In the Heart of a Fool

And strangely enough, just as Tom Van Dorn worshiped the power that bought him, so the old spider, peering through the broken, rotting meshes of what was once his web, felt the power to which it was fastened, felt the power that moved him as a mere pawn in a game whose direction he did not conceive; and Dan’l Sands, in spite of his silent rage, worshiped the power like a groveling idolater.

But the worm never lacks for a bud; that also is a part of God’s plan. Thus, while the forces of egoism, the powers of capital, were concentrating in a vast organization of socialized individualism, the other forces and powers of society which were pointing toward a socialized altruism, were forming also. There was the man in the exquisite gray twill, harnessing Judge Van Dorn and Market Street to his will; and there was Grant Adams in faded overalls, harnessing labor to other wheels that were grinding another grist. Slowly but persistently had Grant Adams been forming his Amalgamation of the Unions of the valley. Slowly and awkwardly his unwieldy machinery was creaking its way round. In spite of handicaps of opposing interests among the men of different unions, his Wahoo Valley Labor Council was shaping itself into an effective machine. If the shares of stock in the mills and the mines and the smelters all ran their dividends through one great hopper, so the units of labor in the Valley were connected with a common source of direction. God does not plant the organizing spirit in the world for one group; it is the common heritage of the time. So the sinister power of organized capital loomed before Market Street with its terrible threat of extinction for the town if the town displeased organized capital; so also rose in the town a dread feeling of uneasiness that labor also had power. The personification of that power was Grant Adams. And when the young man in exquisite gray twill had become only a memory, Tom Van Dorn squarely faced Grant Adams. Market Street was behind the Judge. The Valley was back of Grant. For a time there was a truce, but it was not peace. The truce was a time of waiting; waiting and arming for battle.

During the year of the truce, Nathan Perry was busy. Nathan Perry saw the power that was organizing about him and the Independent mine among the employers in the district, and intuitively he felt the resistlessness of the power. But he did not shrink. He advised his owners to join the combination as a business proposition. But his advice was a dead fly fed to the old spider’s senile vanity. For Daniel Sands had been able to dictate as a part of his acceptance of the proposition, this one concession: That the Independent mine be kept out of the agreement. Nathan Perry suspected this. But most of his owners were game men, and they decided not even to apply for admission to the organization. They found that the young man’s management of the mine was paying well; that the labor problem was working satisfactorily; that the safety devices, while expensive, produced a feeling of good-will among the men that was worth more even in dividends than the interest on the money.

But after he had warned his employers of the wrath to come, Nathan Perry did not spend much time in unavailing regret at their decision. He was, upon the whole, glad they had made it. And having a serious problem in philology to work out–namely, to discover whether Esperanto, Chinese or Dutch is the natural language of man, through study of the conversational tendencies of Daniel Kyle Perry, the young superintendent of the Independent mine gave serious thought to that problem.

Then, of course, there was that other problem that bothered Nathan Perry, and being an engineer with a degree of B. S., it annoyed him to discover that the problem wouldn’t come out straight. Briefly and popularly stated, it is this: If you have a boiler capacity of 200 pounds per square inch and love a girl 200 pounds to the square inch, and then the Doctor in his black bag brings one fat, sweaty, wrinkled baby, and you see the girl in a new and sweeter light than ever before, see her in a thousand ways rising above her former stature to a wonderful womanhood beyond even your dreams–how are you going to get more capacity out of that boiler without breaking it, when the load calls for four hundred pounds? Now these problems puzzled the young man, living at that time in his eight-room house with a bath, and he sat up nights to work them. And some times there were two heads at work on the sums, and once in a while three heads, but the third head talked a various language, whose mild and healing sympathy stole the puzzle from the problem and began chewing on it before they were aware. So Nathan put the troubles of the mine on the hook whereon he hung his coat at night, and if he felt uneasy at the trend of the day’s events, his uneasiness did not come to him at home. He had heard it whispered about–once by the men and once in a directors’ meeting–that the clash with Grant Adams was about to come. If Nathan had any serious wish in relation to the future, it was the ardent hope that the clash would come and come soon.

