The Gibson Upright Part 3

SALVATORE: Ain't we got no right to stand up for our rights?

FRANKEL: Don't you get all you can from _us_? Well, you bet your life we're goin' to keep on gettin' all we can from _you_!

GIBSON: Then life isn't worth anything to either of us--if it's all fight! Is that to go on forever?

NORA: No, Mr. Gibson; it's to go on until the abolition of the wage system!

MIFFLIN: Good!

NORA: The struggle with capitalism will continue till the workers take possession of the machinery of production. It is theirs by right; the wealth they produce is morally their own. The parasites who now consume that wealth must be destroyed.

[_Great approval from workmen; almost a cheer._ MIFFLIN _chuckles and noiselessly claps his hands._]

GIBSON: I'm the parasite!

s...o...b..RG: Well, do we get any answer?

GIBSON: Does any one of you men here think he could answer all of these demands satisfactorily?

SALVATORE: Sure! [_All acquiesce: "Sure, sure!"_]

FRANKEL: You can't put us off any longer with just no little bunch of funny talk!

GIBSON: I'll have an answer for you in fifteen minutes. [_Turns to his desk._] That's all.

s...o...b..RG: Better have it before twelve o'clock.

CARTER [_as they go_]: Do what you kin, Mr. Gibson. All the departments is worked up pretty unusual.

GIBSON [_wearily dropping back into his chair_]: Oh, no, Carter; pretty usual; that's the trouble.

MIFFLIN: A splendid manifestation of spirit, Mr. Gibson! I'll just take advantage of the--

[GIBSON _waves his hand, a.s.senting._ MIFFLIN _overtakes the group at door, puts his hands on the shoulders of two of the workers; and goes out with them talking eagerly._ NORA _follows._ GIBSON _sighs heavily; the telephone bell rings. He takes up the receiver._]

GIBSON: Who is it?... Wait a minute! [_He takes a pad and writes_]: "Central a.s.sociated Lumber Companies." ... Wait a minute. [_Looks at a slip in a pigeonhole of his desk._] Oh, yes, you called me yesterday....

This is Mr. Ragsdale?... No, no, Mr. Ragsdale, I don't think I'm going to do any business with you. You asked me forty-eight dollars a thousand on 200,000 feet.... No, your coming down half a dollar a thousand won't do it.... I say seventeen cents won't do it.... Hold the wire a minute.

[_Looks for letter in pigeonhole, but finds it in his inside pockets.

Then he holds it open, looking at it beside the telephone as he speaks._] h.e.l.lo!... No; I was right; there's nothing doing, Mr.

Ragsdale, I know where I can get that 200,000 feet at forty-five dollars.... I say I know where I can get that lumber at forty-five dollars.... No; I can get it. There won't be any use for you to call up again.... Good-bye!

[_He paces the floor again thoughtfully, then abruptly goes to the factory door; opens it and calls._]

GIBSON: Miss Gorodna!

[NORA _appears in the doorway. She looks at him with disapproving inquiry; then walks in and closes the door. He goes to his desk and touches the rose._]

GIBSON: Why didn't you take it this morning? That poor little rosebed in my yard at home; it's just begun to brighten up. I suppose it thought it was going to send you a June rose every day, as it did last June. You don't want it?

NORA [_gently, but not abating her att.i.tude_]: No, thank you!

GIBSON: [_dropping the rose upon his blotting pad, not into the gla.s.s again_]: This is the fourth that's had to wither disappointed.

NORA [_in a low voice_]: Then hadn't you better let the others live?

GIBSON: I'd like to live a little myself, Nora. Life doesn't seem much worth living for me as it is, and if your theories are making you detest me I think I'm about through.

NORA: It's what you stand for that my theories make me detest--since you used the word.

GIBSON: Well, what is it that I stand for?

NORA: Cla.s.s and cla.s.s hatred.

GIBSON: Which cla.s.s is the hatred coming from?

NORA: From both!

GIBSON: Just in this room right now it seems to be all on one side. And lately it has seemed to me to be more and more not so much cla.s.s as personal; because really, Nora, I haven't yet been able to understand how a girl with your mind can believe that you and I belong to different cla.s.ses.

NORA: You don't! So long as capital exists you and I are in warring cla.s.ses, Mr. Gibson.

GIBSON: What are they?

NORA: Capitalist and proletariat. You can't get out of your cla.s.s and I don't want to get out of mine.

GIBSON: Nora, the law of the United States doesn't recognize any cla.s.ses--and I don't know why you and I should. We both like Montaigne and Debussy. You've even condescended to laugh with me at times about something funny in the shop. Of course not lately; but you used to. In everything worth anything aren't we really in the same cla.s.s?

NORA: We are not. We never shall be--and we never were! Even before we were born we weren't! You came into this life with a silver spoon. I was born in a tenement room where five other people lived. My father was a man with a great brain. He never got out of the tenements in his life; he was crushed and kept under; yet he was a well-read man and a magnificent talker; he could talk Marx and Tolstoi supremely. Yet he never even had time to learn English.

GIBSON: I wish you could have heard what _my_ father talked for Englis.h.!.+

Half the time I couldn't understand him myself. He was Scotch.

NORA: Your father wasn't crushed under the capitalistic system as mine was. My father was an intellectual.

GIBSON: Mine was a worker. They both landed at Castle Garden, didn't they?

NORA: What of that? Mine remained a thinker and a revolutionist; yours became a capitalist.

GIBSON: No; he got a job--in a piano factory.

NORA: Yes, and took advantage of the capitalistic system to own the factory.

GIBSON: Before he did own it he worked fourteen hours a day for twelve years. That's why he owned it.

NORA: How many hours a day do you work, Mr. Gibson?

GIBSON: I _have_ worked twenty-four; sometimes fourteen, sometimes two; usually six.

NORA: In other words, when you want to work.