The Crucifixion of Philip Strong Part 9

The crowd closed around Mr. Winter again. Philip knew enough about men to know that the mill-owner was in genuine danger. Most of his a.s.sailants were the foreign element in the mills. Many of them were under the influence of liquor. The situation was critical. Mr. Winter clung to Philip with the frantic clutch of a man who sees only one way of escape, and clings to that with mad eagerness. Philip turned around and faced the mob. He raised his voice, hoping to gain a hearing and reason with it. But he might as well have raised his voice against a tornado. Some one threw a handful of mud and snow toward the prisoner.

In an instant every hand reached for the nearest missile, and a shower of stones, muddy snow-b.a.l.l.s and limbs torn from the trees on the lawn was rained upon the house. Most of the windows in the lower story were broken. All this time Philip was eagerly remonstrating with the few men who had their hands on Mr. Winter. He thought if he could only plead with them to let the man go he could slip with him around the end of the veranda through a side door and take him through the house to a place of safety. He also knew that every minute was precious, as the police might arrive at any moment and change the situation.

But in spite of his pleas, the mill-owner was gradually pushed and dragged down off the veranda toward the gate. The men tried to get Philip out of the way.

"We don't want to harm you, sir. Better get out of danger," said the same man who had spoken before.

Philip for answer threw one arm about Mr. Winter, saying: "If you kill him, you will kill me with him. You shall never do this great sin against an innocent man. In the name of G.o.d, I call on every soul here to----"

But his words were drowned in the noise that followed. The mob was insane with fury. Twice Mr. Winter was dragged off his feet by those down on the walk. Twice Philip raised him to his feet, feeling sure that if the crowd once threw him down they would trample him to death. Once some one threw a rope over the wretched man's head. Both he and Mr.

Winter were struck again and again. Their clothes were torn into tatters. Mr. Winter was faint and reeling. Only his great terror made his clutch on Philip like that of a drowning man.

At last the crowd had dragged the two outside the gate into the street.

Here they paused awhile and Philip again spoke to the mob:

"Men, made in G.o.d's image, listen to me! Do not take innocent life. If you kill him, you kill me also. For I will never leave his side alive, and I will not permit such murder if I can prevent it."

"Kill them both--the b.l.o.o.d.y coward and the priest!" yelled a voice.

"They both belong to the same church."

"Yes, hang 'em! hang 'em both!" A tempest of cries went up. Philip towered up like a giant. In the light of the street lamp he looked out over the great sea of pa.s.sionate, brutal faces, crazed with drink and riot, and a great wave of compa.s.sionate feeling swept over him. Those nearest never forgot that look. It was Christlike in its yearning love for lost children. His lips moved in prayer.

And just then the outer circle of the crowd seemed agitated. It had surged up nearer the light with the evident intention of hanging the mill-owner on one of the cross pieces of a telegraph pole near by. The rope had again been thrown over his head. Philip stood with one arm about Mr. Winter, and with the other hand stretched out in entreaty, when he heard a pistol-shot, then another. The entire police department had been summoned, and had finally arrived. There was a skirmis.h.i.+ng rattle of shots. But the crowd began to scatter in the neighborhood of the police force. Then those nearer Philip began to run as best they could away from the officers. Philip and the mill-owner were dragged along with the rest in the growing confusion, until, watching his opportunity, Philip pulled Mr. Winter behind one of the large poles by which the lights of the street were suspended.

Here, sheltered a little, but struck by many a blow, Philip managed to s.h.i.+eld with his own body the man who only a little while before had come into his own house and called him a liar, and threatened to withdraw his church support, because of the preaching of Christ's principles.

When finally the officers reached the two men Mr. Winter was nearly dead from the fright. Philip was badly bruised, but not seriously, and he helped Mr. Winter back to the house, while a few of the police remained on guard the rest of the night. It was while recovering from the effects of the night's attack that Philip little by little learned of the facts that led up to the a.s.sault.

There had been a growing feeling of discontent in all the mills, and it had finally taken shape in the Ocean Mill, which was largely owned and controlled by Mr. Winter. The discontent arose from a new scale of wages submitted by the company. It was not satisfactory to the men, and the afternoon of that evening on which Philip had gone down to the hall a committee of the mill men had waited on Mr. Winter, and after a long conference had gone away without getting any satisfaction. They could not agree on the proposition made by the company and by their own labor organization. Later in the day one of the committee, under instructions, went to see Mr. Winter alone, and came away from the interview very much excited and angry. He spent the first part of the evening in a saloon, where he related a part of his interview with the mill-owner, and said that he had finally kicked him out of the office. Still later in the evening he told several of the men that he was going to see Mr. Winter again, knowing that on certain evenings he was in the habit of staying down at the mill office until nearly half-past nine for special business. The mills were undergoing repairs, and Mr. Winter was away from home more than usual.