For the toll of death in the Wahoo Valley was cruel and inexorable. The mines, the factories, the railroads, the smelters, all were death traps, and the maimed, blind and helpless were cast out of the great industrial hopper like chaff. Every little neighborhood had its cripple. From the mines came the blind–whose sight was taken from them by cheap powder; from the railroad yards came the maimed–the handless, armless, legless men who, in their daily tasks had been crushed by inferior car couplings; the smelters sent out their sick, whom the fumes had poisoned, and sometimes there would come out a charred trunk that had gone into the great molten vats a man. The factories took hands and forearms, and sometimes when an accident of unusual horror occurred in the Valley, it would seem like a place of mourning. The burden of all this bloodshed and death was upon the laborers. And more than that,–the burden of the widows and orphans also was upon labor. Capital charged off the broken machinery, the damaged buildings, the worn-out equipment to profit and loss with an easy conscience, while the broken men all over the Valley, the damaged laborers, the worn-out workers, who were thrown to the scrap heap in maturity, were charged to labor. And labor paid this bill, chiefly because capital was too greedy to provide safe machinery, or sanitary shops, or adequate tools!

Nathan Perry, first miner, then pit-boss and finally superintendent, and always member of Local Miners’ Union No. 10, knew what the men were vaguely beginning to see and think. When some man who had been to court to collect damages for a killed or crippled friend, some man who had heard the Judge talk of the assumed risk of labor, some man who had heard lawyers split hairs to cheat working men of what common sense and common justice said was theirs, when some such man cried out in hatred and agony against society, Nathan Perry tried to counsel patience, tried to curb the malice. But in his heart Nathan Perry knew that if he had suffered the wrongs that such a man suffered, he too would be full of wrath and class hatred.

Sometimes, of course, men rose from the pit. Foremen became managers, managers became superintendents, superintendents became owners, owners became rich, and society replied–“Look, it is easy for a man to rise.” Once at lunch time, sitting in the shaft house, Nathan Perry with his hands in his dinner bucket said something of the kind, when Tom Williams, the little Welsh miner, who was a disciple and friend of Grant Adams, cried:

“Yes–that’s true. It is easy for a man to rise. It was easy for a slave to escape from the South–comparatively easy. But is it easy for the class to rise? Was it easy for the slaves to be free? That is the problem–the problem of lifting a whole class–as your class has been lifted, young fellow, in the last century. Why, over in Wales a century ago, a mere tradesman’s son like you–was–was nobody. The middle classes had nothing–that is, nothing much. They have risen. They rule the world now. This century must see the rise of the laboring class; not here and there as a man who gets out of our class and then sneers at us, and pretends he was with us by accident–but we must rise as a class, boy–don’t you see?”

And so, working in the mine, with the men, Nathan Perry completed his education. He learned–had it ground into him by the hard master of daily toil–that while bread and butter is an individual problem that no laborer may neglect except at his peril, the larger problems of the conditions under which men labor–their hours of service, their factory surroundings, their shop rights to work, their relation to accidents and to the common diseases peculiar to any trade–those are not individual problems. They are class problems and must be solved–in so far as labor can solve them alone, not by individual struggle but by class struggle. So Nathan Perry came up out of the mines a believer in the union, and the closed shop. He felt that those who would make the class problem an individual problem, were only retarding the day of settlement, only hindering progress.

Rumor said that the truce in the Wahoo Valley was near an end. Nathan Perry did not shrink from it. But Market Street was uneasy. It seemed to be watching an approaching cyclone. When men knew that the owners were ready to stop the organization of unions, the cloud of unrest seemed to hover over them. But the clouds dissolved in rumor. Then they gathered again, and it was said that Grant Adams was to be gagged, his Sunday meetings abolished or that he was to be banished from the Valley. Again the clouds dissolved. Nothing happened. But the cloud was forever on the horizon, and Market Street was afraid. For Market Street–as a street–was chiefly interested in selling goods. It had, of course, vague yearnings for social justice–yearnings about as distinct as the desire to know if the moon was inhabited. But as a street, Market Street was with Mrs. Herdicker–it never talked against the cash drawer. Market Street, the world over, is interested in things as they are. The statuo quo is God and laissez faire is its profit! So Market Street murmured, and buzzed–and then Market Street also organized to worship the god of things as they are.

