One Way Out Part 16

THE GANG

If I'd been making five dollars a day at this time, I wouldn't have moved from the tenement. In the first place as far as physical comfort went I was never better off. We had all the room we needed. During the winter we had used the living room as a kitchen and dining room just as our forefathers did. We economized fuel in this way and Ruth kept the rooms spotless. We had no fires in our bedrooms and did not want any. We all of us slept with our windows wide open. If we had had ten more rooms we wouldn't have known what to do with them. When we had a visitor we received him in the kitchen. Some of our neighbors took boarders and also slept in the kitchen. I don't know as I should want to do that but at the same time many a family lives in a one room hut in the forest after this fas.h.i.+on. By outsiders it's looked upon as rather romantic. It isn't considered a great hards.h.i.+p by the settlers themselves.

Then we had the advantage of our roof and with summer coming on we looked forward to the garden and the joy of the warm starry nights. We had some wonderful winter pictures, too, from that same roof. It was worth going up there to see the house tops after a heavy snow storm.

If I had wanted to move I could have done only one of two things; either gone back into the suburbs or taken a more expensive flat up town. I certainly had had enough of the former and as for the latter I could see no comparison. If anything this flat business was worse than the suburbs. I would be surrounded by an ordinary group of people who had all the airs of the latter with none of their good points. I'd be hedged in by conventions with which I was now even in less sympathy than before. I wouldn't have exchanged my present freedom of movement and independence of action for even the best suite in the most expensive apartment house in the city. Not for a hundred dollars a week. Advantages? What were they? Would a higher grade of wall paper, a more expensive set of furniture and steam heat compensate me for the loss of the solid comfort I found here by the side of my little iron stove? Was an electric elevator a fair swap for my roof? Were the gilt, the tinsel and the soft carpets worth the privilege I enjoyed here of dressing as I pleased, eating what I pleased, doing what I pleased? Was their apartment-house friends.h.i.+p, however polished, worth the simple genuine fellows.h.i.+p I enjoyed among my present neighbors?

What could such a life offer me for my soul's or my body's good that I didn't have here? I couldn't see how in a single respect I could better my present condition except with the complete independence that might come with a fortune and a country estate. Any middle ground, a.s.suming that I could afford it, meant nothing but the undertaking again of all the old burdens I had just shaken off.

Ruth, the boy and myself now knew genuinely more people than we had ever before known in our lives. And most of them were worth knowing and the others worth some endeavor to _make_ worth knowing. We were all pulling together down here--some harder than others, to be sure, but all with a distinct ambition that was dependent for success upon nothing but our own efforts.

I was in touch with more opportunities than I had ever dreamed existed. All three of us were enjoying more advantages than we had ever dreamed would be ours. My Italian was improving from day to day.

I could handle mortar easily and naturally and point a joint as well as my instructor. I could build a true square pier of any size from one brick to twenty. I could make a square or pigeonhole corner or lay out a brick footing. And I was proud of my accomplishment.

But more interesting to me than anything else was the opportunity I now had as a foreman to test the value of the knowledge of my former fellow workmen which I had been slowly acquiring. I was anxious to see if my ideas were pure theory or whether they were practical. They had proven practical at any rate in securing my own advance. This had come about through no such pull as Rafferty's. It was the result of nothing but my intelligent and conscientious work in the ditch and among the men. And this in turn was made possible by the application of the knowledge I picked up and used as I had the chance. It was only because I had shown my employers that I was more valuable as a foreman than a common laborer that I was not still digging. I had been able to do this because having learned from twenty different men how to handle a crowbar for instance, I had from time to time been able to direct the men with whom I was working as at the start I myself had been directed by Anton'. Anton' was still digging because that was all he knew. I had learned other things. I had learned how to handle Anton'.

I had no idea that my efforts were being watched. I don't know now how I was picked out. Except of course that it must have been because of the work I did.

At any rate I found myself at the head of twenty men--all Italians, all strangers and among them three or four just off the steamer. My first job was on a foundation for an apartment house. Of course my part in it was the very humble one of seeing that the men kept at work digging. The work had all been staked out and the architect's agent was there to give all incidental instructions. He was a young graduate of a technical school and I took the opportunity this offered--for he was a good-natured boy--to use what little I had learned in my night school and study his blue prints. At odd times he explained them to me and aside from what I learned myself from them it helped me to direct the men more intelligently.

But it was on the men themselves that I centred my efforts. As soon as possible I learned them by name. At the noon hour I took my lunch with them and talked with them in their own language. I made a note of where they lived and found as I expected that many were from my ward.

