Snow on the Headlight Part 13

"It is important that no question should arise as to the good faith of the company, and it is our desire and intention that there should be no opportunity for such question."

He even offered to s.h.i.+eld, as far as was consistent, those who, in the heat of the fight, had committed unlawful acts. He was a generous conqueror. It was humane, and manly, and n.o.ble in him to help those unfortunate ones who were now in so much need of help, and to protect them from the persecution of the few little-souled officials who were loath to stop fighting. It is all the more creditable because he was not bound to do it. He wrote: "While men who have been guilty of improper conduct during the late strike cannot be re-employed, and while we cannot give letters to them, no officer or employee should continue the animosities of the conflict after it is over, or interfere to prevent the employment of such men elsewhere."

CHAPTER NINETEENTH

At last the agony was over--at least the agony of suspense. The poor misguided men knew now that all hope had died. They would be re-employed when the company needed them, but it was January--the dullest month in the year. Every railroad in the West was laying men off. Hundreds of the new men were standing in line waiting for business to pick up, and this line must be exhausted before any of the old employees could be taken back. The management considered that the first duty of the company was to the men who had helped to win the strike. There was no disposition on the part of the officials to make it harder for the vanquished army.

They admired the loyalty and self-sacrifice, though deploring the judgment of the mismanaged men; but they were only officers in an opposing army, and so fought the fight for the interest they represented, and for the principles in which they believed.

Nothing in the history of the strike shows more conclusively that the men were out-generalled than the manner in which the company handled the press. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the daily papers of Chicago, with possibly one exception, willfully misrepresented the men, but the story of the strikers was never told. Mr. Paul, the accomplished "bureau of information," stood faithfully at the 'phone and saw that the public received no news that would embarra.s.s the company or encourage the men. The cold, tired reporter found a warm welcome and an easy chair in Mr. Paul's private office, and while he smoked a fragrant cigar the stenographer brought in the "news" all neatly type-written and ready for the printer. Mr. Paul was a sunny soul, who, in the presence of the reporter laughed the seemingly happy laugh of the actor-man, and when alone sighed, suffered and swore as other men did. Mr. Paul was a genius. By his careful manipulation of the press the public was in time persuaded that the only question was whether the company, who owned the road, should run it, or whether the brotherhoods, who did not own it, should run it for them. Every statement given out by the company was printed and accepted, generally, as the whole thing, while only two papers in all the town pretended to print the reports issued by the strikers. The others cut them and doctored them so that they lost their point. But all is fair in love and war, and this was war--war to the knife and the knife to the hilt--so Mr. Paul should not be hated but admired, even by his foes. He was a brilliant strategist. Many there are who argue to this day that Mr. Paul won the strike for the company, but Mr. Paul says Watchem, the detective, did it. At all events they each earned the deathless hatred of the strikers. But, leaving this question open, the fact remains that the general in command--the now dead hero of that fierce fight--deserves a monument at the expense of American railroads, if, as American railroad managers argue, that war was an holy war.

There had never been a moment when the management feared defeat. They had met and measured the amateur officials who were placed in command of the strikers. They were but children in the hands of the big brainy men who were handling the company's business. They could fire a locomotive, "ride a fly," or make time on the tick of the clock. They could awe a convention of car-hands or thrill an audience at a union meeting, but they had not the experience, or mental equipment to cope with the diplomatic officials who stood for the company. Their heads had been turned by the magnitude of their position. They established themselves at a grand hotel where only high-salaried railroad officials could afford to live. They surrounded themselves with a luxury that would have been counted extravagant by the minister of many a foreign land. They dissipated the strength of the Brotherhood and wasted their substance in high living. They had gotten into clothes that did not fit them, and, saddest of all, they did not know it. The good gray chief of the Brotherhood, who was perfectly at home in the office of a president or a general manager, who knew how to meet and talk with a reporter, who was at ease either in overalls or evening dress, was kept in the background.

He would sell out to the company, the deep-lunged leaders said. He could not be trusted, and so from the men directly interested in the fight the strikers chose a leader, and he led them to inglorious defeat; though defeat was inevitable.

