Jimmie Higgins Part 6

The meeting was adjourned, and then Meissner and Jimmie went into conference with Gerrity, the organizer, and Schneider, the brewer, and Comrade Mary Allen, all three of whom happened to be on the committee entrusted with the affairs of the Worker. Jimmie explained that they had met a union organizer--they could not tell about him, but the committee would have a chance to meet him--who would put up the balance of the money needed, provided that the paper would be willing to call at once for a strike of the Empire employees. Could that promise be made? And Comrade Mary Allen laughed, indicating her scorn for anybody who could cherish a doubt on that question!

Comrade Mary was a Quaker; she loved all mankind with religious fervour--and it is astonishing how bitter people can become in the cause of universal love. Her sharp, pale face flushed, and her thin lips set, as she answered that the Worker would most surely fight the war-profiteers, so long as she was on the managing committee!

It was finally decided that Comrade Mary should call on Jerry Coleman in the morning, and satisfy herself that he really meant business; if so, she would get the full committee together on the following evening. The committee had authority to go ahead, as soon as the necessary fund was made up, so if Coleman was all right, there was no reason why the first issue of the paper should not appear next week. Comrade Jack Smith, a reporter on the Herald, the capitalist paper of Leesville, was to resign and become editor of the Worker, and he already had his editorials written--had been showing them about in the local for the past month!

Jimmie and Meissner set out for home, happy in the feeling that they had accomplished more for Socialism on that one night than in all the rest of their lives. But then, as they walked, there came suddenly a clamour of bells on the night air; a fire! They knew the signals, and counted the strokes, and made the discovery that it was in the neighbourhood of their own home! An engine went by on the gallop, with sparks streaming out behind, and they broke into a run.

Before they had gone a couple of blocks, they saw a glare in the sky, and their hearts were in their throats; poor Meissner panted that he had neglected to pay his last month's insurance!

But as they ran, in the ever-growing throng of people, they realized that the fire was too near for their own home; also, it was a bigger blaze than could have been made by any number of shacks. And presently there were shouts in the crowd, "It's the Empire! The Old Shops!" There came a hook and ladder truck, rushing by with shrieking siren, and then the fire-chief in his automobile with a fiercely clanging bell; they turned the corner, and far down the street before them was the building in which for four years Jimmie had tended the bolt-making machine. They saw that one whole end of it was a towering, leaping, sweeping pillar of flames!

CHAPTER V

JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER

I

Jimmie Higgins regarded with the utmost resentment the determination of the war to come to Leesville, in spite of all his labours to keep it out. Take the most preposterous thing you could imagine--the most idiotic thing on the face of the earth--take German spies! When Jimmie heard people talking about German spies, he laughed in their faces, he told them they were a bunch of fools, they belonged in the nursery; for Jimmie cla.s.sed German spies with goblins, witches and sea-serpents. And here suddenly the bewildered little man found himself in the midst of a German spy mania, the like of which he could never have dreamed!

Everybody seemed to take it for granted that the Empire Machine Shops had been burned by German agents; they just knew it, and by the time the fire was out they had a hundred various stories to support their conviction. The fire had leaped from place to place in a series of explosions; the watchman, who had pa.s.sed through the building only two minutes before, had rushed back and seen blazing gasolene, and had almost lost his life in the sweep of the flames.

And next morning the Leesville Herald was out with letters half a foot high, telling these tales and insisting that the plant had been full of German agents, disguised as working men.

Before the day was by the police had arrested a dozen perfectly harmless German and Austrian labourers; at least that was the way it seemed to Jimmie, because of the fact that two of the men were members of the Socialist local. Somebody told Mrs. Meissner that all the Germans in Leesville were to be arrested, and the poor woman was trembling with terror. She wanted her husband to run away, but Jimmie persuaded them that this would be the worst possible course; so Meissner stayed in the house, and Jimmie kept his mouth shut for three whole days--an extraordinary feat for him, and a trial more severe than being in gaol.

He had lost his job--for ever, he thought. But in this again he misjudged the forces which had taken his life in their grip--the power of the gold which had come to Leesville by way of Russia. The day after the fire he received word to report for work again; old man Granitch was so anxious to keep his workers out of the clutches of the Hubbard Engine Company that he put them all, skilled and unskilled, at the job of clearing away the debris of the fire! And five days later came the first carloads of new material, brought on motor-trucks, and the rebuilding of the Empire Shops began. Would you believe it--some of the machinery which had not been damaged too much in the fire was fixed up, and at the end of a couple of weeks was starting up again, covered by a temporary canvas shelter, and with the walls of the new building rising round it!

That was the kind of thing which made America the marvel of the world. It had made old man Granitch young again, people said; he worked twenty hours a day in his shirt-sleeves, and the increase in his profanity was appalling. Even Lacey Granitch, his dashing son, quitted the bright lights of Broadway and came home to help the old man keep his contracts. The enthusiasm for these contracts became as it were the religion of Leesville; it spread even to the ranks of labour, so that Jimmie found himself like a man in a surf, struggling to keep his feet against an undertow.

