HOPE MILLS passed through a very prosperous six months. With some new
processes, invented by the combined energy and ingenuity of the men,
they made a new line of goods which was a perfect success. Interest and
discount vanished; and there was a snug balance in the bank, of which
every man was duly proud. They were beginning, too, to take a great
interest in the finances of the country, and to see that a stable
currency and wise economy and honesty were the best friends to
commercial and industrial prosperity. One little incident made them
exceedingly jubilant.
They had been undersold, in the same line of goods, with quite a large
customer. Winston was rather blue about it at first, then laughed it off
as one of the fluctuations of trade. To his great surprise, six months
after, he received the largest order for goods that had yet been sent.
"We have been much deceived in the quality of
cloths from Yates, Collins, & Co.," ran the note.
"They do not stand wear, though they resemble
yours so closely. Our customers have made numerous
complaints, and desire the old stock, which we are
glad to order again.
"MILES, CHAMBERS, & CO."
This was put up on the bulletin-board, and discussed with much pride at
the club. Every man had an interest in it, and an ambition to excel in
his particular branch. It paid in the long-run to be honest; and, though
there might be a higher principle than remuneration, that was not a bad
test, after all.
So the third summer opened brilliantly. Yardley, Gilman, and four others
drew up an agreement for a co-operative store. They hired one man who
had been a very successful buyer for a large grocery-firm, which had
failed, and took with it his small invested capital. He was to keep the
books, take orders, and do the buying, subject to the advisement of the
managers. A certain low per cent of profits was agreed upon, just
enough, they calculated, to pay expenses; and the goods were to be
offered as low as possible for cash. The superior quality and reduced
price, they decided, would be more agreeable to most of the men than a
small balance at the end of the year. An account was to be kept with
every member, and the agreement to remain in force one year from date.
And yet there are shoals and quicksands for prosperity, as well as
yawning abysses for adversity. There were people in Yerbury--not bad
souls either--who were not content to allow the world to revolve on any
axis but their own. They could see their neighbors' planets go to
destruction with equanimity--following some law of nature or ethics that
regulated supply and demand of any force, in their estimation; but when
some bright particular star flashed out of the orbit they had set for
it, of course it was beyond the pale of safety. There has always been a
great deal of just such obstinacy in the world, just such narrow
prescribing, and yet--"it does move."
One of the favorite objections of these wiseacres was, that Hope Mills
was founded on a wrong basis. Who knew _just exactly_ what amount of
goods Winston sold? Well, there was the amount manufactured,--the amount
on hand every six months. True,--with a disbelieving shake of the
head,--but he was up in the ways of the world; and what would hinder
him, Ananias-like, from keeping back part of the price? When this was
shown to be an utter impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston
harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the
last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some
successful _coup-d'état_ Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and
take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were
going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier,
unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes in an
out-and-out way; but there was going to be a profound mystery about
this--the most simple and above-board management, when every man knew,
every six months, the best and the worst of the details.
Employment was becoming more general all through the country. Everybody
drew a long breath, and decided that the grinding times of depression
had passed. We would soon be back to the brilliant era of past
prosperity.
And then there arose a new light in the labor horizon, a prophet who had
discovered the magic key to the workingmen's paradise, and it had only
to be turned by themselves, to gain entrance. Wherever he went, he was
hailed with acclamation.
It was the old, old war upon capital, the old seductive science of
equalizing things, values, money. Every poor man in the country had a
better right to a cottage and garden and a few hours of leisure, than
these few magnates to grasp every thing in their own hands, to roll in
luxury, to feast in magnificence, to clothe their daughters in silks,
velvets, and diamonds--it was to be noted that Mr. McPherson wore an
immense diamond, but it was to be presumed that his wife or daughter did
_not_. Everywhere one could see the rich growing richer, the poor
poorer, the workman trodden down, brought to the level of slavery with
his long hours and scanty wages. Where was it to end but in a nation of
paupers, of thieves, of criminals of every grade? for, when you made a
brute of a man, there came a time when he turned a brute's hand against
you. This had been the underlying cause of all the world's great
struggles: it had uncrowned kings, it had razed thrones, it had swept
states. There were bits of distorted historical facts, fallacious but
brilliant reasoning, and much bombast.
They heard of him in this city and that, and there was a great deal said
about the cordiality with which he greeted "the horny-handed son of
toil." No town was so small that he disdained it, no city so great that
he feared it. There had been "demonstrations," but he seemed proud of
his defiance of danger.