At last, made desperate by the shadow of coming events, this man, so the officials say, issued a circular advising old employees to return to work and when out on the road to disable and destroy the company's locomotives, abandoning them where they were wrecked and ruined. The man accused of this crime declared that the circular was a forgery, committed by his secretary, who was a detective. But that the circular went out properly signed and sealed is beyond dispute, and in reply to it there came protests from hundreds of honest engine-drivers all up and down the land. The chief of a local division came to Chicago with a copy of the circular and protested so vigorously that he was expelled from the Brotherhood, to the Brotherhood's disgrace.

Smarting under what he deemed a great wrong, he gave the letter into the hands of the officials, and now whenever he secures a position the road that employs him is forced to let him go again or have a strike. He is an outcast--a vagabond, so far as the union is concerned. Ah, the scars of that conflict are deep in the souls of men. The blight of it has shadowed hundreds of happy homes, and ruined many a useful life.

With this "sal-soda" circular in their possession the managers caused the arrest of its author, charging him with conspiracy--a serious offense in Illinois.

A sunny-faced man, with big, soulful blue eyes and a blond mustache, had been living on the same floor occupied by the strike committee. He had conceived a great interest in the struggle. For a man of wealth and culture he showed a remarkable sympathy for the strikers, and so won the heart and confidence of the striker-in-chief. It was perfectly natural, then, that in the excitement incidental to the arrest, the accused should rush into the apartments of the sympathetic stranger and thrust into his keeping an armful of letters and papers.

As the officers of the law led the fallen hero away the blond man selected a number of letters and papers from the bundle, abandoned the balance and strolled forth. For weeks, months, he had been planning the capture of some of these letters, and now they had all come to him as suddenly as fame comes to a man who sinks a s.h.i.+p under the enemy's guns.

This blond man was a detective. His victim was a child.

Yes, the great struggle that had caused so much misery and cost so many millions was at an end, but it was worth to labor and capital all it had cost. The lesson has lasted ten years, and will last ten more.

It had been a long, bitter fight in which even the victorious had lost.

They had lost at least five million dollars in wrecked and ruined rolling stock, bridges and buildings. The loss in net earnings alone was nearly five millions in the first five months of the strike that lasted nearly a year. It would cost five millions more to put the property in the same excellent condition in which the opening of hostilities had found it. It would cost another five millions to win back the confidence of the travelling and s.h.i.+pping public. Twenty millions would not cover the cost, directly and indirectly, to the company, for there were no end of small items--incidentals. To a single detective agency they paid two hundred thousand dollars. And there were others.

It has taken nearly ten years to restore the road to its former condition, and to man the engines as they were manned before the strike.

It would have taken much longer had the owners of the property not settled upon the wise policy of promoting men who had been all their lives in the employ of the Burlington road, to fill the places as fast as they became vacant, of men--the heroes of the strike--who were now sought out by other companies for loftier positions. In this way the affairs of the company were constantly in the hands of men who had gone through it all, who could weed out the worthless among the new men, and select the best of those who had left the road at the beginning of the strike. The result is that there is scarcely an official of importance in the employ of the company to-day who has not been with it for a quarter of a century. The man who took the first engine out at the beginning of the strike--taking his life in his hands, as many believed--is now the general manager of the road.

There was something admirable, even heroic, in the action of the owners in standing calmly by while the officials melted down millions of gold.

As often as a directors' meeting was called the strikers would take heart. "Surely," they would say, "when they see what it costs to fight us they will surrender." The men seem never to have understood that all this was known to the directors long before the sad news reached the public. And then, when the directors would meet and vote to stand by the president, and the president would approve and endorse all that the general manager had done, the disheartened striker would turn sadly away to break the melancholy news to a sorrowing wife, who was keeping lonely vigil in a cheerless home.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH

Dan Moran had not applied for re-employment when the strike was off, but chose rather to look for work elsewhere, and he had looked long and faithfully, and found no place. First of all he had gone west, away to the coast, but with no success. Then he swung around the southern route, up the Atlantic coast and home again. Three years,--one year with the strikers,--four years in all of idleness, and he was discouraged. "It's the curse of the prison," he used to say to his most intimate friends; "the damp of that dungeon clings to me like a plague. It's a blight from which I can't escape. Every one seems to know that I was arrested as a dynamiter, and even my old friends shun me."

