GETTING THE MEN IN LINE
His dismissal had been one of the risks Tom had accepted when he had
decided upon war, and though he felt it keenly now that it had come, yet
its chief effect was to intensify his resolution to overturn Buck Foley.
He strode on block after block, with his long, powerful steps, his
resolution gripping him fiercer and fiercer,--till the thought leaped
into his mind: "I've got to tell Maggie."
He stopped as though a cold hand had been laid against his heart; then
walked on more slowly, considering how he should give the news to her.
His first thought was to say nothing of his dismissal for a few days. By
then he might have found another job, and the telling that he had lost
one would be an easy matter. But his second thought was that she would
doubtless learn the news from some of her friends, and would use her
tongue all the more freely because of his attempt at concealment; and,
furthermore, he would be in the somewhat inglorious position of the man
who has been found out. He decided to have done with it at once.
When he entered his flat Maggie looked up in surprise from the tidy on
which she was working. "What! home already!" Then she noticed his face.
"Why, what's the matter?"
Tom drew off his overcoat and threw it upon the couch. "I've been
fired."
She looked at him in astonishment. "Fired!"
"Yes." He sat down, determined to get through with the scene as quickly
as possible.
For the better part of a minute she could not speak. "Fired? What for?"
she articulated.
"It's Foley's work. He ordered Driscoll to."
"You've been talking about Foley some more, then?"
"I have."
Tom saw what he had feared, a hard, accusing look spread itself over her
face. "And you've done that, Tom Keating, after what I, your wife, said
to you only last week? I told you what would happen. I told you Foley
would make us suffer. I told you not to talk again, and you've gone and
done it!" The words came out slowly, sharply, as though it were her
desire to thrust them into him one by one.
Tom began to harden, as she had hardened. But at least he would give her
the chance to understand him. "You know what Foley's like. You know some
of the things he's done. Well, I've made up my mind that we oughtn't to
stand him any longer. I'm going to do what I can to drive him out of the
union."
"And you've been talking this?" she cut in. "Oh, of course you have! No
wonder he got you fired! Oh, my God! I see it all. And you, you never
thought once of your wife or your child!"
"I did, and you'll see when I tell you all," Tom said harshly. "But
would you have me stand for all the dirty things he does?"
"Couldn't you keep out of his way--as I asked you to? Because a wolf's a
wolf, that's no reason why you should jump in his mouth."
"It is if you can do him up. And I'm going to do Foley up. I'm going to
run against him as walking delegate. The situation ain't so bad as you
think," he went on, with a weak effort to appease her. "You think things
look dark, but they're going to be brighter than they ever were. I'll
get another job soon, and after the first of March I'll be walking
delegate. I'm going to beat Buck Foley, sure!"
For a moment the vision of an even greater elevation than the one from
which they were falling made her forget her bitter wrath. Then it
flooded back upon her, and she put it all into a laugh. "You beat Buck
Foley! Oh, my!"
Her ireful words he had borne with outward calm; he had learned they
were borne more easily, if borne calmly. But her sneering disbelief in
him was too much. He sprang up, his wrath tugging at its leash. She,
too, came to her feet, and stood facing him, hands clenched, breast
heaving, sneering, sobbing. Her words tumbled out.
"Oh, you! you! Brighter days, you say. Ha! ha! You beat Buck Foley? Yes,
I know how! Buck Foley'll not let you get a job in your trade. You'll
have to take up some other work--if you can get it! Begin all over!
We'll grow poorer and poorer. We'll have to eat anything. I'll have to
wear rags. Just when we were getting comfortable. And all because you
wouldn't pay any attention to what I said. Because you were such a
fo-o-ol! Oh, my God! My God!"
As she went on her voice rose to a scream, broken by gasps and sobs. At
the end she passionately jerked Tom's coat and hat from the couch and
threw herself upon it--and the frenzied words tumbled on, and on.
