_The Watched Pot Begins to Boil_
Of all classes of people under the sun, the so-called labouring man has
best cause to pray for deliverance from his friends. His friends are, or
rather were, of three classes. The first, ardent but wingless angels of
mercy, who fail to comprehend the fact that the unlovely lot of their
would-be wards is the result of conditions imposed more largely from
within than from without; the second, those who care neither for lots
nor conditions, regarding the labourer as a senseless tool with which to
hew out his own designs; the third, those who adroitly knock together
the heads of the labourer and his employer and impartially pick the
pockets of each in the general _melee_ which is bound to follow.
The past _were_ is designedly contrasted with the present _are_, for it
is a fact that conditions all around are changing for the better;
slowly, perhaps, but nevertheless surely.
The philanthropic friend of the labourer is learning to develop
balancing tail-feathers of judgment wherewith to direct the flights of
wings of mercy. The employer is beginning to realise the beneficial
results of mutual understanding and of considerate co-operation, and the
industrious fomenter of strife is learning that bones with richer marrow
may be more safely cracked by sensible adjustment than with grievous
clubs wielded over broken heads.
Even so, the millennium is yet far away, and now, as in the past, the
path that leads to it is uphill and dim, and is beset with many
obstacles. There are no short cuts to the summit. In spite of
pessimistic clamours that the rich are growing richer and the poor
poorer, frothy yowls for free and unlimited coinage at sixteen to one,
or for fiat paper at infinity to nothing, the fact remains that, whereas
kings formerly used signets for the want of knowledge to write their
names, licked their greasy fingers for lack of knives and forks, and
starved in Ireland with plenty in France, the poorest to-day can, if
they will, indite readable words on well-sized paper, do things in
higher mathematics, and avoid the thankless task of dividing eight into
seven and looking for the remainder.
Potatoes are worth fifty cents a bushel. Any yokel can dig a hole in the
ground and plant the seed and in due time gather the ripened tubers. The
engineer who drives his engine at sixty miles an hour, flashing by
warning semaphores, rolling among coloured lights, clattering over frogs
and switches, is no yokel. Therefore, because of this fact, with the
compensation of one day he can, if he so elects, buy many potatoes, or
employ many yokels.
Had Sir Isaac Newton devoted to the raising of potatoes the energy which
he gave to astronomy, he might have raised larger potatoes and more to
the hill than his yokel neighbour. But, his conditions having been
potatoes, his reward would have been potatoes, instead of the deathless
glory of the discovery and enunciation of the law of gravity. The
problem is very simple after all. The world has had a useless deal of
trouble because no one has ever before taken the trouble to state the
problem and to elaborate it. It is just as simple as is the obvious fact
that _x_ plus _y_ equals _a_.
There is a possibility, however, that we have been going too fast, and
have consequently overlooked a few items of importance. We forgot for
the moment, as often happens, that the factors in the problem are not
homogeneous digits with fixed values, but complex personalities with
decided opinions of their own as to their individual and relative
importance, as well as pugnacious tendencies for compelling an
acceptance of their assumptions by equally pugnacious factors which
claim a differential valuation in their own favour. This consideration
presents a somewhat different and more difficult phase of the problem.
It really compels us to defer attempts at final solution, for the time
being, at least; to make the best adjustment possible under present
conditions, putting off to the future the final application, much on the
same principle that communities bond their present public possessions
for their own good and complacently bestow upon posterity the obligation
of settling the bills. Considered in this light, the end of the struggle
between capital and labour is not yet. Each is striving for the sole
possession and control of things which belong to neither alone. Each
looks upon the other not as a co-labourer but as a rival, instead of
making intelligent and united effort for an object unattainable by
either alone. If capital would smoke this in his cigar and labour the
same in his pipe, the soothing effects might tend to more amicable and
effective use of what is now dissipated energy.
However, universal panaceas are not to be hoped for. The mailed fist
puts irritating chips upon swaggering shoulders, and the unresentful
turning of smitten cheeks is conducive to a thrifty growth of gelatinous
nincompoops.
