GRANT ADAMS VISITS THE SONS OF ESAU
"My dear," quoth the Doctor to his daughter as he sat poking his feet
with his cane in her little office at the Kindergarten, after they had
discussed Lila's adventure of the night before, "I saw Tom up town this
morning and he didn't seem to be exactly happy. I says, 'Tom, I hear you
beat God at his own game last night!' and," the Doctor chuckled, "Laura,
do you know, he wouldn't speak to me!" As he laughed, the daughter
interrupted:
"Why, father--that was mean--"
"Of course it was mean. Why--considering everything, I'd lick a man if
he'd talk that mean to me. But my Eenjiany devil kind of got control of
my forbearing Christian spirit and I cut loose."
The daughter smiled, then she sighed, and asked: "Father--tell me, why
did that woman object to Tom's use of Kenyon in the riot last night?"
Doctor Nesbit opened his mouth as if to answer her. Then he smiled and
said, "Don't ask me, child. She's a bad egg!"
"Lila says," continued the daughter, "that Margaret appears at every
public place where Kenyon plays. She seems eager to talk to him about
his accomplishments, and has a sort of fascinated interest in whatever
he does, as nearly as I can understand it? Why, father? What do you
suppose it is? I asked Grant, who was here this morning with a Croatian
baby whose mother is in the glass works, and Grant only shook his head."
The father looked at his daughter over his glasses and asked:
"Croatians, eh? That's what the new colony is down in Magnus. Well,
we've got Letts and Lithuanians and why not Croatians? What a mix we
have here in the Valley! I wouldn't wash 'em for 'em!"
"Well, father, I would. And when you get the dirt off they're mostly
just folks--just Indiany, as you call it. They all take my flower seeds.
And they all love bright colors in their windows. And they are spreading
the glow of blooms across the district, just as well as the Germans and
the French and the Belgians and the Irish. And they are here for exactly
the same thing which we are here for, father. We're all in the same
game."
He looked at her blankly, and ventured, "Money?"
"No--you stupid. You know better. It's children. They're here for their
children--to lift their children out of poverty. It's the children who
carry the banner of civilization, the hope of progress, the real
sunrise. These people are all confused and more or less dumb and loggy
about everything else in life but this one thing; they all hope greatly
for their children. For their children they joyfully endure the
hardships of poverty; the injustice of it; to live here in these
conditions that seem to us awful, and to work terrible hours that their
children may rise out of the worse condition that they left in Europe.
And they have left Europe, father, spiritually as well as physically.
Here they are reborn into America. The first generation may seem
foreign, may hold foreign ways--on the outside. But these American born
boys and girls, they are American--as much as we are, with all their
foreign names. They are of our spirit. When America calls they will hear
and follow. Whatever blood they will shed will be real American blood,
because as children, born under the same aspiring genius for freedom
under which we were born, as children they became Americans. Oh, father,
it's for the children that these people here in Harvey--these exploited
people everywhere in this country,--plant the flowers and brighten up
their homes. It's for their children that they are going with Grant to
organize for better things. The fire of life runs ahead of us in hope
for our children, and if we haven't children or the love of them in our
hearts--why, father, that's what's eating Tom's heart out, and blasting
this miserable woman's life! Grant said to-day: 'This baby here
symbolizes all that I stand for, all that I hope to do, all that the
race dreams!"
The Doctor had lighted his pipe, and was puffing meditatively. He liked
to hear his daughter talk. He took little stock in what she said. But
when she asked him for help--he gave it to her unstinted, but often with
a large, tolerant disbelief in the wisdom of her request. As she paused
he turned to her quickly, "Laura--tell me, what do you make out of
Grant?"
He eyed her sharply as she replied: "Father, Grant is a lonely soul
without chick or child, and I'm sorry for him. He goes--"
"Well, now, Laura," piped the little man, "don't be too sorry. Sorrow is
a dangerous emotion."
The daughter turned her face to her father frankly and said: "I realize
that, father. Don't concern yourself about that. But I see Grant some
way, eating the locusts and wild honey in the wilderness, calling out to
a stiff-necked generation to repent. His eyes are focussed on to-morrow.
