The Cup of Fury Part 66

She was lovingly entreated by many a dear woman, but she was snubbed and slandered by others who were as extravagant, indolent, and immoral as the wives and daughters of the rich.

But all in all, the ship-builders loafed horribly in spite of the poetic inspiration of their calling and the prestige of public laudation; in spite of the appeals for hulls to carry food to the starving and troops to the anxious battle-front of Europe. In spite also of the highest wages ever paid to a craft, they kept their efficiency at a lower point than lower paid workmen averaged in the listless pre-war days. Yet there was no lack of outcry that the workman was throttled and enslaved by the greed of capital. There was no lack of outcry that profiteers were bleeding the nation to death and making martyrs of the poor.

Most of the capitalists had been workmen themselves and had risen from the lethargic ma.s.s by the simple expedient of using their brains for schemes and making their muscles produce more than the average output.

The laborers who failed failed because when they got their eight-hour day they did not turn their leisure to production. And some of them dared to claim that the manual toilers alone produced the wealth and should alone be permitted to enjoy it, as if it were possible or desirable to choke off initiative and adventure or to devise a society in which the man whose ambition is to avoid work will set the pace for the man who loves it for itself and whose discontent goads him on to self-improvement! As if it were possible or desirable for the man who works half-heartedly eight hours a day to keep down the man who works whole-souledly eighteen hours a day! For time is power.

Even the benefits the modern laborer enjoys are largely the result of intervention in his behalf by successful men of enterprise who thrust upon the toiler the comforts, the safeguards, and the very privileges he will not or cannot seek for himself.

During the war the employers of labor, the generals of these tremendous armies, were everlastingly alert to find some means to stimulate them to do themselves justice. The best artists of the country devised eloquent posters, and these were stuck up everywhere, reminding the laborer that he was the partner of the soldier. Orators visited the yards and harangued the men. After each appeal there was a brief spurt of enthusiasm that showed what miracles could be accomplished if they had not lapsed almost at once into the usual sullen drudgery.

There were appeals to thrift also. The government needed billions of dollars, needed them so badly that the pennies of the poorest man must be sought for. Few of the workmen had the faintest idea of saving. The wives of some of them were humbly provident, but many of them were debt-runners in the shops and wasters in the kitchens.

A gigantic effort was put forth to teach the American people thrift.

The idea of making small investments in government securities was something new. Bonds were supposed to be for bankers and plutocrats.

Vast campaigns of education were undertaken, and the rich implored the poor to lay aside something for a rainy day. The rich invented schemes to wheedle the poor to their own salvation. So huge had been the wastefulness before that the new fashion produced billions upon billions of investments in Liberty Bonds, and hundreds of millions in War Savings Stamps.

Bands of missionaries went everywhere, to the theaters, the moving-picture houses, the schools, the shops, the factories, preaching the new gospel of good business and putting it across in the name of patriotism.

One of these troupes of crusaders marched upon Davidge's shipyard. And with it came Nicky Easton at last.

Easton had deferred his advent so long that Mamise and Davidge had come almost to yearn for him with heartsick eagerness. The first inkling of the prodigal's approach was a visit that Jake Nuddle paid to Mamise late one evening. She had never broached to him the matter of her talk with Easton, waiting always for him to speak of it to her.

She was amazed to see him now, and he brought amazement with him.

"I just got a call on long distance," he said, "and a certain party tells me you was one of us all this time. Why didn't you put a feller wise?"

Mamise was inspired to answer his reproach with a better: "Because I don't trust you, Jake. You talk too much."

This robbed Jake of his bl.u.s.ter and convinced him that the elusive Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining majesty. Mamise liked him even less in this role than the other.

She took his information with a languid indifference, as if the terrifying news were simply a tiresome confirmation of what she had long expected. Jake was tremulous with excitement and approval.

"Well, well, who'd 'a' thought our little Mamise was one of them slouch-hounds you read about? I see now why you've been stringin' that Davidge b.o.o.b along. You got him eatin' out your hand. And I see now why you put them jumpers on and went out into the yards. You just got to know everything, ain't you?"

Mamise nodded and smiled felinely, as she imagined a queen of mystery would do. But as soon as she could get rid of Jake she was like a child alone in a graveyard.

