HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA!
At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the safe-key to Wade, and
departed to ruin some other property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade
walked with him to the gate.
"I'm glad to be out of a sinking ship," said the ex-boss. "The Works will
go down, sure as shooting. And I think myself well out of the clutches of
these men. They're a bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal
ruffians. Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of my life
with 'em."
"A bad lot, are they?" mused Wade, as he returned to the office. "I must
give them a little sharp talk by way of Inaugural."
He had the bell tapped and the men called together in the main building.
Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic way.
While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces, smoke rose from the
dusty beds where Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, manacled
with heavy chains, stood over the furnace-doors, ready to lift steaming
jorums of melted metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to
swallow.
Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire to ripen it.
Here was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelabs of
the Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying
higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be
crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civilization.
Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep
the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head,
cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the
waves; a light walking-beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the
river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and
vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.
From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy folds of a dim atmosphere,
half dust, half smoke. A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the
grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found this compound quite palpable
and solid, and they moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side by
side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its perpendicular.
Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and
good force wasting for want of a little will and skill to train the force
and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy and chaos.
"All they want here is a head," he thought.
He shook his own. The brain within was well developed with healthy
exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel,
or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The
owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for
a shout, his legs for a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.
At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot" of men came together. They numbered
more than two hundred, though the Foundry was working short. They had been
notified that "that gonoph of a Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller
was in, who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em and tell 'em
whether he was a damn' fool or not."
So all hands collected from the different parts of the Foundry to see the
head.
They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,--a good many
roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung
and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had
been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded
their long pokers like lances.
Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Blackfeet in their
warpaint. Their hairy chests showed, where some men parade elaborate
shirt-bosoms. Some had their sleeves pushed up to the elbow to exhibit
their compact flexors and extensors. Some had rolled their flannel up to
the shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper arm. They wore aprons
tied about the neck, like the bibs of our childhood,--or about the waist,
like the coquettish articles which young housewives affect. But there was
no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were
besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under
bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment.
They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace,
in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake.
Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra's two
hundred crests of insubordination.
They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He read and ticketed each man,
as he came up,--good, bad, or on the fence,--and marked each so that he
would know him among a myriad.
The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the two hundred or the
one would be master in Dunderbunk.
Which was boss? An old question.
It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always
a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.
Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He waited a moment until the
men were still. He was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on
his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. His mouth looked firm,
his brow freighted, his nose clipper,--that the hands could see. But
clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull. Seemingly freighted
brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be
all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit.
All which the hands knew.
Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, when it has a bar to shape.
"I'm the new Superintendent. Richard Wade is my name. I rang the bell
because I wanted to see you and have you see me. You know as well as I do
that these Works are in a bad way. They can't stay so. They must come up
and pay you regular wages and the Company profits. Every man of you has
got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in
his work. You haven't been,--and you know it. You've turned out rotten
iron,--stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of. Now there's to be a
new leaf turned over here. You're to be paid on the nail; but you've got
to earn your money. I won't have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about
me. I shall work hard myself, and every man of you will, or he leaves the
shop. Now, if anybody has a complaint to make, I'll hear him before you
all."
The men were evidently impressed with Wade's Inaugural. It meant
something. But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule.
There began to be a whisper,--
"B'il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!"
Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the new ruler.
Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he had been the butt-end of riot
and revolt at the Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did
not like to abdicate and give in to this new chap without testing him.
In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade's looks and words; but today
he had a sore head, a sour face, and a bitter heart from last night's
spree. And then he had heard--it was as well known already in Dunderbunk
as if the town-crier had cried it--that Wade was lodging at Mrs.
Purtett's, where poor Bill was excluded. So Bill stepped forward as
spokesman of the ruffianly element, and the immoral force gathered behind
and backed him heavily.
Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. But he had sagged one inch
for want of self-respect. He had spoilt his color and dyed his moustache.
He wore foxy-black pantaloons tucked into red-topped boots, with the name
of the maker on a gilt shield. His red flannel shirt was open at the neck
and caught with a black handkerchief. His damaged tile was in permanent
crape for the late lamented Poole.
"We allow," says Bill, in a tone halfway between Lablache's _De profundis_
and a burglar's bull-dog's snarl, "that we've did our work as good as need
to be did. We 'xpect we know our rights. We ha'n't ben treated fair, and
I'm damned if we're go'n' to stan' it."
"Stop!" says Wade. "No swearing in this shop!"
"Who the Devil is go'n' to stop it?" growled Tarbox.
"I am. Do you step back now, and let some one come out who can talk like a
gentleman!"
"I'm damned if I stir till I've had my say out," says Bill, shaking
himself up and looking dangerous.
"Go back!"
Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous.
"Don't tech me!" Bill threatened, squaring off.
He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of
moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.
Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of compelling _kotou_. Round
One of the mill had not given him enough.
He jumped up from his soft bed and made a vicious rush at Wade. But he was
damaged by evil courses. He was fighting against law and order, on the
side of wrong and bad manners.
The same fist met him again, and heavier.
Up went his heels! Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a
fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard black
pillow.
"Ring the bell to go to work!" said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer
jump. "Now, men, take hold and do your duty and everything will go
smooth!"
The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at
the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment
of sledge-hammers.
They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be well governed, as all men do.
They wanted disorder out and order in. The new man looked like a man,
talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands give in with a good grace and go
to work like honest fellows?
The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never
any more insubordination at Dunderbunk.
This was June.
Skates in the next chapter.
Love in good time afterward shall glide upon the scene.