THE INTERVIEW WITH NIXON
SUPERINTENDENT SCHOFIELD was at his desk bright and early next morning,
for the purpose of getting out of the way the thirty-six hours’
accumulation of routine business, before the approaching momentous
interview with Nixon. Only one familiar with the executive offices of a
railroad has any idea of the immense amount of correspondence,—reports,
complaints, requests for information and instructions—which that stretch
of time can accumulate, but the superintendent waded into the pile of
letters and telegrams with a rapidity born of long practice, and when he
finally leaned back in his chair, with a sigh of relief, it wanted still
some minutes of nine o’clock.
“That’s all, Joe,” he said, to the stenographer, and that young man
gathered up the letters, closed his note-book, and left the room.
Mr. Schofield swung around in his chair and stared down over the yards,
his forehead wrinkled thoughtfully.
He and Mr. Round had, the afternoon before, gone over carefully every
detail of the approaching interview, and yet it was very possible that
some trivial incident might spoil it all. Most unpleasant of all loomed
the possibility that he had been mistaken in his estimate of Nixon.
Perhaps the man would not take a bribe—perhaps he was honest. Should
that prove to be the case, any such attempt as Mr. Schofield was about
to undertake could not but result most unpleasantly to himself and to
the railroad. He could already see the newspaper headlines which would
announce it—for the press of the country had, as a rule, followed the
crowd and joined in the yelp at the heels of the “conscienceless
corporations.”
ATTEMPT TO BRIBE!
--------------
Schofield, of the P. & O., Gives Convincing
Evidence of Corporation Methods
--------------
Offers Special Delegate Nixon a Thousand
Dollars to Betray His
Trust
--------------
Believes All Men May be Bought, but
Is Shown that Labour Is Unpurchasable—
Grand Jury to
Investigate
He realized that he must feel his way with the utmost caution, and yet
as he recalled Nixon’s words, and the significant glance which
accompanied them, he could not believe that he had been mistaken. But
the man was adroit and suspicious—a single false movement and he would
be on his guard.
A tap at the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come in,” he called, and an instant later, the door opened and Nixon
entered the room.
“On time, I see,” said Mr. Schofield, pleasantly, and motioned his
visitor to a chair.
“Yes,” said Nixon, taking off his luxurious overcoat and sitting down,
“I make it a point to be on time for little conferences like this. The
boys were inclined to get mad,” he went on, “because I gave you two days
to make up your mind. But I told them there wasn’t nothing to gain by
hurryin’ a thing like this. I told them I wanted to give you a fair
show. That’s me. I allers give everybody a fair show.”
Nixon was, at bottom, coarse and uneducated, and this coarseness and
ignorance would crop up in his talk at times, in spite of his efforts to
suppress them. Since his promotion to a high place in the brotherhood,
he had studied incessantly how best to make himself a “gentleman.”
Unfortunately, his conception of the meaning of that word was modelled
upon the demeanour of barbers, bar-tenders and hotel-clerks. He believed
a diamond scarf-pin and a seal-ring to be indispensable portions of a
gentleman’s attire, together with a shirt striped in loud colours,
glazed shoes, a fancy waistcoat, and a trace of perfume. He also
believed that a gentleman invariably wore his hat cocked over one eye,
to prove himself a knowing fellow and man of the world. He had laboured
with the utmost diligence to form himself upon this model and was
entirely satisfied with the result. That he was not a gentleman, and
that anyone who met him would not so consider him, never for an instant
entered his mind.
“Yes,” he repeated, “I insisted that you be given a fair show, and
finally they saw that I was right. I don’t believe in no snap judgments.
I heard that you was down to Cinci yesterday and saw Round.”
It may be added that another point in Nixon’s conception of gentlemanly
conduct was that he should call men in exalted positions by their last
names to show his sense of equality, or by their first names to prove
his easy familiarity with them.
“Yes,” said Mr. Schofield, “Mr. Round and I had a conference about the
matter.”
“Well,” demanded Nixon, gazing at him from under lowered lids, “what’s
the answer?”
“We won’t reinstate Bassett,” answered Mr. Schofield, quietly.
“Then, by God, it’s fight!” cried Nixon, his face turning purple, and he
brought his fist down on the desk with a crash. “Do you realize what all
this is going to cost you?”
