IN WHICH WE SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, WITH GEORGE BROTHERTON, AND IN
GENERAL CONSIDER THE HABITANTS OF THE KINGDOM
Mr. Brotherton had been pacing the deck of his store like the captain of
a pirate ship in a storm. Nothing in the store suited him; he found Miss
Calvin's high facade of hair too rococo for the attenuated lines of gray
and lavender and heliotrope that had replaced the angular effects in red
and black and green and brown of former years. He had asked her to tone
it down to make it match the long-necked gray jars and soft copper vases
that adorned the gray burlapped Serenity, and she had appeared with it
slopping over her ears, "as per yours of even date!" And still he paced
the deck.
He picked up Zola's "Fecundite," which he had taken from stock; tried to
read it; put it down; sent for "Tom Sawyer"; got up, went after
Dickens's "Christmas Books," and put them down; peeped into "Little
Women," and watched the trade, as Miss Calvin handled it, occasionally
dropping his book for a customer; hunted for "The Three Bears," which he
found in large type with gorgeous pictures, read it, and decided that it
was real literature.
Amos Adams came drifting in to borrow a book. He moved slowly, a sort of
gray wraith almost discarnate and apart from things of the earth.
Brotherton, looking at the old man, felt a candor one might have in
addressing a state of mind. So the big voice spoke gently:
"Here, Mr. Adams," called Brotherton. "Won't you come back here and talk
to me?" But the shopkeeper felt that he should put the elder man at his
ease, so he added: "You're a wise guy, as the Latin fathers used to say.
Anyway, if Jasper ever gets to a point where he thinks marriage will pay
six per cent. over and above losses, you may be a kind of
step-uncle-in-law of mine. Tell me, Mr. Adams--what about children--do
they pay? You know, I've always wanted children. But now--well, you see,
I never thought but that people just kind of picked 'em off the bushes
as you do huckleberries. I'm getting so that I can't look at a great
crowd of people without thinking of the loneliness, suffering and
self-denial that it cost to bring all of them into the world. Good Lord,
man, I don't want lots of children--not now. And yet,
children--children--why, if we could open a can and have 'em as we do
most things, from sardines to grand opera, I'd like hundreds of them.
Yet, I dunno," Mr. Brotherton wagged a thoughtful head.
But Amos Adams rejoined: "Ah, yes, George, but when you think of what it
means for two people to bring a child into the world--what the journey
means--the slow, inexorable journey into the valley of the shadow means
for them, close together; what tenderness springs up; what sacrifices
come forth; what firm knitting of lives; what new kind of love is
bred--you are inclined to think maybe Providence knew what it was about
when it brought children into life by the cruel path."
Mr. Brotherton nodded a sympathetic head.
"Let me tell you something, George," continued Amos. "It's through their
hope of bettering the children that Grant has moved his people in the
Valley out on the little garden plots. There they are--every warmish day
thousands of mothers and children and old men, working their little
plots of ground, trudging back to the tenements in the evening. The love
of children is the one steady, unswerving passion in these lives, and
Grant has nearly harnessed it, George. And it's because Nate Perry has
that love that he's giving freely here for those poor folks a talent
that would make him a millionaire, and is running his mines, and his big
foundry with Cap Morton besides. It's perfectly splendid to see the way
a common fatherhood between him and the men is making a brotherhood.
Why, man," cried Amos, "it refreshes one's faith like a tragedy."
"Hello, Aunt Avey," piped the cheery voice of the little old Doctor, as
he came toddling through the front door. "It's a boy--Joe Calvin the
Third." The Doctor came back to the desk where Amos was standing and
took a chair, and as Amos drifted out of the store as impersonally as he
came, the Doctor began to grin.
"We were just talking of children," said Brotherton with studied
casualness. "You know, Doctor," Brotherton smiled abashed, "I've always
thought I'd like lots of children. But now--"
"I see 'em come, and I see 'em go every day. I'm kind of getting used to
death, George. But the miracle of birth grows stranger and stranger."
"So young Joe Calvin's a proud parent, is he? Boy, you say?"
"Boy," chuckled the Doctor, "and old Joe's out there having a nervous
breakdown. They've had ten births in the Calvin family. I've attended
all of 'em, and this is the first time old Joe's ever been allowed in
the house. To-day the old lady's out there with a towel around her head,
practically having that baby herself. The poor daughter-in-law hasn't
seen it. You'd think she was only invited in as a sort of paying guest.