Men who could not altogether approve of him admitted that he was
"smart," that he uttered a good many truths, half-truths they were,
dressed up in specious falsehoods, all the more dangerous, since the
world does pay homage to virtue and truth. They were troublesome
questions: the great difficulty was the haste made in settling them. A
balance will finally adjust itself, though there may be many vibrations
at first.
It was a fact much to be regretted, that with returning prosperity the
gin-mills and beer-shops of Yerbury had, as a general thing, increased
in their business. A notable instance to the contrary, however, was
Keppler's saloon. It had depended a good deal on the men from Hope Mills
and the iron-works. The latter had been closed so long; and, although
the coffee-house did not seem much of a rival at first, it had gone on
steadily, and given the men time to think. It was not simply the one
glass of beer they took to wash down their midday lunch, but the
treating when a crowd gathered, the many drinks during a heated
discussion of an evening. Not half a dozen of the mill-hands went there
now, so occupied had their minds become with other matters. Keppler's
lease was not out, and his rent was high for the times; he had lost
money and customers, and felt sore over it; he had a grudge against
Jack Darcy as the exponent of a system that interfered with his profits.
McPherson was discussed over pipes and ale one warm June evening, with
brains cleared, of course, by frequent potations and stifling smoke. It
was proposed that he should be invited to lecture at Yerbury.
"I like to see fair play!" cried Keppler. "These fellows over
here"--nodding toward the mill--"have had it all their own way because
they took up a lot of starving men in dull times. That was all well
enough,--praise-worthy--praise-w-o-r-thy," with a long accent. "But
things have changed now,--changed!" with a confident nod. "I'd like to
hear what the man has to say. You see, he has come up from the ranks, he
has been poor himself!"
So the ball was put in motion. McPherson's speech at Millville, a great
laboring-centre, was read aloud with frequent cheering. And the
laboring-men at Yerbury began to wonder why wages were not higher, when
so many shops were running on full time! Somebody was making a great
deal of money: _they_ could barely live. Bread and meat had not fallen
in the ratio of wages. It was still next door to starvation.
Finally some self-constituted labor-committee sent the letter of
invitation, and received a cordial and flattering reply. Mr. McPherson
had heard of Yerbury. He would be only too glad to come among them in
his humble capacity, and shed what light he could upon the side of right
and truth; raise his voice for the oppressed against the oppressor. And
he mentioned that open-air meetings were generally more successful.
They put up a platform on the Common, the largest park in Yerbury. The
day was very fine, not too hot, and a shower the evening before had laid
the dust. At precisely four, a deputation awaited Mr. McPherson and his
party at the station, escorted them to the Bedell House to refresh, and
then to the grand hall of nature, with its waving arches of glistening
green overhead.
Already a great concourse had assembled. Mr. McPherson mounted his
rostrum, and, after a few preliminary flourishes, began in a clear,
strong tone, that had the power of concentrating the attention of his
audience. He went back centuries, and proved that from the very
beginning of all industries there had been the desire to oppress, that
the working-classes had to combine and fight for every advantage gained,
to wrest from kings, peers, masters, even equals, the privileges they
held to-day. Plainly, capital was a tyrant fattening on unpaid toil.
"Were not the rich always in the ranks of capital, always against the
poor man? They squeezed him to the utmost when they had need, then they
flung him away. Did it matter to them if his wife and children starved?
If he stole a loaf of bread to appease the pangs of hunger, he was sent
to prison; but if a bank president stole half a million, he went
to--Europe! [Laughter and applause.] Does the capitalist employ the
laborer in order that there shall be fewer starving men in the country?
It comes in the market, and buys at the lowest price, solely for its own
benefit. It does not concern capital, whether this man can support wife
and children on such a pittance: what business has he with wife and
children! If the man drops at the work-bench, the victim of long hours,
exhaustive toil, insufficient food, the town will thrust him into a
pauper's grave, and another will fill his place. Even negro-slavery was
more noble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave
should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute,
strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its
rights; it was half-starved that it might be weak; it was driven from
pillar to post with a more cruel than slave-driver's whip, that it might
never be able to perfect a successful organization."
And so on and on. The crowd increased. The six-o'clock bells rang, and
the procession from shops wended their way thither, many from curiosity,
some from a hope of a new truth, and not a few filled with a secret
sense of wrong and dissatisfaction. Mr. McPherson was still belaboring
capital. Now he had declared it "a stupendous fraud, a hollow bubble, a
reputation for wealth where no wealth existed, a fictitious claim for
what was not, but which still managed to hold the workman in its iron
grasp; the concentrated labor of the men, not the lawful working
interest of money. Some way this system of evil was going to be uprooted
by men standing firm, refusing the wages of sweat and blood; and in the
general overturn by legislation of state and country, every man was to
have a farm or a factory, to quit work in the middle of the afternoon,
and sit with folded hands on his own door-step, his own master, a free
man!" [Great shouting and applause.]
