IN WHICH JUDGE VAN DORN MAKES HIS BRAGS AND DR. NESBIT SEES A VISION
It was the last day of the last year of the Nineteenth Century--and a
fair, beautiful day it was. The sun shone over Harvey in spite of the
clouds from the smelter in South Harvey, and in spite of the clouds that
were blown by the soft, south wind up the Wahoo Valley from other
smelters and other coal mines, and a score of great smoke stacks in
Foley and Magnus and Plain Valley, where the discovery of coal and oil
and gas, within the decade that was passing, had turned the Valley into
a straggling town almost twenty miles long. So high and busy were the
chimneys that when the south wind blew toward the capital of this
industrial community, often the sun was dimmed in Harvey by a haze. But
on this fair winter's day the air was dry and cold and even in Harvey
shadows were black and clear, and the sun's warmth had set the redbirds
to singing in the brush and put so much joy into the world that Judge
Thomas Van Dorn had ventured out with his new automobile--a chugging,
clattering wonder that set all the horses of Greeley County on their
hind feet, making him a person of distinction in the town far beyond his
renown as a judge and an orator and a person of more than state-wide
reputation. But the Judge's automobile was frail and prone to err--being
not altogether unlike its owner in that regard. Thus many a time when it
chugged out of his barn so proudly, it came limping back behind a span
of mules. And so it happened on that bright, beautiful, December day
that the Judge was sitting upon a box in Captain Morton's shop, while
the Captain at his little forge was welding some bits of metal together
and discoursing upon the virtues of his Household Horse, which he was
assembling in small quantities--having arranged with a firm in South
Chicago to cast the two iron pieces that were needed.
"Now, for instance, on a clothes wringer," the Captain was saying: "It's
a perfect wonder on a clothes wringer: I have the agency of a clothes
wringer that is making agents rich all over the country. But women don't
like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All
right--hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced
three-fifths and a day's wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl
could play The Maiden's Prayer on a piano--eh? Or, say, put it on a
churn--same Horse--one's all that's needed to a house. Or make it an ice
cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that
runs by a crank--and 'y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold
Laura one--traded her one for lessons for Ruth, and she says wash-day at
the Doctor's is like Sunday now--what say? Lila's so crazy about it they
can't keep her out of the basement while the woman works,--likes to
dabble in the water you know like all children, washing her doll
clothes, what say?"
But the Judge said nothing. The Captain tinkered with the metal, and
dipped it slowly in and out of a tub of dirty water to temper it, and as
he tried it in the groove where it belonged upon the automobile backed
up to the shop, he found that it was not exactly true, and went to work
to spring it back into line. The Judge looked around the shop--a barny,
little place filled with all sorts of wheels and pulleys and levers and
half-finished inventions that wouldn't work, and that, even if they
would work, would be of little consequence. There was an attempt to make
a self-oiler for buggy wheels, a half-finished contrivance that was
supposed to keep cordwood stacked in neat rows; an automatic contraption
to prevent coffeepots from burning; a cornsheller that would all but
work; a molasses faucet with an alcohol burner which was supposed to
make the sirup flow faster--but which instead sometimes blew up and
burned down grocery stores, and there were steamers and churns and
household contrivances which the Captain had introduced into the homes
of Harvey in past years, not of his invention, to be sure, but
contrivances that had inspired his eloquence, and were mute witnesses to
his prowess--trophies of the chase. Above the forge were rows of his
patent sprockets, all neatly wrapped in brown paper, and under this row
of merchandise was a clipping from the _Times_ describing the
Captain's invention, and predicting--at five cents a line--that it would
revolutionize the theory of mechanics and soon become a household need
all over the world.
As the Judge looked idly at the Captain's treasures while the Captain
tinkered with the steel, he took off his hat, and the Captain, peering
through his glasses, remarked:
"Getting kind of thin on top, Tom--eh? Doc, he's leaning a little hard
on his cane. Joe Calvin, he's getting rheumatic, and you're getting
thin-haired. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."
"So you believe the Lord runs things here in Harvey, do you, Cap?" asked
the Judge, who was playing with a bit of wire.
"Well--I suppose if you come right down to it," answered the Captain, "a
man's got to have the consolation of religion in some shape or other or
he's going to get mighty discouraged--what say?"
"Why," scoffed the Judge, "it's a myth--there's nothing to it. Look at
my wife--I mean Margaret--she changes religion as often as she changes
dogs. Since we've been married she's had three religions. And what good
does it do her?"
