Mountain Part 19

"Now, really----"

"That's not asking too much."

"It is," the lips pursed grimly. "It's pledged, alas, to the Uplift of the Underdog, the Castigation of the Capitalist Canine, the Manufacture of the Millennium, the Fashioning of the Future's Fascinating Feminism----"

"Enough, enough! But to no single heart," in pleading insistence.

"Nor to no married one neither," she laughed.

"Content, i' faith! Now you may go home to single blessedness and that supper you thoughtlessly promised to grace." But Pelham wondered, more than once, whether the girl's last light retort had hidden a dig at his friendship with Dorothy. Well, Jane had said less than he deserved, at that.

The convention came closer and closer; and still Paul had not had time to prepare the speech, when the son made his requests. The work at the third ramp, and the planning of an opening on the newly purchased crests beyond, kept Pelham's hands exceptionally busy, so that he did not find much time to wonder at his failure to see the expected address.

Three days before the convention, Jane met him with a worried face.

"Something's rotten in the environs of the iron Copenhagen, Pelham. I learned about it from comrade Hernandez. One of the few socialist delegates, a Birrell-Florence miner named Jensen--I don't think you've met him--has been offered a direct bribe to oppose the mining bill.

Somebody's busy, that's sure."

"That does sound discouraging. Let's go over your mining reports, so that I can get the facts straight. I ought to understand the situation, at least."

They went over the figures together. He began to visualize what the cla.s.s struggle meant, here in the quiet, placid South. There had been four large mine explosions in the state the year before, the one at Flagg Mines killing a hundred and ninety-two----"And all of it useless, Pelham! The simplest mine safeguards----"

"The owners can't know of them!"

She shut her lips. "They cost something. Every cent cuts down profits.

It's cheaper to kill men."

"It's horrible!" In dejected impotence he clenched his hands. The unemotional rows of figures began to acquire a breathing significance.

His vivid imagination pictured mangled forms, the bursting h.e.l.l of explosions, the isolated horror of lonely accident and death, the pallid faces of starving mothers and babies, staining the broad margins of the cheap white paper.

She looked up from the pamphlets, her brows creased. Pelham smothered an impulse to kiss away the slight gravure of worry. "The West, bad as it is in some things, at least has modern laws and safeguards." An unmeant accusation drove in her tones. "The creaky old laws here are not even followed! When was the last inspection of your mines?"

"More than a month ago. The inspector wasn't very thorough, I noticed.

They were p.r.o.nounced safe."

"It ought to be done weekly, at least, beside a daily inspection by your forces. Gas can collect in the coal mines, flaws and cracks in the roofing anywhere--only close inspection will do.... And, then, think of the wages paid here! Can a man live--decently, I mean, so that he can send his children to school, and all, on what you pay? And Judge Florence gets seventy-five thousand salary--outside of his dividends."

"My father gets fifty."

"It's compulsory starvation and death for the ones who really produce the wealth.... We'll see what the convention does."

Pelham missed the opening sessions; but Jane gave him reports of the meetings she witnessed, supplemented by what Hernandez and Jensen told him. It was a heated gathering. Big John Pooley was accused outright of dishonest accounting, by one violent structural iron worker. The oily eloquence of Robert E. Lee Bivens smoothed this over. Each of the administration officials--"the boodle gang," as the noisy radical minority called them--was flayed; the editor of the _Voice of Labor_ received an especial lashing from Jensen, who charged him with deliberately selling out labor's paper to the corporations.

The machinery rolled smoothly. All protests were tombed in safely packed committees.

At last came the final night, with Paul's speech, and consideration of the mining bill afterward, as the only unfinished business.

Pooley, using his gavel vigorously, secured general quiet. He spoke of the honor paid by having as their distinguished visitor the wide-awake vice-president of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company. "Every act in his life marks Paul Judson as a friend of labor. Many of you do not know that he holds a union card--the printers elected him to honorary membership more than a year ago. He is one of us. His problems are our problems. He is turning the splendid force of his intellect to a solution of the labor question which will help employer and employee alike. A gentleman of sterling integrity, a leader among leaders----"

The fulsome eulogy continued for a quarter of an hour.

Jane, who sat beside Pelham, sniffed audibly at most of the speech. He had asked his mother to go with them; but she had been too busy planning a dance at the country club, which Paul was giving for Sue, to take the evening off. He would have Jane to look after, his mother reminded him.

The boy was irritated at his companion's att.i.tude. The glamor of the situation, with his father as the recognized champion of labor, fitted smoothly into his own rebellious dreams. With this support, he could achieve his rosiest plannings.

Paul rose to speak, alert, dignified, commanding.

