The Invisible Censor Part 10

"Railroading? No, sir, I was in the wholesale dry-goods business. We had just started in in a small way. I was married only two years, to Adelaide's younger sister. Ah, my accident brought on more trouble than she could stand. She was very different from Adelaide, quite dainty and lively, if you follow me. We were living at that time on Cottage Grove Avenue, on the south side. I was building up the importing end of the business, and then this thing came, and everything went to smash. They gave me no compensation whatsoever, to make the thing worse."

"But, Samuel, how did you come to be out against the strikers?"

"And why shouldn't I be out, I'd like to know!" Samuel straightened up from rubbing a chair, and pointed his rag at my voice. "These scoundrels had nothing against Mr. Pullman. He treated them like a prince. But they took the bit in their teeth, and once they break loose where are we? The President didn't get shut of them till he sent in the troops. But I've always contended that if we business men had taken the matter in hand ourselves and nipped the trouble in the bud, we'd have had no such lawlessness to deal with in the end. It is always the same. The business men are the backbone of the community, but they don't recognize their responsibility! Take the sword to those bullies and blackguards; that's what I say!"

The old man lifted both fists like a dauntless Samson, and fixed me with his sightless eyes. He had paid h.e.l.lishly for living up to his convictions, and here they seemed absolutely unshaken.

"That's all right, too, Samuel," I said, feebly enough, "but how do you feel now? n.o.body compensated you for being laid out in that big strike, and your business was ruined, and here you are emptying the waste-basket. How about that? I think it's fierce that you got injured, but those men in the Pullman strike weren't out to break up society.

They were fighting for their rights, that's all. Don't you think so now?"

"_No_, sir. The solid cla.s.s of the community must be depended upon to preserve law and order. I think that it was the duty of the business men of Chicago to put down ruffianism in that strike and to smite whenever it raised its head. Smite it hip and thigh, as the saying is. Oh, no.

Young men have fine notions about these things, ha, ha! You'll excuse me, won't you, but you can't allow violence and disorder to run riot and then talk of men's 'rights' as an excuse. Ah, but it was a great misfortune for me, I confess. It was the end of all my hopes. The doctors thought at first that the sight might be restored, but I have never seen a glimmer of light since. But we mustn't repine, must we?

That'd never do."

"Samuel!" Mrs. Angier's sharp voice pierced the room.

"Good gracious, back so soon. You'll excuse me, I'm sure.... Coming, Adelaide, coming!"

He groped for his bucket, with its seedy sponge all but submerged in the dirty water. The water splashed a little as he hurriedly made for the door.

"Oh, dear," he muttered, "Adelaide won't like that!"

"AND THE EARTH WAS DRY"

Like all great ideas it seemed perfectly simple when Harrod first disclosed it to his unimportant partner John Prentiss.

"Of course we'll get back of it. We've got to," said Harrod, in the sanct.i.ty of the directors' room. "You've been down to Hopeville on pay day. It's the limit. Ordinary days there's practically no trouble. Pay day's a madhouse. How many men, do you think, had to have the company doctor last pay day?"

"You don't expect me to answer, Robert," Prentiss replied mildly.

"You're telling me, you're not arguing with me."

"Twenty-five, Prentiss, twenty-five drunken swine. What do you think happened? I'll tell you. That doctor never stopped a minute taking st.i.tches, sewing on scalps, mending skulls. He was kept on the hop all day and night all over the town. I'll tell you something more." The st.u.r.dy Harrod rapped his fist on the mahogany table, leaning out of his armchair. "The doctor's wife told me a Polack came to her shack at two in the morning with half his thumb hanging off, bitten off in a drunken brawl. What do you think she did, Prentiss? She amputated it herself, on her own hook, just like a little soldier. She's got nerve, let me tell you. But do you think we want to stand for any more of this? Not much.

Hopeville is going dry!"

Mr. Harrod produced a gold pen-knife and nicked a cigar emphatically. He brushed the tiny wedge of tobacco from his plump trouser leg on to the bronze carpet. He lit his cigar and got up to have a little strut.