Tom looked down upon her a moment, quivering with wrath and a nameless
sickness. Then he picked up hat and coat, and glancing at Ferdinand, who
had shrunk terrified into a corner, walked quickly out of the flat.
He strode about the streets awhile, had dinner in a restaurant, and
then, as Wednesday was the union's meeting night, he went to Potomac
Hall. It fell out that he met Pete and Barry entering as he came up.
"I guess you'll have another foreman to-morrow, boys," he announced; and
he briefly told them of his discharge.
"It'll be us next, Rivet Head," said Pete.
Barry nodded, his face pale.
All the men in the hall learned that evening what had happened to Tom,
some from his friends, more from Foley's friends. And the manner of the
latter's telling was a warning to every listener. "D'you hear Keating
has been fired?" "Fired? No. What for?" A wise wink: "Well, he's been
talkin' about Foley, you know."
Tom grew hot under, but ignored, the open jeering of the Foleyites. The
sympathy of his friends he answered with a quiet, but ominous, "Just you
wait!" There were few present of the men he had counted on seeing, and
soon after the meeting ended, which was unusually early, he started
home.
It was after ten when he came in. Maggie sat working at the tidy; she
did not look up or speak; her passion had settled into resentful
obstinacy, and that, he knew from experience, only time could overcome.
He had not the least desire to assist time in its work of subjection,
and passed straight into their bedroom.
Tom felt her sustained resentment, as indeed he could not help; but he
did not feel that which was the first cause of the resentment--her lack
of sympathetic understanding of him. At twenty-three he had come into a
man's wages, and Maggie's was the first pretty face he had seen after
that. The novelty of their married life had soon worn off, and with the
development of his stronger qualities and of her worst ones, it had
gradually come about that the only thoughts they shared were those
concerning their common existence in their home. Tom had long since
become accustomed to carrying his real ideas to other ears. And so he
did not now consciously miss wifely sympathy with his efforts.
There was no break the next morning in Maggie's sullen resentment. After
an almost wordless breakfast Tom set forth to look for another job. An
opening presented itself at the first place he called. "Yes, it happens
we do need a foreman," said the contractor. "What experience have you
had?"
Tom gave an outline of his course in his trade, dwelling on the last two
years and a half that he had been a foreman.
"Um,--yes. That sounds very good. You say you worked last for Driscoll
on the St. Etienne job?"
"Yes."
"I suppose you don't mind telling why you left? Driscoll hasn't finished
that job yet."
Tom briefly related the circumstances.
"So you're out with Foley." The contractor shook his head. "Sorry. We
need a man, and I guess you're a good one. But if Foley did that to
Driscoll, he'll do the same to me. I can't afford to be mixed up in any
trouble with him."
This conversation was a more or less accurate pattern of many that
followed on this and succeeding days. Tom called on every contractor of
importance doing steel construction work. None of them cared to risk
trouble with Foley, and so Tom continued walking the streets.
One contractor--the man for whom he had worked before he went on the St.
Etienne job--offered Tom what he called some "business advice." "I'm a
pretty good friend of yours, Keating, for I've found you all on the
level. The trouble with you is, when you see a stone wall you think it
was put there to butt your head against. Now, I'm older than you are,
and had a lot more experience, and let me tell you it's a lot easier,
and a lot quicker, when you see trouble across your path like a stone
wall, to go round it than it is to try to butt it out of your way. Stop
butting against Foley. Make up with him, or go to some other city. Go
round him."
In the meantime Tom was busy with his campaign against Foley. He was
discharged on the fourteenth of February; the election came on the
seventh of March; only three weeks, so haste was necessary. On the days
he was tramping about for a job he met many members of the union also
looking for work, and to these he talked wherever he found them. And
every night he was out talking to the men, in the streets, in saloons,
in their own homes.
The problem of his campaign was a simple one--to get at least five
hundred of the three thousand members of the union to come to the hall
on election night and cast their votes against Foley. His campaign,
therefore, could have no spectacular methods and no spectacular
features. Hard, persistent work, night after night--that was all.