The Captain, sighting down the edge of the metal, shook his head, and
the Judge went on: "What good does any religion do? I've broken the ten
commandments, every one of them--and I get on. No one bothers me,
because I keep inside the general statutes. I've beat God at his own
game. I tell you, Cap, you can do what you please just so you obey the
state and federal laws and pay your debts. This God-myth amuses me."
Captain Morton did not care to argue with the Judge. So he said, by way
of making conversation for a customer, and neighbor and guest:
"I hear, well, to be exact, George Brotherton was telling me and the
girls the other night that the Company is secretly dropping out the
members of the unions that Grant Adams has been organizing down in South
Harvey."
"Yes--that Adams is another one of your canting, God-and-morality
fellows. Always watch that kind. I tell you, Captain," barked the Judge,
"about the only thing my wife and I have agreed on for a year is that
this Adams fellow is a sneaking, pharisaical hound. Lord, how she hates
him! Sometimes I think women hate hard enough to compete with your God,
who according to the preachers, is always slipping around getting even
with fellows for their sins. God and women are very much alike, anyway,"
sneered the Judge. In the silence that followed, both men were attracted
by a noise behind them--the rustling of straw. They looked around and
saw the figure of a little girl--a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, shy, little
girl, trying to slip out of the place. She had evidently been in the
loft gathering eggs, for her apron was full, and she had her foot on the
loft ladder.
"Why, Lila, child," exclaimed the Captain, "I clean forgot you being up
there--did you find any eggs? Why didn't you come down long ago?"
"Come here, Lila," called the Judge. The child stood by the ladder
hesitatingly, holding her little apron corners tightly in her teeth
basketing the eggs--too embarrassed now that she was down the ladder, to
use her hands.
"Lila," coaxed the Judge, reaching his hand into his pocket, "won't you
let Papa give you a dollar for candy or something. Come on, daughter."
He put out his hands. She shook her head. She had to pass him to get to
the door. "You aren't afraid of your Papa are you, Lila--come--here's a
dollar for you--that's a good girl."
Her mouth quivered. Big tears were dropping down her cheeks. The
Captain's quick eye saw that something had hurt her. He went over to
her, put his arm about her, took the eggs from her apron, fondled her
gently without speaking. The Judge drew nearer "Lila--come--that's a
good girl--here, take the money. Oh Lila, Lila," he cried, "won't you
take it for Papa--won't you, my little girl?"
The child looked up at him with shy frightened eyes, and suddenly she
put down her head and ran past him. He tried to hold her--to put the
silver into her hand, but she shrank away and dropped the coin before
him.
"Shy child, Judge--very shy. Emma let her gather the eggs this morning,
she loves to hunt eggs," chuckled the Captain, "and she went to the loft
just before you came in. I clean forgot she hadn't come down."
The Captain went on with his work.
"I suppose, Cap," said Van Dorn quietly, "she heard more or less of what
I said." The Captain nodded.
"How much did she understand?" the Judge asked.
"More'n you'd think, Judge--more'n you'd think. But," added Captain
Morton after a pause, "I know the little skite like a top, Judge--and
there's one thing about her: She's a loyal little body. She'll never
tell; you needn't be worrying about that."
The Judge sighed and added sadly: "It wasn't that, Cap--it was--" But
the Judge left his sentence in the air. The mending was done. The Judge
paid the old man and gave him a dollar more than he asked, and went
chugging off in a cloud of smoke, while the Captain, thinking over what
the Judge had said, sighed, shook his head, and bending over his work,
cackled in an undertone, snatches of a tune that told of a land that is
fairer than day. He had put together three sprockets and was working on
the fourth when he looked up and saw his daughter Emma sitting on the
box that the Judge had vacated. The Captain put his hand to his back and
stood up, looking at his eldest daughter with loving pride.
"Emma," he said at length, "Judge Tom says women are like God." He stood
near her and smoothed her hair, and patted her cheek as he pressed her
head against his side. "I guess he's right--eh? Lila was in the loft
getting eggs and she overheard a lot of his fool talk." The daughter
made no reply. The Captain worked on and finally said: "It kind of hit
Tom hard to have Lila hear him; took the tuck out of him, eh?"
Emma still waited. "My dear, the more I know of women the better I think
of God, and the surer I am of God, the better I think of women--what
say?" He sat on the box beside her and took her hand in his hard,
cracked, grimy hand, "'Y gory, girl, I tell you, give me a line on a
man's idea of God and I can tell you to a tee what he thinks of
women--eh?" The Captain dropped the hand for a moment and looked out of
the door into the alley.