He talked until seven, and wound up at last with a desperate but covert
onslaught on Hope Mills. "No two men or six men, or company of any kind,
had a right to band together to starve not only the men in their own
town, but the laborers throughout the world, by so reducing wages for
their own sole benefit; and every workman who submitted to have these
chains forged around body and soul, no matter by what specious
expedient, was a worse traitor, a more cruel oppressor of wife and
children, than the red-handed capital that stood ready to make him a
slave!"
There was an immense deal of cheering and applause. Mr. McPherson was
invited to supper at the Bedell House by a deputation of working-men,
though I think there were few horny-handed ones among them. Liquors
flowed freely, and the feast was rather noisy. A purse was handed to him
when he went away--he was too noble to make any charge when he spoke in
behalf of a cause so near his heart.
The seed was sown, and it is too true that "foul weeds grow apace."
There were club-meetings and union-meetings. The shoe-factory, which had
struggled hard to get on its legs again, soon became a hotbed of
discontent. The hatters held meetings, the paper-makers were aroused,
and then began preparation for another grand strike. The weavers from
Coldbridge and Stilford sent over a deputation to Hope Mills, warning,
exhorting, and threatening. "No system," said they, "should interfere
with mutual strength and protection."
And this was not all. It seemed as if Yerbury meant to make them the
scape-goat of every thing. Robert Winston was broadly caricatured; and
there was a bit of insulting abuse, calling them traders in their
brethren's blood, pasted up on the gate-post. "The Evening Transcript"
went over the system of co-operation, and showed to its own
satisfaction, that it was a system full of errors and miscalculations
based on the credulity of workmen. It hinted that the same mysterious
cause which reduced profits last year would reduce them again next year,
that at the end of the five years the bread and cheese would come out
just even, although there had been a great deal more bread than cheese,
as everybody knew. If the corporation were working for the best
interests of the men, why had they not sold off stock when every one
knew prices were going permanently down, instead of waiting to sell it
below cost? Why had they paid exorbitant prices for wool when the market
was flooded with it? Why had they not done this or that? until one
wondered why, understanding the woollen-business so well, and being able
to see just where enormous profits could be made, and losses avoided,
they had not all gone into it themselves. The article wound up with a
covert and insulting insinuation. Human nature was the same, the world
over. Men of the highest probity and honor had succumbed to temptation:
these men who had never really been in any responsible position had yet
to be proved. If men like David Lawrence and Horace Eastman could not
make a stand against fluctuations and difficulties, it was hardly likely
success would crown any such abnormal undertaking.
Jack did not see the paper until the next day. Some one laid it
surreptitiously on his desk. His face flushed darkly at the attack upon
his honesty, and for a moment all the belligerency of his boyhood rose
to the surface. He had half a mind to hunt up the writer of the article,
and pound him to a jelly with his two fists. But presently he laughed to
himself, and then made a tour of the mills in his cheeriest fashion. He
saw with grief that the seed had found root. There were some sullen
faces and short answers.
It certainly is a hard thing to keep on fighting an old foe that can
only be beaten, never killed.
Jack stumbled over Cameron in the store-room.
"Cameron," said he with a white, rigid face, "I wish to God this was the
last day of the five years! I should walk out of Hope Mills, and never
set foot in it again, no, not even if they implored me on their knees. A
thankless, miserable set! The lying article in last night's paper made
me mad for a moment, but could not sting: yet the faces of my own men
did as I came through the rooms."
"You've had a hard pull, Jack!" Cameron's voice was fatherly and
soothing. "You might have put your money and your brains in something
that would have proved much pleasanter. But the man who takes up the
first end of a truth always gets hard knocks: it is the people who come
after who find a smooth path. Don't you remember," drawing his wrinkled
face into a queer smile, "the shrewd application your New York lady made
about the children of Israel? Jack, if the salvation scheme of the Bible
was all proved false,--which it never will be, to my mind,--there's so
much wisdom in it beside, that a chap could take it just for a sort of
guidebook in every-day matters, all the same. And now we're going to
have a big fight."
"You think that?" cried Jack, in vague alarm. "I wish Winston was here.
He can always talk so to the point!"
"Well, he isn't: we've got to go through it ourselves. But this settles
it! You see, there's been Price, and Pickett, and Davy, to stir up
strife and bad feeling, and all this outside influence; but my old
woman's praying us through, and I set a good deal of store by her
prayers, Jack! If these ruffians go on, Yerbury'll be half ruined again,
but it is their own fault. I'm not much on capital punishment, but I
would go to the hanging of that McPherson. If he'd staid away, we should
have done well enough."
