I
The trouble was not in being a bank clerk, but in being a clerk in a
bank that wanted him to be nothing but a bank clerk. That kind always
enriches first the bank and later on a bit of soil.
Hendrik Rutgers had no desire to enrich either bank or soil.
He was blue-eyed, brown-haired, clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked, tall,
well-built, and square-chinned. He always was in fine physical trim,
which made people envy him so that they begrudged him advancement, but
it also made them like him because they were so flattered when he
reduced himself to their level by not bragging of his muscles. He had a
quick-gaited mind and much fluency of speech. Also the peculiar sense of
humor of a born leader that enabled him to laugh at what any witty devil
said about others, even while it prevented him from seeing jokes aimed
at his sacred self. He not only was congenitally stubborn--from his
Dutch ancestors--but he had his Gascon grandmother's ability to believe
whatever he wished to believe, and his Scandinavian great-grandfather's
power to fill himself with Berserker rage in a twinkling. This made him
begin all arguments by clenching his fists. Having in his veins so many
kinds of un-American blood, he was one of the few real Americans in his
own country, and he always said so.
It was this blood that now began to boil for no reason, though the
reason was really the spring.
He had acquired the American habit of reading the newspapers instead of
thinking, and his mind therefore always worked in head-lines. This time
it worked like this: MORE MONEY AND MORE FUN!
Being an American, he instantly looked about for the best rung of the
ladder of success.
He had always liked the cashier. A man climbs at first by his friends.
Later by his enemies. That is why friends are superfluous later.
Hendrik, so self-confident that he did not even have to frown,
approached the kindly superior.
"Mr. Coster," he said, pleasantly, "I've been on the job over two years.
I've done my work satisfactorily. I need more money." You could see from
his manner that it was much nicer to state facts than to argue.
The cashier was looking out of the big plate-glass window at the
wonderful blue sky--New York! April! He swung on his swivel-chair and,
facing Hendrik Rutgers, stared at a white birch by a trout stream three
hundred miles north of the bank.
"Huh?" he grunted, absently. Then the words he had not heard indented
the proper spot on his brain and he became a kindly bank cashier once
more.
"My boy," he said, sympathetically, "I know how it is. Everybody gets
the fit about this time of year. What kind of a fly would you use for--
I mean, you go back to your cage and confine your attention to the K-L
ledger."
A two hours walk in the Westchester hills would have made these two men
brothers. Instead, Hendrik allowed himself to fill up with that anger
which is apt to become indignation, and thus lead to freedom. Anger is
wrath over injury; indignation is wrath over injustice: hence the
freedom.
"I am worth more to the bank than I'm getting. If the bank wants me to
stay--"
"Hendrik, I'll do you a favor. Go out and take a walk. Come back in ten
minutes--cured!
"Thanks, Mr. Coster. But suppose I still want a raise when I come back?
"Then I'll accept your resignation."
"But I don't want to resign. I want to be worth still more to the bank
so that the bank will be only too glad to pay me more. I don't want to
live and die a clerk. That would be stupid for me, and also for the
bank."
"Take the walk, Hen. Then come back and see me."
"What good will that do me?"
"As far as I can see, it will enable you to be fired by no less than the
Big Chief himself. Tell Morson you are going to do something for me.
Walk around and look at the people--thousands of them; they are working!
Don't forget that, Hen; working; _making regular wages_! Good luck, my
boy. I've never done this before, but you caught me fishing. I had just
hooked a three-pounder," he finished, apologetically.
Hendrik was suffocating as he returned to his cage. He did not think; he
felt--felt that everything was wrong with a civilization that kept both
wild beasts and bank clerks in cages. He put on his hat, told the head
bookkeeper he was going on an errand for Mr. Coster, and left the bank.
The sky was pure blue and the clouds pure white. There was in the air
that which even when strained through the bank's window-screens had made
Hendrik so restless. To breathe it, outdoors, made the step more
elastic, the heartbeats more vigorous, the thoughts more vivid, the
resolve stronger. The chimneys were waving white plumes in the bright
air--waving toward heaven! He wished to hear the song of freedom of
streams escaping from the mountains, of the snow-elves liberated by the
sun; to hear birds with the spring in their throats admitting it, and
the impatient breeze telling the awakening trees to hurry up with the
sap. Instead, he heard the noises that civilized people make when they
make money. Also, whenever he ceased to look upward, in the place of the
free sunlight and the azure liberty of God's sky, he beheld the
senseless scurrying of thousands of human ants bent on the same golden
errand.
When a man looks down he always sees dollar-chasing insects--his
brothers!
He clenched his fists and changed, by the magic of the season, into a
fighting-man. He saw that the ant life of Wall Street was really a
battle. Men here were not writing on ledgers, but fighting deserts, and
swamps, and mountains, and heat, and cold, and hunger; fighting Nature;
fighting her with gold for more gold. It followed that men were fighting
men with gold for more gold! So, of course, men were killing men with
gold for more gold!
So greatly has civilization advanced since the Jews crucified Him for
interfering with business, that to-day man not only is able to use
dollars to kill with, but boasts of it.
"Fools!" he thought, having in mind all other living men. After he
definitely classified humanity he felt more kindly disposed toward the
world.