Poor Prentiss looked at him as only a weedy Yankee can look at a man whose cheeks are rosy with arrogant health. Why the stout Harrod who ate and drank as he willed should be proclaiming prohibition, while the man with a Balkan digestive apparatus should be a reluctant listener, no one could have a.n.a.lyzed. It never would have occurred to Prentiss to be so restlessly efficient. But Harrod was as simple as chanticleer. He'd made up his mind.

"We'll back Billy Sunday. His advance agent will be in town this week,"

Mr. Harrod unfolded. "We'll put the whole industry behind him. Drink is a constant source of inefficiency. It's an undeniable cause. When do we have accidents? On Mondays, regularly. The men come back stupefied from the rotgut they've been drinking, and it's simple luck if they don't set fire to the mine. The Hopeville mine is perfectly safe. Except for that one big disaster we had, it's one of the safest mines in the country.

But how can you call any mine safe if the fellows handling dynamite and the men working the cage are just as likely as not to have a hangover?

We'll stop it. We'll make that town so dry that you can't find a beer bottle in it. It took me some time to realize the common sense of this situation, but it's as clear as daylight; it's ridiculously clear. We're fools, Prentiss, that we didn't advocate prohibition twenty years ago."

"Twenty years ago, Robert," Prentiss murmured, "you were checking coal at the pit-head. You weren't so d.a.m.ned worried about evolving policies for the mine owners twenty years ago."

"Well, you know what I mean," Robert Harrod rejoined.

"Perfectly," retorted Prentiss. "And I'm with you, though all the perfumes of Arabia won't cleanse these little hands."

That was the first gospel, so to speak, and Harrod was as good as his word. He saw Sunday's advance agent, he rallied the industry, he lunched with innumerable Christians and had a few painful but necessary political conferences. The prohibitionist manager he discovered to be a splendid fellow-direct, clean-cut, intelligent, indefatigable. The whole great state was won to prohibition after a strenuous preparation and a typically "bitter" campaign.

And everything went well at Hopeville. At first, not unnaturally, there was a good deal of rebellion. A few of the miners-you know Irish miners, born trouble-makers-talked considerably. Something in them took kindly to the relief from monotony that came with a periodic explosion, and they muttered blasphemously about the prohibitionists, and time hung heavy on their hands. A few of them pulled out, preceded by the gaunt Scotchman who had run the bare "hotel" where most of the whisky was consumed. These were led by a sullen compatriot of their own, a man who once was a fine miner but who had proved his own best customer in the liquor business and whose contour suggested that his body was trying desperately to blow a bulb. One miner left for a neighboring state (still wet) to purchase a pair of boots. He crawled back on foot after a week, minus the new boots, plus a p.a.w.n-ticket, and most horribly chewed by an unintelligent watchdog who had misunderstood his desire to borrow a night's lodging in the barn. The drinking haunts were desolate reminders of bygone entertainments for weeks after the law took effect, and few of the younger men could look forward to tame amus.e.m.e.nt, amus.e.m.e.nt that had no elysium in it, without a twinge of disgust. But on the whole, Hopeville went dry with surprising simplicity. A great many of the miners were neither English, Scotch, Cornish, Welsh nor Irish, but Austrians and Italians and Poles, and these were not so inured to drinking and biting each other as Mr. Harrod might have thought. The mud in Hopeville, it is true, was often from nine inches to four feet deep, and there were no named streets, and no known amus.e.m.e.nts, and a very slim possibility of distraction for the unmarried men. After prohibition, however, a far from unpleasant club house was founded, with lots of "dangerous" reading material, and a segregated place for homemade music, and bright lights and a fire, and a place to write letters, and a pungent odor of something like syndicalism in the air.

That was the beginning. The men did not detonate on pay day, except in lively conversation. There was less diffused blasphemy. It concentrated rather particularly on one or two eminent men. And when the virtues and defects of these men were sufficiently canva.s.sed, the "system" beyond them was a.n.a.lyzed. Even the delight of the Hunkies in dirt, or the meanness of certain bosses, began to be less engrossing than the exact place in the terrestrial economy where Harrod and Prentiss got off.

