THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL
One Saturday afternoon, after we had been paid off, Morse, the head of
the department, whose job I had been eyeing enviously for five years
now, called me into his office. For three minutes I saw all my hopes
realized; for three minutes I walked dizzily with my whole life
justified. I could hardly catch my breath as I followed him. I didn't
realize until then how big a load I had been carrying. As a drowning
man is said to see visions of his whole past life, I saw visions of my
whole future. I saw Ruth's eager face lifted to mine as I told her the
good news; I saw the boy taken from his commonplace surroundings and
doing himself proud in some big preparatory school where he brushed up
against a variety of other boys; I saw--God pity me for the fool I
was--other children at home to take his place. I can say that for
three minutes I have lived.
Morse seated himself in the chair before his desk and, bending over
his papers, talked without looking at me. He was a small fellow. I
don't suppose a beefy man ever quite gets over a certain feeling of
superiority before a small man. I could have picked up Morse in one
hand.
"Carleton," he began, "I've got to cut down your salary five hundred
dollars."
It came like a blow in the face. I don't think I answered.
"Sorry," he added, "but Evans says he can double up on your work and
offers to do it for two hundred dollars more."
I repeated that name Evans over and over. He was the man under me.
Then I saw my mistake. While watching the man ahead of me I had
neglected to watch the man behind me. Evans and I had been good
friends. I liked him. He was about twenty, and a hard worker.
"Well?" said Morse.
I recovered my wind.
"Good God," I cried; "I can't live on any less than I'm getting now!"
"Then you resign?" he asked quickly.
For a second I saw red. I wanted to take this pigmy by the throat. I
wanted to shake him. He didn't give me time before exclaiming:
"Very well, Carleton. I'll give you an order for two weeks' pay in
advance."
The next thing I knew I was in the outer office with the order in my
hand. I saw Evans at his desk. I guess I must have looked queer, for
at first he shrank away from me. Then he came to my side.
"Carleton," he said, "what's the matter?"
"I guess you know," I answered.
"You aren't fired?"
I bucked up at this. I tried to speak naturally.
"Yes," I said, "I'm fired."
"But that isn't right, Carleton," he protested. "I didn't think it
would come to that. I went to Morse and told him I wanted to get
married and needed more money. He asked me if I thought I could do
your work. I said yes. I'd have said yes if he'd asked me if I could
do the president's work. But--come back and let me explain it to
Morse."
It was white of him, wasn't it? But I saw clearly enough that he was
only fighting for his right to love as I was fighting for mine. I
don't know that I should have been as generous as he was--ten years
before. He had started toward the door when I called him back.
"Don't go in there," I warned. "The first thing you know you'll be
doing my work without your two hundred."
"That's so," he answered. "But what are you going to do now?"
"Get another job," I answered.
One of the great blessings of my life is the fact that it has always
been easy to report bad news to Ruth. I never had to break things
gently to her. She always took a blow standing up, like a man. So now
I boarded my train and went straight to the house and told her. She
listened quietly and then took my hand, patting it for a moment
without saying anything. Finally she smiled at me.
"Well, Billy," she said, "it can't be helped, can it? So good luck to
Evans and his bride."
When a woman is as brave as that it stirs up all the fighting blood in
a man. Looking into her steady blue eyes I felt that I had exaggerated
my misfortune. Thirty-eight is not old and I was able-bodied. I might
land something even better than that which I had lost. So instead of
a night of misery I actually felt almost glad.
I started in town on Monday in high hope. But when I got off the train
I began to wonder just where I was bound. What sort of a job was I
going to apply for? What was my profession, anyway? I sat down in the
station to think the problem over.
For twenty years now I had been a cog in the clerical machinery of the
United Woollen Company. I was known as a United Woollen man. But just
what else had this experience made of me? I was not a bookkeeper. I
knew no more about keeping a full set of books than my boy. I had
handled only strings of United Woollen figures; those meant nothing
outside that particular office. I was not a stenographer, or an
accountant, or a secretary. I had been called a clerk in the
directory. But what did that mean? What the devil was I, after twenty
years of hard work?
The question started the sweat to my forehead. But I pulled myself
together again. At least I was an able-bodied man. I was willing to
work, had a record of honesty and faithfulness, and was intelligent as
men go. I didn't care what I did, so long as it gave me a living
wage. Surely, then, there must be some place for me in this alert,
hustling city.
I bought a paper and turned to "Help Wanted." I felt encouraged at
sight of the long column. I read it through carefully. Half of the
positions demanded technical training; a fourth of them demanded
special experience; the rest asked for young men. I couldn't answer
the requirements of one of them. Again and again the question was
forced in upon me--what the devil was I?
