Not being favored by chance in getting acquainted with Dede Mason,
Daylight's interest in her slowly waned. This was but natural, for he
was plunged deep in hazardous operations, and the fascinations of the
game and the magnitude of it accounted for all the energy that even his
magnificent organism could generate.
Such was his absorption that the pretty stenographer slowly and
imperceptibly faded from the forefront of his consciousness. Thus, the
first faint spur, in the best sense, of his need for woman ceased to
prod. So far as Dede Mason was concerned, he possessed no more than a
complacent feeling of satisfaction in that he had a very nice
stenographer. And, completely to put the quietus on any last lingering
hopes he might have had of her, he was in the thick of his spectacular
and intensely bitter fight with the Coastwise Steam Navigation Company,
and the Hawaiian, Nicaraguan, and Pacific-Mexican Steamship-Company.
He stirred up a bigger muss than he had anticipated, and even he was
astounded at the wide ramifications of the struggle and at the
unexpected and incongruous interests that were drawn into it. Every
newspaper in San Francisco turned upon him. It was true, one or two of
them had first intimated that they were open to subsidization, but
Daylight's judgment was that the situation did not warrant such
expenditure. Up to this time the press had been amusingly tolerant and
good-naturedly sensational about him, but now he was to learn what
virulent scrupulousness an antagonized press was capable of. Every
episode of his life was resurrected to serve as foundations for
malicious fabrications. Daylight was frankly amazed at the new
interpretation put upon all he had accomplished and the deeds he had
done. From an Alaskan hero he was metamorphosed into an Alaskan bully,
liar, desperado, and all around "bad Man." Not content with this, lies
upon lies, out of whole cloth, were manufactured about him. He never
replied, though once he went to the extent of disburdening his mind to
half a dozen reporters. "Do your damnedest," he told them. "Burning
Daylight's bucked bigger things than your dirty, lying sheets. And I
don't blame you, boys... that is, not much. You can't help it. You've
got to live. There's a mighty lot of women in this world that make
their living in similar fashion to yours, because they're not able to
do anything better. Somebody's got to do the dirty work, and it might
as well be you. You're paid for it, and you ain't got the backbone to
rustle cleaner jobs."
The socialist press of the city jubilantly exploited this utterance,
scattering it broadcast over San Francisco in tens of thousands of
paper dodgers. And the journalists, stung to the quick, retaliated
with the only means in their power-printer's ink abuse. The attack
became bitterer than ever. The whole affair sank to the deeper deeps
of rancor and savageness. The poor woman who had killed herself was
dragged out of her grave and paraded on thousands of reams of paper as
a martyr and a victim to Daylight's ferocious brutality. Staid,
statistical articles were published, proving that he had made his start
by robbing poor miners of their claims, and that the capstone to his
fortune had been put in place by his treacherous violation of faith
with the Guggenhammers in the deal on Ophir. And there were editorials
written in which he was called an enemy of society, possessed of the
manners and culture of a caveman, a fomenter of wasteful business
troubles, the destroyer of the city's prosperity in commerce and trade,
an anarchist of dire menace; and one editorial gravely recommended that
hanging would be a lesson to him and his ilk, and concluded with the
fervent hope that some day his big motor-car would smash up and smash
him with it.
He was like a big bear raiding a bee-hive and, regardless of the
stings, he obstinately persisted in pawing for the honey. He gritted
his teeth and struck back. Beginning with a raid on two steamship
companies, it developed into a pitched battle with a city, a state, and
a continental coastline. Very well; they wanted fight, and they would
get it. It was what he wanted, and he felt justified in having come
down from the Klondike, for here he was gambling at a bigger table than
ever the Yukon had supplied. Allied with him, on a splendid salary,
with princely pickings thrown in, was a lawyer, Larry Hegan, a young
Irishman with a reputation to make, and whose peculiar genius had been
unrecognized until Daylight picked up with him. Hegan had Celtic
imagination and daring, and to such degree that Daylight's cooler head
was necessary as a check on his wilder visions. Hegan's was a
Napoleonic legal mind, without balance, and it was just this balance
that Daylight supplied. Alone, the Irishman was doomed to failure, but
directed by Daylight, he was on the highroad to fortune and
recognition. Also, he was possessed of no more personal or civic
conscience than Napoleon.
It was Hegan who guided Daylight through the intricacies of modern
politics, labor organization, and commercial and corporation law. It
was Hegan, prolific of resource and suggestion, who opened Daylight's
eyes to undreamed possibilities in twentieth-century warfare; and it
was Daylight, rejecting, accepting, and elaborating, who planned the
campaigns and prosecuted them. With the Pacific coast from Peugeot
Sound to Panama, buzzing and humming, and with San Francisco furiously
about his ears, the two big steamship companies had all the appearance
of winning. It looked as if Burning Daylight was being beaten slowly
to his knees. And then he struck--at the steamship companies, at San
Francisco, at the whole Pacific coast.
