Philip Dru: Administrator Part 4

THE STORY OF THE LEVINSKYS

As soon as public attention was brought to Philip in such a generous way, he received many offers to write for the press and magazines, and also to lecture.

He did not wish to draw upon his father's slender resources, and yet he must needs do something to meet his living expenses, for during the months of his inactivity, he had drawn largely upon the small sum which he had saved from his salary.

The Strawns were insistent that he should continue to make their home his own, but this he was unwilling to do. So he rented an inexpensive room over a small hardware store in the East Side tenement district. He thought of getting in one of the big, evil-smelling tenement houses so that he might live as those he came to help lived, but he abandoned this because he feared he might become too absorbed in those immediately around him.

What he wanted was a broader view. His purpose was not so much to give individual help as to formulate some general plan and to work upon those lines.

And yet he wished an intimate view of the things he meant to devote his life to bettering. So the clean little room over the quiet hardware store seemed to suit his wants.

The thin, sharp-featured Jew and his fat, homely wife who kept it had lived in that neighborhood for many years, and Philip found them a mine of useful information regarding the things he wished to know.

The building was narrow and but three stories high, and his landlord occupied all of the second story save the one room which was let to Philip.

He arranged with Mrs. Levinsky to have his breakfast with them. He soon learned to like the Jew and his wife. While they were kind-hearted and sympathetic, they seldom permitted their sympathy to encroach upon their purse, but this Philip knew was a matter of environment and early influence. He drew from them one day the story of their lives, and it ran like this:

Ben Levinsky's forebears had long lived in Warsaw. From father to son, from one generation to another, they had handed down a bookshop, which included bookbinding in a small way. They were self-educated and widely read. Their customers were largely among the gentiles and for a long time the anti-semitic waves pa.s.sed over them, leaving them untouched.

They were law-abiding, inoffensive, peaceable citizens, and had been for generations.

One bleak December day, at a market place in Warsaw, a young Jew, baited beyond endurance, struck out madly at his aggressors, and in the general melee that followed, the son of a high official was killed. No one knew how he became involved in the brawl, for he was a sober, high-minded youngster, and very popular. Just how he was killed and by whom was never known. But the Jew had struck the first blow and that was all sufficient for the blood of hate to surge in the eyes of the race-mad mob.

Then began a blind, unreasoning ma.s.sacre. It all happened within an hour. It was as if after nightfall a tornado had come out of the west, and without warning had torn and twisted itself through the city, leaving ruin and death in its wake. No Jew that could be found was spared. Saul Levinsky was sitting in his shop looking over some books that had just come from the binder. He heard shots in the distance and the dull, angry roar of the hoa.r.s.e-voiced mob. He closed his door and bolted it, and went up the little stairs leading to his family quarters.

His wife and six-year-old daughter were there. Ben, a boy of ten, had gone to a n.o.bleman's home to deliver some books, and had not returned.

Levinsky expected the mob to pa.s.s his place and leave it unmolested. It stopped, hesitated and then rammed in the door. It was all over in a moment. Father, mother and child lay dead and torn almost limb from limb. The rooms were wrecked, and the mob moved on.

The tempest pa.s.sed as quickly as it came, and when little Ben reached his home, the street was as silent as the grave.

With quivering lip and uncertain feet he picked his way from room to room until he came to what were once his father, mother and baby sister, and then he swooned away. When he awoke he was shivering with cold. For a moment he did not realize what had happened, then with a heartbreaking cry he fled the place, nor did he stop until he was a league away.

He crept under the sheltering eaves of a half-burned house, and cold and miserable he sobbed himself to sleep. In the morning an itinerant tinker came by and touched by the child's distress, drew from him his unhappy story. He was a lonely old man, and offered to take Ben with him, an offer which was gladly accepted.

We will not chronicle the wanderings of these two in pursuit of food and shelter, for it would take too long to tell in sequence how they finally reached America, of the tinker's death, and of the evolution of the tinker's pack to the well ordered hardware shop over which Philip lived.

CHAPTER IX

PHILIP BEGINS A NEW CAREER

After sifting the offers made him, Philip finally accepted two, one from a large New York daily that syndicated throughout the country, and one from a widely read magazine, to contribute a series of twelve articles.

Both the newspaper and the magazine wished to dictate the subject matter about which he was to write, but he insisted upon the widest lat.i.tude.

The sum paid, and to be paid, seemed to him out of proportion to the service rendered, but he failed to take into account the value of the advertising to those who had secured the use of his pen.

He accepted the offers not alone because he must needs do something for a livelihood, but largely for the good he thought he might do the cause to which he was enlisted. He determined to write upon social subjects only, though he knew that this would be a disappointment to his publishers. He wanted to write an article or two before he began his permanent work, for if he wrote successfully, he thought it would add to his influence. So he began immediately, and finished his first contribution to the syndicate newspapers in time for them to use it the following Sunday.

He told in a simple way, the story of the Turners. In conclusion he said the rich and the well-to-do were as a rule charitable enough when distress came to their doors, but the trouble was that they were unwilling to seek it out. They knew that it existed but they wanted to come in touch with it as little as possible.

They smothered their consciences with the thought that there were organized societies and other mediums through which all poverty was reached, and to these they gave. They knew that this was not literally true, but it served to make them think less badly of themselves.