And old lady Calvin comes in every few minutes and delivers homilies on
the joys of large families!"
The Doctor laughed until his blue old eyes watered, and he chirped when
he had his laugh out: "How soon we forget! Which, I presume, is one of
God's semi-precious blessings!"
When the Doctor went out, Brotherton found the store deserted, except
for Miss Calvin, who was in front. Brotherton carried a log to the
fireplace, stirred up the fire, and when he had it blazing, found Laura
Van Dorn standing beside him.
"Well, George," she said, "I've just been stealing away from my children
in the Valley for a little visit with Emma."
"Very well, then," said Mr. Brotherton, "sit down a minute with me. Tell
me, Laura--about children--are they worth it?"
She was a handsome woman, with youth still in her eyes and face, who sat
beside George Brotherton, looking at the fire that March day.
"George--good old friend," she said gently, "there's nothing else in the
world so worth it as children."
She hesitated before going so deeply into her soul, perhaps picking her
verbal way. "George--no man ever degraded a woman more than I was
degraded. Yet I brought Lila out of it, and I thank God for her, and I
don't mind the price--not now." She turned to look at Mr. Brotherton
inquiringly as she said: "But what I come in to talk to you about,
George, was Grant. Have you noticed in the last few months--that
growing--well--it's more than enthusiasm, George; it's a fanaticism.
Since he has been working on the garden plan--Grant has been getting
wilder and wilder in his talk about the Democracy of labor. Have you
noticed it--or am I oversensitive?"
Brotherton, poking idly in the fire, did not answer at once. At length
he said:
"Grant's a zealot. He's full of this prisms, prunes and peace idea, this
sweetness and light revolution, this notion of hitching their hop-dreams
to these three-acre plots, and preaching non-resistance. It's coming a
little fast for me, Laura--just a shade too many at times. But, on the
other hand--there's Nate Perry. He's as cold-blooded a Yankee as ever
swindled a father--and he's helping with the scheme. He's--"
"He has no faith in the Democracy of Labor. He hoots," interrupted
Laura. "What he's doing is working for a more efficient lot of laboring
men, so that when the time comes when the unions shall ask and get more
definite control of the factories and mines, in the way of wage-setting,
and price-making, they will bring some sense with their control. He's
merely looking after himself--in the last analysis; but Grant's going
mad. George, he actually believes that when this thing wins here in the
Valley--the peaceful strike, the rise of labor, and the theory of
non-resistance--he's going over the world, and in a few years will have
labor emancipated. Have you heard him--that is, recently?"
"Well, yes, a week or so ago," answered Brotherton, "and he was going it
at a pretty fair clip for a minute then. Well, say--I mean--what should
we do?" he asked, drumming with the poker on the hearth. "Laura,"
Brotherton ran his eyes from the poker until they met her frank, gray
eyes, "Grant would listen to you before he would listen to any one else
on earth or in Heaven--I'm sure of that."
"Then what shall we do?" she asked. "We mustn't let him wreck
himself--and all these people? What ought I--"
A shadow fell across the door, and in another moment there stood in the
opening of the alcove the tall, lean figure of Thomas Van Dorn.
When Laura was gone, Van Dorn, after more or less polite circumlocution,
began to unfold a plan of Market Street to buy the _Daily Times_
and bring Jared Thurston back to Harvey to run it in the interests of
the property owners in the town and in the Valley. Incidentally he had
come to warn George on behalf of Market Street that he was harboring
Grant Adams, contrary to the judgment of Market Street. But George
Brotherton's heart was far from Market Street; it was out on the hill
with Emma, his wife, and his mouth spoke from the place of his treasure.
"Tom--tell me, as between man and man, what do you think of children?
You're sort of in the outer room of the Blue Lodge of grandfatherdom,
with Lila and Kenyon getting ready for the preacher, and you ought to
know, Tom--honest, man, how about it?"
A wave of self-pity enveloped the Judge. His voice broke as he answered:
"George, I haven't any little girl--she never even has spoken to me
about this affair that the whole town knows about. Oh, I haven't any
child at all."