“Tell me,” suggested Mr. Schofield. “And don’t hit my desk again like
that. Some of my men might think there was a fight, and come in. We
don’t want any intruders.”
“No,” agreed Nixon, “we don’t,” and he glanced sharply about the room.
Then he hitched his chair closer to the desk and leaned forward in his
earnestness. “This thing’ll cost you a hundred thousand dollars before
you’ve done with it, and no end of trouble. I’ve been lookin’ over the
field, and I know. First, I’ll call off the engineers.”
“We’ll replace them,” said Mr. Schofield, promptly.
“You’ll try to,” corrected Nixon, “but it won’t be so easy as you think.
Good engineers ain’t knockin’ around the country lookin’ fer scab
jobs—you know that as well as I do. The good men are all in the
brotherhood. All you’ll find is a few dubs who can run an engine after a
fashion and who don’t belong to the brotherhood or have been kicked
out—they’ll soon play hob with your engines.”
“No doubt they’re pretty bad if they’ve been kicked out,” observed Mr.
Schofield.
“But,” continued Nixon, impressively, paying no heed to the
interruption, “the minute this scab engineer climbs up into the cab,
that same minute the fireman will climb down. More than that, no union
conductor or brakeman will help run a train which a scab engineer is
driving, no union switchman will throw a target for it, and no union
operator will give it orders. So there you are—fire Bassett, and you’ll
need mighty soon not only a new outfit of engineers, but of firemen,
conductors, brakemen, switchmen and operators. Maybe you think it’ll be
easy to find new men to take their places, but I don’t.”
“I don’t either,” agreed Mr. Schofield; “but just the same we won’t give
up the fight before it begins.”
“Well, your lines are bound to be tied up more or less, even at the
best,” said Nixon, “and right in the busy season, too. That will mean
considerable of a loss.”
“Yes,” nodded Mr. Schofield, “it will.”
“And some of the loss will be permanent. When traffic is turned aside
that way, if only for a short time, some of it always stays turned
aside. After you git things straightened out, you’ll have to git out and
hustle for business, or your earnings will show a permanent decrease.”
“I know that too,” said Mr. Schofield.
“And there’s another thing to consider,” went on Nixon, impressively.
“Union men are orderly and law-abiding. All they will do is to quit
their jobs and let you run the road if you can. They won’t interfere
with you—they never do.”
“So I have heard,” said Mr. Schofield, with a grim smile. “Surely it’s
no use repeating that fairy tale to me.”
“It’s no fairy tale,” protested Nixon, earnestly, but there was a
sardonic light in his eyes. “As I said, union men never make trouble.
But there’s always a lot of sympathizers and hangers-on who try to help,
and who always do make trouble, however hard the union men may try to
prevent it.”
“I don’t think the union men will lose any sleep trying to stop it.”
“Yes, they will,” contradicted Nixon, “but they won’t be able to. Wind
of this trouble has got about, you know; and just last night, as I was
passing a saloon over here, I heard two or three fellers talkin’ and one
of them remarked what a beautiful big blaze the stock-yards would make
and how easy it would be to start.”
“Is this a threat?” asked Mr. Schofield, looking fixedly at his visitor.
“A threat? Oh, dear, no; I’m simply telling you what I heard—I want you
to know what kind of trouble it is you’re walkin’ into. Of course, I
stopped right away and told those fellers we union men wouldn’t stand
for nothing like that.”
“Yes,” commented Mr. Schofield, “I’ve got a picture of you stopping.
Your righteous indignation is plainly apparent.”
“Well, anyway,” said Nixon, grinning, “there’s no telling what’ll happen
if you decide to let this strike go on.”
“I didn’t say that we had decided to do that,” said Mr. Schofield,
quietly. “I only said that we wouldn’t reinstate Bassett,” and he looked
Nixon straight in the eye.
That individual sustained the gaze for a moment, his colour deepening a
little; then he arose and made a deliberate circuit of the room,
assuring himself that all the doors were tightly closed, and also
glancing into the closet where the superintendent hung his hat and
overcoat. The inspection finished, he returned to his chair, and
produced two big black cigars, handing one to his companion and lighting
the other.
“Thanks,” said Mr. Schofield, taking the cigar with a little effort. He
lighted it, took a puff or two, and then looked critically at its fat,
black contour. “Good cigar,” he commented.
