“We’ve done nothing we were not compelled to do, if we were to win.”
“I’m not saying anything about that,” Bertie answered. “What I am
complaining about is your squealing now that you’re getting a taste of
your own medicine. How many strikes have you won by starving labour into
submission? Well, labour’s worked out a scheme whereby to starve you
into submission. It wants the closed shop, and, if it can get it by
starving you, why, starve you shall.”
“I notice that you have profited in the past by those very labour gouges
you mention,” insinuated Brentwood, one of the wiliest and most astute of
our corporation lawyers. “The receiver is as bad as the thief,” he
sneered. “You had no hand in the gouging, but you took your whack out of
the gouge.”
“That is quite beside the question, Brentwood,” Bertie drawled. “You’re
as bad as Hanover, intruding the moral element. I haven’t said that
anything is right or wrong. It’s all a rotten game, I know; and my sole
kick is that you fellows are squealing now that you’re down and labour’s
taking a gouge out of you. Of course I’ve taken the profits from the
gouging and, thanks to you, gentlemen, without having personally to do
the dirty work. You did that for me—oh, believe me, not because I am
more virtuous than you, but because my good father and his various
brothers left me a lot of money with which to pay for the dirty work.”
“If you mean to insinuate—” Brentwood began hotly.
“Hold on, don’t get all-ruffled up,” Bertie interposed insolently.
“There’s no use in playing hypocrites in this thieves’ den. The high and
lofty is all right for the newspapers, boys’ clubs, and Sunday
schools—that’s part of the game; but for heaven’s sake don’t let’s play
it on one another. You know, and you know that I know just what jobbery
was done in the building trades’ strike last fall, who put up the money,
who did the work, and who profited by it.” (Brentwood flushed darkly.)
“But we are all tarred with the same brush, and the best thing for us to
do is to leave morality out of it. Again I repeat, play the game, play
it to the last finish, but for goodness’ sake don’t squeal when you get
hurt.”
When I left the group Bertie was off on a new tack tormenting them with
the more serious aspects of the situation, pointing out the shortage of
supplies that was already making itself felt, and asking them what they
were going to do about it. A little later I met him in the cloak-room,
leaving, and gave him a lift home in my machine.
“It’s a great stroke, this general strike,” he said, as we bowled along
through the crowded but orderly streets. “It’s a smashing body-blow.
Labour caught us napping and struck at our weakest place, the stomach.
I’m going to get out of San Francisco, Corf. Take my advice and get out,
too. Head for the country, anywhere. You’ll have more chance. Buy up a
stock of supplies and get into a tent or a cabin somewhere. Soon
there’ll be nothing but starvation in this city for such as we.”
How correct Bertie Messener was I never dreamed. I decided that he was
an alarmist. As for myself, I was content to remain and watch the fun.
After I dropped him, instead of going directly home, I went on in a hunt
for more food. To my surprise, I learned that the small groceries where
I had bought in the morning were sold out. I extended my search to the
Potrero, and by good luck managed to pick up another box of candles, two
sacks of wheat flour, ten pounds of graham flour (which would do for the
servants), a case of tinned corn, and two cases of tinned tomatoes. It
did look as though there was going to be at least a temporary food
shortage, and I hugged myself over the goodly stock of provisions I had
laid in.
The next morning I had my coffee in bed as usual, and, more than the
cream, I missed the daily paper. It was this absence of knowledge of
what was going on in the world that I found the chief hardship. Down at
the club there was little news. Rider had crossed from Oakland in his
launch, and Halstead had been down to San Jose and back in his machine.
They reported the same conditions in those places as in San Francisco.
Everything was tied up by the strike. All grocery stocks had been bought
out by the upper classes. And perfect order reigned. But what was
happening over the rest of the country—in Chicago? New York?
Washington? Most probably the same things that were happening with us,
we concluded; but the fact that we did not know with absolute surety was
irritating.
General Folsom had a bit of news. An attempt had been made to place army
telegraphers in the telegraph offices, but the wires had been cut in
every direction. This was, so far, the one unlawful act committed by
labour, and that it was a concerted act he was fully convinced. He had
communicated by wireless with the army post at Benicia, the telegraph
lines were even then being patrolled by soldiers all the way to
Sacramento. Once, for one short instant, they had got the Sacramento
call, then the wires, somewhere, were cut again. General Folsom reasoned
that similar attempts to open communication were being made by the
authorities all the way across the continent, but he was non-committal as
to whether or not he thought the attempt would succeed. What worried him
was the wire-cutting; he could not but believe that it was an important
part of the deep-laid labour conspiracy. Also, he regretted that the
Government had not long since established its projected chain of wireless
stations.