The preceding _status quo_ existed in general at the Rainbow mines and
mill, besides having a few individual characteristics peculiarly their
own. Miners and millmen, for the most part recent importations from all
countries of Europe, had come from the realms of oppression to the land
of the free with very exaggerated notions of what freedom really was.
The dominant expression of this idea was that everyone could do as he
pleased, and that if the other fellow didn't like it, he, the other
fellow, could get out. The often enunciating of abstract principles led
to their liberal application to concrete facts. In this application they
had able counsel in the ambitious Morrison.
"Who opened these mountain wilds?" Morrison was wont to inquire, not for
information, but for emphasis. "Who discovered, amidst toils and dangers
and deprivations and snowslides, these rich mines of gold and silver?
Who made them accessible by waggon trail and railroads and burros? Who
but the honest sons of honest toil? Who, when these labours are
accomplished, lolls in the luxurious lap of the voluptuous East, reaping
the sweat of your brows, gathering in the harvest of hands toiling for
three dollars a day or less? Who, but the purse-proud plutocrat who sits
on his cushioned chair in Wall Street, sending out his ruthless minions
to rob the labourer of his toil and to express his hard-won gold to the
stanchless maw of the ghoulish East. Rise, noble sons of toil, rise!
Stretch forth your horny hands and gather in your own! Raise high upon
these mountain-peaks the banner of freedom's hope before despairing eyes
raised from the greed-sodden plains of the effete East!"
Whereat the sons of toil would cheer and then proceed to stretch forth
hands to unripened fruits with such indiscriminating activity that both
mine and mill ceased to yield expenses to the eastern plutocrat, and
even the revenues of the Blue Goose were seriously impaired, to the
great distress of Pierre.
These rhodomontades of Morrison had grains of plausible truth as nuclei.
The workmen never, or rarely, came in personal contact with their real
employers. Their employers were in their minds men who reaped where
others had sown, who gathered where they had not strewn. The labourer
gave no heed to costly equipment which made mines possible, or at best
weighed them but lightly against the daily toil of monotonous lives.
They saw tons of hard-won ore slide down the long cables, crash through
the pounding stamps, saw the gold gather on the plates, saw it retorted,
and the shining bars shipped East. Against this gold of unknown value,
and great because unknown, they balanced their daily wage, that looked
pitifully small.
The yield of their aggregate labour in foul-aired stopes and roaring
mill they could see in one massive lump. They could not see the
aggregate of little bites that reduced the imposing mass to a tiny
dribble which sometimes, but not always, fell into the treasury of the
company. They would not believe, even if they saw.
For these reasons, great is the glory of the leaders of labour who are
rising to-day, holding restraining hands on turbulent ignorance and
taking wise counsel with equally glorious leaders who are striving to
enforce the truth that all gain over just compensation is but a sacred
trust for the benefit of mankind. These things are coming to be so
to-day. But so long as sons of wealth are unmindful of their
obligations, and so long as ignorance breathes forth noxious vapours to
poison its victims, so long will there be battles to be fought and
victories to be won.
Thus was the way made ready for the feet of one of the labourer's
mistaken friends. Morrison was wily, if not wise. He distinguished
between oratory and logic. He kindled the flames of indignation and
resentment with the one and fed them with the other. But in the
performance of each duty he never lost sight of himself.
Under the slack management of previous administrations, the conditions
of the Rainbow mine and mill had rapidly deteriorated. In the mine a
hundred sticks of powder were used or wasted where one would have
sufficed. Hundreds of feet of fuse, hundreds of detonators, and pounds
of candles were thrown away. Men would climb high in the mine to their
work only to return later for some tool needed, or because their
supplies had not lasted through their shift. If near the close of hours,
they would sit and gossip with their fellow-workmen. Drills and hammers
would be buried in the stope, or thrown over the dump. Rock would be
broken down with the ore, and the mixed mass, half ore and half rock,
would be divided impartially and sent, one-half to the dump and one-half
to the mill.