Incidentally I dropped a word here and there about the "Young American Political Club," and asked them to come around to some of the meetings. I found out where they came from and wherever I could, I a.s.sociated them with some of their fellows with whom I had worked. I found out about their families. In brief I made myself know every man of them as intimately as was possible.

I don't suppose for a minute that I could have done this successfully if I hadn't really been genuinely interested in them. If I had gone at it like a professional hand shaker they would have detected the hypocrisy in no time. Neither did I attempt a chummy att.i.tude nor a fatherly att.i.tude. I made it clearly understood that I was an American first of all and that I was their boss. It was perfectly easy to do this and at the same time treat them like men and like units. I tried to make them feel that instead of being merely a bunch of Dagoes they were Italian workingmen. Your foreign laborer is quick to appreciate such a distinction and quick to respond to it. With the American-born you have to draw a sharper line and hold a steadier rein. I figured out that when you find a member of the second or third generation still digging, you've found a man with something wrong about him.

The next thing I did was to learn what each man could do best. Of course I could make only broad cla.s.sifications. Still there were men better at lifting than others; men better with the crowbar; men better at shoveling; men naturally industrious who would leaven a group of three or four lazy ones. As well as I could I sorted them out in this way.

In addition to taking this personal interest in them individually, I based my relations with them collectively on a principle of strict, homely justice. I found there was no quality of such universal appeal as this one of justice. Whether dealing with Italians, Russians, Portuguese, Poles, Irish or Irish-Americans you could always get below their national peculiarities if you reached this common denominator.

However browbeaten, however slavish, they had been in their former lives this spark seemed always alive. However c.o.c.ky or anarchistic they might feel in their new freedom you could pull them up with a sharp turn by an appeal to their sense of justice. And by justice I mean nothing but what ex-president Roosevelt has now made familiar by the phrase "a square deal." Justice in the abstract might not appeal to them but they knew when they were being treated fairly and when they were not. Also they knew when they were treating you fairly and when they were not. I never allowed a man to feel bullied or abused; I never gave a sharp order without an explanation. I never discharged a man without making him feel guilty in his heart no matter how much he protested with his lips. And I never discharged him without making the other men clearly see his guilt. When a man went, he left no sympathizers behind him.

On the other hand I made them act justly towards their employer and towards me. I taught them that justice must be on both sides. I tried to make them understand that their part was not to see how little work they could do for their money and that mine was not to see how much they could do, but that it was up to both of us to turn out a full fair day's work. They were not a chain gang but workmen selling their labor. Just as they expected the store-keepers to sell them fair measure and full weight, so I expected them to sell a full day and honest effort.

It wasn't always possible to secure a result but when it wasn't I got rid of that man on the first occasion. It was very much easier to handle in this way the freedom-loving foreigners than I looked for; with the American-born it was harder than I expected.

On the whole however I was mighty well pleased. I certainly got a lot of work out of them without in any way pus.h.i.+ng them. They didn't sweat for me and I didn't want them to--but they kept steadily at their work from morning until night. Then too, I didn't hesitate to do a little work myself now and then. If at any point another man seemed to be needed to help over a difficulty I jumped in. I not only often saved the useless efforts of three or four men in this way but I convinced them that I too had my employers' interests at heart. My object wasn't simply to earn my day's pay, it was to finish the job we were on in the shortest possible time. It makes a big difference whether a man feels he is working by the day or by the job. I tried to make them feel that we were all working by the job.

Without boasting I think I can say that we cut down the contractor's estimate by at least a full day. I know they had to do some hustling to get the pile-drivers to the spot on time.

On the next job I had to begin all over again with a new gang. It seemed a pity that all my work on the other should be wasted but I didn't say anything. For two months I took each time the men I had and did my best with them. I had my reward in finding myself placed at the head of a constantly increasing force. I also found that I was being sent on all the hurry-up work. I learned something every day. Finally when the time seemed ripe I went to the contractor's agent with the proposition towards which I had all along been working. This was that I should be allowed to hire my own men.

The agent was skeptical at first about the wisdom of entrusting such power as this to a subordinate but I put my case to him squarely. I said in brief that I was sure I could pick a gang of fifty men who would do the work of seventy-five. I told him that for a year now I had been making notes on the best workers and I thought I could secure them. But I would have to do it myself. It would be only through my personal influence with them that they could be got. He raised several objections but I finally said:

"Let me try it anyhow. The men won't cost you any more than the others and if I don't make good it's easy enough to go back to the old way."

It's queer how stubbornly business men cling to routine. They get stuck in a system and hate to change. He finally gave me permission to see the men. I was then to turn them over to the regular paymaster who would engage them. This was all I wanted and with my note book I started out.

