In the Heart of a Fool Part 62

"We can't have this, Ahab--this won't do--a few days of this and we'll have bloodshed."

It did not occur to Ahab Wright that he had been singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and "I Am a Soldier of the Cross," and "I'll Be Washed in the Blood of the Lamb," all of his pious life, without ever meaning anything particularly sanguinary. He heard the war song of the revolution, and being a literal and peth-headed man, prepared to defend the flag with all the ardor that had burned in John Kollander's heart for fifty years.

"I tell you, Mr. Mayor, we need the troops. The Sheriff agrees with me--now you hear that," said young Joe. "Will you wait until some one is killed or worse, until a mine is flooded, before sending for them?"

"You know, Ahab," put in old Joe, "the Governor said on the phone this morning, not to let this situation get away from you."

The crowd was joining the singing. The words--the inspiring words of the labor chant had caught the people on the sidewalk, and a great diapason was rising:

"March on! March on!--all hearts resolved On victory or death."

"Hear that--hear that, Ahab!" cried old Joe. "Why, the decent people up town here are going crazy--they're all singing it--and that little devil is waving a red flag with the white one!"

Ahab Wright looked and was aghast. "Doesn't that mean rebellion--anarchy--and bloodshed?" he gasped.

"It means socialism," quoth young Joe, laconically, "which is the same thing."

"Well, well! my! my! Dear me," fretted Ahab, "we mustn't let this go on."

"Shall I get the Governor on the phone--you know we have the Sheriff's order here--just waiting for you to join him?" asked young Joe.

The Haves were moving the realm of the discussion about their property from pure reason to the baser emotions.

"Look, look!" cried the Mayor. "Grant Adams is standing on that platform--and those women have to hold him up--it's shameful. Listen!"

"I want to say to my old neighbors and friends here in Harvey," cried Grant, "that in this strike we shall try with all our might, with all our hearts' best endeavors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Our property in the mines and mills in this Valley, we shall protect, just as sacredly as our partners on Wall Street would protect it. It is our property--we are the legatees of the laborers who have piled it up. You men of Harvey know that these mines represent little new capital. They were dug with the profits from the first few shafts.

The smelters rose from the profits of the first smelters in the district. Where capital has builded with fresh investment--we make no specific claim, but where capital has builded here in this district from profits made in the district--profits made by reason of cheating the crippled and the killed, profits made by long deadly hours of labor, profits made by cooking men's lungs on the slag dump, profits made by choking men to death, unrequited, in cement dust, profits sweated out of the men at the gla.s.s furnaces--where capital has appropriated unjustly, we expect to appropriate justly. We shall take nothing that we do not own. This is the beginning of the rise of the Democracy of Labor--the dawn of the new day." He waved his arm and his steel claw and chanted:

"March on!--March on!--all hearts resolved,"

And in a wave of song the response came

"To victory or death."

Grant Adams flaunted his black slouch hat; then he sprang from the platform, and hurried to the front of the procession. The band struck up a lively tune and the long trail of white-clad women and white-badged men became animate.

"Well, Ahab--you heard that? That is rebellion," said old Joe, squinting his mole-like eyes. "What are you going to do about that--as the chief priest of law and order in this community?"

Five minutes later Ahab Wright, greatly impressed with the dignity of his position, and with the fact that he was talking to so superior a person as a governor, was saying:

"Yes, your excellency--yes, I wanted to tell you of our conditions here in the Valley. It's serious--quite serious." To the Governor's question the Mayor replied:

"No--no--not yet, but we want to prevent it. This man Adams--Grant Adams, you've heard about him--"

And then an instant later he continued, "Yes--that's the man, Governor--Dr. Nesbit's friend. Well, this man Adams has no respect for authority, nor for property rights, and he's stirring up the people."

Young Joe Calvin winked at his father and said during the pause,

"That's the stuff--the old man's coming across like a top."

Ahab went on: "Exactly--'false and seditious doctrines,' and I'm afraid, Governor, that it will be wise to send us some troops."

The Calvins exchanged approving nods, and young Joe, having the enthusiasm of youth in his blood, beat his desk in joyous approval of the trend of events.

"Oh, I don't know as to that," continued Ahab, answering the Governor.

"We have about four thousand men--perhaps a few more out. You know how many troops can handle them."

"Tell him we'll quarter them in the various plants, Ahab," cut in old Joe, and Ahab nodded as he listened.

"Well, don't wait for the tents," he said. "Our people will quarter the men in the buildings in the centers of the disturbance. Our merchants can supply your quartermaster with everything. We have about a thousand policemen and deputy sheriffs--"

While the Mayor was listening to the Governor, Calvin senior said to his son, "Probably we'd better punch him up with that promise about the provo marshal," and young Joe interrupted:

"And, Mr. Mayor, don't forget to remind him of the promise he made to Tom Van Dorn,--about me."

Ahab nodded and listened. "Wait," he said, putting his hand over the telephone receiver, and added in a low voice to those in the room: "He was just talking about that and thinks he will not proclaim martial law until there is actual violence--which he feels will follow the coming of the troops, when the men see he is determined. He said then that he expected Captain Calvin of the Harvey Company to take charge, and the Governor will speak to the other officers about it." Ahab paused a moment for further orders. "Well," said the elder Calvin, "I believe that's all."

"Will there be anything else to-day, Joe?" asked Ahab, unconsciously a.s.suming his counter manner to young Joe Calvin, who replied without a smile:

"Well--no--not to-day, thank you," and Ahab went back to the Governor and ended the parley.