That was the last that any one saw of the man until, about ten o'clock, some one going home past the mill office heard a man groaning at the foot of a new excavation at the end of the building, and climbing down discovered the man who had been to see Mr. Winter twice that afternoon.

He had a terrible gash in his head, and lived only a few minutes after he was discovered. To the half-dozen men who stood over him in the saloon, where he had been carried, he had murmured the name of "Mr.

Winter," and had then expired.

A very little adds fuel to the brain of men already heated with rum and hatred. The rumor spread like lightning that the wealthy mill-owner had killed one of the employees who had gone to see him peaceably and arrange matters for the men. He had thrown him out of the office into one of the new mill excavations and left him there to die like a dog in a ditch. So the story ran all through the tenement district, and in an incredibly swift time the worst elements in Milton were surging toward Mr. Winter's house with murder in their hearts, and the means of accomplis.h.i.+ng it in their hands.

Mr. Winter had finished his work at the office and gone home to sit down to a late lunch, as his custom was, when he was interrupted by the mob.

The rest of the incident is connected with what has been told. The crowd seized him with little ceremony, and it was only Philip's timely arrival and his saving of minutes until the police arrived, that prevented a lynching in Milton that night. As it was, Mr. Winter received a scare from which it took a long time to recover. He dreaded to go out alone at night. He kept on guard a special watchman, and lived in more or less terror even then. It was satisfactorily proved in a few days that the man who had gone to see Mr. Winter had never reached the office door.

But, coming around the corner of the building where the new work was being done, he had fallen off the stone work, striking on a rock in such a way as to produce a fatal wound. This tempered the feeling of the workmen toward Mr. Winter; but a wide-spread unrest and discontent had seized on every man employed in the mills, and as the winter drew on, affairs reached a crisis.

The difference between the mills and the men over the scale of wages could not be settled. The men began to talk about a strike. Philip heard of it, and at once, with his usual frankness and boldness, spoke with downright plainness to the men against it. That was at the little hall a week after the attempt on Mr. Winter's life. Philip's part in that night's event had added to his reputation and his popularity with the men. They admired his courage and his grit. Most of them were ashamed of the whole affair, especially after they had sobered down and it had been proved that Mr. Winter had not touched the man. So Philip was welcomed with applause as he came out on the little platform and looked over the crowded room, seeing many faces there that had glared at him in the mob a week before. And yet his heart told him he loved these men, and his reason told him that it was the sinner and the unconverted that G.o.d loved. It was a terrible responsibility to have such men count him popular, and he prayed that wisdom might be given him in the approaching crisis, especially as he seemed to have some real influence.

He had not spoken ten words when some one by the door cried, "Come outside! Big crowd out here want to get in." It was moonlight and not very cold, so every one moved out of the hall, and Philip mounted the steps of a storehouse near by and spoke to a crowd that filled up the street in front and for a long distance right and left. His speech was very brief, but it was fortified with telling figures, and at the close he stood and answered a perfect torrent of questions. His main counsel was against a strike in the present situation. He had made himself familiar with the facts on both sides. Strikes, he argued, except in very rare cases, were demoralizing--an unhealthy, disastrous method of getting justice done. "Why, just look at that strike in Preston, England, among the cotton spinners. There were only 660 operatives, but that strike, before it ended, threw out of employment over 7,800 weavers and other workmen who had nothing whatever to do with the quarrel of the 660 men. In the recent strike in the cotton trade in Lancas.h.i.+re, at the end of the first twelve weeks the operatives had lost in wages alone $4,500,000. Four strikes that occurred in England between 1870 and 1880, involved a loss in wages of more than $25,000,000. In 22,000 strikes investigated lately by the National Bureau of Labor, it is estimated that the employees lost about $51,800,000, while the employers lost only $30,700,000. Out of 353 strikes in England between 1870 and 1880, 191 were lost by the strikers, 71 were gained, and 91 com-promised; but in the strikes that were successful, it took several years to regain in wages the amount lost by the enforced idleness of the men."

There were enough hard-thinking, sensible men in the audience that night to see the force of his argument. The majority, however, were in favor of a general strike to gain their point in regard to the scale of wages.

When Philip went home he carried with him the conviction that a general strike in the mills was pending. In spite of the fact that it was the worst possible season of the year for such action, and in spite of the fact that the difference demanded by the men was a trifle, compared with their loss of wages the very first day of idleness, there was a determination among the leaders that the fifteen thousand men in the mills should all go out in the course of a few days if the demands of the men in the Ocean Mill were not granted.

What was the surprise of every one in Milton, therefore, the very next day, when it was announced that every mill in the great system had shut down, and not a man of the fifteen thousand laborers who marched to the buildings in the early gray of the winter morning found entrance.

Statements were posted up on the doors that the mills were shut down until further notice. The mill-owners had stolen a march on the employees, and the big strike was on; but it had been started by Capital, not by Labor, and Labor went to its tenement or congregated in the saloon, sullen and gloomy; and, as days went by and the mills showed no signs of opening, the great army of the unemployed walked the streets of Milton in growing discontent and fast acc.u.mulating debt and poverty.

