have constructed a button--the corporation. It gives them their
dearest wish--wealth and power. It removes responsibility away off,
beyond their sight. They do not hesitate. They press the button. And
then, away off, beyond their sight, so far from them that they can
pretend--can make many believe, including themselves--that they really
didn’t know and don’t know what the _other_ consequences of pressing
the button are--away off there, as the button is pressed, people die,
people starve, babies are slaughtered, misery blackens countless
lives. The prosperous, respectable gentlemen press the button. And
not they, but the corporation grabs public property--bribes public
officials--hires men they never see to do their dirty work, their cruel
work, their work of shame and death. They press the button--and the
dividends pour in--and they ignore and forget the rest.”
A long silence. He sat in one of his favorite attitudes--body bent
forward, elbow on knees, eyes staring at the carpet. She slowly
smoothed down first one sleeve of her blouse, then the other. At last
she said:
“Yes--that is it. I understand.”
“We can’t take any of that money.”
Again silence. Then she:
“No, George--we can’t.”
“You are _sure_ you understand?”
“Ever since we became engaged I’ve been getting ready to be your wife.”
“You have no secret hope--perhaps unknown to yourself--that I will
change--will join your class?”
“For a while--last spring--I had,” she confessed. “But soon--when I
knew you better--and understood your speeches--then I didn’t want you
to change.” She smiled quizzically--“not even your tailor.”
He looked down at the new suit in which he thought himself almost too
fine. But he couldn’t see how characteristically it bunched and bagged
upon his figure intolerant of fashionable clothing. “Don’t you like
this suit?” he inquired anxiously. “I got it to please you. I hoped
you’d like it.”
“I _love_ it,” she declared. “I wouldn’t have you changed one least
little bit.”
He rose. “I’ll go get the license. We can marry to-morrow--and start
for home. We can stop off and look at Niagara Falls if you like. I’ve
never seen it.”
She laughed and hugged him. He thought it was altogether because of the
decision about the marriage. “Yes--do let’s take in Niagara,” she said,
and she laughed again.
“I’ve got a lot to do before inauguration,” he went on. “After we get
to Harrison I may not be able to spend much time with you.”
“How much’ll we have to live on, George?”
“Oh--lots of money. The salary’s eight thousand a year. We’re going
to live very simply. I don’t believe in acting the way our governors
have been acting lately. We mustn’t forget that we are working for the
people--and that they are very poor. I take it that you don’t care for
luxury--or you wouldn’t have bothered with me.”
“I don’t care for anything but you,” she said. “And I know what I’m
about.”
“Oh, you’ll soon get your bearings, and we’ll be saving money. We’ve
got to live after we get out, you know. And I may not be able to make
as much as eight thousand at lecturing and law--_my_ kind of law.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said she.
He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes.
Said he:
“You understand that I mean what I say, Ellen?”
“Yes--George.”
“And that it isn’t going to be any different with me after we’re
married.”
“It mustn’t be.”
“Out of your class--into mine--to stay there, Ellen.”
“To stay there. I’ve learned about the men who use the people to step
up on, and then turn traitors. I am marrying your life, George. You are
not marrying mine--what mine has been.”
They looked at each other gravely. And it was then and there that they
took their real marriage vows.
The ceremony in the large drawing-room two days later was less
impressive. In fact, it was absurd, as marriage ceremonies in the
customary surroundings of pretentiousness usually are--to all who have
an unspoiled sense of humor. The fussy and angry father, alternating
thoughts of tenderness with longings to slay--the solemn-ass preacher
in robes, with affected voice and sycophant manner toward rich Senator
Clearwater--the pretty grotesque accidents due to the agitation of
Eleanor and the awkwardness of the lank and long governor-elect--the
snufflings and weepings of Aunt Louisa, glad Eleanor was making a
marriage that improved the prospects of her own grown and married
children for a large share of the Clearwater fortune--these and all
other absurdities and hypocrisies made the wedding something for the
happy pair to joke about on the train.
“How much did you tell Mr. Desbrough to give the clergyman?” she asked.
George blushed. “I was going to give him twenty-five, but Bill said he
was such a swell he must have fifty. So I had to let it go at that.”
“Weakening already!” mocked she. “Five dollars would have been too
much. He’s a frightful cad--always fawning on rich people and hunting
a rich wife--and he a servant of Jesus Christ.”
