BOJO'S FATHER
The offices of the Associated Woolen Mills were on the sixteenth floor
of a modern office building in the lower city, which towered above the
surrounding squalid brownstone houses given over to pedlers and
delicatessen shops like a gleaming stork ankle deep in a pool of murky
water.
Bojo wandered through long mathematical rooms with mathematical young
men perched high on desk stools all with the same mathematical curve of
the back, past squadrons of clicking typewriters, clicking endlessly as
though each human unit had been surrendered into the cogs of a universal
machine. He passed one by one a row of glassed-in rooms with names of
minor officers displayed, marking them solemnly as though already he saw
the long slow future ahead: Mr. Pelton, treasurer; Mr. Spinny, general
secretary; Mr. Colton, second vice-president; Mr. Horton,
vice-president; Mr. Rhoemer, general manager, until he arrived at the
outer waiting-room with its faded red leather sofas and polished brass
spittoons, where he had come first as a boy in need of money.
Richardson, an old young man, who walked as though he had never been in
a hurry and spoke in a whisper, showed him into the inner office of
Jotham B. Crocker, explaining that his father would return presently.
Everything was in order; chairs precisely placed, the window shades at
the same level, bookcases with filed memoranda, even to the desk, where
letters to be read and letters to be signed were arranged in neat
packages side by side.
On the wall was extended an immense oil painting fifteen feet by ten, of
Niagara Falls in frothy eruption, with a large and brilliant rainbow
lost in the mist and several figures in the foreground representing the
noble Indians gazing with feelings of awe upon the spectacle of nature.
Behind the desk hung a large black and white engraving of Abraham
Lincoln, with one hand resting on the Proclamation of Emancipation,
flanked by smaller portraits of Henry Ward Beecher and the author of the
McKinley tariff. Opposite was an old-time family group done in crayons,
representing Mr. and Mrs. Crocker standing side by side, with Jack in
long trousers and Tom in short, while on the shining desk amid the
papers was a daguerrotype mounted in a worn leather frame, of the wife
who had been dead fifteen years.
Bojo selected a cigar from the visitors box and strode up and down,
rehearsing in his mind the arguments he would bring to bear against the
expected ultimatum. From the window the lower bay expanded below him
with its steam insects crawling across the blue-gray surface, its
wharf-crowded shores, beyond the ledges on ledges of factories trailing
cotton streamers against the brittle sky. Everywhere the empire of
industry extended its stone barracks without loveliness or pomp,
smoke-grimed, implacable prisons, where multitudes herded under
artificial light that humanity might live in terms of millions.
As he looked, he seemed already to have surrendered his individuality,
swallowed up in the army of labor, and the revolt arose in him anew.
What was the use of money if it could not bring a wider horizon and
greater opportunities? And a sort of dull anger moved in him against the
parental ambition which limited him to unnecessary drudgery.
Of all the persons he had met the greatest stranger to him was his
father. Since his mother's death, when he was but eight years of age,
his life had been spent in boarding school and college, in summer camps
or on visits to chums. Their relations had been formal. At the beginning
and end of each summer he had come down the long avenue of desks, past
the glass doors into the private office, to report, to receive money,
and to be sped with a few appropriate words of advice. Several times
during the year his father would appear on a short warning, stay a few
hours, and hurry off. On such occasions Tom had always felt that he was
being surveyed and estimated as a lumberman watches the growth of a
young forest.
His father was always in a hurry, always in good health, matter of fact,
and generous. That his business had prospered and extended he knew,
though to what extent his father's activities had multiplied he still
was ignorant. Conversation between them had always been difficult in
those tours of inspection; but Bojo, instinctively, censored the
lithographs on the wall (harmless though they were) and the choice of
novels which his father would be sure to examine with a critical eye.
Klondike, the sweep, arranged the room in military order and Fred
DeLancy was enjoined to observe a bread-and-milk diet. Bojo had an idea
that his father was very stern, rigid, and exact, with the unrelenting
attitude toward folly and leisure which had characterized the Crocker
family in the days of their seven celebrated divines.
"How are you, Tom?" said a chest-voice behind him. "Turn around. You
look in first-class shape. Glad to see you."
"Glad to see you, father," he said hastily, taking the stubby, powerful
hand.
"Just a moment--go on with your cigar. Let me straighten out this desk.
Train was ten minutes late."
"Now it comes," thought Bojo to himself as he gripped his hands and
assumed a determined frown.
As they faced each other they were astonishingly alike and unlike. They
had the same squaring of the brows, the same obstinate rise of the head
at the back, and the prominent undershot jaw. Years had thickened the
frame of the father and written characteristic lines about the mouth and
the eyes. He had become so integral a part of the machine he had created
that in the process all the finer youthful shades of expression had
faded away.