He looked a miserable moment at Brotherton, perhaps reviewing the years
which they had lived and grown from youth to middle age together and
growled: "Not a thing--not a damned thing in it--George, in all this
forty years of fighting to keep ahead of the undertaker! Not a God
damned thing!" And so he left the Sweet Serenity of Books and Wall Paper
and went back to the treadmill of life, spitting ashes from his gray
lips!
And then Daniel Sands toddled in to get the five-cent cigars which he
had bought for a generation--one at a time every day, and Brotherton
came to Daniel with his problem.
The old man, whose palsied head forever was denying something, as if he
had the assessor always in his mind, shut his rheumy eyes and answered:
"My children--bauch--" He all but spat upon their names. "Morty--moons
around reading Socialist books, with a cold in his throat and dishwater
in his brains. And the other, she's married a dirty traitor and stands
by him against her own flesh and blood. Ba-a-a-ch!" He showed his blue,
old mouth, and cried:
"I married four women to give those children a home--and what thanks do
I get? Ingrates--one a milk-sop--God, if he'd only be a Socialist and
get out and throw dynamite; but he won't; he won't do a thing but sit
around drooling about social justice when I want to eat my meals in
peace. And he goes coughing all day and night, and grunting, and now
he's wearing a pointed beard--he says it's for his throat, but I
know--it's because he thinks it's romantic. And that Anne--why, she's
worse," but he did not finish the sentence. His old head wagged
violently. Evidently another assessor had suddenly pounced in upon his
imagination. For he shuffled into the street.
Mr. Brotherton sat by the fire, leaning forward, with his fingers locked
between his knees. The warning against Grant Adams that Tom Van Dorn had
given him had impressed him. He knew Market Street was against Grant
Adams. But he did not realize that Market Street's attitude was only a
reflex of the stir in the Valley. All Market streets over the earth feel
more or less acutely changes which portend in the workshops, often
before those changes come. We are indeed "members one of another," and
the very aspirations of those who dream of better things register in the
latent fears of those who live on trade. We are so closely compact in
our organization that a man may not even hope without crowding his
neighbor. And in that little section of the great world which men knew
as Market Street in Harvey, the surest evidence of the changing attitude
of the men in the Valley toward their work, was found not in the crowds
that gathered in Belgian Hall week after week to hear Grant Adams, not
in the war-chest which was filling to overflowing, not in the gardens
checkered upon the hillsides, but rather in the uneasiness of Market
Street. The reactions were different in Market Street and in the Valley;
but it was one vision rising in the same body, each part responding
according to its own impulses. Of course Market Street has its side, and
George Brotherton was not blind to it. Sitting by his fire that raw
March day, he realized that Market Street was never a crusader, and why.
He could see that the men from whom the storekeepers bought goods on
ninety days' time, 3 per cent. off for cash, were not crusaders. When a
man turned up among them with a six-months' crusade for an evanescent
millennium, flickering just a few years ahead, the wholesalers of the
city and the retailers of Market Street nervously began thumbing over
their rapidly accumulating "bills payable" and began using crisp,
scratchy language toward the crusader.
It made Brotherton pause when he thought how they might involve and
envelop him--as a family man. For as he sat there, the man's mind kept
thinking of children. And his mind wandered to the thought of his wife
and his home--and the little ones that might be. As his mind clicked
back to Amos Adams, and to the strange family that would produce three
boys as unlike as Grant and Jasper and Kenyon, he began to consider how
far Kenyon had come for a youth in his twenties. And Brotherton realized
that he might have had a child as old as Kenyon. Then Mr. Brotherton put
his hands over his face and tried to stop the flying years.
A shadow fell, and Brotherton greeted Captain Morton, in a sunburst of
mauve tailoring. The Captain pointed proudly to a necktie pin
representing a horse jumping through a horseshoe, and cried: "What you
think of it? Real diamond horseshoe nails--what say?"
"Now, Captain, sit down here," said Mr. Brotherton. "You'll do,
Captain--you'll do." But the subject nearest the big man's heart would
not leave it. "Cap," he said, "what about children--do they pay?"
"That's just it," put in the Captain. "That's just what I said to Emmy
this morning. I was out to see her after you left and stayed until Laura
Van Dorn came and chased me off. Emmy's mighty happy, George--mighty,
mighty happy--eh? Her mother always was that way. I was the one that was
scared." George nodded assent. "But to-day--well, we just sat there and
cried--she's so happy about it--eh? Wimmin, George, ain't scared a bit.