“You’ll have to look after the money, Ellen,” confessed Helm. “I’m a
fool about it. I’ve got mighty little use for the blamed stuff, anyhow.
Besides, it’ll give you something to do.”
She looked at him with a shrewd smile.
“You’re going to test me?--isn’t that it?”
He nodded. “I want to find out just what you’ve got to learn. Just
because I _had_ to go into this, I didn’t go in blind. I can’t do
things that way.”
“I guess we’ve both been doing a lot of thinking since last spring.”
She slipped her hand into his. “I don’t know what I’ve got to learn,
but I do know that I’m going to learn it.”
He looked at her, with that expression in his eyes which gave her the
sense of love and strength and tenderness superhuman. He said:
“Yes--I can count on you, Ellen.”
“As long as you look at me like that,” said she, “I’ll not ever be
anything but happy. I’d not be a woman, if I were.”
VI
THE TEST
In the large back yard of the “Executive Mansion” the young governor,
George Helm, was wheeling his first born--George Helm, also--up and
down the shady central walk in a perambulator of the latest scientific
make. The baby was giving the healthy baby’s fascinating exhibition of
the fathomless peace and content that can be got only from sleep. The
Governor and Bill Desbrough, the state Attorney-General and his one
really intimate friend, were talking politics. At the window of the
sitting-room sat Eleanor Helm, sewing--when she was not watching the
two Georges--_her_ two Georges.
There are two things as brief as any in this world of brevities--the
babyhood of her first born to the mother who loves babies, and his
term of office to the public man who loves office. It so happened that
both these befell the Helms at the same time. George married Eleanor
Clearwater, daughter of the lumber king and United States Senator, a
few weeks before he was inaugurated; and the first baby came toward
the end of the second year of that famous stormy term of his. It was
now the spring of his fourth year as governor. Both he and the young
woman at the window looked younger than when they married--without
the consent which her father dared not publicly withhold, or indeed
privately, since he had not the courage to cut himself off from his
only child. The reason the hands were turning backward for Helm and
his wife was, of course, happiness. A man often loves a woman--a
girl--for the possibilities he sees in her which he fancies he can
realize. Indeed one of woman’s best beguilements for “leading on”
the man she wants is the subtle creating or encouragement of this
same fancy. But when a woman really does love a man, she loves him
for himself, wishes him to stay exactly as he is. Eleanor had taken
the lank, tall, rural-looking impersonation of strength, gentleness
and self-unconscious simplicity because that was what she wanted.
Having got it and finding that it did not change, she proceeded to be
happy. The slovenly woman’s way of being happy is to go to pieces.
The energetic and self-respecting woman’s way is to “take a fresh
grip.” Mrs. George Helm was younger than she had been since early
girlhood. She felt utterly and blissfully irresponsible; had she not
her George, and had not he taken everything on his shoulders--except
looking after the money-spending, the house--and the baby? The house
and the baby were a delight. Looking after the house meant making big
George comfortable; looking after the baby meant making little George
comfortable. As for the money, that was simple enough. In the first
place, there wasn’t much of it; in the second place, George gave it all
to her and meekly accepted the small allowance for pocket money--all he
was fit to be trusted with.
“Bill,” said George to the lazy friend whom he had made into
his political manager and had forced to take the office of
Attorney-General--“Bill, you ought to get married. My wife takes all
the responsibilities off my shoulders and leaves me free just to have
fun.”
Bill was amused. Only a few minutes before Mrs. Helm had told him that
a sensible woman--meaning, of course, herself--always chose a man she
could trust and then turned over to him all the responsibilities and
gave herself up to love and happiness.
George Helm’s reason for looking younger was somewhat different. That
is, he got the happiness in a different way. Much is said about the
heavy cares of office, and certainly most men in high office do age
rapidly. But Helm’s notion of the duties of office was not that usually
held by officials. If a man spends his time at secretly doing things
which would ruin him, were they found out--if he hides service of
thieves and plunderers behind a pretense of public service, naturally
he grows old rapidly. Such secrets and such terrors loosen the hair and
the teeth, stoop the shoulders, yellow the fat and sag and wrinkle the
cheeks. But if a man has no secrets in his public service, if he spends
each day in the rejuvenating effort to do the square thing without
troubling himself in the least about whether he will be misunderstood,
or maligned, or beaten for a second term, he gets younger and happier
all the time. For health and vitalizing no other vacation equals the
vacation from lying and swindling and double-dealing and plotting that
make up the routine of so many lives.