At the mill was the same shiftless state of affairs. Tools once used
were left to be hunted for the next time they were wanted. On the night
shift the men slept at their posts or deserted them for the hilarious
attractions of the Blue Goose. The result was that the stamps, unfed,
having no rock to crush, pounded steel on steel, so that stamps were
broken, bossheads split, or a clogged screen would burst, leaving the
half-broken ore to flow over the plates and into the wash-sluices with
none of its value extracted.
Among the evils that followed in the train of slack and ignorant
management not the least was the effect upon the men. If a rich pocket
of ore was struck the men stole it all. They argued that it was theirs,
because they found it. The company would never miss it; the company was
making enough, anyway, and, besides, the superintendent never knew when
a pocket was opened, and never told them that it was not theirs. These
pilfered pockets were always emptied at the Blue Goose. On these
occasions the underground furnace glowed ruddily, and Pierre would stow
the pilfered gold among other pilfered ingots, and would in due time
emerge from his subterranean retreat in such cheerful temper that he had
no heart to browbeat the scared-looking Madame. Whereupon Madame would
be divided in her honest soul between horror at Pierre's wrong-doing and
thankfulness for a temporary reprieve from his biting tongue.
The miners stole supplies of all kinds and sold them or gave them to
their friends. Enterprising prospectors, short of funds, as is usually
the case, "got a job at the mine," then, having stocked up, would call
for their time and go forth to hunt a mine of their own.
The men could hardly be blamed for these pilferings. A slack land-owner
who makes no protest against the use of his premises as a public
highway, in time not only loses his property but his right to protest as
well.
So it happened at the Rainbow mine and mill that, as no locks were
placed on magazines, as the supply-rooms were open to all, and as no
protest was made against the men helping themselves, the men came to
feel that they were taking only what belonged to them, whatever use was
made of the appropriated supplies.
These were some of the more obvious evils which Firmstone set about
remedying. Magazines and supply-rooms were locked and supplies were
issued on order. Workmen ceased wandering aimlessly about while on
shift. Rock and ore were broken separately, and if an undue proportion
of rock was delivered at the mill it was immediately known at the mine
and in unmistakable terms.
The effect of these changes on the men was various. Some took an honest
pride in working under a man who knew his business. More chafed and
fumed under unwonted restrictions. These were artfully nursed by the
wily Morrison, with the result that a dangerous friction was developing
between the better disposed men and the restless growlers. This feeling
was also diligently stimulated by Morrison.
"Go easy," was his caution; "but warm it up for them."
"Warm it up for them!" indignantly protested one disciple. "Them fellers
is the old man's pets."
Morrison snorted.
"Pets, is it? Pets be damned! It's only a matter of time when the old
man will be dancing on a hot stove, if you've got any sand in your
crops. The foreman's more than half with you now. Get the union
organised, and we'll run out the pets and the old man too. You'll never
get your rights till you're organised."
At the mill, Firmstone's nocturnal visits at any unexpected hour made
napping a precarious business and visits to the Blue Goose not to be
thought of.
The results of Firmstone's vigilance showed heavily in reduced expenses
and in increased efficiency of labour; but these items were only
negative. The fact remained that the yield of the mill in bullion was
but slightly increased and still subject to extreme variations. The
conclusion was inevitable that the mill was being systematically
plundered. Firmstone knew that there must be collusion, not only among
the workmen, but among outsiders as well. This was an obvious fact, but
the means to circumvent it were not so obvious. He knew that there were
workmen in the mill who would not steal a penny, but he also knew that
these same men would preserve a sullen silence with regard to the
peculations of their less scrupulous fellows. It was but the grown-up
sense of honour, that will cause a manly schoolboy to be larruped to the
bone before he will tell about his errant and cowardly fellow.
Firmstone was well aware of the simmering discontent which his rigid
discipline was arousing. He regretted it, but he was hopeful that the
better element among the men would yet gain the ascendant.
"He's square," remarked one of his defenders. "There was a mistake in my
time, last payroll, and he looked over the time himself." "That's so,"
in answer to one objector. "I was in the office and saw him."
"You bet he's square," broke in another. "Didn't I get a bad pair of
boots out of the commissary, and didn't he give me another pair in their
place? That's what."
If Morrison and Pierre had not been in active evidence Firmstone would
have won the day without a fight.