John Marvel, Assistant Part 43

Langton actually looked pleased; but I could not tell whether it was because his warning had been verified or because I had escaped.

"'T was that other skunk," muttered Talman sullenly.

"Who? Dutch?"

The footpad coughed. "Don' know who 'twas."

"You don't? You don't know who I am either?"

The man gave him a keen look of inspection, but he evidently did not know him. Langton leaned over and dropped his voice. "Did you ever know--?" I could not catch the name. But the thug's eyes popped and he turned white under his dirt.

"I didn't have nothin' 't all to do with it. I was in Canady," he faltered.

Langton's eyes suddenly snapped. "I know where you were. This gentleman's a friend of mine," he said. "He saved my life once, and if you ever touch him, I'll have you--" He made a gesture with his hand to his throat. "Understand? And not all the bosses in the city will save you. Understand?"

"I ain't goin' to touch him. I got nothin' against him."

"You'd better not have," said Langton, implacably. "Come here." He took him out into the doctor's front office and talked to him for some little time while I told the doctor of my adventure.

"Who is Langton when he is at home?" I asked him.

He chuckled. "He is the best man for you to have in this city if Coll McSheen is your enemy. He is a retainer of Mr. Leigh's."

Just then Langton and the thug came in.

"Say, I'm sorry I took a hand in that job," said the latter. "But that skunk that runned away, he put 't up, and he said 's another friend of his got him to do it."

"Coll McSheen?"

"I don't know who 'twas," he persisted.

I glanced at Langton, and he just nodded.

"Good-by. If ever you wants a job done----"

"Get out," said Langton.

"Don't you give 't to that other skunk. I didn't know. Good-by. Obliged to you." And he pa.s.sed through the door which Langton held open for him.

"It's all right," said the latter as he closed the door. "You had a close graze--that's one of the worst criminals in the country. He don't generally bungle a job. But he's all right now. But there are others."

"My dog saved my life--he got his throat."

"That's a good dog. Better keep him close to you for a while."

XXVII

THE SHADOW

A great factory with the machinery all working and revolving with absolute and rhythmic regularity and with the men all driven by one impulse and moving in unison as though a const.i.tuent part of the mighty machine, is one of the most inspiring examples of directed force that the world shows. I have rarely seen the face of a mechanic in the act of creation which was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive.

Such were the men, some hundreds of them, whom I used to gaze at and admire and envy through the open windows of several great factories and mills along the street through which lay my way to my office. I chose this street for the pleasure of seeing them of a morning, as with bared and brawny arms and chests and shining brows, eager and earnest and bold, they bent over glowing fires and flaming furnaces and rolled ma.s.sive red-hot irons. .h.i.ther and yon, tossing them about, guiding them in their rush and swing and whirl, as though they were very sons of Vulcan, and ever with a catch of song or a jest, though a swerve of the fraction of an inch might mean death itself.

I had come to know some of them well, that is, as well as a man in a good coat can know men in a workman's blouse, and numbers of them I began to know in a sort, as day after day I fell in beside them on their way to or from their work; for, lawyer and gentleman as I was, they, I think, felt in me the universal touch of brotherhood. We used to talk together, and I found them human to the core and most intelligent.

Wolffert was an idol among them. They looked to him as to a champion.

"He has learned," said one of them to me once, "the secret of getting at us. He takes us man for man and don't herd us like cattle. He speaks to me on a level, man to man, and don't patronize me."

He was a strong-visaged, clear-eyed Teuton with a foreign accent.

"We haf our own home," he said with pride, "and the building company is 'most off my back. If we can but keep at vork we'll soon be safe, and the young ones are all at school. The sun shines bright after the storm," he added with a shake of his strong head.

"Ah, well, we are having good times now. The sun is shining for many of us. Let us pray that it may keep shining."

"G.o.d grant it," he said, solemnly.

I was thinking of Miss Eleanor Leigh and the way she had smiled the last time Heaven had favored me with a sight of her. That was sunshine enough for me. She had heard of the attack on me and had been so sympathetic that I had almost courted her again on the spot. John Marvel had made me out quite a hero.

The good times, however, of which my mill-friends and I talked were rapidly pa.s.sing. In Coll McSheen's offices plans were being laid which were to blot out the sun for many a poor family.

Within a day or two I began to observe in the press ominous notices of an approaching strike. All the signs, it was declared, pointed to it.

Meetings were being held, and the men were rapidly getting out of hand of their conservative leaders, who, it being on the verge of winter, were averse to their undertaking the strike at this time, notwithstanding what they admitted were their undoubted and long-standing grievances. As I ran over the accounts in many of the papers I was surprised to find that among these "conservatives" was mentioned the name of Wringman. It was evident, however, that the efforts of the conservative element were meeting with success; for in the workingmen's section through which I pa.s.sed every day there was not as yet the least sign of excitement of any kind, or, indeed, of any dissatisfaction. The railway men all appeared quiet and contented, and the force in the several large factories along my route whom I mingled with in my tramp back and forth from my office were not only free from moroseness, but were easy and happy. The only strikes going on in the city were those on the lines in which the Argand interests were, and they were frequently spoken of as "chronic."