"Well, Father, I agree with you in general about women but in particular
I don't care about Mrs. Herdicker and I wish Martha had another job,
though I suppose it's better than teaching school." The daughter sighed.
"Honest, father, sometimes when I've been on my feet all day, and the
children have been mean, and the janitor sticks his head in and grins,
so I'll know the superintendent is in the building and get the work off
the board that the rules don't allow me to put on, or one of the other
girls sends a note up to watch for my spelling for he's cranky on
spelling to-day, I just think, 'Lordee, if I had a job in some one's
kitchen, I'd be too happy to breathe.' But then--"
"Yes--yes, child--I know it's hard work now--but 'y gory, Emmy, when I
get this sprocket introduced and going, I'll buy you six superintendents
in a brass cage and let you feed 'em biled eggs to make 'em sing--eh?"
He smiled and patted his daughter's hair and rose to go back to work.
The girl plucked at his coat and said: "Now sit down, father, I want to
talk to you," she hesitated. "It's about Mr. Brotherton. You know he's
been coming out here for years and I thought he was coming to see me,
and now Martha thinks he comes to see her, and Martha always stays there
and so does Ruth, and if he is coming to see me--" she stopped. Her
father looked at her in astonishment. "Why, father," she went on,--"why
not? I'm twenty-five, and Martha's twenty-two and even Ruth is
seventeen--he might even be coming to see Ruth," she added bitterly.
"Yes, or Epaminondas--the cat--eh?" cut in the old man. Then he added,
indignantly, "Well, how about this singing Jasper Adams--who's he coming
to see? Or Amos--he comes around here sometimes Saturday night after G.
A. R. meeting, with me--what say? Would you want us all to clear out and
leave you the front room with him?" demanded the perturbed Captain.
Then the father put his arm about his child tenderly: "Twenty-five years
old--twenty-five years--why, girl, in my time a girl was an old maid
laid on the shelf at twenty-five--and here you are," he mused, "just
thinking of your first beau and here I am needing your mother worse than
I ever did in my life. Law-see' girl--how do I know what to do--what
say?" But he did know enough to draw her to him and kiss her and sigh.
"Well--maybe I can do something--maybe--we'll see." And then she left
him and he went to his work. And as he worked the thought struck him
suddenly that if he could put one of his sprockets in the Judge's
automobile where he had seen a chain, that it would save power and stop
much of the noise. So as he worked he dreamed that his sprocket was
adopted by the makers of the new machines, and that he was
rich--exceedingly rich and that he took the girls to visit the Ohio kin,
and that Emma had her trip to the Grand Canyon, that Martha went to
Europe and that Ruthie "took vocal" of a teacher in France whose name he
could not pronounce.
As he hammered away at his bench he heard a shuffling at the door and
looking up saw Dr. Nesbit in the threshold.
"Come in, Doctor; sit down and talk," shrilled the Doctor before the
Captain could speak, and when the Doctor had seated himself upon the box
by the workbench, the Captain managed to say: "Surely--come right in,
I'm kind of lonesome anyhow."
"And I'm mad," cried the Doctor. "Just let me sit here and blow off a
little to my old army friend."
"Well--well, Doctor, it's queer to see you hot under the collar--eh?"
The Doctor began digging out his pipe and filling it, without speaking.
The Captain asked: "What's gone wrong? Politics ain't biling? what say?"
"Well," returned the Doctor, "you know Laura works at her kindergarten
down there in South Harvey, and she got me to pass that hours-of-service
law for the smelter men at the extra session last summer. Good law!
Those men working there in the fumes shouldn't work over six hours a
day--it will kill them. I managed by trading off my hide and my chances
of Heaven to get a law through, cutting them down to eight hours in
smelter work. Denny Hogan, who works on the slag dump, is going to die
if he has to do it another year on a ten-hour shift. He's been up and
down for two years now--the Hogans live neighbors to Laura's school and
I've been watching him. Well," and here the Doctor thumped on the floor
with his cane, "this Judge--this vain, strutting peacock of a Judge,
this cat-chasing Judge that was once my son-in-law, has gone and knocked
the law galley west so far as it affects the slag dump. I've just been
reading his decision, and I'm hot--good and hot."