Concentration on a fixed idea, indomitable purpose, decision,
self-discipline were there in the strongly sculptured chin and maxillary
muscles, under the sparse, close-cropped beard shot with gray; courage
and tenacity in the deep eyes, which, like Bojo's, had the disconcerting
fixity of the mastiff's; but the quality of dreams which so keenly
qualified the tempestuous obstinacy of the son had been discarded as so
much superfluous baggage. Life to him was a succession of immediate
necessities, a military progress, and his imagination went with
difficulty beyond the demands of the hour. He dressed in a
pepper-and-salt business suit made of his own product, wore a made-up
tie and comfortable square-toed shoes, with a certain aggressive disdain
for the fashions as a quality of pretentiousness.
He ran through his correspondence in five minutes while Bojo pricked up
his ears at the sums which he flung off without hesitation. Richardson
faded from the room, the father shifted a package of memoranda, turned
the face of his desk clock so he could follow the time, drew back in his
chair, and helped himself to a cigar, shooting a glance at the embattled
figure of the son.
"You look all primed up--ready to jump in the ring," he said with a
smile, and without waiting for Bojo's embarrassed answer he continued,
caging his fingers and adopting a quick, incisive tone.
"Well, Tom, you have now arrived at man's estate and it is right that I
should discuss with you your future course in life. But before we come
to that I wish to say several things. You've finished your college
course very creditably. You have engaged a good deal in different
sports, it is true; but you have not allowed it to interfere with your
serious work, and I believe on the whole your experience in athletics
has been valuable. It has taught you qualities of self-restraint and
discipline, and it has given you a sound body. Your record in your
studies, while it has not been brilliant, has been creditable. You've
kept out of bad company, chosen the right friends-- I am particularly
impressed with Mr. Granning--and you've not gone in for dissipation.
You've done well and I have no complaint. You've worked hard and you've
played hard. You will take a serious view of life."
This discourse annoyed Bojo. It seemed to fling a barrier of
conventionality between them, driving them further apart.
"Why the deuce doesn't he talk in a natural way?" he thought moodily.
And he felt with a sudden depression the futility of arguing his case.
"We're in for a row. There's no way out."
"Now, Tom, lets talk about the future."
"Here it comes," said Bojo to himself, bracing himself to resist.
"What would you like to do?"
"What would _I_ like?" said Tom, completely off his guard.
"Yes, what are your ideas?"
The turn was so unexpected that he could not for the moment assemble his
thoughts. He rose, making a pretext of seeking an ash-tray, and
returned.
"Why, to tell the truth, sir, I came here expecting that you would
demand that I go into this--into the mills."
"I see, and you don't want to do what your father's done. You want
something else, something better."
The tone in which this was said aroused the obstinacy in the young man,
but he repressed the first answer.
"Well?"
"I don't know, sir, that there's any use of my explaining myself; I
don't know what good it'll do," he said slowly.
"On the contrary, I am not making demands on you. I am here to discuss
with you." (Bojo repressed a smile at this.) "You've thought about this.
What do you suggest?"
"I don't think you'll understand it at all, but I want time."
"Time to do what?"
"To get out and see the world, to meet men who are doing things, to get
a chance to develop, to get my ideas straightened out a bit."
"Is that all?"
"No, that's not quite honest," said Bojo suddenly. "The truth is, sir, I
don't see why I should begin all over again, the drudgery and the
isolation and all. If you wanted me to do only that why did you send me
to college? I've made friends and it's only right I should have the
opportunity to lead as big a life as they. Money isn't everything, it's
what you get out of life, and besides I've got opportunities, unusual
opportunities to get ahead here."
"Have you made up your mind, Tom?" said the father slowly.
"I'm afraid I have, sir."
"Let me talk to you. You may see it in a different light. First you
speak of opportunities--what opportunities?"
"Mr. Drake has been kind enough--"
"That means Wall Street."
"Yes, sir."
The father thought a moment.
"What is the situation between you and Miss Drake?"
"We are very good friends."
"Would you marry her if you didn't have a cent?"
"I would not."
"I am glad to hear you say that. Very glad. So you re going into Wall
Street," he said, after a moment. "Are you going into the banking
business?"
"Why, no."
"Or into railroads or any creative industry?"
"Not exactly."
"You're going into Wall Street," said Crocker, "like a great many young
men, who've been having an easy, luxurious time at college and who want
to go on with it. You're going there as a gambler, hoping to get the
inside track through some influence and make a hundred thousand dollars
of other people's money in a lucky year."
"That's rather a hard way to put it, sir."
"You don't pretend to be able to earn a hundred thousand dollars in one
year or in five, do you, Tom?"
"Let me put it in another way," said Bojo after a moment's indecision.