Jack drew a long, troubled breath.
"I'd let every man go out who wanted to, but I wouldn't pay-him a red
cent, there!"
That evening Jack went down to Larch Avenue. He found Fred and Sylvie up
in arms. Indignation was a mild term.
It was a magnificent night, with a nearly full moon. The light flooded
the wide lawn path, and made shadows of elves and gnomes on the porch,
as the wind wandered in and out the great honeysuckle, whose ripe, rich
perfume was shaken about with every waft. Within, an Argand lamp, and
porcelain shade with a minute painting of Puck and his fairy host, sent
a softened radiance on the old, rich-hued carpet, and antique furniture.
It was but little changed, yet wore an indescribably antique look.
Over at an open window sat Irene Lawrence, dressed in white, with a
single deep-red velvety rose at her throat, which Sylvie had pinned
there. Her hair had grown rapidly, and, though it did not quite curl,
the ends tumbled about loosely, framing in the face with their dusky
purplish tint. It was very clear now, and a little pale; the old
brilliant coloring had not all returned; the passionless grace, the deep
eyes with their steady lights, the mouth suggesting mobility and warmth
and passion, rather than defining it, the droop of the white lids, the
unruffled brow, and the pose of the bowed head and slightly-yielding
throat, made a marvellous picture.
The three were talking earnestly, as people do in the great crises of
life; Sylvie wondrously piquant, with some thin, black, trailing stuff
making shifting billows about her restless feet. She questioned Jack
eagerly, she denounced the attack as cruel and cowardly. What did he
mean to do? What should Fred do for him?
"There is nothing to do, but just wait for the result. The
dragon's-teeth have been sown. The only comfort I have is, that you
never can put a lie on the face of truth, and nail it there. No amount
of arguing or talk can make a thing so when it is _not_ so. Higher than
this little human round, God garners every truth in his keeping, and
will make it tell somewhere!"
Miss Lawrence raised her eyes, and glanced over to him. Had the slow
impassiveness of her soul been touched, that this sudden peculiar grace
of sympathy, or some hidden kindred feeling, rose and asserted itself?
And yet she might have been in some magnetic sleep, for all actual
movement of her features; it was the dawn of an expression that seemed
to transport him to some strange world, where he had known her long
ago,--where he had watched for her coming, listened to her
voice,--rather than any present interest or meaning.
He rose abruptly.
"You are not going!" cried Sylvie, in her pretty wifely imperiousness.
"I"--for a moment he had the sensation of a man drowning. The surging
waves were about him, throbbing, leaping, strangling him. There was a
ringing in his ears, there was a long shuddering sensation, like being
overwhelmed.
"It is very warm," he went on in a faint, strained voice, wiping the
beaded drops from his broad brow.
"Come over here," pleaded Sylvie: "you will be cooler. The wind is
south, and doesn't blow in those windows. You are sure you feel quite
well?" scanning him anxiously. "You look pale."
"It was only momentary." He wondered now what had so moved him. "I am
like good old John Bunyan's Pilgrim,"--laughing faintly,--"'tumbled up
and down' with these excitements. I wish they were at an end. We were
going on so nicely when that McPherson came! Don't let us think any more
about it," throwing up his head with a nervous shake. "Sylvie, I wish
you would sing something."
"With pleasure. Fred and I have been practising duets. When Yerbury is
laid in ashes we can go off as strolling minstrels;" and she laughed
gayly, as she went to the piano. That exquisite tact in changing a mood
or scene was a familiar characteristic of Sylvie Barry.
As the sound of their blending voices floated out on the summer night
air, there leaped up in Darcy's soul a subtle, forceful, vivifying
flame, touching to a white heat the farthest pulse of his being.
Resistance appeared impossible: he did not even dream what manner of
influence this might be. Long afterward--it seemed ages to him--as their
heads were bent together over the pages of the music, he raised his
eyes, and let them wander slowly toward Irene Lawrence.
Was there something quite new in the face,--a sort of strange,
wondering, troubled expression, as if some unseen, almost unknown, depth
had been stirred?
He did not need to ask the question now. Wild as it was, he loved that
statue over yonder, and it seemed to him that his passion in its
enduring vitality must awaken her soul to kindred life! An exultant
strength and determination rose within him. What might have abashed
another man, filled him with a deathless courage, as high as it was
pure.
He thanked Sylvie and Fred for the song, but resisted their entreaties
to remain. When he said good-night, he went over to Miss Lawrence, and
took her hand. It was cold and passive, and her eyes fell beneath his.