After all, why should men fight Nature or fight men? Nature was only too
willing to let men live who kept her laws; and men were only too willing
to love their fellow-men if only dollars were not sandwiched in between
human hearts. He saw, in great happy flashes, the comfort of living
intelligently, brothers all, employers and employed, rid of the curse of
money, the curse of making it, the curse of coining it out of the sweat
and sorrow of humanity.
"Fools!" This time he spoke his thought aloud. A hurrying broker's clerk
smiled superciliously, recognizing a stock-market loser talking of
himself to himself, as they all do. But Hendrik really had in mind bank
clerks who, instead of striking off their fetters, caressed them as
though they were the flesh of sweethearts; or wept, as though tears
could soften steel; or blasphemed, as though curses were cold-chisels!
And every year the fetters were made thicker by the blacksmith Habit. To
be a bank clerk, now and always; now and always nothing!
He now saw all about him hordes of sheep-hearted Things with pens behind
their ears and black-cloth sleeve-protectors, who said, with the
spitefulness of eunuchs or magazine editors:
"_You also are of us!_"
He would _not_ be of them!
He might not be able to change conditions in the world of finance, not
knowing exactly how to go about it, but he certainly could change the
financial condition of Hendrik Rutgers. He would become a free man. He
would do it by getting more money, if not from the bank, from somebody
else. In all imperfectly Christianized democracies a man must
capitalize his freedom or cease to be free.
He returned to the bank. He was worth thousands to it. This could be
seen in his walk. And yet when the cashier saw Hendrik's face he
instantly rose from his chair, held up a hand to check unnecessary
speech, and said:
"Come on, Rutgers. You are a damned fool, but I have no time to convince
you of it. You understand, of course, that you'll never work for us
again!"
"I shall tell the president."
"Yes, yes. He'll fire you."
"Not if he is intelligent, he won't," said Rutgers, with assurance.
The cashier looked at him pityingly and retorted: "A long catalogue of
your virtues and manifold efficiency will weigh with him as much as two
cubic inches of hydrogen. But I warned you."
"I know you did," said Hendrik, pleasantly.
Whereupon Coster frowned and said: "You are in class B--eight hundred
dollars a year. In due time you will be promoted to class C--one
thousand dollars. You knew our system and what the prospects were when
you came to us. Other men are ahead of you; they have been here longer
than you. We want to be fair to all. If you were going to be
dissatisfied you should not have kept somebody else out of a job."
Hendrik did not know how fair the bank was to clerks in class C. He knew
they were not fair to one man in class B. Facts are facts. Arguments are
sea-foam.
"You say I kept somebody out of a job?" he asked.
"Yes, you did!"
The cashier's tone was so accusing that Hendrik said:
"Don't call a policeman, Mr. Coster."
"And don't you get fresh, Rutgers. Now see here; you go back and let the
rise come in the usual course. I'll give you a friendly tip: once you
are in class C you will be more directly under my own eye!"
Instead of feeling grateful for the implied promise, Hendrik could think
only that they classified men like cattle. All steers weighing one
thousand pounds went into pen B, and so on. This saved time to the
butchers, who, not having to stop in order to weigh and classify, were
enabled to slit many more throats per day.
He did not know it, but he thought all this because he wished to go
fishing. Therefore he said: "I've got to have more money!" His fists
clenched and his face flushed. He thought of cattle, of the ox-making
bank, of being driven from pen A into pen B, and, in the end,
fertilizer. "I've got to!" he repeated, thickly.
"You won't get it, take it from me. To ask for it now simply means being
instantly fired."
"Being fired" sounded so much like being freed that Hendrik retorted,
pleasantly:
"Mr. Coster, you may yet live to take your orders from me, if I am
fired. But if I stay here, you never will; that's sure."
The cashier flushed angrily, opened his mouth, magnanimously closed it,
and, with a shrug of his shoulders, preceded Hendrik Rutgers into the
private office of the president.
"Mr. Goodchild," said Coster, so deferentially that Hendrik looked at
him in surprise for a full minute before the surprise changed into
contempt.
Mr. Goodchild, the president, did not even answer. He frowned,
deliberately walked to a window and stared out of it sourly. A little
deal of his own had gone wrong, owing to the stupidity of a subordinate.
_He had lost MONEY!_
He was a big man with jowls and little puffs under the eyes; also
suspicions of purple in cheeks and nose and suspicions of everybody in
his eyes. Presently he turned and spat upon the intruders. He did it
with one mild little word:
"Well?"
He then confined his scowl to the cashier. The clerk was a species of
the human dirt that unfortunately exists even in banks and has to be
apologized for to customers at times, when said dirt, before arrogance,
actually permits itself vocal chords.
They spoil the joy of doing business, damn 'em!
"This is the K-L ledger clerk," said Coster. "He wants a raise in
salary. I told him 'No,' and he then insisted on seeing you." Years of
brooding over the appalling possibility of having to look for another
job had made the cashier a skilful shirker of responsibilities. He
always spoke to the president as if he were giving testimony under oath.
"When one of these chaps, Mr. Coster," said the president in the
accusing voice bank presidents use toward those borrowers whose
collateral is inadequate, "asks for a raise and doesn't get it he begins
to brood over his wrongs. People who think they are underpaid
necessarily think they are overworked. And that is what makes socialists
of them!"