I didn't know which way to turn. I had no relatives to help me--from
the days of my great-grandfather no Carleton had ever quit the game
more than even. My business associates were as badly off as I was and
so were my neighbors.
My relations with the latter were peculiar, now that I came to think
of it. In these last dozen years I had come to know the details of
their lives as intimately as my own. In a way we had been like one big
family. We knew each other as Frank, and Joe, and Bill, and Josh, and
were familiar with one another's physical ailments when any of us had
any. If any of the children had whooping cough or the measles every
man and woman in the neighborhood watched at the bedside, in a sense,
until the youngster was well, again. We knew to a dollar what each man
was earning and what each was spending. We borrowed one another's
garden tools and the women borrowed from each other's kitchens. On the
surface we were just about as intimate as it's possible for a
community to be. And yet what did it amount to?
There wasn't a man-son of them to whom I would have dared go and
confess the fact I'd lost my job. They'd know it soon enough, be sure
of that; but it mustn't come from me. There wasn't one of them to whom
I felt free to go and ask their help to interest their own firms to
secure another position for me. Their respect for me depended upon my
ability to maintain my social position. They were like steamer
friends. On the voyage they clung to one another closer than bark to a
tree, but once the gang plank was lowered the intimacy vanished. If I
wished to keep them as friends I must stick to the boat.
I knew they couldn't do anything if they had wanted to, but at the
same time I felt there was something wrong in a situation that would
not allow me to ask even for a letter of introduction without feeling
like a beggar. I felt there was something wrong when they made me feel
not like a brother in hard luck but like a criminal. I began to wonder
what of sterling worth I had got out of this life during the past
decade.
However that was an incidental matter. The only time I did such
thinking as this was towards the early morning after I had lain awake
all night and exhausted all other resources. I tackled the problem in
the only way I could think of and that was to visit the houses with
whom I had learned the United Woollen did business. I remembered the
names of about a dozen of them and made the rounds of these for a
starter. It seemed like a poor chance and I myself did not know
exactly what they could do with me but it would keep me busy for a
while.
With waits and delays this took me two weeks. Without letters it was
almost impossible to reach the managers but I hung on in every case
until I succeeded. Here again I didn't feel like an honest man
offering to do a fair return of work for pay, so much as I did a
beggar. This may have been my fault; but after you've sat around in
offices and corridors and been scowled at as an intruder for three or
four hours and then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" you
can't help having a grouch. There wasn't a man who treated my offer as
a business proposition.
At the end of that time two questions were burned into my brain: "What
can you do?" and "How old are you?" The latter question came as a
revelation. It seems that from a business point of view I was
considered an old man. My good strong body counted for nothing; my
willingness to undertake any task counted for nothing. I was too old.
No one wanted to bother with a beginner over eighteen or twenty. The
market demanded youth--youth with the years ahead that I had already
sold. Wherever I stumbled by chance upon a vacant position I found
waiting there half a dozen stalwart youngsters. They looked as I had
looked when I joined the United Woollen Company. I offered to do the
same work at the same wages as the youngsters, but the managers didn't
want me. They didn't want a man around with wrinkles in his face.
Moreover, they were looking to the future. They didn't intend to
adjust a man into their machinery only to have him die in a dozen
years. I wasn't a good risk. Moreover, I wouldn't be so easily
trained, and with a wider experience might prove more bothersome. At
thirty-eight I was too old to make a beginning. The verdict was
unanimous. And yet I had a physique like an ox and there wasn't a gray
hair in my head. I came out of the last of those offices with my fists
clenched.
In the meanwhile I had used up my advance salary and was, for the
first time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my bills
weekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week I
knew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. The
neighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping.
And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours with
my wife I had ever known.
She sent me away every morning with fresh hope and greeted me at night
with a cheerfulness that was like wine. And she did this without any
show of false optimism. She was not blind to the seriousness of our
present position, but she exhibited a confidence in me that did not
admit of doubt or fear. There was something almost awesomely beautiful
about standing by her side and facing the approaching storm. She used
to place her small hands upon my back and exclaim:
"Why, Billy, there's work for shoulders like those."
It made me feel like a giant.
So another month passed. I subscribed to an employment bureau, but the
only offer I received was to act as a sort of bouncer in a barroom. I
suppose my height and weight and reputation for sobriety recommended
me there. There was five dollars a week in it, and as far as I alone
was concerned I would have taken it. That sum would at least buy
bread, and though it may sound incredible the problem of getting
enough to eat was fast becoming acute. The provision men became daily
more suspicious. We cut down on everything, but I knew it was only a
question of time when they would refuse to extend our credit for the
little we _had_ to have. And all around me my neighbors went their
cheerful ways and waited for me to work it out. But whenever I thought
of the barroom job and the money it would bring I could see them shake
their heads.