The _Times_ the next morning with flaring headlines announced that the Governor had decided to send troops to the Wahoo Valley to protect the property in the mines and mills for the rightful owners and to prevent any further incendiary speaking and rioting such as had disgraced Market Street the day before. In an editorial the Governor was advised to proclaim martial law, as only the strictest repression would prevent the rise of anarchy and open rebellion to the authorities.

The troops came on the early morning trains, and filed into the sheds occupied by the workmen before the strike. The young militiamen immediately began pervading South Harvey, Foley and Magnus, and when the strikers lined up before the gates and doors of their former working places at seven o'clock that morning they met a brown line of youths--devil-may-care young fellows out for a lark, who liked to prod the workmen with their bayonets and who laughingly ordered the strikers to stop trying to keep the strike-breakers from going to work. The strikers were bound by their pledges to the Trades Council not to touch the strike-breakers under any circ.u.mstances. The strikers--white-badged and earnest-faced--made their campaign by lining up five on each side of a walk or path through which the strike-breakers would have to pa.s.s to their work, and crying:

"Help us, and we'll help you. Don't scab on us--keep out of the works, and we'll see that you are provided for. Join us--don't turn your backs on your fellow workers."

They would stretch out their arms in mute appeal when words failed, and they brought dozens of strike-breakers away from their work. And on the second morning of the strike not a wheel turned in the district.

All morning Grant Adams moved among the men. He was a marked figure--with his steel claw--and he realized that he was regarded by the militiamen as an ogre. A young militiaman had hurt a boy in Magnus--p.r.i.c.ked him in the leg and cut an artery. Grant tried to see the Colonel of the company to protest. But the soldier had been to the officer with his story, and Grant was told that the boy attacked the militiaman--which, considering that the boy was a child in his early teens and the man was armed and in his twenties, was unlikely. But Grant saw that his protests would not avail. He issued a statement, gave it to the press correspondents who came flocking in with the troops, and sent it to the Governor, who naturally transferred it back to the militiamen.

In the afternoon the parade started again--the women and children in white, and the men in white coats and white working caps. It formed on a common between Harvey and South Harvey, and instead of going into Harvey turned down into the Valley where it marched silently around the quiet mills and shafts and to the few tenements where the strike-breakers were lodged. A number of them were sitting at the windows and on the steps and when the strikers saw the men in the tenements, they raised their arms in mute appeal, but spoke no word. Down the Valley the procession hurried and in every town repeated this performance. The troops had gathered in Harvey and were waiting, and it was not until after three o'clock that they started after the strikers. A troop of cavalry overtook the column in Foley, and rode through the line a few times, but no one spoke, and the cavalrymen rode along the line but did not try to break it. So the third day pa.s.sed without a fire in a furnace in the district.

That night Grant Adams addressed the strikers in Belgian Hall in South Harvey, in Fraternity Hall in Magnus and on a common in Foley. The burden of his message was this: "Stick--stick to the strike and to our method. If we can demonstrate the fact that we have the brains to organize, to abandon force, to maintain ourselves financially, to put our cause before our fellow workers so clearly that they will join us--we can win, we can enter into the partners.h.i.+p in these mills that is ours by right. The Democracy of Labor is a Democracy of Peace--only in peace, only by using the higher arts of peace under great provocation may we establish that Democracy and come into our own.

Stick--stick--stick to the strike and stick to the ways of peace. Let them rally to their Colonels and their tin soldiers--and we shall not fear--for we are gathered about the Prince of Peace."

The workmen always rose to this appeal and in Foley where the Letts had worked in the slag-dump, one of them, who did not quite understand the a.s.sociation of words implied by the term the Prince of Peace, cried:

"Hurrah for Grant, he is the Prince of Peace," and the good natured crowd laughed and cheered the man's mistake.

But the _Times_ the next morning contained this head:

"Shame on Grant Adams, Trying to Inflame Ignorant Foreigners.

Declares he is the Prince of Peace and gets Applause from his Excited Dupes--Will he Claim to be Messiah?"

It was a good story--from a purely sensational viewpoint, and it was telegraphed over the country, that Grant Adams, the labor leader, was claiming to be a messiah and was rallying foreigners to him by supernatural powers. The _Times_ contained a vicious editorial calling on all good citizens to stamp out the blasphemous cult that Adams was propagating. The editorial said that the authorities should not allow such a man to speak on the streets maintained by tax-payers, and that with the traitorous promises of owners.h.i.+p of the mines and mills backing up such a campaign, rebellion would soon be stalking the street and bloodshed such as had not been seen in America for a generation would follow. The names which the _Times_ called Grant Adams indicated so much malice, that Grant felt encouraged, and believed he had the strike won, if he could keep down violence. So triumph flambeaued itself on his face. For two peaceful days had pa.s.sed. And peace was his signal of victory.

But during the night a trainload of strike-breakers came from Chicago.

They were quartered in the railroad yards, and Grant ordered a thousand pickets out to meet the men at daybreak. Grant called out the groups of seven and each lodging house, tenement and car on the railroad siding was parceled out to a group. Moreover, Grant threw his army into action by ordering twenty groups into Sands Park, through which the strike-breaking smelter men would pa.s.s after the pickets had spoken to the strike-breakers in their door yards. Lining the park paths, men stood in the early morning begging working men not to go into the places made vacant by the strike. In addition to this, he posted other groups of strikers to stand near the gates and doors of the working places, begging the strike-breakers to join the strikers.