I know 'em. I've been in their kitchins for thirty years, George, and
let me tell you somepin funny," continued the Captain. "Old Ahab Wright
has taken to smoking in public to get the liberal vote! Let me tell you
somepin else. They've decided to put the skids under Grant Adams and his
gang down in the Valley, and the other day they ran into a snag. You
know Calvin & Calvin are representing the owners since Tom's got this
life job, though he's got all his money invested down there and still
advises 'em. Well, anyway, they decided to put a barbed-wire trocha
around all the mines and the factories. Well, four carloads of wire and
posts shows up down in the Valley this week, and, 'y gory, man,--they
can't get a carpenter in town or down there to touch it. Grant's got 'em
sewed up. But Tom says he'll fix 'em one of these days, if they get
before him in his court--what say?"
"I suppose he will, Captain," replied Mr. Brotherton, and took up his
theme. "But getting back to the subject of children--I've been talking
all morning about 'em to all kinds of folks, and I've decided the
country's for 'em. Children, Cap," Mr. Brotherton rose, put on his coat
and took the Captain's arm, "children, Captain," he repeated, as they
reached the sidewalk and were starting for the street car, "children, I
figure it out--children are the see-ment of civilization! Well,
say--thus endeth the reading of the first lesson!"
As they stood in the corner transfer shed waiting for the car, Grant
Adams came up. "Say, Grant," called Brotherton, "what you goin' to do
about that barbed wire trocha?"
"Oh," smiled Grant, "I've just about settled it. The boys will begin on
it this afternoon. A lot of them were angry when they heard what the
owners were up to, but I said, 'Here: we've got justice on our side. We
claim a partnership interest in all those mines and factories down
there. We contend that we who labor there now are the legatees of all
the labor that's been killed and maimed and cheated by long hours and
low wages down in the Valley for thirty years, and if we have a
partnership right in those mines and factories, it's our business to
protect them.' So I talked the boys into putting up the trocha. I tell
you, George," said Grant, and the tremor of emotion strained his voice
as he spoke, "it won't be long until we'll have a partnership in that
trocha, just as we'll have an interest in every hammer and bolt, and
ledge and vein in the Valley. It's coming, and coming fast--the
Democracy of Labor. I have faith, the men and women have faith--all over
the Valley. We've found the right way--the way of peace. When labor has
proved its efficiency--"
"Ah--you're crazy, Grant," snapped the Captain. "This class of people
down here--these ignorant foreigners--why, they couldn't run a peanut
stand--eh?"
Dick Bowman and his son came up, and not knowing a discussion was in the
wind, Dick shook hands around. And after the Captain had taken his
uptown car, Grant stood apart, lost in thought, but Dick said: "Well,
Benny, we got here in time for the car!" Then craning his long neck, the
father laughed: "Ben, here's a laboring man and his shift goes on at
one--so he's in a hurry, but we'll make it."
"Dick," began Brotherton, looking at the thin shadow of a man who was
hardly Brotherton's elder by half a dozen years. "Dick, you're a kind of
expert father, you and Joe Calvin, and to-day Joe's a granddaddy--tell
me about the kiddies--are they worth it?"
Bowman threw his head back and craned his long neck. "Not for us--not
for us poor--maybe for you people here," said Bowman, who paused and
counted on his fingers: "Eight born, three dead--that's too many. Joe
Calvin, he's raised all his and they're doing fairly well. That's his
girl in here--ain't it?" Bowman sighed. "Her and my Jean played together
back in their little days; before we moved to South Harvey." He lowered
his voice.
"George, mother hasn't heard from Jean for going on two year, now. She
went off with a fellow; told us she married him--she was just a
child--but had been working around in the factories--and, well, I don't
say so, but I guess she just has got where she's ashamed to
write--maybe."
His voice rose in anger as he cried: "Why didn't she have a show, like
this girl of Joe's? He's no better than I. And you know my wife--well,
she's no Mrs. Joe Calvin--she's been as happy about 'em when they came
as if they were princes of the blood." He stopped.
"Then there's Mugs--I dunno, George,--it seems like we tried with Mugs,
but all them saloons and--well, the gambling and the women under his
nose from the time he was ten years old--well, I can't make him work.