The mills were all running as usual; work was going on; but a shadow was deepening over the community of the operatives. The strike which the newspapers had been prophesying for some time was decreed--not yet, indeed, by the proper authorities; but it was determined on by the leaders, and its shadow was darkening the entire section. The first knowledge I had of it was the gloom that appeared on the countenances of the men I saw in the morning. And when I met Wolffert he was more downcast than I had seen him in a long time. He had been working night and day to stave off the trouble.

"The poor fools!" was all he could say. "They are the victims of their ignorance."

From my earliest arrival in the city I had been aware of something about the laboring element--something connected with the Union, yet different from what I had been accustomed to elsewhere. I had ever been an advocate of the union of workingmen to protect themselves against the tyranny and insolence of those who, possibly by fortuitous circ.u.mstances, were their employers. I had seen the evil of the uncurbed insolence added to the unlimited power of the boss to take on or to fling off whom he pleased and, while the occupation lasted, to give or reduce wages as he pleased. And I had seen the tyrannous exercise of this power--had seen men turned off for nothing but the whim of a superior; had seen them hacked about; ordered around as if they had been beasts of burden, and if they ever murmured, told to go elsewhere, as though a poor man with a family of children could "go elsewhere" at an hour's notice; hundreds of men, thousands of men "laid off," because, it was said, "times were dull," though the returns from their work in good times had made their employers rich beyond anything their fathers had ever dreamed of. And I had witnessed with that joy that a man feels in seeing justice meted out, the rise of a power able to exact, if not complete, at least, measurable justice for the down-trodden.

But here was something different. It was still the Union; but bore a new complexion and a different relation alike to the workingman, the employer, and the public. It was a strange power and its manifestation was different. It was not in active exercise when I first went among the workingmen. Yet it was ever present. A cloud appeared to hang over the population; there was a feeling that a volcano, as yet quiet, might burst forth at any time, and no man could tell what the end might be. It was ever in men's minds, not only the workingmen's, but the tradesmen's, the middlemen's. It appeared to keep on edge a keen antagonism between all laboring men as such and all other men. It was nearer and more important than politics or religion. It had entered into their lives and created a power which they feared and obeyed. To a considerable extent it had taken away their liberties, and their lives were regulated by their relation to it. I saw the growth of the system and was mystified by it, for I saw individuality and personal liberty pa.s.sing away--men deliberately abandoning their most cherished privileges to submit to a yoke that was being put on them. I noted the decline of excellence in the individual's work and of ambition for excellence in himself--the decay of the standard of good workmanship. I marked the mere commercial question of wages--higher wages irrespective of better work--take the place of the old standard of improved workmanship and witnessed the commercialism which in large figures had swept over the employer cla.s.s, now creep over and engulf the laboring cla.s.s to the destruction of all fine ambition and the reduction of excellence to a dead level of indifferent mediocrity. They deliberately surrendered individual liberty and all its possibilities and became the bondmen of a tyrannous dictator which they set up.

I was familiar with the loafer and the shirker. He is incident to humanity. He exists in every calling and rank of life. But it was novel to me to find an entire cla.s.s deliberately loafing and shirking and slurring on principle. I saw gangs of workmen waiting around, shivering in the wind, for the hour to come when they might take up the tools which lay at hand with which they might have warmed themselves. I saw them on the stroke, drop those tools as though the wave of sound had paralyzed their arms. I saw them leave the stone half set, the rivet half driven, the bar half turned; the work, whatever it was, half done.

I saw bright, alert, intelligent men, whose bodies were twice and their brains ten times as active as their fellows', do double work in the same time as the latter and then dawdle and loaf and yawn empty-handed beside the unfinished work with which they might readily have doubled their income. I asked some of my friends why it was and the answer was always the same: "the Union."

A strike was going on on the other side of the town, but the direct results were not yet felt among us, and as the enterprises there where the trouble existed were in conflict with those on our side, and therefore our rivals, it did not appear likely that we should be affected except possibly to our advantage. The population of our section, therefore, looked on and discussed the troubles with the placid satisfaction of men who, secure on land, discuss and commiserate those tossed by storms far off, whose existence is known only by the long surges that with spent force roll against their sh.o.r.e. They enjoyed their own good fortune, rejoiced in the good times, and to a considerable extent spent their earnings like children, almost indifferent as to the future.

XXVIII

THE WALKING DELEGATE

Miss Eleanor Leigh had observed for some time that her father was more than usually grave and preoccupied. She knew the cause, for her father discussed many matters with her. It was often his way of clarifying his own views. And when he asked her what she thought of them she felt that it was the highest compliment she ever received--not that he took her advice, she knew, but this did not matter; he had consulted her. The fact gave her a self-reliance wholly different from mere conceit. It steadied her and furnished her a certain atmosphere of calm in which she formed her judgment in other matters. Of late, in the shadow of the clash with his operatives, which appeared to be growing more and more imminent, he had not advised with her as formerly and the girl felt it.