Nixon laughed complacently.
“Yes, I’m kind o’ pertick’ler about my tobacco,” he said. “These is a
private stock—I get ’em from a friend of mine. I’ll send you over a
couple of boxes.”
“They’re better cigars than I can afford to smoke,” remarked the
superintendent. “The job of special delegate must pay pretty well.”
Nixon laughed again.
“Oh, so, so,” he said, and tilting his chair back, rammed his hands deep
in his trousers’ pockets.
“How long have you held it?”
“Three years—an’ there’s never been a breath of complaint against me. If
any man stands square with the brotherhood, it’s me,” and again Nixon
grinned sardonically.
Mr. Schofield’s last trace of uncertainty had vanished. He knew his
ground now and could advance more surely.
“No,” he went on, slowly, “we won’t reinstate Bassett, and at the same
time we’re going to avoid a strike, if we can. I think you remarked the
other day that there would be no strike unless you called it.”
“There won’t,” said Nixon, briefly.
“What will happen, then?”
“I’ll make a report adverse to Bassett and he’ll be kicked out of the
brotherhood?”
“Won’t he make a howl?”
“Let him. What good will it do? My report goes.”
Mr. Schofield nodded, as he watched the cigar smoke float slowly upward.
“I see,” he commented, and there was a moment’s silence. “Suppose,” he
went on, at last, “that you were convinced that it was your duty to make
such a report, what assurance would we have that you would really make
it?”
“You’d have to take my word,” said Nixon. “You could count on me making
the report, all right, if I was properly convinced.”
“And I suppose,” continued Mr. Schofield, “that you would have to
be—ah—convinced in advance.”
This was a new experience for him and he was considerably the more
confused of the two.
“Sure thing,” answered Nixon, bluntly.
“Well, I’ll see if I can convince you. Bassett was drunk, he was
insolent to his superior officer; to reinstate him would mean the end of
discipline on this line. His offence falls clearly under rule
forty-three, which says that no employee of the road, on duty or off,
shall frequent saloons. In violating that rule, he laid himself liable
to discharge and discharged he was. He also violated rule sixty-one,
which says that insolence to a superior officer may be punished by
dismissal, at the discretion of the train master. The train master
exercised his discretion and dismissed him. When Bassett was employed by
the road he was given a copy of the rules and knew that he must obey
them if he wanted to hold his job. He disobeyed them, and lost it—so
he’s got nobody to blame but himself. That’s our position. Don’t you
think it’s a pretty strong one?”
“Yes,” agreed Nixon, slowly, “it looks pretty strong,” but he was
plainly waiting for something that was still to come.
“By the way,” continued Mr. Schofield, opening a drawer of his desk.
“After you left the other day, I found this package on the floor,” and
he took from the drawer a little packet, carefully wrapped and sealed,
and laid it on his desk. “It doesn’t belong to anyone around here, and I
thought maybe you’d dropped it.”
“Let’s see it,” said Nixon, and took it with eager fingers. He ripped
open the seal and drew out a little bundle of paper currency. He ran
through it rapidly and found it to consist of ten one hundred dollar
bills. “Yes,” he said, slipping them into an inside pocket. “It’s mine.
I’d been wondering what had become of it.”
“And you’re convinced?”
“Perfectly, I’ll report against Bassett.”
“When?”
Nixon glanced at his watch and started to his feet.
“Right away,” he said. “The meeting’s called for ten-thirty. I’ll just
have time to get there.”
He picked up hat and overcoat and started for the door. Mr. Schofield,
his finger hovering over an electric button, watched him with a
perplexed pucker of the forehead. Then his face cleared, and he took his
hand away from the button.
“Well, good-bye,” he said. “I’m glad we could settle it so easily.”
“Oh, nobody never has no trouble with me,” said Nixon, “if they talk
business,” and he opened the door and closed it after him.
Two men, who—so a single glance told him—were not railroad men, were
standing just across the hall, looking out of a window. They glanced
around, as he came out, but made no effort to molest him, and he hurried
away, the packet in his inside pocket pressing against his breast with a
most reassuring warmth.
And just as he disappeared down the stairs, the door of Mr. Schofield’s
room opened and the two strangers were called hastily inside.
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