Jake had told her that Nicky would be down in a few days, and not to be surprised when he appeared. She wanted to get the news to Davidge, but she dared not go to his rooms so late. And in the morning she was due at her job of pa.s.sing rivets. She crept into bed to rest her dog-tired bones against the morrow's problems. Her dreams were all of death and destruction, and of steel ships crumpled like b.a.l.l.s of paper thrown into a waste-basket.

If she had but known it, Davidge was making the rounds of his sentry-line. The guard at one gate was sound asleep. He found two others playing cards, and a fourth man dead drunk.

Inside the yards the great hulls rose up to the moon like the b.u.t.tresses of a cliff. Only, they were delicately vulnerable, and Europe waited for them.

CHAPTER IV

True sleep came to Mamise so late that her alarm-clock could hardly awaken her. It took all her speed to get her to her post. She dared not keep Sutton waiting, and fear of the time-clock had become a habit with her. As she caught the gleaming rivets and thrust them into their sconces, she wondered if all this toil were merely a waste of effort to give the sarcastic G.o.ds another laugh at human folly.

She wanted to find Davidge and took at last the desperate expedient of pretended sickness. The pa.s.ser-boy Snotty was found to replace her, and she hurried to Davidge's office.

Miss Gabus stared at her and laughed. "Tired of your rivetin' a'ready?

Come to get your old job back?"

Mamise shook her head and asked for Davidge. He was out--no, not out of town, but out in the yard or the shop or up in the mold-loft or somewheres, she reckoned.

Mamise set out to find him, and on the theory that among places to look for anything or anybody the last should be first she climbed the long, long stairs to the mold-loft.

He was not among the acolytes kneeling at the templates; nor was he in the cathedral of the shop. She sought him among the ships, and came upon him at last talking to Jake Nuddle, of all people!

Nuddle saw Mamise first and winked, implying that he also was making a fool of Davidge. Davidge looked sheepish, as he always did when he was caught in a benevolent act.

"I was just talking to your brother-in-law, Miss Webling," he said, "trying to drive a few rivets into that loose skull. I don't want to fire him, on your account, but I don't see why I should pay an I. W.

W. or a Bolshevist to poison my men."

Davidge had been alarmed by the indifference of his sentinels. He thought it imbecile to employ men like Nuddle to corrupt the men within, while the guards admitted any wanderer from without. He was making a last attempt to convert Nuddle to industry for Mamise's sake, trying to pluck this dingy brand from the burning.

"I was just showing Nuddle a little bookkeeping in patriotism," he said. "The Liberty Loan people are coming here, and I want the yard to do itself proud. Some of the men and women are going without necessities to help the government, while Nuddle and some others are working for the Kaiser. This is the record of Nuddle and his crew:

"'Wages, six to ten dollars a day guaranteed by the government.

Investment in Liberty Bonds, nothing; purchases of War Savings Stamps, nothing; contributions to Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., K. of C., J. W. B., Salvation Army, nothing; contributions to relief funds of the Allies, nothing. Time spent at drill, none; time spent in helping recruiting, none. A clean sheet, and a sheet full of time spent in interfering with other men's work, sneering at patriotism, saying the Kaiser is no worse than the Allies, pretending that this is a war to please the capitalists, and that a soldier is a fool.'

"In other words, Nuddle, you are doing the Germans' business, and I don't intend to pay you American money any longer unless you do more work with your hands and less with your jaw."

Nuddle was stupid enough to swagger.

"Just as you say, Davidge. You'll change your tune before long, because us workin'-men, bein' the perdoocers, are goin' to take over all these plants and run 'em to soot ourselves."

"Fine!" said Davidge. "And will you take over my loans at the banks to meet the pay-rolls?"

"We'll take over the banks!" said Jake, majestically. "We'll take over everything and let the workin'-men git their doos at last."

"What becomes of us wicked plutocrats?"

"We'll have you workin' for us."

"Then we'll be the workin'-men, and it will be our turn to take over things and set you plutocrats to workin' for us, I suppose. And we'll be just where we are now."

This was growing too seesawy for Nuddle, and he turned surly.

"Some of you won't be in no shape to take over nothin'."

Davidge laughed. "It's as bad as that, eh? Well, while I can, I'll just take over your b.u.t.ton."

"You mean I'm fired?"

"Exactly," said Davidge, holding out his hand for the badge that served as a pa.s.s to the yards and the pay-roll. "Come with me, and you'll get what money's coming to you."

This struck through Nuddle's thick wits. He cast a glance of dismay at Mamise. If he were discharged, he could not help Easton with the grand blow-up. He whined: