They Call Me Carpenter Part 13

"Worldly and corrupt people ask me to do miracles, to prove my power to them. But the proof I bring to the world is a new vision and a new hope."

"Oh, I see! Your religion! May I ask about it?"

"You are the first; the world will follow you. Say to the people that I have come to understand the nature and causes of their mobs."

"Mobs?" said the puzzled young blood-hound.

"I wish to understand a land which is governed by mobs; I wish to know, who lives upon the madness of others."

"You have been studying a mob this morning?" inquired the reporter.

"I ask, why do the police of Mobland put down the mobs of the poor, and not the mobs of the rich? I ask, who pays the police, and who pays the mobs."

"I see! You are some kind of radical!" And with sickness of soul I saw another headline before my mind's eye:

WEALTHY CLUBMAN AIDS BOLSHEVIK PROPHET

I hastened to break in: "Mr. Carpenter is not a radical; he is a lover of man." But then I realized, that did not sound just right.

How the devil was I to describe this man? How came it that all the phrases of brotherhood and love had come to be tainted with "radicalism"? I tried again: "He is a friend of peace."

"Oh, really!" observed the reporter. "A pacifist, hey?" And I thought: "d.a.m.n the hound!" I knew, of course, that he had the rest of the formula in his head: "Pro-German!" Out loud I said: "He teaches brotherhood."

But the hound was not interested in my generalities and evasions.

"Where have you seen mobs of the rich, Mr. Carpenter?"

"I have seen them whirling through the streets in automobiles, killing the children of the poor."

"You have seen that?"

"I saw it last night."

Now, I had inspected our "Times" and our "Examiner" that morning, and noted that both, in their accounts of the accident, had given only the name of the chauffeur, and suppressed that of the owner. I understood what an amount of social and financial pressure that feat had taken; and here was Carpenter about to spoil it! I laid my hand on his arm, saying: "My friend, you were a guest in that car. You are not at liberty to talk about it."

I expected to be argued with; but Carpenter apparently conceded my point, for he fell silent. It was the young reporter who spoke. "You were in an auto accident, I judge? We had only one report of a death, and that was caused by Mrs. Stebbins' car. Were you in that?"

Then, as neither Carpenter nor I replied, he laughed. "It doesn't matter, because I couldn't use the story. Mr. Stebbins is one of our 'sacred cows.' Good-day, and thank you."

He started away; and suddenly all my terror of newspaper publicity overwhelmed me. I simply could not face the public as guardian of a Bolshevik! I shouted: "Young man!" And the reporter turned, respectfully, to listen. "I tell you, Mr. Carpenter is _not_ a radical! Get that clear!" And to the young man's skeptical half-smile I exclaimed: "He's a Christian!" At which the reporter laughed out loud.

XXVII

We got to the Labor Temple, and found the place in a buzz of excitement, over what had occurred in front of Prince's last night.

I had suspected rough work on the part of the police, and here was the living evidence--men with bandages over cracked heads, men pulling open their shirts or pulling up their sleeves to show black and blue bruises. In the headquarters of the Restaurant Workers we found a crowd, jabbering in a dozen languages about their troubles; we learned that there were eight in jail, and several in the hospital, one not expected to live. All that had been going on, while we sat at table gluttonizing--and while tears were running down Carpenter's cheeks!

It seemed to me that every third man in the crowd had one of the morning's newspapers in his hand--the newspapers which told how a furious mob of armed ruffians had sought to break its way into Prince's, and had with difficulty been driven off by the gallant protectors of the law. A man would read some pa.s.sage which struck him as especially false; he would tell what he had seen or done, and he would crumple the paper in his hand and cry. "The liars! The dirty liars!"--adding adjectives not suitable for print.

I realized more than ever that I had made a mistake in letting Carpenter get into this place. It was no resort for anybody who wanted to be patriotic, or happy about the world. All sorts of wonderful promises had been made to labor, to persuade it to win the war; and now labor came with the blank check, duly filled out according to its fancy--and was in process of being kicked downstairs. Wages were being "liquidated," as the phrase had it; and there was an endless succession of futile strikes, all pitiful failures. You must understand that Western City is the home of the "open shop;" the poor devils who went on strike were locked out of the factories, and slugged off the streets; their organizations were betrayed by spies, and their policies dedeviled by provocateurs. And all the ma.s.s of misery resulting seemed to have crowded into one building this bright November morning; pitiful figures, men and women and even a few children--for some had been turned out of their homes, and had no place to go; ragged, haggard, and underfed; weeping, some of them, with pain, or lifting their clenched hands in a pa.s.sion of impotent fury. My friend T-S, the king of the movies, with all his resources, could not have made a more complete picture of human misery--nor one more fitted to work on the sensitive soul of a prophet, and persuade him that capitalist America was worse than imperial Rome.