He paid tribute to the audience, and to the hosts of labor they represented. They were particularly fortunate, he said, in their leadership; under the sane, conservative guidance of such men they were sure to reflect credit on the city, the state, the entire South.

"I believe in you. I believe in the work you are doing. You are the brawn and the backbone of our free white Anglo-Saxon democracy, the flower of the world's peoples. And the backbone"--he smiled embracingly--"is as necessary as the head; the brawn is as essential as the brain.

"There are some--socialists, anarchists, or whatever you choose to call them--who are working for a body without a head, brawn without a brain.

You can find such bodies in the morgue. The decapitated socialist state is a corpse."

There was a burst of applause at this. Pelham went chill all over, as he realized how unpopular socialism would be made to appear. And--his father speaking!

"We have pa.s.sed, as a people, out of the black gloom, our heritage from a red war of brother against brother, into the golden sunshine of a new day, a day of prosperity and plenty, an hour of progress and enlightenment. While the rest of the world is torn with war, peace is upon us; our products, sold to the warring world, a.s.sure an unprecedented prosperity to us. Beware lest the evil counselor, the plausible deceiver, the wily plotter creep in, and our ears lend attention to his seductive tones! This is no time for the disorganizer.

We, as well as you, are fighting for the best things of life--peace, freedom, and the welfare of every one, capitalist and laborer alike, and a whole-souled, complete understanding and brotherhood between all of us!"

The applause was noisily demonstrative. One delegate, who had attended too many sub-conventions in various bars, started down the aisle to shake the hand of "brother Judson." The vigorous pilotage of two ushers steered him into the safer harbor of the street.

After the interruption, Paul turned to his topic. "I favor state mining regulation--and the stricter the better, always conserving the full liberty of the individual to make his free contract. That present joke at Jackson--that so-called mining law, which would bankrupt every mine owner, and drive into unemployment and starvation every mine employee in the state--I know that none of you can be so blind to your own interest as to favor it.

"I hope that you will go on record as favoring a sane, reasonable law--one protecting your employer's profit, so that your wages will be safe."

He branched into a technical discussion of the flaws of the law, emphasizing what labor would lose in every case if the proposed changes were made. There were growls of dissent from some quarters--even Pelham, sick at heart, hissed one of his statements; but the applause overwhelmed the disagreement. Benignant John Pooley, seated at the speaker's right, led the handclapping at every pause.

"It's up to you," Paul's tones sharpened, grew crisper. "You have it in your power to go on record against it, or for it. If against it, you a.s.sure a continuation of the present helpful and hopeful laws--not perfect, by any means, but laws which will be constantly bettered by an intelligent legislature, representative of the whole people. Or you can favor it--and thereby favor, instead of prosperity and progress, bankruptcy for the owners, spiritual bankruptcy for its supporters, and, worse than all, a wide-spread business depression, which will force capital elsewhere, slow down and stop the wheels of industry, drive the storekeepers out of business, and drag your own wives and families into want, poverty, ultimate degradation and death.

"The smoke from those mining settlements and furnace stacks upon the mountain above our iron city is the symbol of life--life for all of us.

It is the pillar of smoke by day, the cloud of fire by night. This bill"--and he pointed an imperative finger first at the chairman, and then over the audience--"this bill will clear the sky of that smoke, and leave those mines and furnaces to rot and rust into sc.r.a.p-iron. Take your choice. I believe that you cannot fail to take the wise, the sane, the brotherly, the prosperous way, for all of us, for Adamsville and the nation."

Before he could settle into his chair, and while the applause thundered at its fullest, Jensen was on his feet, shouting a demand that the chair recognize him. Pooley blandly motioned him again and again into his seat. The applause persisted.

"A question, Mr. Chairman! A question, Mr. Chairman!"

The president could ignore him no longer. "Delegate Jensen."

"Will the speaker answer a question?"

Paul, suave and collected, smilingly consented.

"Isn't it a fact that"--Jensen's voice choked in his throat, in his mad eagerness to make his point--"that the mine safeguards here are behind every state in the union? That the men are paid less, and suffer more accidents? How can there be harmony between capital and labor? Don't we both want the same thing?" His words crowded over each other; his growing incoherence was unintelligible to most of the audience. He waved a pamphlet at the speaker. "I have in my hand the latest federal mining report----"

"Aw, hire a hall, Swedey!" an ugly-faced satellite of Pooley's cut in.

The audience laughed, releasing tense feelings.

"I will do my best to answer the questions," Paul began. He picked up a paper from the desk before him. "I have here the report referred to. It is a fact that the monetary wage here is slightly lower than in most states. But the purchasing price of money is almost twice that in some Western states."