As the two men and the baby carriage reached the far end of the walk,
Bill said:
“George, it’s a wonder you aren’t wheeling this cart up and down the
main street.”
“Too much noise and dust,” replied the governor. “Bad for the fat one.”
He usually called his namesake “the fat one.”
“You’ve done about everything else I can think of to get everybody
down on you. You’ve made the politicians hate you by forcing through
decent primary and election laws. You’ve got the railroads and the big
businesses down on you by making them pay taxes and obey the laws.
You’ve got the farmers down on you by giving the railroads the excuse
of their taxes for raising rates. You’ve got the breweries down on you
by shutting up a lot of their doggeries and enforcing an inspection of
their beer. You’ve got the merchants down on you by making them toe
the mark on false weights and measures. You’ve got the men down on
you because they say your ‘honest’ administration has made business
bad, and increased the unemployed. You’ve got the women down on you
because you and your wife haven’t been social snobs and givers of
swell entertainments, as governors and their wives always have been
hitherto--and are expected to be.”
George listened, much amused. “No friends left but you, Bill,” said he.
“You haven’t succeeded in pleasing anybody on earth.”
“Except myself,” said Helm.
They had turned and were once more moving toward the house--toward the
young woman at the window. “Yourself--and your wife,” said Desbrough.
“I hope so,” said George. He was looking at her. His eyes always
changed expression when he looked at her.
“When you took this office, you said you were going to please the
people,” pursued Bill.
“To _serve_ the people,” corrected Helm.
“Same thing,” rejoined his friend. “Now--you’ve found out that there
isn’t any such thing as the people.”
Helm nodded.
“There are a lot of interests of one kind and another, big and little.
The masses are employed by them to produce and are their customers as
consumers. The interests rob them, both ways from the Jack.”
Helm nodded.
“There are pluckers and plucked, but there is no such thing as ‘the
people.’”
“Not yet,” admitted Helm.
“You’ve been serving something that doesn’t exist.”
Helm nodded.
“The pluckers hate you because you’ve interfered with their game. The
plucked hate you because they think you’ve put them in a position where
they’ll not be plucked only because they haven’t anything to pluck.”
“They don’t hate me, exactly,” said George.
“You’re right. I withdraw hate. They love you. They go crazy at sight
of you. They flock to hear you speak and they cheer you until you have
to stop them to get through your speech. But--that doesn’t fool you?”
“Not for a minute,” replied Helm. “They think I mean well but
am--dangerous.”
“You hypnotized them two years ago,” Desbrough went on, “and induced
them to give you a legislature that had to put through your program.
But the pluckers have organized and have put that fox Sayler in charge
again--and they’ve got your humble friends of the workshop and the plow
good and scared at last.”
“But I didn’t bring you here to-day, Bill, to talk about my political
fortunes. What’s become of those Western Timber cases?”
“Those cases you asked me to get up against the Western Timber and
Mineral Company?” said Desbrough with a curious change of voice.
“Wait,” said Helm. “My wife wants the baby.”
Desbrough waited. Helm disappeared with the carriage at the
half-basement door; Mrs. Helm disappeared from the window. Affairs of
state had to wait full ten minutes. Then Helm rejoined his friend with
an expression of intense, if somewhat guilty, pleasure that gave the
shrewd Attorney-General a clue to what had occurred within. Said Helm,
with renewed vigor:
“What about those cases, Bill? You lazy pup! I’ve had to nag at you
ever since we got in.”
“Haven’t I done all you asked?” laughed Desbrough.
“Yes--and done it well, Bill. But--how I have had to nag!”
“It’d ’a’ been better for you, if I hadn’t done so much. You’ve tried
to set the world straight, George, in one term as governor.”
“You’re wrong there, old man,” replied Helm. “I’ve simply settled each
question as it came up. It had to be settled one way or the other. I
haven’t had time to do anything but just the things that were squarely
put up to me to do.”
Desbrough’s shrug was admission that George had spoken exactly. “I
don’t blame you, George,” said he. “But you see how it is. Didn’t I
warn you?”
“That I was playing bad politics? Oh, yes. And I knew it. I knew how to
get in, Bill. I knew how to stay in. But when it came to a show-down I
couldn’t do a dozen rotten things in order to get through one that was
half way decent.”