The days came and went, and for a while it was a humdrum time. Nothing
happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. The streets were
not so crowded. The working class did not come uptown any more to see
how we were taking the strike. And there were not so many automobiles
running around. The repair-shops and garages were closed, and whenever a
machine broke down it went out of commission. The clutch on mine broke,
and neither love nor money could get it repaired. Like the rest, I was
now walking. San Francisco lay dead, and we did not know what was
happening over the rest of the country. But from the very fact that we
did not know we could conclude only that the rest of the country lay as
dead as San Francisco. From time to time the city was placarded with the
proclamations of organized labour—these had been printed months before,
and evidenced how thoroughly the I.L.W. had prepared for the strike.
Every detail had been worked out long in advance. No violence had
occurred as yet, with the exception of the shooting of a few wire-cutters
by the soldiers, but the people of the slums were starving and growing
ominously restless.
The business men, the millionaires, and the professional class held
meetings and passed resolutions, but there was no way of making the
proclamations public. They could not even get them printed. One result
of these meetings, however, was that General Folsom was persuaded into
taking military possession of the wholesale houses and of all the flour,
grain, and food warehouses. It was high time, for suffering was becoming
acute in the homes of the rich, and bread-lines were necessary. I knew
that my servants were beginning to draw long faces, and it was
amazing—the hole they made in my stock of provisions. In fact, as I
afterward surmised, each servant was stealing from me and secreting a
private stock of provisions for himself.
But with the formation of the bread-lines came new troubles. There was
only so much of a food reserve in San Francisco, and at the best it could
not last long. Organized labour, we knew, had its private supplies;
nevertheless, the whole working class joined the bread-lines. As a
result, the provisions General Folsom had taken possession of diminished
with perilous rapidity. How were the soldiers to distinguish between a
shabby middle-class man, a member of the I.L.W., or a slum dweller? The
first and the last had to be fed, but the soldiers did not know all the
I.L.W. men in the city, much less the wives and sons and daughters of the
I.L.W. men. The employers helping, a few of the known union men were
flung out of the bread-lines; but that amounted to nothing. To make
matters worse, the Government tugs that had been hauling food from the
army depots on Mare Island to Angel Island found no more food to haul.
The soldiers now received their rations from the confiscated provisions,
and they received them first.
The beginning of the end was in sight. Violence was beginning to show
its face. Law and order were passing away, and passing away, I must
confess, among the slum people and the upper classes. Organized labour
still maintained perfect order. It could well afford to—it had plenty to
eat. I remember the afternoon at the club when I caught Halstead and
Brentwood whispering in a corner. They took me in on the venture.
Brentwood’s machine was still in running order, and they were going out
cow-stealing. Halstead had a long butcher knife and a cleaver. We went
out to the outskirts of the city. Here and there were cows grazing, but
always they were guarded by their owners. We pursued our quest,
following along the fringe of the city to the east, and on the hills near
Hunter’s Point we came upon a cow guarded by a little girl. There was
also a young calf with the cow. We wasted no time on preliminaries. The
little girl ran away screaming, while we slaughtered the cow. I omit the
details, for they are not nice—we were unaccustomed to such work, and we
bungled it.
But in the midst of it, working with the haste of fear, we heard cries,
and we saw a number of men running toward us. We abandoned the spoils
and took to our heels. To our surprise we were not pursued. Looking
back, we saw the men hurriedly cutting up the cow. They had been on the
same lay as ourselves. We argued that there was plenty for all, and ran
back. The scene that followed beggars description. We fought and
squabbled over the division like savages. Brentwood, I remember, was a
perfect brute, snarling and snapping and threatening that murder would be
done if we did not get our proper share.
And we were getting our share when there occurred a new irruption on the
scene. This time it was the dreaded peace officers of the I.L.W. The
little girl had brought them. They were armed with whips and clubs, and
there were a score of them. The little girl danced up and down in anger,
the tears streaming down her cheeks, crying: “Give it to ’em! Give it to
’em! That guy with the specs—he did it! Mash his face for him! Mash
his face!” That guy with the specs was I, and I got my face mashed, too,
though I had the presence of mind to take off my glasses at the first.
My! but we did receive a trouncing as we scattered in all directions.
Brentwood, Halstead, and I fled away for the machine. Brentwood’s nose
was bleeding, while Halstead’s cheek was cut across with the scarlet
slash of a black-snake whip.
