Youth Challenges Part 52

"The plan is practically complete, isn't it?" he asked.

"I'd call it so. The skeleton is there and it's covered with flesh.

Some of the joints creak a little and maybe there's an ear or an eyebrow missing.... But those are details."

Bonbright nodded. "We'll try it out," he said. "To-night there's a ma.s.s meeting--to stir our men up to strike. They mustn't strike, and I'm going to stop them--with the plan."

"Eh?" said the professor.

"I'm going to the meeting," said Bonbright.

"You're--young man, you're crazy."

"I'm going to head off that strike. I'm going there and I'm going to announce the plan."

"They won't let you speak."

"I think they will.... Curiosity will make them."

The young man did understand something of human nature, thought the professor. Curiosity would, most likely, get a hearing for him.

"It's dangerous," said he. "The men aren't in a good humor. There might be some fanatic there--"

"It's a chance," said Bonbright, "but I've got to take it."

"I'll go with you," said the professor.

"No. I want to be there alone. This thing is between my men and me.

It's personal. We've got to settle it between ourselves."

The professor argued, pleaded; but Bonbright was stubborn, and the professor had previous acquaintance with Bonbright's stubbornness. Its quality was that of tool steel. Bonbright had made up his mind to go and to go alone. n.o.body could argue him out of it.

Bonbright did go alone. He went early in order to obtain a good position in the hall, a mammoth gathering place capable of seating three thousand people. He entered quietly, unostentatiously, and walked to a place well toward the front, and he entered un.o.bserved. The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place.

In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright could feel it. It made him tingle; it gave him a sensation of vibrating emptiness resembling that of a man descending in a swift elevator.

Bonbright was not accustomed to public speaking, but, somehow, he did not regard what he was about to say as a public speech. He did not think of it as being kindred to oratory. He was there to talk business with a gathering of his men, that was all. He knew what he was going to say, and he was going to say it clearly, succinctly, as briefly as possible.

In half an hour the chairs on the platform were occupied by chairman, speakers, union officials. The great hall was jammed, and hundreds packed about the doors in the street without, unable to gain admission.... The chairman opened the meeting briefly. Behind him Bonbright saw Dulac, saw the members of the committee that had waited on him, saw other men known to him only because he had seen their pictures from time to time in the press. It was an imposing gathering of labor thought.

Bonbright had planned what he would do. It was best, he believed, to catch the meeting before it had been excited by oratory, before it had been lashed to anger. It was calmer, more reasonable now than it would be again. He arose to his feet.

"Mr. Chairman," he said, distinctly.

The chairman paused; Bonbright's neighbors turned to stare; men all over the hall rose and craned their necks to have a view of the interrupter.

"Sit down!...Shut up!" came cries from here and there. Then other cries, angry cries. "It's Foote!... It's the boss! Out with him!... Out with him!"

"Mr. Chairman," said Bonbright, "I realize this is unusual, but I hope you will allow me to be heard. Every man here must admit that I am vitally interested in what takes place here to-night.... I come in a friendly spirit, and I have something to say which is important to me and to you. I ask you to hear me. I will be brief..."

"Out with him!... No!... Throw him out!" came yells from the floor. The house was on its feet, jostling, surging. Men near to Bonbright hesitated. One man reached over the shoulders of his fellows and struck at Bonbright. Another shoved him back.

"Let him talk.... Let's hear him," arose counter-cries. The meeting threatened to get beyond control, to become a mob.

The chairman, familiar with the men he dealt with, acted quickly. He turned to Dulac and whispered, then faced the hall with hands upheld.

"Mr. Foote is here uninvited," he said. "He requests to be heard. Let us show him that we are reasonable, that we are patient.... Mr. Dulac agrees to surrender a portion of his time to Mr. Foote. Let us hear what he has to say."

Bonbright pushed his way toward the aisle and moved forward. Once he stumbled, and almost fell, as a man thrust out a foot to trip him--and the hall laughed.

"Speak your piece. Speak it nice," somebody called, and there was another laugh. This was healthier, safer.

Bonbright mounted the platform and advanced to its edge.

"Every man here," he said, "is an employee of mine. I have tried to make you feel that your interests are my interests, but I seem to have failed--or you would not be here. I have tried to prove that I want to be something more than merely your employer, but you would not believe me."

"Your record's bad," shouted a man, and there was another laugh.

"My record is bad," said Bonbright. "I could discuss that, but it wouldn't change things. Since I have owned the mills my record has not been bad. There are men here who could testify for me. All of you can testify that conditions have been improved.... But I am not here to discuss that. I am here to lay before you a plan I have been working on. It is not perfect, but as it stands it is complete enough, so that you can see what I am aiming at. This plan goes into effect the day the new plant starts to operate."

"Does it recognize the unions?" came from the floor.

"No," said Bonbright. "Please listen carefully.... First it establishes a minimum wage of five dollars a day. No man or woman in the plant, in any capacity, shall be paid less than five dollars a day. Labor helps to earn our profits and labor should share in them. That is fair. I have set an arbitrary minimum of five dollars because there must be some basis to work from...."

The meeting was silent. It was nonplused. It was listening to the impossible. Every man, every employee, should be paid five dollars a day!

"Does that mean common labor?"

"It means everyone," said Bonbright. "It means the man who sweeps out the office, the man who runs the elevator, the man who digs a ditch.

Every man does his share and every man shall have his share.

"I want every man to live in decent comfort, and I want his wife and babies to live in comfort. With these wages no man's wife need take in washing nor work out by the day to help support the family. No man will need to ask his wife to keep a boarder to add to the family's earnings...."

The men listened now. Bonbright's voice carried to every corner and cranny of the hall. Even the men on the platform listened breathlessly as he went on detailing the plan and its workings. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the world's history. No such offer had ever been made to workingmen by an employer capable of carrying out his promises.... He told them what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it. He told them what he wanted them to do to co-operate with him--of an advisory board to be elected by the men, sharing in deliberations that affected the employees, of means to be inst.i.tuted to help the men to save and to take care of their savings, of a strict eight-hour day.... No union had ever dreamed of asking such terms of an employer.

"How do we know you'll do it?" yelled a man.

"You have my word," said Bonbright.

"Rats!"

"Shut up... shut up!" the objector was admonished.

"That's all, men," Bonbright said. "Think it over. This plan is going into effect. If you want to share in it you can do so, every one of you.... Thank you for listening."

Bonbright turned and sat down in a chair on the platform, anxious, watching that sea of faces, waiting to see what would happen.

Dulac leaped to his feet. "It's a bribe," he shouted. "It's nothing but an attempt to buy your manhood for five dollars a day. We're righting for a principle--not for money.... We're--"

But his voice was drowned out. The meeting had taken charge of itself.

It wanted to listen to no oratory, but to talk over this thing that had happened, to realize it, to weigh it, to determine what it meant to them. Abstract principle must always give way to concrete fact. The men who fight for principle are few. The fight is to live, to earn, to continue to exist. Men who had never hoped to earn a hundred dollars a month; men who had for a score of years wielded pick and shovel for two dollars a day or less, saw, with eyes that could hardly believe, thirty dollars a week. It was wealth! It was that thirty dollars that gripped them now, not the other things. Appreciation of them would come later, but now it was the voice of money that was in their ears. What could a man do with five dollars a day? He could live--not merely exist.... The thing that could not be had come to pa.s.s.