第 二十七 章 · Chapter XXVII

I

The strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps, white and

red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and

linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union

of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in

demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the

truck-drivers’ union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was

nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers’ strike, a general

strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through

strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way

from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman,

trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks

from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by

strikers--rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats,

smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from

the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.

The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life

was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a

long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand.

Even Babbitt’s friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and

merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely

resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but

ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little

belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering

groups on corners. “Move on there now! I can’t have any of this

loitering!”

Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When

mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a

young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or

grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys

yelped, “Get onto de tin soldier!” and striking truck-drivers inquired

tenderly, “Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in

the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be

careful of that bayonet, now, or you’ll cut yourself!”

There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no

one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of

Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and

in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who

did not hate the enemy.

A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the

other--and the city was hysterical.

And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal.

He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he

agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when

his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of

going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a

broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls

had been hungry, he was troubled. “All lies and fake figures,” he said,

but in a doubtful croak.

For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a

sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on “How the Saviour Would End Strikes.”

Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to the

service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as to

what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the

large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink.

Frink whispered, “Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I

don’t believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him

stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of

discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right

up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!”

“Yes--well--” said Babbitt.

The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his

poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:

“During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let

us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our

fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk

about scientific prevention of scientific--_scientific!_ Now, let me

tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take

the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which

were so popular with the ‘scientists’ a generation ago. Oh, yes, they

were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to

destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and

has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization

by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever,

and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired

opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile!

“And now these same ‘scientists’ want to replace the natural condition

of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what

high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic

paternalism. Naturally, I’m not criticizing labor courts, injunctions

against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in

which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing

the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor

is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and

government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.

“What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter

isn’t a question of economics. It’s essentially and only a matter of

Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion!

Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss,

the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother

and the younger. Brothers, that’s what they must be, loving brothers,

and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!”

It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, “Oh, rot!”

“Huh?” said Chum Frink.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s just as clear as mud. It

doesn’t mean a darn thing.”

“Maybe, but--”

Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at

him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous.

II

The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel

Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west

from his office at ten that morning, he saw a drove of shabby men

heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He

hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure.

“Damn loafers! Wouldn’t be common workmen if they had any pep,” he

complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward

the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass

known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.

The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim

shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a

boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers’

monotonous orders: “Keep moving--move on, ’bo--keep your feet warm!”

Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, “Tin

soldiers,” and “Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!” but the

militiamen grinned and answered only, “Sure, that’s right. Keep moving,

Billy!”

Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who

were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel

Nixon’s striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum,

that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully

clamored, “Great work, Captain! Don’t let ’em march!” He watched the

strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with “They

can’t stop our peacefully walking.” The militiamen tore away the

posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled

off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of

soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn’t going to be

any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.

Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane,

smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the

history department in the State University, an old man and

white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family.

“Why, gosh,” Babbitt marveled, “a swell like him in with the strikers?

And good ole Senny Doane! They’re fools to get mixed up with this bunch.

They’re parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it

for them, not a cent! And-- I don’t know ’s _all_ the strikers look like

such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!”

The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street.

“They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the

streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!” Babbitt

grumbled. “Of course, they’re--they’re a bad element, but-- Oh, rats!”

At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others

fretted, “I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” or solaced their

spirits with “kidding.”

Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki.

“How’s it going, Captain?” inquired Vergil Gunch.

“Oh, we got ’em stopped. We worked ’em off on side streets and separated

’em and they got discouraged and went home.”

“Fine work. No violence.”

“Fine work nothing!” groaned Mr. Drum. “If I had my way, there’d be a

whole lot of violence, and I’d start it, and then the whole thing would

be over. I don’t believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows

and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are

nothing in God’s world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs,

and the only way to handle ’em is with a club! That’s what I’d do; beat

up the whole lot of ’em!”

Babbitt heard himself saying, “Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about

like you and me, and I certainly didn’t notice any bombs.”

Drum complained, “Oh, you didn’t, eh? Well, maybe you’d like to take

charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the

strikers are! He’d be glad to hear about it!” Drum strode on, while all

the table stared at Babbitt.

“What’s the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and

kisses, or what?” said Orville Jones.

“Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and

butter away from our families?” raged Professor Pumphrey.

Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a

mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence

was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must

have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only

too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt’s stammering:

“No, sure; course they’re a bunch of toughs. But I just mean-- Strikes me

it’s bad policy to talk about clubbing ’em. Cabe Nixon doesn’t. He’s got

the fine Italian hand. And that’s why he’s colonel. Clarence Drum is

jealous of him.”

“Well,” said Professor Pumphrey, “you hurt Clarence’s feelings, George.

He’s been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he

wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!”

Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being

watched.

III

As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch,

“--don’t know what’s got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a

corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that,

too. Near’s I can figure out--”

Babbitt was vaguely frightened.

IV

He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a

kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that

the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of

whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant

hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:

“--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day,

doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought

to be able--”

Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In

vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while

Gunch’s hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.

V

“There’s a lot of these fellows,” Babbitt was complaining to his wife,

“that think if workmen go on strike they’re a regular bunch of fiends.

Now, of course, it’s a fight between sound business and the destructive

element, and we got to lick the stuffin’s out of ’em when they challenge

us, but doggoned if I see why we can’t fight like gentlemen and not go

calling ’em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down.”

“Why, George,” she said placidly, “I thought you always insisted that

all strikers ought to be put in jail.”

“I never did! Well, I mean-- Some of ’em, of course. Irresponsible

leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about

things like--”

“But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called ‘liberal’ people

were the worst of--”

“Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word.

Depends on how you mean it. And it don’t pay to be too cocksure about

anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they’re not such bad people. Just

foolish. They don’t understand the complications of merchandizing and

profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they’re about

like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for

profits.”

“George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I _know_

you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don’t mean a

word you say--but if people that didn’t understand you were to hear you

talking, they’d think you were a regular socialist!”

“What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now-- I

want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when

I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and-- Honest, do you think

people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were

decent?”

“Of course they would. But don’t worry, dear; I know you don’t mean a

word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for

to-night?”

On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, “She doesn’t understand me. Hardly

understand myself. Why can’t I take things easy, way I used to?

“Wish I could go out to Senny Doane’s house and talk things over with

him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there!

“Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I’m

trying to get at, and let me talk to her and-- I wonder if Myra’s right?

Could the fellows think I’ve gone nutty just because I’m broad-minded

and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--”