He expects an immediate millennium. But he is at least looking forward,
not back. And the world back of us is so full of change, that I am sure
the world before us also must be full of change, and maybe sometime we
shall arrive at Grant's goal. He's not working for himself, either in
fame or in power, or in any personal thing. He's just following the
light as it is given him to see it, here among the poor."
The daughter lifted a face full of enthusiasm to her father. He puffed
in silence. "Well, my dear, that's a fine speech. But when I asked you
about Grant I was rising to a sort of question of personal privilege. I
thought perhaps I would mix around at his meeting to-night! If you think
I should, just kind of stand around to give him countenance--and," he
chuckled and squeaked: "To bundle up a few votes!"
"Do, father--do--you must!"
"Well," squeaked the little voice, "so long as I must I'm glad to know
that Tom made it easy for me, by turning all of Harvey and the Valley
over to Grant at the riot last night. Why, if Tom tried to stop Grant's
meeting to-night Market Street itself would mob Tom--mob the very Temple
of Love." The Doctor chuckled and returned to his own affairs. "Being on
the winning side isn't really important. But it's like carrying a potato
in your pocket for rheumatism: it gives a feller confidence. And after
all, the devil's rich and God's poor have all got votes. And votes
count!" He grinned and revived his pipe.
He was about to speak again when Laura interrupted him, "Oh,
father--they're not God's poor, whose ever they are. Don't say that.
They're Daniel Sands's poor, and the Smelter Trust's poor, and the Coal
Trust's poor, and the Glass and Cement and Steel company's poor. I've
learned that down here. Why, if the employers would only treat the
workers as fairly as they treat the machines, keeping them fit, and
modern and bright, God would have no poor!"
The Doctor rose and stretched and smiled indulgently at his daughter.
"Heigh-ho the green holly," he droned. "Well, have it your way. God's
poor or Dan's poor, they're my votes, if I can get 'em. So we'll come to
the meeting to-night and blow a few mouthfuls on the fires of
revolution, for the good of the order!"
He would have gone, but his daughter begged him to stay and dine with
her in South Harvey, before they went to the meeting. So for an hour the
Doctor sat in his daughter's office by the window, sometimes giving
attention to the drab flood of humanity passing along the street as the
shifts changed for evening in the mines and smelters, and then listening
to the day's stragglers who came and went through his daughter's office:
A father for medicine for a child, a mother for advice, a breaker boy
for a book, a little girl from the glass works for a bright bit of
sewing upon which she was working, a woman from Violet Hogan's room with
a heartbreak in her problem, a group of women from little Italy with a
complaint about a disorderly neighbor in their tenement, a cripple from
the mines to talk over his career, whether it should be pencils or shoe
strings, or a hand organ, or some attempt at handicraft; the head of a
local labor union paying some pittance to Laura, voted by the men to
help her with her work; a shy foreign woman with a badly spelled note
from her neighbor, asking for flower seeds and directions translated by
Laura into the woman's own language telling how to plant the seeds; a
belated working mother calling for the last little tot in the nursery
and explaining her delay. Laura heard them all and so far as she could,
she served them all. The Doctor was vastly proud of the effective way in
which she dispatched her work.
It was six o'clock, but the summer sun still was high and the traffic in
the street was thick. For a time, while a woman with a child with
shriveled legs was talking to Laura about the child's education, the
Doctor sat gazing into the street. When the room was empty, he
exclaimed, "It's a long weary way from the sunshine and prairie grass,
child! How it all has changed with the years! Ten years ago I knew 'em
all, the men and the employers. Now they are all newcomers--men and
masters. Why, I don't even know their nationalities; I don't even know
what part of the earth they come from. And such sad-faced droves of
them; so many little scamps, underfed, badly housed for generations. The
big, strapping Irish and Germans and Scotch and the wide-chested little
Welshmen, and the agile French--how few of them there are compared with
this slow-moving horde of runts from God knows where! It's been a long
time since I've been down here to see a shift change, Laura. Lord--Lord
have mercy on these people--for no one else seems to care!"
