Comrades Part 34

"At least you have the courage of your convictions. I can't help admiring it."

As further opposition was useless, the order was put into execution.

The superintendent finally caught the young man's spirit, withdrew his resignation, and undertook the work with enthusiasm.

At the end of the summer the success of the colony was astounding. The wildest prediction of the young leader fell below the facts. The crop of cantaloups averaged one hundred and five crates to the acre, and brought three dollars and a half a crate. The net profit on the melons reached the enormous total of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The men who raised the crop and added this wealth to the treasury of the colony were not slow in demanding an immediate readjustment of the scale of wages.

Two hundred and fifty men had done all the work of planting, cultivating, harvesting this crop and added ten times as much to the year's income as the combined labour of all the other members of the colony.

Brick-masons were receiving two dollars a day and farm-hands one dollar. The miners who were digging for gold in the mountain ranges and on the beaches were receiving five dollars a day and had added as yet not a single dollar to the wealth of the community. They had discovered gold in three new districts and thousands of dollars had been wasted in vain efforts to make it pay. The farmers protested bitterly against such waste, and demanded the equalization of wages.

Their spokesman astonished Norman by the vehemence and audacity of their demands:

"If Socialism means justice," he shouted, "now is the time to prove it! Labour creates all value. We have created one hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of wealth for the colony and we have received a mere pittance. If we created this wealth----"

"Wait a minute, comrades," Norman interrupted, with irritation. "Why should you continue to repeat that foolish a.s.sertion? You didn't create this wealth."

"Then I'd like to know who did?" shouted the orator. "We turned the soil, placed the fertilizers, planted every seed, cultivated every vine, pulled every melon, packed and placed them on the steamer. If we didn't make the wealth, who did?"

"I did," the young leader declared. "I conceived the possibility of this crop. I tried to persuade your superintendent and overseers. They had no faith. I forced them to plant these particular seeds against their own wishes. Your labour is a fixed thing year in and year out.

All men must work or die. All life is a struggle thus with tooth and nail for a living. The creator of wealth is the superior intelligence that conceives something better than this clodhopper's daily task. You did what you were told to do. Your hands would have worked just as many hours at labour just as tiresome over a crop of beans that wouldn't have paid a profit at all this year. Wealth belongs to its creator. I made the crop, your hands were the mere automata which my brain directed. Your demands are absurd. I refuse to consider them or to permit their discussion."

The farmers refused point-blank to submit to this decision, and voted unanimously to quit work until they were given justice. Every plough stopped and the entire machinery of food production came to a dead standstill.

Norman threatened to refuse them admission to the dining-hall unless they returned to work, and they boldly replied that they would smash the door down and take what was their own.

Had the farmers been alone in their demands for an equalization of wages, the situation would have been easier to handle. But discontent over the question of wages had been growing steadily since the day of the decision that wages should be unequal.

The distinctions of wealth and poverty were rapidly making their appearance as in the old world. The cook had married a scrubwoman and the scrubwoman's daughter had married the drainman who had charge of the sewers. The combine income of the two highest-salaried workers in the colony had at once formed the nucleus of a new aristocracy of wealth.

The strike of the entire farming division of the colony was the match thrown in the powder magazine. Discontent flamed in every department of labour.

The demand for absolute equality of wages became resistless. It was the only thing which could once more bring order out of chaos.

Norman called a meeting of the general a.s.sembly and submitted the question for their discussion and decision. The debate was long, fierce, and bitter. In vain did the young leader plead with those who were receiving the highest rates that the profits of the colony would be greater and that each would share alike in the total wealth of the community. They denounced the proposed act as the climax of infamy.

The chef was furious.

"You give me the wages of a clodhopper and ask me to prepare a table fit for a king. Well, try it, and see what you get."

He sat down repeating his threat in a series of endless announcements to the people around him.

"I think he'll poison us all if you pa.s.s this law," Barbara whispered.

"The farmers will run us through with their pitchforks if we don't,"

he laughed.

"Poisoning is the easier way," she sighed.

The leader of the bra.s.s band raised the biggest row of all. From the first these men had refused to lift their hand to do a thing except to play at stated hours each day and furnish the music for the three evenings of social amus.e.m.e.nt.

"You place me on an equality with the lout who holds a calf or the clodhopper who holds a plough--I, who feed the soul with ravis.h.i.+ng melody--I, who lift man from earth to heaven on the wings of angels!"

The band leader swelled with righteous wrath and sat down beside the cook who was still muttering incoherently:

"Let 'em try it--and see what they get!"

Yet, in spite of the fierce threats of the cook, the scrubwoman, the drainman, the musician, and all the high-salaried favourites of labour, the inevitable occurred. When put to a vote equal wages were established by an overwhelming majority.

Each member of the colony, man, woman, and child, was voted free food, clothes, and shelter, and a credit of five hundred dollars a year at the Brotherhood store.

The executive council was abolished and in its place a board of governors established, composed of the heads of each department of labour and presided over by two regents, a man and a woman, elected by the general a.s.sembly. Norman and Barbara were elected regents without opposition, and the old heads of each department of labour placed on the board of governors to serve until the approaching annual election.

The a.s.sembly proposed:

"Article I. of the const.i.tution of the new State of Ventura as follows:

"Every citizen of the State must labour according to his ability.

Those who can work and will not shall be made to work."

No man who voted this simple and obviously just law could dream of the tremendous results. It was merely the enactment into statutory law of the first principle of an effective Socialism:

"From every man according to his ability, unto every man according to his needs."

The first obvious requirement of such a law was an immediate increase of the police and detective force at the command of the regents and the board of governors.

Norman thanked the a.s.sembly for the promptness and thoroughness which had characterized their work, and closed his congratulations with a sentence of peculiarly sinister meaning to the man who had ears to hear.

"Hereafter, comrades, we can move forward without another pause. There can never be another strike on the island of Ventura. The State is now supreme."

The Wolfs, who had modestly declined all office, were omnipresent during the long sessions of the a.s.sembly, which had lasted two days.

Everywhere they had counselled compromise, forbearance, good fellows.h.i.+p, moving quietly from group to group in the big hall, and always winning new friends.

Wolf's gnarled hand gripped Norman's at the close of the meeting as he bent his ma.s.sive head and whispered:

"A great day's work, Comrade Chief--one that will make history."

The young leader's face clouded as he slowly replied:

"I wish I were sure that it will be history of the right kind."

"You doubt it?" the old leader asked incredulously.

"It all depends on our leaders.h.i.+p."

"With your hand on the helm"--Wolf paused and smiled curiously--"the s.h.i.+p of State is safe."