Youth Challenges Part 53

Dulac shouted, demanded their attention. He might as well have tried to still the breakers that roared upon a rocky sh.o.r.e. Dulac did not care for money. He was a revolutionist, a thinker, a man whose work lay with conditions, not with individuals. Here every man was thinking as an individual; applying that five dollars a day to his own peculiar, personal affairs.... Already men were hurrying out of the hall to carry the amazing tidings home to their wives.

Dulac stormed on.

One thing was apparent to Bonbright. The men believed him. They believed he had spoken the truth. He had known they would believe him; somehow he had known that. The thing had swept them off their feet. In all that mult.i.tude was not a man whose life was not to be made easier, whose wife and children were not to be happier, more comfortable, removed from worry. It was a moving sight to see those thousands react.

They were drunk with it.

An old man detached himself from the ma.s.s and rushed upon the platform.

"It's true?... It's true?" he said, with tears running down his face.

"It's true," said Bonbright, standing up and offering his hand.

That was the first of hundreds. Some one shouted, hoa.r.s.ely, "Hurrah for Foote!" and the armory trembled with the shout.

The thing was done. The thing he had come to do was accomplished. There would be no strike.

Dulac had fallen silent, was sitting in his chair with his face hidden.

For him this was a defeat, a bitter blow.

Bonbright made his way to him.

"Mr. Dulac," he said, "have you found her?"

"You've bribed them.... You've bought them," Dulac said, bitterly.

"I've given them what is theirs fairly.... Have you found any trace of her?" Even in this moment, which would have thrilled, exalted another, which would have made another man drunk with achievement, Bonbright could think of Ruth. Even now Ruth was uppermost in his mind. All this mattered nothing beside her. "Have you got any trace?" he asked.

"No," said Dulac.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Next morning the whole city breakfasted with Bonbright Foote. His name was on the tongue of every man who took in a newspaper, and of thousands to whom the news of his revolutionary profit-sharing or minimum-wage plan was carried by word of mouth. It was the matter of wages that excited everyone. In those first hours they skipped the details of the plan, those details which had taken months of labor and thought to devise. It was only the fact that a wealthy manufacturer was going to pay a minimum wage of five dollars a day.

The division between capital and labor showed plainly in the reception of the news. Capital berated Bonbright; labor was inclined to fulsomeness. Capital called him on the telephone to remonstrate and to state its opinion of him as a half-baked idiot of a young idealist who was upsetting business. Labor put on its hat and stormed the gates of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, seeking for five-dollar jobs. Not hundreds of them came, but thousands. The streets were blocked with applicants, every one eager for that minimum wage. The police could not handle the mob. It was there for a purpose and it intended to stay....

When it was rebuked, or if some one tried to tell them there were no jobs for it, it threw playful stones through the windows. It was there at dawn; it still remained at dark.

A man who had an actual job at Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, was a hero, an object of admiring interest to his friends and neighbors. The thing touched him. There had been a miraculous laying on of hands, under which had pa.s.sed away poverty. So must the friends and acquaintances of a certain blind man whose sight was restored by a bit of divine spittle have regarded him.

Malcolm Lightener did not content himself with telephoning. He came in person to say his say to Bonbright, and he said it with point and emphasis.

"I thought I taught you some sense in my shop," he said, as he burst into Bonbright's office. "What's this I hear now? What idiocy are you up to? Is this infernal newspaper story true?"

"Substantially," said Bonbright.

"You're crazy. What are you trying to do? Upset labor conditions in this town so that business will go to smash? I thought you had a level head. I had confidence in you--and here you go, shooting off a half-c.o.c.ked, wild-eyed, socialistic thing! Did you stop to think what effect this thing would have on other manufacturers?"

"Yes," said Bonbright.

"It'll pull labor down on us. They'll say we can afford to pay such wages if you can."

"Well," said Bonbright, "can't you?"