"Amen, and Amen, father," answered the daughter. "These are the people
that Grant is trying to stir to consciousness. These are the people
who--"
"Well, yes," he turned a sardonic look upon his daughter, "they're the
boys who voted against me the last time because Tom and Dan hired a man
in every precinct to spread the story that I was a teetotaler, and that
your mother gave a party on Good Friday--and all because Tom and Dan
were mad at me for pushing that workingmen's compensation bill! But now
I look at 'em--I don't blame 'em! What do they know about workingmen's
compensation!" The Doctor stopped and chuckled; then he burst out: "I
tell you, Laura, when a man gets enough sense to stand by his
friends--he no longer needs friends. When these people get wise enough
not to be fooled by Tom and old Dan, they won't need Grant! In the
meantime--just look at 'em--look at 'em paying twice as much for rent as
they pay up town: gouged at the company stores down here for their food
and clothing; held up by loan sharks when they borrow money; doped with
aloes in their beer, and fusil oil in their whiskey, wrapped up in
shoddy clothes and paper shoes, having their pockets picked by weighing
frauds at the mines, and their bodies mashed in speed-up devices in the
mills; stabled in filthy shacks without water or sewers or electricity
which we uptown people demand and get for the same money that they pay
for these hog-pens--why, hell's afire and the cows are out--Laura! by
Godfrey's diamonds, if I lived down here I'd get me some frisky dynamite
and blow the whole place into kindling." He sat blinking his
indignation; then began to smile. "Instead of which," he squeaked, "I
shall endeavor by my winning ways to get their votes." He waved a gay
hand and added, "And with God be the rest!"
Towering above a group of workers from the South of Europe--a delegation
from the new wire mill in Plain Valley, Grant Adams came swinging down
the street, a Gulliver among his Lilliputians. Although it was not even
twilight, it was evident to the Doctor that something more than the
changing shifts in the mills was thickening the crowds in the street.
Little groups were forming at the corners, good-natured groups who
seemed to know that they were not to be molested. And the Doctor at his
window watched Grant passing group after group, receiving its
unconscious homage; just a look, or a waving hand, or an affectionate,
half-abashed little cheer, or the turning of a group of heads all one
way to catch Grant's eyes as he passed.
At the Captain's vacant lot, Grant rose before a cheering throng that
filled the lot, and overflowed the sidewalk and crowded far down the
street. Two flickering torches flared at his head. An electric in front
of the Hot Dog and a big arc-light over the door of the smelter lighted
the upturned faces of the multitude. When the crowd had ceased cheering,
Grant, looking into as many eyes of his hearers as he could catch,
began:
"I have come to talk to Esau--the disinherited--to Esau who has
forfeited his birthright. I am here to speak to those who are toiling in
the world's rough work unrequited--I am here, one of the poor to talk to
the poor."
His voice held back so much of his strength, his gaunt, awkward figure
under the uncertain torches, his wide, impassioned gestures, with the
carpenter's nail claw always before his hearers, made him a strange kind
of specter in the night. Yet the simplicity of his manner and the
directness of his appeal went to the hearts of his hearers. The first
part of his message was one of peace. He told the workers that every
inch they gained they lost when they tried to overcome cunning with
force. "The dynamiter tears the ground from under labor--not from under
capital; he strengthens capital," said Grant. "Every time I hear of a
bomb exploding in a strike, or of a scab being killed I think of the
long, hard march back that organized labor must make to retrieve its
lost ground. And then," he cried passionately, and the mad fanatic glare
lighted his face, "my soul revolts at the iniquity of those who, by
craft and cunning while we work, teach us the false doctrine of the
strength of force, and then when we use what they have taught us, point
us out in scorn as lawbreakers. Whether they pay cash to the man who
touched the fuse or fired the gun or whether they merely taught us to
use bombs and guns by the example of their own lawlessness, theirs is
the sin, and ours the punishment. Esau still has lost his
birthright--still is disinherited."
He spoke for a time upon the aims of organization, and set forth the
doctrine of class solidarity. He told labor that in its ranks altruism,
neighborly kindness that is the surest basis of progress, has a thousand
disintegrated expressions. "The kindness of the poor to the poor, if
expressed in terms of money, would pay the National debt over night," he
said, and, letting out his voice, and releasing his strength, he begged
the men and women who work and sweat at their work to give that altruism
some form and direction, to put it into harness--to form it into ranks,
drilled for usefulness. Then he spoke of the day when class
consciousness would not be needed, when the unions would have served
their mission, when the class wrong that makes the class suffering and
thus marks the class line, would disappear just as they have disappeared
in the classes that have risen during the last two centuries.