It was hell. It was the deepest of all deep hells--the middle-class
hell. There was nothing theatrical about it--no fireworks or red
lights. It was plain, dull, sodden. Here was my position: work in my
own class I couldn't get; work as a young man I was too old to get;
work as just plain physical labor these same middle-class neighbors
refused to allow me to undertake. I couldn't black my neighbors' boots
without social ostracism, though Pasquale, who kept the stand in the
United Woollen building, once confided to me that he cleared some
twenty-five dollars a week. I couldn't mow my neighbors' front lawns
or deliver milk at their doors, though there was food in it. That was
honest work--clean work; but if I attempted it would they play golf
with me? Personally I didn't care. I would have taken a job that day.
But there were the wife and boy. They were held in ransom. It's all
very well to talk about scorning the conventions, to philosophize
about the dignity of honest work, to quote "a man's a man for a'
that"; but associates of their own kind mean more to a woman and a
growing boy than they do to a man. At least I thought so at that time.
When I saw my wife surrounded by well-bred, well-dressed women, they
seemed to me an essential part of her life. What else did living mean
for her? When my boy brought home with him other boys of his age and
kind--though to me they did not represent the highest type--I felt
under obligations to retain those friends for him. I had begot him
into this set. It seemed barbarous to do anything that would allow
them to point the finger at him.
I felt a yearning for some primeval employment. I hungered to join the
army or go to sea. But here again were the wife and boy. I felt like
going into the Northwest and preempting a homestead. That was a saner
idea, but it took capital and I didn't have enough. I was tied hand
and foot. It was like one of those nightmares where in the face of
danger you are suddenly struck dumb and immovable.
I was beginning to look wild-eyed. Ruth and I were living on bread,
without butter, and canned soup. I sneaked in town with a few books
and sold them for enough to keep the boy supplied with meat. My shoes
were worn out at the bottom and my clothes were getting decidedly
seedy. The men with whom I was in the habit of riding to town in the
morning gave me as wide a berth as though I had the leprosy. I guess
they were afraid my hard luck was catching. God pity them, many of
them were dangerously near the rim of this same hell themselves.
One morning my wife came to me reluctantly, but with her usual
courage, and said:
"Billy, the grocery man didn't bring our order last night." It was
like a sword-thrust. It made me desperate. But the worst of the
middle-class hell is that there is nothing to fight back at. There you
are. I couldn't say anything. There was no answer. My eyes must have
looked queer, for Ruth came nearer and whispered:
"Don't go in town to-day, Billy."
I had on my hat and had gathered up two or three more volumes in my
green bag. I looked at the trim little house that had been my home for
so long. The rent would be due next month. I looked at the other trim
little houses around me. Was it actually possible that a man could
starve in such a community? It seemed like a satanic joke. Why, every
year this country was absorbing immigrants by the thousand. They did
not go hungry. They waxed fat and prosperous. There was Pasquale, the
bootblack, who was earning nearly as much as I ever did.
We were standing on the porch. I took Ruth in my arms and kissed her.
She drew back with a modest protest that the neighbors might see. The
word neighbors goaded me. I shook my fist at their trim little houses
and voiced a passion that had slowly been gathering strength.
"Damn the neighbors!" I cried.
Ruth was startled. I don't often swear.
"Have they been talking about you?" she asked suddenly, her mouth
hardening.
"I don't know. I don't care. But they hold you in ransom like bloody
Moroccan pirates."
"How do they, Billy?"
"They won't let me work without taking it out of you and the boy."
Her head dropped for a second at mention of the boy, but it was soon
lifted.
"Let's get away from them," she gasped. "Let's go where there are no
neighbors."
"Would you?" I asked.
"I'd go to the ends of the earth with you, Billy," she answered
quietly.
How plucky she was! I couldn't help but smile as I answered, more to
myself:
"We haven't even the carfare to go to the ends of the earth, Ruth. It
will take all we have to pay our bills."
"All we have?" she asked.
No, not that. They could get only a little of what she and I had. They
could take our belongings, that's all. And they hadn't got those yet.
But I had begun to hate those neighbors with a fierce, unreasoning
hatred. In silence they dictated, without assisting. For a dozen years
I had lived with them, played with them, been an integral part of
their lives, and now they were worse than useless to me. There wasn't
one of them big enough to receive me into his home for myself alone,
apart from the work I did. There wasn't a true brother among them.
Our lives turn upon little things. They turn swiftly. Within fifteen
minutes I had solved my problem in a fashion as unexpected as it was
radical.