make people accept any tyranny in preference to the danger of
fire and murder let loose. But Victor is teaching the workingmen to
stop playing the masters' game for them. No wonder they hate him! He
makes them afraid of the day when the united workingmen will have their
way by organizing and voting. And they know that if Victor Dorn lives,
that day will come in this city very, very soon." Selma saw Davy Hull,
impatient at his long wait, advancing toward them. She said: "You will
talk to your father?"
"Yes," said Jane. "And I assure you he will do what he can. You don't
know him, Miss Gordon."
"I know he loves you--I know he MUST love you," said Selma. "Now, I
must go. Good-by. I knew you would be glad of the chance to do
something worth while."
Jane had been rather expecting to be thanked for her generosity and
goodness. Selma's remark seemed at first blush an irritating attempt
to shift a favor asked into a favor given. But it was impossible for
her to fail to see Selma's sensible statement of the actual truth. So,
she said honestly:
"Thank you for coming, Miss Gordon. I am glad of the chance."
They shook hands. Selma, holding her hand, looked up at her, suddenly
kissed her. Jane returned the kiss. David Hull, advancing with his
gaze upon them, stopped short. Selma, without a glance--because
without a thought--in his direction, hastened away.
When David rejoined Jane, she was gazing tenderly after the small,
graceful figure moving toward the distant entrance gates. Said David:
"I think that girl has got you hypnotized."
Jane laughed and sent him home. "I'm busy," she said. "I've got
something to do, at last."