The Captain interrupted:
"I saw Violet Hogan and the children--dressed like princesses, walking
out to-day--past the Judge's house--showing it to them--what say? My,
how old she looks, Doctor!"
"Well--the damned villain--the infernal scoundrel--" piped the Doctor.
"I just been reading that decision. The men showed in their lawsuit that
the month before the law took effect the company, knowing the law had
been passed, went out and sold their switch and sold the slag dump, to a
fake railroad company that bought a switch engine and two or three cars,
and incorporated as a railroad, and then--the same people owning the
smelter and the railroad, they set all the men in the smelter that they
could working on the slag dump, so the men were working for the railroad
and not for the smelter company and didn't come within the eight hour
law. And now the Judge stands by that farce; he says that the men
working there under the very chimney of the smelter on the slag dump
where the fumes are worst, are not subject to the law because the law
says that men working for the smelters shall not work more than eight
hours, and these men are working for a cheating, swindling subterfuge of
a railroad. That's judge-made law. That's the kind of law that makes
anarchists. Law!" snorted the Doctor, "Law!--made by judges who have
graduated out of the employ of corporations--law!--is just what the
Judge on the bench dares to read into the statute. I tell you, Cap, if
the doctors and engineers and preachers were as subservient to greed and
big money as the lawyers are, we would soon lose our standing. But when
a lawyer commits some flagrant malpractice like that of Tom Van
Dorn's--the lawyers remind us that the courts are sacred institutions."
The Doctor's pipe was out and in filling it again, he jabbed viciously
at the bowl with his knife, and in the meantime the Captain was saying:
"Well, I suppose he found the body of the decisions leaning that way,
Doc--you know Judges are bound by the body of the law."
"The body of the law--yes, damn 'em, I've bought 'em to find the body of
the law myself."
The Doctor sputtered along with his pipe and cried out in his high
treble--"I never had any more trouble buying a court than a Senator. And
lawyers have no shame about hiring themselves to crooks and notorious
lawbreakers. And some lawyers hire themselves body and soul to great
corporations for life and we all know that those corporations are merely
evading the laws and not obeying them; and lawyers--at the very top of
the profession--brazenly hire out for life to that kind of business.
What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who
devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that
kind of doctors--but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our
medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers
who devote themselves to skinning the public--they are at the head of
the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A
damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole
profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack--a hair-splitting, owl-eyed,
venal quack--who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the
strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of
injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in
his quackery. Justice demands that he take that fake corporation, made
solely to evade the law, and shake its guts out and tell the men who put
up this job, that he'll put them all in jail for contempt of court if
they try any such shenanigan in his jurisdiction again. That would be
justice. This--this decision--is humbug and every one knows it. What's
more--it may be murder. For men can't work on that slag dump ten hours a
day without losing their lives."
The captain tapped away at his sprocket. He had his own ideas about the
sanctity of the courts. They were not to be overthrown so easily. The
Doctor snorted: "Burn their bodies, and blear their minds, and then wail
about our vicious lower classes--I'm getting to be an anarchist."
He prodded his cane among the debris on the floor and then he began to
twitch the loose skin of his lower face and smiled. "Thank you, Cap," he
chirped. "How good and beautiful a thing it is to blow off steam in a
barn to your old army friend."
The Captain looked around and smiled and the Doctor asked: "What was
that you were saying about Violet Hogan?"
"I said I saw her to-day and she looked faded and old--she's not so much
older than my Emma--eh?"
"Still," said the Doctor, "Violet's had a tough time--a mighty tough
time; three children in six years. The last one took most of her teeth;
young horse doctor gave her some dope that about killed her; she's done
all the cooking, washing, scrubbing and made garden for the family in
that time--up every morning at five, seven days in the week to get
breakfast for Dennis--Emma would look broken if she'd had that." The
Doctor paused. "Like her mother--weak--vain--puts all of Denny's wages
on the children's backs--Laura says Violet spends more on frills for
those kids than we spend for groceries--and Violet goes around herself
looking like the Devil before breakfast." The Doctor rested his chin on
his cane. "Remember her mother--Mrs. Mauling--funny how it breeds that
way. The human critter, Cap, is a curious beast--but he does breed
true--mostly." The Doctor loafed, whistling, around the work shop,
prodding at things with his cane, and wound up leaning against one end
of the bench.
"Last day of the century," he piped, "makes a fellow pause and study.