It was no easy job for me and for a week I had to cut out my night school and give all my time to it. Many of the men had moved and others had gone into other work but I kept at it night after night trotting from one end of the city to the other until I rounded up about thirty of them. This seemed to me enough to form a core. I could pick up others from time to time as I found them. The men remembered me and when I told them something of my plan they all agreed with a grin to report for work as soon as they were free. And this was how Carleton's gang happened to be formed.

It took me about three months to put all my fifty men into good working order and it wasn't for a year that I had my machine where I wanted it. But it was a success from the start. At the end of a year I learned that even the contractor himself began to speak with some pride of Carleton's gang. And he used it. He used it hard. In fact he made something of a special feature of it. It began to bring him emergency business. Wherever speed was a big essential, he secured the contract through my gang. He used us altogether for foundation work and his business increased so rapidly that we were never idle. I became proud of my men and my reputation.

But of course this success--this proof that my idea was a good one--only whetted my appet.i.te for the big goal still ahead of me. I was eager for the day when this group of men should really be Carleton's gang. It was hard in a way to see the result of my own thought and work turning out big profits for another when all I needed was a little capital to make it my own. Still I knew I must be patient. There were many things yet that I must learn before I should be competent to undertake contracts for myself. In the meanwhile I could satisfy my ambition by constantly strengthening and perfecting the machine.

Then, too, I found that the gang was bringing me into closer touch with my superiors. One day I was called to the office of the firm and there I met the two men who until now had been nothing to me but two names. For a year I had stared at these names painted in black on white boards and posted about the grounds of every job upon which I had worked. I had never thought of them as human beings so much as some hidden force--like the unseen dynamo of a power plant. They were both Irish-Americans--strong, prosperous-looking men. Somehow they made me distinctly conscious of my own ancestry. I don't mean that I was over-proud--in a way I don't suppose there was anything to boast of in the Carletons--but as I stood before these men in the position of a minor employee I suppose that unconsciously I looked for something in my past to offset my present humiliating situation. And from a business point of view, it was humiliating. The Carletons had been in this country two hundred years and these men but twenty-five or thirty and yet I was the man who stood while they faced me in their easy chairs before their roll-top desks. It was then that I was glad to remember there hadn't been a war in this country in which a Carleton had not played his part. I held myself a little better for the thought.

They were unaffected and business-like but when they spoke it was plain "Carleton" and when I spoke it was "Mr. Corkery," or "Mr.

Galvin." That was right and proper enough.

They had called me in to consult with me on a big job which they were trying to figure down to the very lowest point. They were willing to get out of it with the smallest possible margin of profit for the advertis.e.m.e.nt it would give them and in view of future contracts with the same firm which it might bring. The largest item in it was the handling of the dirt. They showed me their blue prints and their rough estimate and then Mr. Corkery said:

"How much can you take off that, Carleton?"

I told him I would need two or three hours to figure it out. He called a clerk.

"Give Carleton a desk," he said.

Then he turned to me:

"Stay here until you've done it," he said.

It took me all the forenoon. I worked carefully because it seemed to me that here was a big chance to prove myself. I worked at those figures as though I had every dollar I ever hoped to have at stake. I didn't trim it as close as I would have done for myself but as it was I took off a fifth--the matter of five thousand dollars. When I came back, Mr. Corkery looked over my figures.

"Sure you can do that?" he asked.

I could see he was surprised.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"I'd hate like h.e.l.l to get stuck," he said.

"You won't get stuck," I answered.

"It isn't the loss I mind," he said, "but--well there is a firm or two that is waiting to give me the laugh."

"They won't laugh," I said.

He looked at me a moment and then called in a clerk.

"Have those figures put in shape," he said, "and send in this bid."

Corkery secured the contract. I picked one hundred men. The morning we began I held a sort of convention.

"Men," I said, "I've promised to do this in so many days. They say we can't do it. If we don't, here's where they laugh at the gang."

We did it. I never heard from Corkery about it but when we were through I thanked the gang and I found them more truly mine than they had ever been before.

Every Sat.u.r.day night I brought home my fifteen dollars, and Ruth took out three for the rent, five for household expenses, and put seven in the ginger jar. We had one hundred and thirty dollars in the bank before the raise came, and after this it increased rapidly. There wasn't a week we didn't put aside seven dollars, and sometimes eight.

The end of my first year as an emigrant found me with the following items to my credit: Ruth, the boy and myself in better health than we had ever been; Ruth's big mother-love finding outlet in the neighborhood; the boy alert and ambitious; myself with the beginning of a good technical education, to say nothing of the rudiments of a new language, with a loyal gang of one hundred men and two hundred dollars in cash.

This inventory does not take into account my new friends, my new mental and spiritual outlook upon life, or my enhanced self-respect.