Little Jack is steady enough for a boy of twenty--he's in the Company
mines, and we've put Ben in this year. He is twelve--though, for
Heaven's sake, don't go blabbing it; he's supposed to be fourteen. And
little Betty, she's in school yet. I don't know how she'll turn out. No,
George," he went on, "children for us poor, children's a mighty risky,
uncertain crop. But," he smiled reflectively, "I'm right here to tell
you they're lots of fun as little shavers--growing up. Why, George, you
ought to hear Benny sing. Them Copinis of the Hot Dog found he had a
voice, and they've taught him some dago songs." Ben was a bright-faced
boy of twelve--big for his age, with snappy, brown eyes and apples of
cheeks and curly hair. He slipped away to look into a store window,
leaving the two men alone. Mr. Brotherton was in a mellow mood. He put
his great paw on the small man's shoulder and said huskily:
"Say, Dick, honest, I'd rather have just one boy like that than the
whole damn Valley--that's right!"
The car came bowling up and the South Harvey people boarded it. Grant
Adams rode down into the Valley with great dreams in his soul. He talked
little to the Bowmans, but looked out of the window and saw the dawn of
another day. It is the curse of dreamers that they believe that when
they are convinced of a truth, they who have pursued it, who have
suffered for it, who have been exalted by it, they have only to pass out
their truth to the world to remake the universe. But the world is made
over only when the common mind sees the truth, and the common heart
feels it. So the history of reform is a history of disappointment. The
reform works, of course. But in working it does only the one little
trick it is intended to do, and the long chain of incidental blessings
which should follow, which the reformers feel must inevitably follow,
wait for other reformers to bring them into being. So there is always
plenty of work for the social tinker, and no one man ever built a
millennium. For God is ever jealous for our progeny, and leaves an
unfinished job always on the work bench of the world.
Grant Adams believed that he had a mission to bring labor into its own.
The coming of the Democracy of Labor was a real democracy to him--no
mere shibboleth. And as he rode through the rows of wooden tenements,
where he knew men and women were being crushed by the great industrial
machine, he thought of the tents in the fields; of the women and
children and of the old and the sick going out there to labor through
the day to piece out the family wage and secure economic independence
with wholesome, self-respecting work. It seemed to him that when he
could bring the conditions that were starting in Harvey, to every great
industrial center, one great job in the world would be done forever.
So he drummed his iron claw on the seat before him, put his hard hand
upon his rough face, and smiled in the joy of his high faith.
Dick Bowman and his boy left Grant at the car. He waved his claw at
little Ben when they parted, and sighed as he saw the little fellow
scampering to shaft No. 3 of the Wahoo Fuel Company's mines. There Grant
lost sight of the child, and went to his work. In two hours he and
Violet Hogan had cleaned off his desk. He had promised the Wahoo Fuel
Company to see that the work of constructing the trocha was started that
afternoon, and when Violet had telephoned to Mechanics' Hall, Grant and
a group of men went to the mines to begin on the trocha. They passed
down the switch into the yards, and Grant heard a brakeman say:
"That Frisco car there has a broken brake--watch out for her."
And a switchman reply:
"Yes--I know it. I tried to get the yardmaster not to send her down. But
we'll do what we can."
The brakeman on the car signaled for the engineer to pull the other cars
away, and leave the Frisco car at the top of a slight grade, to be
shoved down by the men when another car was needed at the loading chute.
Grant walked toward the loading chute, and a roar from the falling coal
filled his ears. He saw little Ben under a car throwing back the coal
falling from the faulty chute on to the ground.
Through the roar Grant heard a yell as from a man in terror. He looked
back of him and saw the Frisco car coming down the grade as if shot from
a monster catapult!
"The boy--the boy--!" he heard the man on the car shriek. He tried to
clamber over the coal to the edge of the car, but before he could reach
the side, the Frisco car had hit the loading car a terrific blow,
sending it a car length down the track.
One horrible scream was all they heard from little Ben. Grant was at his
side in a moment. There, stuck to the rail, were two little legs and an
arm. Grant stooped, picked up the little body, pulled it loose from the
tracks, and carried it, running, to the company hospital.
As Grant ran, tears fell in the little, coal-stained face, and made
white splotches on the child's cheeks.