On the evening after the meeting and on the following evening Tom had
talks with several leading men in the union. A few joined in his plan
with spirit. But most that he saw held back; they were willing to help
him in secret, but they feared the result of an open espousal of his
cause. There were only a dozen men, including Barry and Pete, who were
willing to go the whole way with him, and these he formed loosely into a
campaign committee. They held a caucus and nominations for all offices
were made, Tom being chosen to run for walking delegate and president.
The presidency was unsalaried, and during Foley's régime had become an
office of only nominal importance; all real power that had ever
belonged to the position had been gradually absorbed by the office of
walking delegate. At the meeting on the twenty-first Tom's ticket was
formally presented to the union, as was also Foley's.
Even before this the dozen were busy with a canvass of the union. The
members agreed heartily to the plan of demanding an increase in wages,
for they had long been dissatisfied with the present scale. But to come
out against Foley, that was another matter. Tom found, as he had
expected, that his arguments had to be directed, not at convincing the
men that Foley was bad, but at convincing them it was safe to oppose
him. Reformers are accustomed to explain their failure by saying they
cannot arouse the respectable element to come out and vote against
corruption. They would find that even fewer would come to the polls if
the voters thereby endangered their jobs.
The answers of the men in almost all cases were the same.
"If I was sure I wouldn't lose my job, I'd vote against Foley in a
minute. But you know well enough, Tom, that we have a hard enough time
getting on now. Where'd we be if Foley blacklisted us?"
"But there's no danger at all, if enough of us come out," Tom would
reply. "We can't lose."
"But you can't count on the boys coming out. And if we lose, Foley'll
make us all smart. He'll manage to find out every man that voted against
him."
Here was the place in which the guarantee he had sought from Mr. Baxter
would fit in. Impelled by knowledge of the great value of this
guarantee, Tom went to see the big contractor a few days after his first
visit. The uniform traveled down the alley between the offices and
brought back word that Mr. Baxter was not in. Tom called again and
again. Mr. Baxter was always out. Tom was sorely disappointed by his
failure to get the guarantee, but there was nothing to do but to make
the best of it; and so he and his friends went on tirelessly with their
nightly canvassing.
The days, of course, Tom continued to spend in looking for work. In
wandering from contractor to contractor he frequently passed the
building in which was located the office of Driscoll & Co.; and, a week
after his discharge, as he was going by near one o'clock, it chanced
Miss Arnold was coming into the street. They saw each other in the same
instant. Tom, with his natural diffidence at meeting strange women, was
for passing her by with a lift of his hat. "Why, Mr. Keating!" she
cried, with a little smile, and as they held the same direction he could
but fall into step with her.
"What's the latest war news?" she asked.
"One man still out of a job," he answered, taking refuge in an attempt
at lightness. "No actual conflict yet. I'm busy massing my forces. So
far I have one man together--myself."
"You ought to find that a loyal army." She was silent for a dozen paces,
then asked impulsively: "Have you had lunch yet?"
Tom threw a surprised look down upon her. "Yes. Twelve o'clock's our
noon hour. We men are used to having our lunch then."
"I thought if you hadn't we might have lunched in the same place," she
hastened to explain, with a slight flush of embarrassment. "I wanted to
ask you some questions. You see, since I've been in New York I've been
in a way thrown in contact with labor unions. I've read a great deal on
both sides. But the only persons I've had a chance to talk to have all
been on the employers' side,--persons like Mr. Driscoll and my uncle,
Mr. Baxter."
"Baxter, the contractor--Baxter & Co.?"
"Yes."
Tom wondered what necessity had forced the niece of so rich a man as Mr.
Baxter to earn her living as a stenographer.
"I've often wanted to talk with some trade union man, but I've never had
the chance. I thought you might tell me some of the things I want to
know."