"What you have made and what you have been able to give me have put me
in the way of acquiring friends that others can't make, and friends are
assets. The higher up you go in society the easier it is to make money;
isn't it so? Opportunities are assets also. If I have the opportunity to
make a lot of money in a short time, what is the sense of turning my
back on the easiest way and taking up the hardest?"
"Tom, do you young fellows ever stop to think that there is such a thing
as your own country, and that if you've got advantages you've also got
responsibilities?" said Crocker, senior, shaking his head. "You want
money like all the rest. What good do you want to do in return? What
usefulness do you accomplish in the scheme of things here? You talk of
opportunity--you don't know what a real opportunity and a privilege is.
Now let me say my say."
Richardson came sliding into the room at this moment and he paused to
deny the card, with a curt order against further interruptions. When he
resumed it was on a quieter note, with a touch of sadness.
"The trouble is, our points of view are too far apart for us to come
together at present. You want something that isn't going to satisfy you
and I know isn't going to satisfy you. But I can't make you see it,
there's the pity of it. You've got to get your hard knocks yourself.
You've got real ambition in you. Now let me tell you something about the
mills and you think it over. There's some bigger things in this world
than you think, and the biggest is to create something, something useful
to the community; to make a monument of it and to pass it down for your
son to carry on--family pride. You think there's only drudgery in it.
Did you ever think there were thousands and thousands of people
depending on how you run your business? Do you realize that every great
business to-day means the protection of those thousands; that you've got
to study out how to protect them at every point in order to make them
efficient; that there's nothing unimportant? You've got to watch over
their health and their happiness, see that they get amusement,
relaxation; that they're encouraged to buy homes and taught to save
money. You've got to see that they get education to keep them out of the
hands of ignorant agitators. You've got to make them self-respecting and
able intelligently to understand your own business, so that they'll
perceive they're getting their just share. Add to that the other side,
the competition, the watching of every new invention, the calculating to
the last cent, the study of local and foreign conditions of supply and
demand, the habits and tastes of different communities. Add also the
biggest thing that you've got, a mixed population, that's got to be
turned into intelligent, useful American citizens, and you've got as big
an opportunity and responsibility as you can place before any young
fellow I know. What do you say?"
Bojo had nothing to say--not that he had surrendered, but that his own
arguments seemed petty besides these.
The father rose and laid his hands on his son's shoulders.
"Why, Tom, don't you know it's been the dream of my life to hand you
down this thing that I've built myself? Don't you know there's a
sentiment about it? Why, it isn't dollars and cents: I've got ten times
what I want; it's pride. I'm proud of every bit of it. There isn't a new
turn, mechanical or social, has come up over the world but what I've
adopted it there. I haven't had a strike in fifteen years. I've done
things there would open your eyes. You'd be proud. Well, what are you
thinking?"
"You make it very hard, sir," he said slowly. He had not expected this
sort of appeal. "If I were older, I don't know--but it's hard now." He
could not tell him all the surrender would mean, and though his deeper
nature had been reached he still fought on. "I'm not starting where you
started, sir; that's the trouble. You went to work when you were twelve.
It would be easier if I had, and, if you'll forgive me, it's your fault
too that I want what I want now. I suppose I do want to begin on top,
but I've been on top all these years, that's all. I couldn't do it now;
perhaps later--I don't know. If I went up to the mills now I should eat
my heart out. I'm sorry to have to say this to you, but it's the truth."
The father left him abruptly and seated himself at his desk without
speaking.
"If I insisted you would refuse," he said slowly.
"I'm afraid I'd have to, sir," said Bojo, with a feeling of dread.
There was another silence, at the end of which Mr. Crocker drew out his
check-book and looked at it solemnly.
"Good! Now he's figuring how much he'll give me and cut me off!" thought
the son.
"Tom, I don't want to lose you too," said the father slowly. "I'm going
to try a different way with you. You're sound and you ring true. The
only trouble is you don't know; you've got to learn your lesson. So you
think if you had a start you'd clean up a fortune, don't you?--and you
believe--" he paused--"in Wall Street friends. Very well; I'm going to
give you an opportunity to get your eyes open."
He dipped his pen in the ink and wrote a check with deliberation, while
Bojo, puzzled, thought to himself: "What the deuce is he up to now?"
"I'm not going to make a bargain with you. I'm going to trust to
experience and to the Crocker in you. I know the stuff you're made of.
You'll never make an idler, you'll never stand that life, but you want
to try it. Very well. I'm going to give you a check. It's yours. Play
with it all you want. You'll get it taken away from you in two years at
the most. When that happens come back to me, do you understand, where
you belong! Blood's thicker than water, my boy; there's something in
father and son sticking together, doing something that counts! Here,
take this."
And he placed in his hand a check which read:
Pay to the order of Thomas Beauchamp Crocker
Fifty thousand dollars
JOTHAM B. CROCKER.