And, lo, when the pursuit ceased and we had gained the machine, there,
hiding behind it, was the frightened calf. Brentwood warned us to be
cautious, and crept up on it like a wolf or tiger. Knife and cleaver had
been left behind, but Brentwood still had his hands, and over and over on
the ground he rolled with the poor little calf as he throttled it. We
threw the carcass into the machine, covered it over with a robe, and
started for home. But our misfortunes had only begun. We blew out a
tyre. There was no way of fixing it, and twilight was coming on. We
abandoned the machine, Brentwood pulling and staggering along in advance,
the calf, covered by the robe, slung across his shoulders. We took turn
about carrying that calf, and it nearly killed us. Also, we lost our
way. And then, after hours of wandering and toil, we encountered a gang
of hoodlums. They were not I.L.W. men, and I guess they were as hungry
as we. At any rate, they got the calf and we got the thrashing.
Brentwood raged like a madman the rest of the way home, and he looked
like one, with his torn clothes, swollen nose, and blackened eyes.
There wasn’t any more cow-stealing after that. General Folsom sent his
troopers out and confiscated all the cows, and his troopers, aided by the
militia, ate most of the meat. General Folsom was not to be blamed; it
was his duty to maintain law and order, and he maintained it by means of
the soldiers, wherefore he was compelled to feed them first of all.
It was about this time that the great panic occurred. The wealthy
classes precipitated the flight, and then the slum people caught the
contagion and stampeded wildly out of the city. General Folsom was
pleased. It was estimated that at least 200,000 had deserted San
Francisco, and by that much was his food problem solved. Well do I
remember that day. In the morning I had eaten a crust of bread. Half of
the afternoon I had stood in the bread-line; and after dark I returned
home, tired and miserable, carrying a quart of rice and a slice of bacon.
Brown met me at the door. His face was worn and terrified. All the
servants had fled, he informed me. He alone remained. I was touched by
his faithfulness and, when I learned that he had eaten nothing all day, I
divided my food with him. We cooked half the rice and half the bacon,
sharing it equally and reserving the other half for morning. I went to
bed with my hunger, and tossed restlessly all night. In the morning I
found Brown had deserted me, and, greater misfortune still, he had stolen
what remained of the rice and bacon.
It was a gloomy handful of men that came together at the club that
morning. There was no service at all. The last servant was gone. I
noticed, too, that the silver was gone, and I learned where it had gone.
The servants had not taken it, for the reason, I presume, that the club
members got to it first. Their method of disposing of it was simple.
Down south of Market Street, in the dwellings of the I.L.W., the
housewives had given square meals in exchange for it. I went back to my
house. Yes, my silver was gone—all but a massive pitcher. This I
wrapped up and carried down south of Market Street.
I felt better after the meal, and returned to the club to learn if there
was anything new in the situation. Hanover, Collins, and Dakon were just
leaving. There was no one inside, they told me, and they invited me to
come along with them. They were leaving the city, they said, on Dakon’s
horses, and there was a spare one for me. Dakon had four magnificent
carriage horses that he wanted to save, and General Folsom had given him
the tip that next morning all the horses that remained in the city were
to be confiscated for food. There were not many horses left, for tens of
thousands of them had been turned loose into the country when the hay and
grain gave out during the first days. Birdall, I remember, who had great
draying interests, had turned loose three hundred dray horses. At an
average value of five hundred dollars, this had amounted to $150,000. He
had hoped, at first, to recover most of the horses after the strike was
over, but in the end he never recovered one of them. They were all eaten
by the people that fled from San Francisco. For that matter, the killing
of the army mules and horses for food had already begun.
Fortunately for Dakon, he had had a plentiful supply of hay and grain
stored in his stable. We managed to raise four saddles, and we found the
animals in good condition and spirited, withal unused to being ridden. I
remembered the San Francisco of the great earthquake as we rode through
the streets, but this San Francisco was vastly more pitiable. No
cataclysm of nature had caused this, but, rather, the tyranny of the
labour unions. We rode down past Union Square and through the theatre,
hotel, and shopping districts. The streets were deserted. Here and
there stood automobiles, abandoned where they had broken down or when the
gasolene had given out. There was no sign of life, save for the
occasional policemen and the soldiers guarding the banks and public
buildings. Once we came upon an I.L.W. man pasting up the latest
proclamation. We stopped to read. “We have maintained an orderly
strike,” it ran; “and we shall maintain order to the end. The end will
come when our demands are satisfied, and our demands will be satisfied
when we have starved our employers into submission, as we ourselves in
the past have often been starved into submission.”