But Mr. Brotherton of the Brotherton Book & Stationery Company held aloof from the Merchants’ Protective Association. Mr. Brotherton at odd times, at first by way of diversion, and then as a matter of education for his growing business, had been glancing at the contents of his wares. Particularly had he been interested in the magazines. Moreover, he was talking. And because it helped him to sell goods to talk about them, he kept on talking.

About this time he affected flowing negligee bow ties, and let his thin, light hair go fluffy and he wrapped rather casually it seemed, about his elephantine bulk, a variety of loose, baggy garb, which looked like a circus tent. But he was a born salesman–was Mr. Brotherton. He plastered literature over Harvey in carload lots.

One day while Mr. Brotherton was wrapping up “Little Women” and a “Little Colonel” book and “Children of the Abbey” that Dr. Nesbit was buying for Lila Van Dorn, the Doctor piped, “Well, George, they say you’re getting to be a regular anarchist–the way you’re talking about conditions in the Valley?”

“Not for a minute,” answered Mr. Brotherton. “Why, man, all I said was that if the old spider kept making the men use that cheap powder that blows their eyes out and their hands off, and their legs off, they ought to unionize and strike. And if it was my job to handle that powder I’d tie the old devil on a blast and blow him into hamburger.” Mr. Brotherton’s rising emotions reddened his forehead under his thin hair, and pulled at his wind. He shook a weary head and leaned on a show case. “But I say, stand by the boys. Maybe it will make a year of bad times or maybe two; but what of that? It’ll make better times in the end.”

“All right, George–go in. I glory in your spunk!” chirped the Doctor as he put Lila’s package under his arm. “Let me tell you something,” he added, “I’ve got a bill I’m going to push in the next legislature that will knock a hole in that doctrine of the assumed risk of labor, you can drive a horse through. It makes the owners pay for the accidents of a trade, instead of hiding behind that theory, that a man assumes those risks when he takes a job.”

The Doctor put his head to one side, cocked one eye and cried: “How would that go?”

“Now you’re shoutin’, Doc. Bust a machine, and the company pays for it. Bust a man, the man pays for it or his wife and children or his friends or the county. That’s not fair. A man’s as much of a part of the cost of production as a machine!”

The Doctor toddled out, clicking his cane and whistling a merry tune and left Mr. Brotherton enjoying his maiden meditations upon the injustices of this world. In the midst of his meditations he found that he had been listening for five minutes to Captain Morton. The Captain was expounding some passing dream about his Household Horse. Apparently the motor car, which was multiplying rapidly in Harvey, had impressed him. He was telling Mr. Brotherton that his Household Horse, if harnessed to the motor car, would save much of the power wasted by the chains. He was dreaming of the distant day when motor cars would be used in sufficient numbers to make it profitable for the Captain to equip them with his power saving device.

But Mr. Brotherton cut into the Captain’s musings with: “You tell the girls to wash the cat for I’m coming out to-night.”

“Girls?–huh–girls?” replied the Captain as he looked over his spectacles at Mr. Brotherton. “’Y gory, man, what’s the matter with me–eh? I’m staying out there on Elm Street yet–what say?” And he went out smiling.

When the Captain entered the house, he found Emma getting supper, Martha setting the table and Ruth, with a candy box before her at the piano, going over her everlasting “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs” from “C to C” as Emma called it.

Emma took her father’s hat, put it away and said: “Well, father–what’s the news?”

“Well,” replied the Captain, with some show of deliberation, “a friend of mine down town told me to tell you girls to wash the cat for he’ll be along here about eight o’clock.”

“Mr. Brotherton,” scoffed Ruth. “It’s up to you two,” she cried gayly in the midst of her eternal journey from “C” to “C.” “He never wears his Odd Fellows’ pin unless he’s been singing at an Odd Fellows’ funeral, so that lets me out to-night.”

“Well,” sighed Emma, “I don’t know that I want him even if he has on his Shriner’s pin. I just believe I’ll go to bed. The way I feel to-night I’m so sick of children I believe I wouldn’t marry the best man on earth.”