The arrival of Carpenter attracted no particular attention. The troubles of these people were too recent for them to be aware of anything else. All they wanted was some one to tell their troubles to, and they quickly found that this stranger was available for the purpose. He asked many questions, and before long had a crowd about him--as if he were some sort of government commissioner, conducting an investigation. It was an all day job, apparently; I hung round, trying to keep myself inconspicuous.

Towards noon came a boy with newspapers, and I bought the early edition of the "Evening Blare." Yes, there it was--all the way across the front page; not even a big fire at the harbor and an earthquake in j.a.pan had been able to displace it. As I had foreseen, the reporter had played up the most sensational aspects of the matter: Carpenter announced himself as a prophet only twenty-four hours out of G.o.d's presence, and proved it by healing the lame and the halt and the blind--and also by hypnotising everyone he spoke to, from a wealthy young clubman to a mob of Jewish housewives.

Incidentally he denounced America as "Mobland," and called it a country governed by madmen.

I took the paper to him, thinking to teach him a little worldly prudence. Said I: "You remember, I tried to keep out that stuff about mobs--"

He took the sheet from my hands and looked at the headlines. I saw his nostrils dilate, and his eyes flash. "Mobs? This paper is a mob!

It is the worst of your mobs!" And it fell to the floor, and he put his foot on the flaring print.

Said he: "You talk about mobs--listen to this." Then, to one of the group about him: "Tell how they mobbed you!" The man thus addressed, a little Russian tailor named Korwsky, narrated in his halting English that he was the secretary of the tailors' union, and they had a strike, and a few days ago their offices had been raided at night, the door "jimmed" open and the desk rifled of all the papers and records. Evidently it had been done by the bosses or their agents, for nothing had been taken but papers which would be of use against the strike. "Dey got our members' list," said Korwsky. "Dey send people to frighten 'em back to verk! Dey call loans, dey git girls fired from stores if dey got jobs--dey hound 'em every way!"

The speaker went on to declare that no such job could have been pulled off without the police knowing; yet they made no move to arrest the criminals. His voice trembled with indignation; and Carpenter turned to me.

"You have mobs that come at night, with dark lanterns and burglars'

tools!"

I had noticed among the men talking to Carpenter one who bore a striking resemblance to him. He was tall and not too well nourished; but instead of the prophet's robes of white and amethyst, he wore the clothes of a working-man, a little too short in the sleeves; and where Carpenter had a soft and silky brown beard, this man had a skinny Adam's apple that worked up and down. He was something of an agitator, I judged, and he appeared to have a religious streak. "I am a Christian," I heard him say; "but one of the kind that speak out against injustice. And I can show you Bible texts for it," he insisted. "I can prove it by the word of G.o.d."

This man's name was James, and I learned that he was one of the striking carpenters. The prophet turned to him, and said: "Tell him your story." So the other took from his pocket a greasy note-book, and produced a newspaper clipping, quoting an injunction which Judge Wollcott had issued against his union. "Read that," said he; but I answered that I knew about it. I remember hearing my uncle laughing over the matter at the dinner-table, saying that "Bobbie" Wollcott had forbidden the strikers to do everything but sit on air and walk on water. And now I got another view of "Bobbie," this time from a prophet fresh from G.o.d. Said the prophet: "Your judges are mobs!"

XXVIII

Soon after the noon-hour, there pushed his way into the crowd a young man, whom I recognized as one of the secretaries of T-S. He was looking for me, and told me in a whisper that his employer was downstairs in his car, and wanted to see Mr. Carpenter and myself about something important. He did not want to come up, because it was too conspicuous. Would we come down and take a little drive? I answered that I should be willing, but I knew Carpenter would not--he had been in an automobile accident the night before, and had refused to ride again.

Then, said the secretary, was there some room where we could meet? I went to one of the officials, and asked for a vacant room where I could talk about a private matter with a friend. I managed to separate Carpenter from his crowd and took him to the room, and presently Everett, the secretary, came with T-S.

The great man shook hands cordially with both of us; then, looking round to make sure that no one heard us, he began: "Mr. Carpenter, I told you I vould give a tousand dollars to dese strikers."

The other's face, which had looked so grey and haggard, was suddenly illumined as if by his magical halo. "I had forgotten it! There are so many hungry in there; I have been watching them, wondering when they would be fed."

"All right," said T-S. "Here you are." And reaching into his pocket, he produced a wad of new shiny hundred dollar notes, folded together. "Count 'em."

Carpenter took the money in his hand. "So this is it!" he said. He looked at it, as if he were inspecting some strange creature from the wilds of Patagonia.

"It's de real stuff," said T-S, with a grin.

"The stuff for which men sell their souls, and women their virtue!

For which you starve and beat and torture one another--"

"Ain't it pretty?" said the magnate, not a bit embarra.s.sed.

The other began reading the writing on the notes--as you may remember having done in some far-off time of childhood. "Whose picture is this?" he asked.

"I dunno," said the magnate. "De Secretary of de Treasury, I reckon."