“Messener’s very words,” Collins said. “And I, for one, am ready to
submit, only they won’t give me a chance to submit. I haven’t had a full
meal in an age. I wonder what horse-meat tastes like?”
We stopped to read another proclamation: “When we think our employers are
ready to submit we shall open up the telegraphs and place the employers’
associations of the United States in communication. But only messages
relating to peace terms shall be permitted over the wires.”
We rode on, crossed Market Street, and a little later were passing
through the working-class district. Here the streets were not deserted.
Leaning over the gates or standing in groups were the I.L.W. men. Happy,
well-fed children were playing games, and stout housewives sat on the
front steps gossiping. One and all cast amused glances at us. Little
children ran after us, crying: “Hey, mister, ain’t you hungry?” And one
woman, nursing a child at her breast, called to Dakon: “Say, Fatty, I’ll
give you a meal for your skate—ham and potatoes, currant jelly, white
bread, canned butter, and two cups of coffee.”
“Have you noticed, the last few days,” Hanover remarked to me, “that
there’s not been a stray dog in the streets?”
I had noticed, but I had not thought about it before. It was high time
to leave the unfortunate city. We at last managed to connect with the
San Bruno Road, along which we headed south. I had a country place near
Menlo, and it was our objective. But soon we began to discover that the
country was worse off and far more dangerous than the city. There the
soldiers and the I.L.W. kept order; but the country had been turned over
to anarchy. Two hundred thousand people had fled from San Francisco, and
we had countless evidences that their flight had been like that of an
army of locusts.
They had swept everything clean. There had been robbery and fighting.
Here and there we passed bodies by the roadside and saw the blackened
ruins of farm-houses. The fences were down, and the crops had been
trampled by the feet of a multitude. All the vegetable patches had been
rooted up by the famished hordes. All the chickens and farm animals had
been slaughtered. This was true of all the main roads that led out of
San Francisco. Here and there, away from the roads, farmers had held
their own with shotguns and revolvers, and were still holding their own.
They warned us away and refused to parley with us. And all the
destruction and violence had been done by the slum-dwellers and the upper
classes. The I.L.W. men, with plentiful food supplies, remained quietly
in their homes in the cities.
Early in the ride we received concrete proof of how desperate was the
situation. To the right of us we heard cries and rifle-shots. Bullets
whistled dangerously near. There was a crashing in the underbrush; then
a magnificent black truck-horse broke across the road in front of us and
was gone. We had barely time to notice that he was bleeding and lame.
He was followed by three soldiers. The chase went on among the trees on
the left. We could hear the soldiers calling to one another. A fourth
soldier limped out upon the road from the right, sat down on a boulder,
and mopped the sweat from his face.
“Militia,” Dakon whispered. “Deserters.”
The man grinned up at us and asked for a match. In reply to Dakon’s
“What’s the word?” he informed us that the militiamen were deserting.
“No grub,” he explained. “They’re feedin’ it all to the regulars.” We
also learned from him that the military prisoners had been released from
Alcatraz Island because they could no longer be fed.
I shall never forget the next sight we encountered. We came upon it
abruptly around a turn of the road. Overhead arched the trees. The
sunshine was filtering down through the branches. Butterflies were
fluttering by, and from the fields came the song of larks. And there it
stood, a powerful touring car. About it and in it lay a number of
corpses. It told its own tale. Its occupants, fleeing from the city,
had been attacked and dragged down by a gang of slum dwellers—hoodlums.
The thing had occurred within twenty-four hours. Freshly opened meat and
fruit tins explained the reason for the attack. Dakon examined the
bodies.
“I thought so,” he reported. “I’ve ridden in that car. It was
Perriton—the whole family. We’ve got to watch out for ourselves from now
on.”
“But we have no food with which to invite attack,” I objected.
Dakon pointed to the horse I rode, and I understood.
Early in the day Dakon’s horse had cast a shoe. The delicate hoof had
split, and by noon the animal was limping. Dakon refused to ride it
farther, and refused to desert it. So, on his solicitation, we went on.
He would lead the horse and join us at my place. That was the last we
saw of him; nor did we ever learn his end.
By one o’clock we arrived at the town of Menlo, or, rather, at the site
of Menlo, for it was in ruins. Corpses lay everywhere. The business
part of the town, as well as part of the residences, had been gutted by
fire. Here and there a residence still held out; but there was no
getting near them. When we approached too closely we were fired upon.
We met a woman who was poking about in the smoking ruins of her cottage.