He had been saying something like that to Patsy Daly the very day he returned to Chicago. They were walking down through the yards, for Patsy, who was close to the officials, had insisted upon going personally to the master-mechanic, and interceding for the old engineer who had carried him thousands of miles while the world slept, and the wild storm raged around them. Patsy had been telling the old engineer the news of the road, but was surprised that Moran should seem to know all that had taken place, the changes and promotions, the vast improvements that had been made by the company, and the rapidly growing traffic. Patsy stopped short, and looking his companion in the eye, began to laugh.

"Now what in thunder are you laughing at?" asked Moran.

"At Patsy Daly, the luny," said the conductor (Patsy had been promoted); "why, of course you know everything. I've been rooming at the house, and I remember now that _she_ always knew just where you were at all times.

Ah! ye sly old rogue--"

"Patsy," said Moran, seriously, putting up his hand as a signal for silence.

"That's all right, old man. She deserves a decent husband, but it'll be something new to her. Say, Dan, a fool has less sense than anybody, an'

Patsy Daly's a fool. Here have I been at the point of making love to her myself, and only her tears and that big boy of hers have kept me from it. And all the time I thought she was wastin' water on that blatherskite of a Cowels, but I think better of her now."

"And why should she weep for any one else?" asked the old engineer.

"And why shouldn't she weep for you, Dannie? wandering up and down the earth, homeless and alone. Why I remember now. She would cry in her coffee at the mention of your name. And Dan, she's growin' prettier every day, and she's that gentle and--"

Just then the wild scream of a yard engine close behind them caused them to step aside.

"Wope!" cried a switchman, bang bang went the bell--"Look out there,"

yelled Patsy, for as the two pedestrians looked back they saw a drunken man reel out from among the cars. The driver of the switch-engine saw the man as the engine struck him, and, reversing, came to a quick stop and leaped to the ground.

The man lay with his lower limbs beneath the machine, and a blind driver (those broad wheels that have no f.l.a.n.g.es) resting on the pit of his stomach, holding him to the rail. The young engineer, having taken in the situation, leaped upon his engine, and was about to back off when Moran signalled him to stand still. "Don't move," said the old engineer, "he may want to say a word before he dies, and if you move that wheel he will be dead."

"Why, h.e.l.lo Greene, old hoss; is this you?" asked Moran, lifting the head of the unfortunate man and pus.h.i.+ng the unkept hair back from his forehead.

Greene opened his eyes slowly, looked at his questioner, glanced all about and, as Moran lifted his head, gazed at the great wheel that had almost cut his body into two pieces. He was perfectly sober now, and asked why they didn't back up and look him over.

"We shall presently," said Moran, "only we were afraid we might hurt you. You are not in any pain now, are you?"

"No," said the man, "I don't know when I've felt more comfortable; but for all that I guess I'm clean cut in two, ain't I, Dan?"

"Oh no, not so bad as that."

"Oh yes, I guess there's no use holdin' out on me. Is the foreman here?"

"Yes, here I am, Billy."

"Billy!" said Greene, "now wouldn't that drive you to cigarettes?

Billy!--why don't you call me drunken Bill? I'm used to that."

"Well, what is it, old man?" asked the foreman, bending down.

"You know this man? This is Dan Moran, the dynamiter." And the foreman of the round-house, recognizing the old engineer for the first time, held out his hand, partly to show to Moran and others that the strike was off, and partly to please the dying man.

"That's right," said Greene to the foreman, "it'll be good for you to touch an honest hand."

By this time a great crowd had gathered about the engine. Some police officers pushed in and ordered the engineer to "back away."

"An' what's it _to_ ye?" asked Greene with contempt, for he hated the very b.u.t.tons of a policeman. "It's no funeral uf yours. Ye won't grudge me a few moments with me friend, will ye? Move on ye tarrier."

The big policeman glanced about and recognizing the foreman asked why the devil he didn't "git th' felly out?"