It was not much of a blow at first. A Christian Endeavor convention
being held in San Francisco, a row was started by Express Drivers'
Union No. 927 over the handling of a small heap of baggage at the Ferry
Building. A few heads were broken, a score of arrests made, and the
baggage was delivered. No one would have guessed that behind this
petty wrangle was the fine Irish hand of Hegan, made potent by the
Klondike gold of Burning Daylight. It was an insignificant affair at
best--or so it seemed. But the Teamsters' Union took up the quarrel,
backed by the whole Water Front Federation. Step by step, the strike
became involved. A refusal of cooks and waiters to serve scab
teamsters or teamsters' employers brought out the cooks and waiters.
The butchers and meat-cutters refused to handle meat destined for
unfair restaurants. The combined Employers' Associations put up a
solid front, and found facing them the 40,000 organized laborers of San
Francisco. The restaurant bakers and the bakery wagon drivers struck,
followed by the milkers, milk drivers, and chicken pickers. The
building trades asserted its position in unambiguous terms, and all San
Francisco was in turmoil.
But still, it was only San Francisco. Hegan's intrigues were masterly,
and Daylight's campaign steadily developed. The powerful fighting
organization known as the Pacific Slope Seaman's Union refused to work
vessels the cargoes of which were to be handled by scab longshoremen
and freight-handlers. The union presented its ultimatum, and then
called a strike. This had been Daylight's objective all the time.
Every incoming coastwise vessel was boarded by the union officials and
its crew sent ashore. And with the Seamen went the firemen, the
engineers, and the sea cooks and waiters. Daily the number of idle
steamers increased. It was impossible to get scab crews, for the men
of the Seaman's Union were fighters trained in the hard school of the
sea, and when they went out it meant blood and death to scabs. This
phase of the strike spread up and down the entire Pacific coast, until
all the ports were filled with idle ships, and sea transportation was
at a standstill. The days and weeks dragged out, and the strike held.
The Coastwise Steam Navigation Company, and the Hawaiian, Nicaraguan,
and Pacific-Mexican Steamship Company were tied up completely. The
expenses of combating the strike were tremendous, and they were earning
nothing, while daily the situation went from bad to worse, until "peace
at any price" became the cry. And still there was no peace, until
Daylight and his allies played out their hand, raked in the winnings,
and allowed a goodly portion of a continent to resume business.
It was noted, in following years, that several leaders of workmen built
themselves houses and blocks of renting flats and took trips to the old
countries, while, more immediately, other leaders and "dark horses"
came to political preferment and the control of the municipal
government and the municipal moneys. In fact, San Francisco's
boss-ridden condition was due in greater degree to Daylight's
widespreading battle than even San Francisco ever dreamed. For the
part he had played, the details of which were practically all rumor and
guesswork, quickly leaked out, and in consequence he became a
much-execrated and well-hated man. Nor had Daylight himself dreamed
that his raid on the steamship companies would have grown to such
colossal proportions.
But he had got what he was after. He had played an exciting hand and
won, beating the steamship companies down into the dust and mercilessly
robbing the stockholders by perfectly legal methods before he let go.
Of course, in addition to the large sums of money he had paid over, his
allies had rewarded themselves by gobbling the advantages which later
enabled them to loot the city. His alliance with a gang of cutthroats
had brought about a lot of cutthroating. But his conscience suffered
no twinges. He remembered what he had once heard an old preacher
utter, namely, that they who rose by the sword perished by the sword.
One took his chances when he played with cutting throats, and his,
Daylight's, throat was still intact. That was it! And he had won. It
was all gamble and war between the strong men. The fools did not
count. They were always getting hurt; and that they always had been
getting hurt was the conclusion he drew from what little he knew of
history. San Francisco had wanted war, and he had given it war. It
was the game. All the big fellows did the same, and they did much
worse, too.
"Don't talk to me about morality and civic duty," he replied to a
persistent interviewer. "If you quit your job tomorrow and went to
work on another paper, you would write just what you were told to
write. It's morality and civic duty now with you; on the new job it
would be backing up a thieving railroad with... morality and civic
duty, I suppose. Your price, my son, is just about thirty per week.
That's what you sell for. But your paper would sell for a bit more.
Pay its price to-day, and it would shift its present rotten policy to
some other rotten policy; but it would never let up on morality and
civic duty.
"And all because a sucker is born every minute. So long as the people
stand for it, they'll get it good and plenty, my son. And the
shareholders and business interests might as well shut up squawking
about how much they've been hurt. You never hear ary squeal out of
them when they've got the other fellow down and are gouging him. This
is the time THEY got gouged, and that's all there is to it. Talk about
mollycoddles! Son, those same fellows would steal crusts from starving
men and pull gold fillings from the mouths of corpses, yep, and squawk
like Sam Scratch if some blamed corpse hit back. They're all tarred
with the same brush, little and big. Look at your Sugar Trust--with
all its millions stealing water like a common thief from New York City,
and short-weighing the government on its phoney scales. Morality and
civic duty! Son, forget it."