“Well--you’ll go out, and somebody that’s altogether rotten’ll come in.”
“How about those cases?”
“I’ll take them up in a few days.” Desbrough was trying to hide his
nervousness from his keen-eyed friend. “Give me another week, George.”
Helm laid a heavy hand on Desbrough’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
he demanded.
Desbrough saw he could not evade. “This Western Timber and Mineral
Company--the T. and M., as they call it--it’s a queer sort of holding
corporation.”
“It’s the worst thief in this part of the world--a waster and a stealer
and a starver.”
“But it’s a clever villain--the cleverest. It’s got safety hooks
and lines out in every direction. If you attack it you’ll get a
return volley from pretty near everything that has a voice in this
state--newspapers, preachers, charity societies of every kind, doctors,
lawyers, retailers. It’s wound round everything and everybody.”
“It’s the big waster, the big stealer, the big starver--and the big
corruption. Now, it has defied the government of this state--the
people.”
“The people doesn’t exist,” Desbrough reminded him.
“It’s got to go.”
“First crack out of the box--as soon as I begin to attack--it will
close a lot of plants and throw fifty thousand workers--men, women and
children--out of employment.”
“Is that as bad as what it’s doing?”
“No,” admitted Desbrough. “Not one hundredth part as bad. But it’ll
_look_ worse. Everybody will think and say it’s worse.”
“What are you afraid of, Bill? I know it isn’t yourself. _What_ is it?”
Desbrough looked steadily at his friend. “You know what the T. & M.
is--_who_ it really is?”
“Anybody especial?”
“It’s controlled by--your father-in-law.”
This was by no means the first time that George Helm had been faced
with the difficulties necessarily involved in his having married
the daughter of one of the leading politico-business traffickers of
the Middle West. But theretofore each difficulty had come in some
form that enabled him to keep on his course without wounding his
wife’s sensibilities, and with no other ill effect than deepening his
father-in-law’s secret hatred and detestation. But now the long-dreaded
crisis seemed to have come.
“We’ve warned that company several times,” said he, reflecting.
“Five formal warnings,” said Desbrough. “I’ve just given them a sixth.
That’s why I’m delaying.”
“Six. That’s too many. We’ve been more than fair.”
“George, if I go ahead--I send two of your wife’s own cousins to the
pen--and disgrace her father--drive him out of public life.”
A long silence. Then Helm said quietly:
“Do you think they’ll pay attention to the warning?”
“No,” replied Desbrough. He watched the lines growing slowly taut in
George Helm’s rugged face, and hastily added, “Now, see here, old
man--for God’s sake _don’t_ do another unpractical thing--the worst
yet. The others only wrecked you politically. This’ll wreck your home.”
In the same tranquil way Helm said:
“Have I ever done a single unpractical thing? You know I haven’t. You
know--or ought to--that Sayler-- There’s a politician!--he put up the
whole game on me. He fixed it so that I’d be forced either to do dirty
work or to offend one after another every power in this state and so
kill myself politically.”
Desbrough suddenly saw the whole plot--simple, devilish, inevitably
successful. And all his love for Helm was concentrated in the deep,
passionate fury of his exclamation--“The dirty devil!”
“No use calling names,” rejoined Helm placidly. “He plays his game; we
play ours. And anyhow, he has lost.”
“Lost?” echoed Desbrough. “How do you make that out? I think he’s won.
Hasn’t he done you up for a second term?”
“Even so, still he has lost,” Helm answered. “His main object was to
make us do dirty work. And we haven’t--not yet.”
Desbrough’s eyes shifted. After a pause he said with some constraint:
“You want me to wait till these people have a chance to act on my last
warning?”
Helm said:
“I’ll give you an answer to-morrow. You’re all ready to go ahead?”
“Yes.”
“Then--I’ll see you to-morrow.”
And Desbrough did not envy him the rest of that day and the night.