"Oh, Esau," he cried in the voice that men called insane because of its
intensity, "your birthright is not gone. It lies in your own heart.
Quicken your heart with love--and no matter what you have lost, nor what
you have mourned in despair, in so much as you love shall it all be
restored to you."
They did not cheer as he talked. But they stood leaning forward intently
listening. Some of his hearers had expected to hear class hatred
preached. Others were expecting to hear the man lash his enemies and
many had assumed that he would denounce those who had committed the
mistakes of the night before. Instead of giving his hearers these
things, he preached a gospel of peace and love and hope. His hearers did
not understand that the maimed, lean, red-faced man before them was
dipping deeply into their souls and that they were considering many
things which they had not questioned before.
When he plunged into the practical part of his speech, an explanation of
the allied unions of the Valley, he told in detail something of the ten
years' struggle to bring all the unions together under one industrial
council in the Wahoo Valley, and listed something of the strength of the
organization. He declared that the time had come for the organization to
make a public fight for recognition; that organization in secret and
under cover was no longer honorable. "The employers are frankly and
publicly allied," said Grant. "They have their meetings to talk over
matters of common interest. Why should not the unions do the same thing?
The smelter men, the teamsters, the miners, the carpenters, the steel
workers, the painters, the glass workers, the printers--all the
organized men and women in this district have the same common interests
that their employers have, and we should in no wise be ashamed of our
organization. This meeting is held to proclaim our pride in the common
ground upon which organized labor stands with organized capital in the
Wahoo Valley."
He called the rolls of the unions in the trades council and for an hour
men stood and responded and reported conditions among workers in their
respective trades. It was an impressive roll call. After their
organization had been completed, a great roar of pride rose and Grant
Adams threw out his steel claw and leaning forward cried:
"We have come to bring brotherhood into this earth. For in the union
every man sacrifices something to the common good; mutual help means
mutual sacrifice, and self-denial is brotherly love. Fraternity and
democracy are synonymous. We must rise together by self-help. I know how
easy it is for the rich man to become poor. I know that often the poor
man becomes rich. But when Esau throws off the yoke of Jacob, when the
poor shall rise and come into their own, the rise shall not be as
individuals, but as a class. The glass workers are better paid than the
teamsters; but their interests are common, and the better paid workers
cannot rise except their poorly paid fellow workmen rise with them. It
is a class problem and it must have a class solution."
Grant Adams stood staring at the crowd. Then he spread out his two gaunt
arms and closed his eyes and cried: "Oh, Esau, Esau, you were faint and
hungry in that elder day when you drank the red pottage and sold your
birthright. But did you know when you bartered it away, that in that
bargain went your children's souls? Down here in the Valley, five babies
die in infancy where one dies up there on the hill. Ninety per cent. of
the boys in jail come from the homes in the Valley and ten per cent.
from the homes on the hill. And the girls who go out in the night, never
to come home--poor girls always. Crime and shame and death were in that
red pottage, and its bitterness still burns our hearts. And why--why in
the name of our loving Christ who knew the wicked bargain Jacob
made--why is our birthright gone? Why does Esau still serve his brother
unrequited?" Then he opened his eyes and cried stridently--"I'll tell
you why. The poor are poor because the rich are rich. We have been
working a decade and a half in this Valley, and profits, not new
capital, have developed it. Profits that should have been divided with
labor in wages have gone to buy new machines--miles and miles of new
machines have come here, bought and paid for with the money that labor
earned, and because we have not the machines which our labor has bought,
we are poor--we are working long hours amid squalor surrounded with
death and crime and shame. Oh, Esau, Esau, what a pottage it was that
you drank in the elder day! Oh, Jacob, Jacob, wrestle, wrestle with thy
conscience; wrestle with thy accusing Lord; wrestle, Jacob, wrestle, for
the day is breaking and we will not let thee go! How long, O Lord, how
long will you hold us to that cruel bargain!"
He paused as one looking for an answer--hesitant, eager, expectant. Then
he drew a long breath, turned slowly and sadly and walked away.
No cheer followed him. The crowd was stirred too deeply for cheers. But
the seed he had sown quickened in a thousand hearts even if in some
hearts it fell among thorns, even if in some it fell upon stony ground.
The sower had gone forth to sow.