II

The plans for the Worker were delayed, for the reason that when Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, went to look for Jerry Coleman the day after the fire, that dispenser of ten dollar bills had mysteriously disappeared. It was a week before he showed up again; and meantime fresh events had taken place, both in the local and outside. To begin with the latter, as presumably the more important, an English pa.s.senger liner, the pride of the Atlantic fleet, loaded to the last cabin with American millionaires, was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine. More than a thousand men, women and children went down, and the deed sent a shudder of horror through the civilized world. At the meeting of Local Leesville, which happened to take place the evening afterward, it proved a difficult matter to get business started.

The members stood about and argued. What could you say about a government that ordered a crime like that? What could you say about a naval officer who would carry out such an order? Thus Comrade Norwood, the young lawyer; and Schneider, the brewer, answered that the German government had done everything that any reasonable man could ask. It had published a notice in the New York papers, to the effect that the vessel was subject to attack, and that anyone who travelled on her would do so at his peril. If women and children would ride on munition-ships--

"Munition-ships?" cried Norwood; and then Schneider pointed to a news-dispatch, to the effect that the Lusitania had had on board a shipment of cartridge-cases.

"A fine lot of munitions!" jeered the lawyer.

Well, was the reply, what were cartridge-cases for, if not to kill Germans? The Germans had been attacked by the whole world, and they had to defend themselves. When you looked at Comrade Schneider, you saw a man who felt himself attacked by the whole world; his face was red up to the roots of his hair, and he was ready to defend himself with any weapon he could get hold of.

Comrade Koeln, a big gla.s.s-blower, broke into the discussion. The German government was authority for the statement that the Lusitania had been armed with guns. And when Norwood hooted at this, every German in the room was up in arms. What did he have to disprove it?

The word of the British government! Was not "perfidious Albion" a byword!

"The thing that beats me," declared the young lawyer, "is the way you Germans stand up for the Kaiser now, when before the war you couldn't find enough bad things to say about him."

"What beats me," countered Schneider, "is how you Americans stand up for King George. Every newspaper in Wall Street howling for America to go into the war--just because some millionaires got killed!"

"You don't seem to realize that the greater number of the men who lost their lives on that ship were working men!"

"Ho! Ho!" hooted Comrade Stankewitz. "Vall Street loves so the vorking men!"

Comrade Mary Allen, who loved all men, took up the argument. If those working men had been killed in a mine disaster, caused by criminal carelessness and greed for profits; if they had died of some industrial disease which might easily have been prevented; if they had been burned in a factory without fire-escapes--n.o.body in Wall Street would have wanted to go to war. And, of course, every Socialist considered this was true; every Socialist saw quite clearly that the enormity of the Lusitania sinking lay in the fact that it had reached and injured the privileged people, the people who counted, who got their names in the papers and were not supposed to be inconvenienced, even by war. So it was possible for Jimmie Higgins, even though shocked by what the Germans had done, to be irritated by the fuss which the Wall Street newspapers made.

Young Emil Forster spoke, and they listened to him, as they always did. It was a quarrel, he said--and as usual in quarrels, both sides had their rights and wrongs. You had to balance a few English and American babies against the millions of German babies which the British government intended to starve. It was British sea-power maintaining itself--and of course controlling most of the channels of publicity. It appealed to what it called "law"--that is to say, the customs it had found convenient in the past. British cruisers were able to visit and search vessels, and to take off their crews; but submarines could not do that, so what the British clamour about "law" amounted to was an attempt to keep Germany from using her only weapon. After all, ask yourself honestly if it was any worse to drown people quickly than to starve them slowly.

And then came "Wild Bill". This wrangling over German and British gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves, when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again--that vas vy he hated var, it divided the vorkers. There was nothing you could say for var. But "Wild Bill" smiled his crooked smile. There were several things you could say. War gave the workers guns, and taught them to use them; how would it be if some day they turned these guns about and fought their own battles?

III

Comrade Gerrity now took the chair and made an effort to get things started. The minutes of the last meeting were read, new members were voted on, and then Comrade Mary Allen rose to report for the Worker committee. The fund had been completed, the first number of the paper was to appear next week, and it was now up to every member of the local to get up on his toes and hustle as never in his life before. Comrade Mary, with her thin, eager face of a religious zealot, made everyone share her fervour.

All save Lawyer Norwood. Since the retirement of Dr. Service he was the chief pro-ally trouble-maker, and he now made a little speech.

He had been agreeably surprised to learn that the money had been raised so quickly; but then certain uncomfortable doubts having occurred to him, he had made inquiries and found there was some mystery about the matter. It was stated that the new paper was to demand a general strike in the Empire; and of course everybody knew there were powerful and sinister forces now interested in promoting strikes in munition factories.

"Wild Bill" was on his feet in an instant. Had the comrade any objection to munition workers demanding the eight hour day?

"No," said Norwood, "of course not; but if we are going into a fight with other people, we surely ought to know who they are and what their purpose is. I have been informed--there seems to be a little hesitation in talking about it--that a lot of money has been put up by one man, and n.o.body knows who that man is."

"He's an organizer for the A. F. of L.!" The voice was Jimmie's. In his excitement the solemn pledge of secrecy was entirely forgotten!

"Indeed!" said Norwood. "What is his name?"

n.o.body answered.

"Has he shown his credentials?" Again silence.

"Of course, I don't need to tell men as familiar with union affairs as the comrades here that every bona-fide organizer for a union carries credentials. If he does not produce them, it is at least occasion for writing to the organization and finding out about him.

Has anybody done that?"

Again there was silence.