I've seen fifty-three years of the old century--seen the electric light,
the telephone, the phonograph, the fast printing press, the
transcontinental railroad, the steam thresher, the gasoline engine--and
all its wonders clear down to Judge Tom's devil wagon. That's a good
deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized--leaving the
homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen
steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts;
one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one.
So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings,
greater than courts, greater than governments--greater than God himself
as matters stand, Cap--I'm terribly afraid that's true."
The Doctor was serious. His high voice was calm, and he smoked a while
in peace. "But," he added reflectively--"Cap, I want to tell you
something more wonderful than all; I've seen seven absolutely honest men
elected this year to the State Senate--I've sounded them, felt them out,
had all kinds of reports from all kinds of people on those seven men.
Each man thinks he's alone, and there are seven."
The Doctor leaned over to the Captain and said confidentially, "Cap--we
meet next week. Listen here. I was elected without a dollar of the old
spider's money. He fought me for that smelter law on the quiet. Now look
here; you watch my smoke. I'm going to organize those seven, and make
eight and you're going to see some fighting."
"You ain't going to fight the party, are you, Doc?" asked the amazed
Captain, as though he feared that the Doctor would fall dead if he
answered yes. But the Doctor grinned and said: "Maybe--if it fights me."
"Well, Doc--" cried the Captain, "don't you think--"
"You bet I think--that's what's the matter. The smelter lawsuit's made
me think. They want to control government so they can have a license to
murder. That's what it means. Watch 'em blight Denny Hogan's lungs down
on the dump; watch 'em burn 'em up and crush 'em in the mines--by
evading the mining laws; watch 'em slaughter 'em on the railroads;
murder is cheap in this country--if you control government and get a
slaughter license."
The Doctor laughed. "That's the old century--and say, Cap--I'm with the
new. You know old Browning--he says:
"It makes me mad
To think what men will do an' I am dead."
The Doctor waved his cane furiously, and grinned as he threw back his
head, laughed silently, kicked out one leg, and stood with one eye
cocked, looking at the speechless Captain. "Well, Cap--speak up--what
are you going to do about it?"
"'Y gory, Doc, you certainly do talk like a Populist--eh?" was all the
Captain could reply. The Doctor toddled to the door, and standing there
sang back: "Well, Cap--do you think the Lord Almighty laid off all the
angels and quit work on the world when he invented Tom Van Dorn's
automobile--that it is the last new thing that will ever be tried?"
And with that, the Doctor went out into the alley and through his alley
gate into his house. But the Captain's mind was set going by the
Doctor's parting words. He was considering what might follow the
invention of Tom Van Dorn's automobile. There was that chain, and there
was his sprocket. It would work--he knew it would work and save much
power and much noise. But the sprocket must be longer, and stronger.
Then, he thought, if the wire spokes and the ball-bearing and rubber
tires of the bicycle had made the automobile possible, and now that they
were getting the gasoline engine of the automobile perfected so that it
would generate such vast power in such a small space--what if they could
conserve and apply that power through his invention--what if the
gasoline engine might not through his Household Horse some day generate
and use a power that would lift a man off the earth? What then? As he
tapped the bolts and turned the screws and put his little device
together, he dreamed big dreams of the future when men should fly, and
the boundaries of nations would disappear and tariffs would be
impossible. This shocked him, and he tried to figure out how to prevent
smuggling by flying machines; but as he could not, he dreamed on about
the time when war would be abolished among civilized men, because of his
invention.
So while he was dreaming in matter--forming the first vague nebulae of
coming events, the infinite intelligence washing around us all, floating
this earth, and holding the stars in their courses, sent a long, thin
fleck of a wave into the mind of this man who stood working and dreaming
in the twilight while the old century was passing. And while he saw his
vision, other minds in other parts of the earth saw their visions. Some
of these myriad visions formed part of his, and his formed part of
theirs, and all were part of the great vision that was brooding upon the
bourne of time and space. And other visions, parts of the great vision
of the Creator, were moving with quickening life in other minds and
hearts. The disturbed vision of justice that flashed through the
Doctor's mind was a part of the vast cycle of visions that were hovering
about this earth. It was not his alone, millions held part of it;
millions aspired, they knew not why, and staked their lives upon their
faith that there is a power outside ourselves that makes for
righteousness. And as the waves of infinite, resistless,
all-encompassing love laved the world that New Year's night that cast
the new Century upon the strange shores of time, let us hope that the
dreams of strong men stirred them deeply that they might move wisely
upon that mysterious tide that is drawing humanity to its unknown goal.