* * * * *
In the afternoon, to the governor’s private room in the Capitol came
Harvey Sayler. Nominally, Sayler was a rich United States Senator
and the state leader of the Republican party machine. Actually, he
was the boss of the machines of both parties, was an overlord of
bosses, was the plutocracy’s honored and courted major-general for the
Middle West. As the masses in their slow, dim way were beginning to
realize that parties and politics were not matters of principle but
of pocket filling--and pocket-emptying, Sayler was being denounced,
was being built up into a figure of greater menace, and therefore
of greater public admiration and respect, than the actualities
warranted, powerful and dangerous though he was. But he had remained
the affable, cynically good-humored good fellow. Whenever one of
the plutocracy’s thoroughly pliant tools was in high office, Sayler
and he always pretended to quarrel, got the newspapers to fool the
public with big headlines--“Fearless governor (or attorney-general
or judge) breaks with the bosses”--and Sayler and he met only in the
stealthiest privacy, if meeting became necessary. Whenever a more or
less independent man was in office, Sayler always kept on terms of the
greatest apparent friendliness with him--for obvious reasons.
As Helm had shown in his talk with Bill Desbrough, he understood
Sayler. And Sayler, knowing that he could gain nothing by deceiving
Helm in their personal talks, gave himself the pleasure of being almost
frank.
“Well, Governor,” said he, “how goes the game of honest politics?”
“I needn’t tell _you_,” replied Helm, good-humoredly.
“You’ll some day see I was right when I warned you there was no such
thing as honest politics.”
“Did I ever deny it?” said Helm. “How could there be honest politics?
Human society is, necessarily, modeled as yet upon the only example man
had to guide them--nature, with her cruel law of the survival of the
fittest. Men live by taking advantage of one another--of one another’s
ignorance, stupidity, necessity, cowardice. And politics--it’s
simply the struggle between warring appetites, between competing
selfishnesses.”
“Then what’s the use of exhorting men to stop robbing each other?”
inquired Sayler. “Isn’t my plan the wiser--and the better?--to try to
show the strong that they shouldn’t strip the weak--that they should
content themselves with all the harvest, and not uproot and so prevent
another harvest.”
“I admit you have your usefulness,” replied Helm. “But I insist that my
sort of politician is useful also. You are trying to soften the strong,
we to strengthen the weak. But”--with eyes suddenly twinkling--“I’ve
been expecting you. I knew your plan was about complete.”
“My plan?”
“You’ve been very cleverly forcing me into a position where I’d have
every interest, big and little, in the state against me--a position
where it would be impossible for me to get a second term--or any
office. Well--you’ve apparently got me where you want me. So it’s time
for you to make me a proposition.”
Sayler’s smile was admission.
“Incidentally,” pursued Helm, “you’ve made me punish those of your
plutocratic friends who were restless under your rule. They are now
all back at your feet, I believe?”
Sayler laughed. “All,” said he. “They’ll not annoy me soon again.”
“Well--what next?”
“I’ve come to offer you _my_ position,” was Sayler’s unexpected and
astounding offer. “I am going to marry again, and the lady does not
like politics--my kind of politics--the only kind I can play. Also,
I’m tired. I’d like to give my place to my colleague in the Senate
and first lieutenant, splendid old Doc Woodruff. But he’s a born
lieutenant. He simply couldn’t learn to lead. So--I’ve been training
you for the job.”
Sayler evidently regarded it as a rare joke that he, a plutocracy boss,
had been training the most radical and anti-plutocratic governor in
the Middle West--had been training him to become the leader for the
plutocracy. Helm, recovering from his surprise, was also amused.
“I’ve been teaching you the folly of your ways. You have had a free
hand. You have done what was right. Result--general dissatisfaction,
general distrust of _you_, general desire for a change back to us. The
people say--‘Yes, those fellows steal almost all the fruits of our
labor. But they own the mines and the shops and the railroads, which
practically means that they own the land. If we want to earn a living
for our families, we’ve got to apply to them for permission to work.
The sensible thing for us to do is to make the best terms we can. If
we took the property away from the plutocracy we’d not get it, but our
clever leaders would, and they’d rob us just as we’re being robbed
now.’ Isn’t that the way the people reason?”
“Much like that,” admitted Helm.
“And there they show their shrewd sense. Oh, the people aren’t
fools--not altogether. They have intelligence enough. What they lack
is _efficient_ intelligence. They know, but they don’t know how to use
their knowledge.”
“They’re learning,” said Helm.
“You mean your independent following? Yes”--Sayler nodded
thoughtfully--“you have done wonders. I’ve admired the way you’ve built
up a personal following of nearly a hundred thousand votes. If we
didn’t happen to own both machines--and therefore are indifferent which
wins--your following would give you the balance of power. As matters
stand, what is a hundred thousand, when we have nearly half a million?”
Helm was silent.