The note of sincere disappointment in Miss Arnold's voice brought a
suggestion to Tom's mind that both embarrassed and attracted. He was not
accustomed to the society of women of Miss Arnold's sort, whose order of
life had been altogether different from his own, and the idea of an hour
alone with her filled him with a certain confusion. But her freshness
and her desire to know more of the subject that was his whole life
allured him; and his interest was stronger than his embarrassment. "For
that matter, I'm not busy, as you know. If you would like it, I can talk
to you while you eat."
For the next hour they sat face to face in the quiet little restaurant
to which Miss Arnold had led the way. The other patrons found themselves
looking over at the table in the corner, and wondering what common
subject could so engross the refined young woman in the tailored gown
and the man in ill-fitting clothes, with big red hands, red neck and
crude, square face. For their part these two were unconscious of the
wondering eyes upon them. With a query now and then from Miss Arnold,
Tom spiritedly presented the union side of mooted questions of the
day,--the open shop, the strike, the sympathetic strike, the boycott.
The things Miss Arnold had read had dealt coldly with the moral and
economic principles involved in these questions. Tom spoke in human
terms; he showed how every point affected living men, and women, and
children. The difference was the difference between a treatise and life.
Miss Arnold was impressed,--not alone by what Tom said, but by the man
himself. The first two or three times she had seen him, on his brief
visits to the office, she had been struck only by a vague bigness--a
bigness that was not so much of figure as of bearing. On his last visit
she had been struck by his bold spirit. She now discovered the crude,
rugged strength of the man: he had thought much; he felt deeply; he
believed in the justice of his cause; he was willing, if the need might
be, to suffer for his beliefs. And he spoke well, for his sentences,
though not always grammatical, were always vital. He seemed to present
the very heart of a thing, and let it throb before the eyes.
When they were in the street again and about to go their separate ways,
Miss Arnold asked, with impulsive interest: "Won't you talk to me again
about these things--some time?"
Tom, glowing with the excitement of his own words and of her sympathetic
listening, promised. It was finally settled that he should call the
following Sunday afternoon.
Back at her desk, Miss Arnold fell to wondering what sort of man Tom
would be had he had four years at a university, and had his life been
thrown among people of cultivation. His power, plus these advantages,
would have made him--something big, to say the least. But had he gone to
college he would not now be in a trade union. And in a trade union, Miss
Arnold admitted to herself, was where he was needed, and where he
belonged.
Tom went on his way in the elation that comes of a new and gratifying
experience. He had never before had so keen and sympathetic a listener.
And never before had he had speech with a woman of Miss Arnold's
type--educated, thoughtful, of broad interests. Most of the women he had
known necessity had made into household drudges--tired and
uninteresting, whose few thoughts rarely ranged far from home. Miss
Arnold was a discovery to him. Deep down in his consciousness was a
distinct surprise that a woman should be interested in the big things of
the outside world.
He was fairly jerked out of his elation, when, on turning a corner, he
met Foley face to face in front of a skyscraper that was going up in
lower Broadway. It was their first meeting since Foley had tried to
have grim sport out of him on the St. Etienne Hotel.
Foley planted himself squarely across Tom's path. "Hello, Keating!
How're youse? Where youse workin' now?"
The sneering good-fellowship in Foley's voice set Tom's blood
a-tingling. But he tried to step to one side and pass on. Again Foley
blocked his way.
"I understand youse're goin' to be the next walkin' delegate o' the
union. That's nice. I s'pose these days youse're trainin' your legs for
the job?"
"See here, Buck Foley, are you looking for a fight? If you are, come
around to some quiet place and I'll mix it up with you all you want."
"I don't fight a man till he gets in my class."
"If you don't want to fight, then get out of my way!"
With that Tom stepped forward quickly and butted his hunched-out right
shoulder against Foley's left. Foley, unprepared, swung round as though
on a pivot. Tom brushed by and continued on his way with unturned head.
Again the walking delegate proved that he could swear.