The first attack, she told us had been on the stores, and as she talked
we could picture that raging, roaring, hungry mob flinging itself on the
handful of townspeople. Millionaires and paupers had fought side by side
for the food, and then fought with one another after they got it. The
town of Palo Alto and Stanford University had been sacked in similar
fashion, we learned. Ahead of us lay a desolate, wasted land; and we
thought we were wise in turning off to my place. It lay three miles to
the west, snuggling among the first rolling swells of the foothills.
But as we rode along we saw that the devastation was not confined to the
main roads. The van of the flight had kept to the roads, sacking the
small towns as it went; while those that followed had scattered out and
swept the whole countryside like a great broom. My place was built of
concrete, masonry, and tiles, and so had escaped being burned, but it was
gutted clean. We found the gardener’s body in the windmill, littered
around with empty shot-gun shells. He had put up a good fight. But no
trace could we find of the two Italian labourers, nor of the house-keeper
and her husband. Not a live thing remained. The calves, the colts, all
the fancy poultry and thoroughbred stock, everything, was gone. The
kitchen and the fireplaces, where the mob had cooked, were a mess, while
many camp-fires outside bore witness to the large number that had fed and
spent the night. What they had not eaten they had carried away. There
was not a bite for us.
We spent the rest of the night vainly waiting for Dakon, and in the
morning, with our revolvers, fought off half-a-dozen marauders. Then we
killed one of Dakon’s horses, hiding for the future what meat we did not
immediately eat. In the afternoon Collins went out for a walk, but
failed to return. This was the last straw to Hanover. He was for flight
there and then, and I had great difficulty in persuading him to wait for
daylight. As for myself, I was convinced that the end of the general
strike was near, and I was resolved to return to San Francisco. So, in
the morning, we parted company, Hanover heading south, fifty pounds of
horse-meat strapped to his saddle, while I, similarly loaded, headed
north. Little Hanover pulled through all right, and to the end of his
life he will persist, I know, in boring everybody with the narrative of
his subsequent adventures.
I got as far as Belmont, on the main road back, when I was robbed of my
horse-meat by three militiamen. There was no change in the situation,
they said, except that it was going from bad to worse. The I.L.W. had
plenty of provisions hidden away and could last out for months. I
managed to get as far as Baden, when my horse was taken away from me by a
dozen men. Two of them were San Francisco policemen, and the remainder
were regular soldiers. This was ominous. The situation was certainly
extreme when the regulars were beginning to desert. When I continued my
way on foot, they already had the fire started, and the last of Dakon’s
horses lay slaughtered on the ground.
As luck would have it, I sprained my ankle, and succeeded in getting no
farther than South San Francisco. I lay there that night in an
out-house, shivering with the cold and at the same time burning with
fever. Two days I lay there, too sick to move, and on the third, reeling
and giddy, supporting myself on an extemporized crutch, I tottered on
toward San Francisco. I was weak as well, for it was the third day since
food had passed my lips. It was a day of nightmare and torment. As in a
dream I passed hundreds of regular soldiers drifting along in the
opposite direction, and many policemen, with their families, organized in
large groups for mutual protection.
As I entered the city I remembered the workman’s house at which I had
traded the silver pitcher, and in that direction my hunger drove me.
Twilight was falling when I came to the place. I passed around by the
alleyway and crawled up the black steps, on which I collapsed. I managed
to reach out with the crutch and knock on the door. Then I must have
fainted, for I came to in the kitchen, my face wet with water, and whisky
being poured down my throat. I choked and spluttered and tried to talk.
I began saying something about not having any more silver pitchers, but
that I would make it up to them afterward if they would only give me
something to eat. But the housewife interrupted me.
“Why, you poor man,” she said, “haven’t you heard? The strike was called
off this afternoon. Of course we’ll give you something to eat.”
She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparing to fry
it.
“Let me have some now, please,” I begged; and I ate the raw bacon on a
slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demands of the
I.L.W. had been granted. The wires had been opened up in the early
afternoon, and everywhere the employers’ associations had given in.
There hadn’t been any employers left in San Francisco, but General Folsom
had spoken for them. The trains and steamers would start running in the
morning, and so would everything else just as soon as system could be
established.
And that was the end of the general strike. I never want to see another
one. It was worse than a war. A general strike is a cruel and immoral
thing, and the brain of man should be capable of running industry in a
more rational way. Harrison is still my chauffeur. It was part of the
conditions of the I.L.W. that all of its members should be reinstated in
their old positions. Brown never came back, but the rest of the servants
are with me. I hadn’t the heart to discharge them—poor creatures, they
were pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver.
And now I can’t discharge them. They have all been unionized by the
I.L.W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human
endurance. Something must be done.