"Well, Robert," inquired the man of migraine, back in the home office, "how is your precious prohibition working? It seems to me the doctor's wife is the sole beneficiary so far."

"Working?" the rubicund Harrod responded urgently. "I don't know what we're going to do about it. You can't rely on the men for anything. A few years ago, after all, they took their wages over to Mason and blew it all in, or they soaked up enough rum in Hopeville to satisfy themselves, and come back on the job. Now, what do they do? They quit for two weeks when they want to. They quit for a month at a time. And still they have a balance. You can't deal with such men. They're infernally independent. They're impudent with prosperity. I never saw anything like it. We can't stand it. I don't know what we're going to do."

"You're going to back the liquor trade, Robert, of course. That's simple enough."

"You may laugh, but it is too late, I tell you, the harm's done. We can't remedy it. National prohibition is right on top of us. I don't know what we'll do."

"Sell 'em Bevo. That'll keep them conservative. Ever drink it?"

"Bevo? Conservative? Prentiss, this is serious. These men are completely out of hand."

"Well, aren't they more efficient?"

"Of course they're more efficient. They're too d.a.m.nably efficient. They wanted Hopeville drained and they're getting it drained. They'll insist on having it paved next. They'll want hot and cold water. They'll want bathtubs. That'll be the end."

"The end? Come, Robert, perhaps only the beginning of the end."

"It's very amusing to you, Prentiss, but you're in on this with me.

We've forced these working-men into prohibition, and now they're sober, they're everlastingly sober. They're making demands and getting away with it. We've got to go on or go under. Wake up, man. I've played my cards. What can we do?"

"What can we do? That is not the point now. Now the point is, what'll _they_ do."

TELEGRAMS

In my simple world a cablegram is so rare that I should treasure the mere envelope. I should not be likely to resurrect it. It would be buried in a bureau, like a political badge or a cigar-cutter-but there is a silly magpie in every man, and a cable I would preserve. To discuss cablegrams or even cut-rate wireless, however, would be an affectation.

These are the orchids of communication. It is the ordinary telegram I sing.

There was a magnificence about a quick communication in the days before the Western Union. Hors.e.m.e.n went galloping roughshod through scattering villages. It was quite in order for a panting messenger to rush in, make his special delivery, and drop dead. This has ceased to be his custom.

In Mr. Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Cla.s.s there is one omission. He neglected to deal with that great adept in leisure, the messenger-boy.

"Messenger-boy" is a misnomer. He is either a puling infant or a tough, exceedingly truculent little ogre of uncertain age and habit. His life is consecrated. He cares for nothing except to disprove the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Foreseeing this cult of the messenger service, the designers of the modern American city abandoned all considerations of beauty, mystery, and suggestion in an heroic effort to circ.u.mvent the boy in blue. But the boy in blue cannot be beaten. By what art he is selected I know not. Whether he is attributable to environment or heredity I dare not guess. But with a possible inferiority to his rival, the coat-room boy, and, of course, nature's paradox the crab, he is supreme.

It is not a telegram in its last stages that has magic. Much better for the purposes of drama to have Cleopatra receive a breathless minion, not a laconic imp with a receipt to be signed. Yet a telegram has magic. If you are hardened you do not register. It is the fresh who have the thrill. But no one is totally superior to telegrams. Be you ever so inured, there is one telegram, _the_ telegram, which will find your core.

Sometimes at a hotel-desk I stand aside while an important person, usually a man but occasionally a woman, gets a handful of mail without any sign of curiosity, and goes to the elevator without even sorting out the wires. Such persons are marked. They are in public life. It is pardonable. There must be public men and public women. I should not ask any one to give up his career for the peculiar ecstasies of the telegram. But no one can deny that these persons have parted with an essence of their being. What if I find a solitary notice? "It is under your door." I bolt for the elevator, thrilled, alive.