"You've sowed a fine crop of discontent. It's d.a.m.ned unfair. You'll have every workingman in town flocking to you. You'll get the pick of labor."

"That's good business, isn't it?" Bonbright asked, with a smile. "Now, Mr. Lightener, there isn't any use thrashing me. The plan is going into effect. It isn't half baked. I haven't gone off half c.o.c.ked. It is carefully planned and thought out--and it will work. There'll be flurries for a few days, and then things will come back to the normal for you fellows.... I wish it wouldn't. You're a lot better able than I am to do what I'm doing, and you know it. If you can, you ought to."

"No man has a right to go ahead deliberately and upset business."

"I'm not upsetting it. I'm merely being fair, and that's what business should have been years ago. I'm able to pay a five-dollar minimum, and labor earns it. Then it ought to have it. If you can pay only a four-dollar minimum, then you should pay it. Labor earns it for you....

If there's a man whose labor earns for him only a dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and that man pays it, he's doing as much at I am..."

"Bonbright," said Malcolm Lightener, getting to his feet, "I'm d.a.m.n disappointed in you."

"Come in a year and tell me so, then I'll listen to you," said Bonbright.

"This nonsense won't last a year. It won't pan out. You'll have to give it up, and then what? You'll be in a devil of a pickle, won't you?"

"All you see is that five dollars. In a day or two the whole plan will be ready. I'm having it printed in a pamphlet, and I'll send you one.

If you read it carefully and can come back and tell me it's nonsense, then I don't know you. You might let me go under suspended sentence at least."

Lightener shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Take one chunk of advice," he said. "Keep away from the club for a few days. If the boys feel the way I do they're apt to take you upstairs and drown you in a bathtub."

That was the side of the affair that Bonbright saw most during the day.

Telephone messages, letters, telegrams, poured in and cluttered his desk. After a while he ceased to open them, for they were all alike; all sent to say the same thing that Malcolm Lightener had said. Capital looked upon him as a Judas and flayed him with the sharpest words they could choose.

He read all the papers, but the papers reflected the estimated thought of their subscribers. But to all of them the news was the big news of the day. No headline was too large to announce it... But the papers, even those with capitalistic leanings, were afraid to be too outspoken.

Gatherers of news come to have some knowledge of human nature, and these men saw deeper and farther and quicker than the Malcolm Lighteners. They did not commit themselves so far but that a drawing back and realignment would be possible... No little part of Bonbright's day was spent with reporters.

The news came to every house in the city. It came even to Mrs. Moody's obscure boarding house, and the table buzzed with it. It mounted the stairs with Mrs. Moody to the room where Ruth lay apathetically in her bed, not stronger, not weaker, taking no interest in life.

Mrs. Moody sat daily beside Ruth's bed and talked or read. She read papers aloud and books aloud, and grumbled. Ruth paid slight attention, but lay gazing up at the ceiling, or closed her eyes and pretended she was asleep. She didn't care what was going on in the world. What did it matter, for she believed she was going to leave the world shortly. The prospect did not frighten her, nor did it gladden her. She was indifferent to it.

Mrs. Moody sat down in her rocker and looked at Ruth triumphantly.

"I'll bet this'll interest you," she said. "I'll bet when I read this you won't lay there and pertend you don't hear. If you do it's because somethin's wrong with your brains, that's all I got to say. Sick or well, it's news to stir up a corpse."

She began to read. The first words caught Ruth's attention. The words were Bonbright Foote. She closed her eyes, but listened. Her thoughts were not clear; her mental processes were foggy, but the words Mrs.

Moody was reading were important to her. She realized that. It was something she had once been interested in--terribly interested in...

She tried to concentrate on them; tried to comprehend. Presently she interrupted, weakly:

"Who--who is it--about?" she asked.

"Bonbright Foote, the manufacturer. I read it out plain."

"Yes... What is it?... I didn't--understand very well. What did he--do?"