_In a direct and forceful manner, he pointed out that our civilization was fundamentally wrong inasmuch as among other things, it restricted efficiency; that if society were properly organized, there would be none who were not sufficiently clothed and fed; that the laws, habits and ethical training in vogue were alike responsible for the inequalities in opportunity and the consequent wide difference between the few and the many; that the result of such conditions was to render inefficient a large part of the population, the percentage differing in each country in the ratio that education and enlightened and unselfish laws bore to ignorance, bigotry and selfish laws._ But little progress, he said, had been made in the early centuries for the reason that opportunity had been confined to a few, and it was only recently that any considerable part of the world's population had been in a position to become efficient; and mark the result. Therefore, he argued, as an economical proposition, divorced from the realm of ethics, the far- sighted statesmen of to-morrow, if not of to-day, will labor to the end that every child born of woman may have an opportunity to accomplish that for which it is best fitted. Their bodies will be properly clothed and fed at the minimum amount of exertion, so that life may mean something more than a mere struggle for existence. Humanity as a whole will then be able to do its share towards the conquest of the complex forces of nature, and there will be brought about an intellectual and spiritual quickening that will make our civilization of to-day seem as crude, as selfish and illogical as that of the dark ages seem now to us.

Philip's article was widely read and was the subject of much comment, favorable and otherwise. There were the ever-ready few, who want to re- make the world in a day, that objected to its moderation, and there were his more numerous critics who hold that to those that have, more should be given. These considered his doctrine dangerous to the general welfare, meaning their own welfare. But upon the greater number it made a profound impression, and it awakened many a sleeping conscience as was shown by the hundreds of letters which he received from all parts of the country. All this was a tremendous encouragement to the young social worker, for the letters he received showed him that he had a definite public to address, whom he might lead if he could keep his medium for a time at least. Naturally, the publishers of the newspaper and magazine for which he wrote understood this, but they also understood that it was usually possible to control intractable writers after they had acquired a taste for publicity, and their att.i.tude was for the time being one of general enthusiasm and liberality tempered by such trivial attempts at control as had already been made.

No sooner had he seen the first story in print than he began formulating his ideas for a second. This, he planned, would be a companion piece to that of the Turners which was typical of the native American family driven to the East Side by the inevitable workings of the social order, and would take up the problem of the foreigner immigrating to this country, and its effect upon our national life. In this second article he incorporated the story of the Levinskys as being fairly representative of the problem he wished to treat.

In preparing these articles, Philip had used his eyes for the first time in such work, and he was pleased to find no harm came of it. The oculist still cautioned moderation, but otherwise dismissed him as fully recovered.

CHAPTER X

GLORIA DECIDES TO PROSELYTE THE RICH

While Philip was establishing himself in New York, as a social worker and writer, Gloria was spending more and more of her time in settlement work, in spite of the opposition of her family. Naturally, their work brought them much into each other's society, and drew them even closer together than in Philip's dark days when Gloria was trying to aid him in the readjustment of his life. They were to all appearances simply comrades in complete understanding, working together for a common cause.

However, Strawn's opposition to Gloria's settlement work was not all impersonal, for he made no secret of his worry over Gloria's evident admiration for Dru. Strawn saw in Philip a masterly man with a prodigious intellect, bent upon accomplishing a revolutionary adjustment of society, and he knew that nothing would deter him from his purpose.

The magnitude of the task and the uncertainties of success made him fear that Gloria might become one of the many unhappy women who suffer martyrdom through the greatness of their love.

Gloria's mother felt the same way about her daughter's companion in settlement work. Mrs. Strawn was a placid, colorless woman, content to go the conventional way, without definite purpose, further than to avoid the rougher places in life.

She was convinced that men were placed here for the sole purpose of shielding and caring for women, and she had a contempt for any man who refused or was unable to do so.

Gloria's extreme advanced views of life alarmed her and seemed unnatural. She protested as strongly as she could, without upsetting her equanimity, for to go beyond that she felt was unladylike and bad for both nerves and digestion. It was a grief for her to see Gloria actually working with anyone, much less Philip, whose theories were quite upsetting, and who, after all, was beyond the pale of their social sphere and was impossible as a son-in-law.

Consequently, Philip was not surprised when one day in the fall, he received a disconsolate note from Gloria who was spending a few weeks with her parents at their camp in the hills beyond Tuxedo, saying that her father had flatly refused to allow her to take a regular position with one of the New York settlements, which would require her living on the East Side instead of at home. The note concluded:

"Now, Philip, do come up for Sunday and let's talk it over, for I am sadly at variance with my family, and I need your a.s.sistance and advice.

"Your very sincere,

"GLORIA."

The letter left Dru in a strangely disturbed state of mind, and all during the trip up from New York his thoughts were on Gloria and what the future would bring forth to them both.

On the afternoon following his arrival at the camp, as he and the young woman walked over the hills aflame with autumnal splendor, Gloria told of her bitter disappointment. The young man listened in sympathy, but after a long pause in which she saw him weighing the whole question in his mind, he said: "Well, Gloria, so far as your work alone is concerned, there is something better that you can do if you will. The most important things to be done now are not amongst the poor but amongst the rich. There is where you may become a forceful missionary for good. All of us can reach the poor, for they welcome us, but there are only a few who think like you, who can reach the rich and powerful.

"Let that be your field of endeavor. Do your work gently and with moderation, so that some at least may listen. If we would convince and convert, we must veil our thoughts and curb our enthusiasm, so that those we would influence will think us reasonable."

"Well, Philip," answered Gloria, "if you really think I can help the cause, of course--"

"I'm sure you can help the cause. A lack of understanding is the chief obstacle, but, Gloria, you know that this is not an easy thing for me to say, for I realize that it will largely take you out of my life, for my path leads in the other direction.

"It will mean that I will no longer have you as a daily inspiration, and the sordidness and loneliness will press all the harder, but we have seen the true path, and now have a clearer understanding of the meaning and importance of our work."