Meanwhile the trial of the man arrested for shooting Philip came on, and Philip and his wife both appeared as witnesses in the case. The man was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. It has nothing special to do with the history of Philip Strong, but may be of interest to the reader to know that in two years' time he was pardoned out and returned to Milton to open his old saloon, where he actually told more than once the story of his attempt on the preacher's life.

There came also during those stormy times in Milton the trial of several of the men who were arrested for the a.s.sault on Mr. Winter. Philip was also summoned as a witness in these cases. As always, he frankly testified to what he knew and saw. Several of the accused were convicted, and sentenced to short terms. But the mill-owner, probably fearing revenge on the part of the men, did not push the matter, and most of the cases went by default for lack of prosecution.

Mr. Winter's manner toward Philip underwent a change after that memorable evening when the minister stood by him at the peril of his own life. There was a feeling of genuine respect, mingled with fear, in his deportment toward Philip. To say that they were warm friends would be saying too much. Men as widely different as the minister and the wealthy mill-man do not come together on that sacred ground of friends.h.i.+p, even when one is indebted to the other for his life. A man may save another from hanging and still be unable to save him from selfishness. And Mr.

Winter went his way and Philip went his, on a different basis so far as common greeting went, but no nearer in the real thing, which makes heart-to-heart communion impossible. For the time being, Mr. Winter's hostility was submerged under his indebtedness to Philip. He returned to his own place in the church and contributed to the financial support.

CHAPTER X.

One day at the close of a month, Philip came into the cosey parsonage, and, instead of going right up to his study as his habit was when his outside work was done for the day, he threw himself down on a couch by the open fire. His wife was at work in the other room, but she came in, and, seeing him lying there, inquired what was the matter.

"Nothing, Sarah, with me. Only I'm sick at heart with the sight and knowledge of all this wicked town's sin and misery."

"Do you have to carry it all on your shoulders, Philip?"

"Yes," replied Philip, almost fiercely. It was not that either. Only, his reply was like a great sob of conviction that he must bear something of these burdens. He could not help it.

Mrs. Strong did not say anything for a moment. Then,

"Don't you think you take it too seriously, Philip?"

"What?"

"Other people's wrongs. You are not responsible."

"Am I not? I am my brother's keeper. What quant.i.ty of guilt may I not carry into the eternal kingdom if I do not do what I can to save him!

Oh, how can men be so selfish? Yet I am only one person. I cannot prevent all this suffering alone."

"Of course you cannot, Philip. You wrong yourself to take yourself to task so severely for the sins of others. But what has stirred you up so this time?" Mrs. Strong understood Philip well enough to know that some particular case had roused his feeling. He seldom yielded to such despondency without some immediate practical reason.

Philip sat up on the couch and clasped his hands over his knee with the eager earnestness that characterized him, when he was roused.

"Sarah, this town slumbers on the smoking crest of a volcano. There are more than fifteen thousand people here in Milton out of work. A great many of them are honest, temperate people who have saved up a little.

But it is nearly gone. The mills are shut down, and, on the authority of men that ought to know, shut down for all winter. The same condition of affairs is true in a more or less degree in the entire State and throughout the country and even the world. People are suffering to-day in this town for food and clothing and fuel through no fault of their own. The same thing is true of thousands and even hundreds of thousands all over the world. It is an age that calls for heroes, martyrs, servants, saviors. And right here in this town, where distress walks the streets and actual want already has its clutch on many a poor devil, society goes on giving its expensive parties and living in its little round of selfish pleasure just as if the volcano was a downy little bed of roses for it to go to sleep in whenever it wearies of the pleasure and wishes to retire to happy dreams. Oh, but the bubble will burst one of these days, and then----"

Philip swept his hand upward with a fine gesture, and sunk back upon the couch, groaning.

"Don't you exaggerate?" The minister's wife put the question gently.

"Not a bit! Not a bit! All true. I am not one of the French Revolution fellows, always lugging in blood and destruction, and prophesying ruin to the nation and the world if it doesn't gee and haw the way I tell it to. But I tell you, Sarah, it takes no prophet to see that a man who is hungry and out of work is a dangerous man to have around. And it takes no extraordinary-sized heart to swell a little with righteous wrath when in such times as these people go right on with their useless luxuries of living, and spend as much on a single evening's entertainment as would provide a comfortable living for a whole month to some deserving family."

"How do you know they do?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've figured it out. I will leave it to any one of good judgment that any one of these projected parties mentioned here in the evening paper," Philip smoothed the paper on the head of the couch--"any one of them will cost in the neighborhood of one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars. Look here! Here's the Goldens'

party--members of Calvary Church. They will spend at least twenty-five to thirty dollars in flowers; and refreshments will cost fifty more; and music another twenty-five; and incidentals twenty-five extra--and so on.

Is that right, Sarah, these times, and as people ought to live now?"