“Oh, well, of course, Emma,” suggested the handsome Miss Morton, “if you feel that way about it why, I–”

“Now Martha–” cried the elder sister, “can’t you let me alone and get out of here? I tell you, the superintendent and the principal and the janitor and the dratted Calvin kid all broke loose to-day and I’m liable to run out doors and begin to jump and down in the street and scream if you start on me.”

But after supper the three Misses Morton went upstairs, and did what they could to wipe away the cares of a long and weary day. They put on their second best dresses–all but Emma, who put on her best, saying she had nothing else that wasn’t full of chalk and worry. At seven forty-five, they had the parlor illuminated. As for the pictures and bric-a-brac–to-wit, a hammered brass flower pot near the grate, and sitting on an onyx stand a picture of Richard Harding Davis, the contribution of the eldest Miss Morton’s callow youth, also a brass smoking set on a mission table, the contribution of the youngest Miss Morton from her first choir money–as for the pictures and bric-a-brac, they were dusted until they glistened, and the trap was all set, waiting for the prey.

They heard the gate click and the youngest Miss Morton said quickly: “Well, if he’s an Odd Fellow, I guess I’ll take him. But,” she sighed, “I’ll bet a cooky he’s an Elk and Martha gets him.”

The Captain went to the door and brought in the victim to as sweet and demure a trio of surprised young women and as patient a cat, as ever sat beside a rat hole. After he had greeted the girls–it was Ruth who took his coat, and Martha his hat, but Emma who held his hand a second the longest, after she spied the Shriner’s pin–Mr. Brotherton picked up the cat.

“Well, Epaminondas,” he puffed as he stroked the animal and put it to his cheek, “did they take his dear little kitties away from him–the horrid things.”

This was Mr. Brotherton’s standard joke. Ruth said she never felt the meeting was really opened until he had teased them about Epaminondas’ pretended kittens.

For the first hour the talk ranged with obvious punctility over a variety of subjects–but never once did Mr. Brotherton approach the subject of politics, which would hold the Captain for a night session. Instead, Mr. Brotherton spun literary tales from the shop. Then the Captain broke in and enlivened the company with a description of Tom Van Dorn’s new automobile, and went into such details as to cams and cogs and levers and other mechanical fittings that every one yawned and the cat stretched himself, and the Captain incidentally told the company that he had got Van Dorn’s permission to try the Household Horse on the old machine before it went in on the trade.

Then Ruth rose. “Why, Ruth, dear,” said Emma sweetly, “where are you going?”

“Just to get a drink, dear,” replied Ruth.

But it took her all night to finish drinking and she did not return. Martha rose, began straightening up the littered music on the piano, and being near the door, slipped out. By this time the Captain was doing most of the talking. Chiefly, he was telling what he thought the sprocket needed to make it work upon an automobile. At the hall door of the dining room two heads appeared, and though the door creaked about the time the clock struck the half hour, Mr. Brotherton did not see the heads. They were behind him, and four arms began making signs at the Captain. He looked at them, puzzled and anxious for a minute or two. They were peremptorily beckoning him out. Finally, it came to him, and he said to the girls: “Oh, yes–all right.” This broke at the wrong time into something Mr. Brotherton was saying. He looked up astonished and the Captain, abashed, smiled and after shuffling his feet, backed up to the base burner and hummed the tune about the land that was fairer than day. Emma and Mr. Brotherton began talking. Presently, the Captain picked up the spitting cat by the scruff of the neck and held him a moment under his chin. “Well, Emmy,” he cut in, interrupting her story of how Miss Carhart had told the principal if “he ever told of her engagement before school was out in June, she’d just die,” with:

“I suppose there’ll be plenty of potatoes for the hash?”

And not waiting for answer, he marched to the kitchen with the cat, and in due time, they heard the “Sweet Bye and Bye” going up the back stairs, and then the thump, thump of the Captain’s shoes on the floor above them.

The eldest Miss Morton, in her best silk dress, with her mother’s cameo brooch at her throat, and with the full, maidenly ripeness of twenty-nine years upon her brow, with her hair demurely parted on said brow, where there was the faintest hint of a wrinkle coming–which Miss Morton attributed to a person she called “the dratted Calvin kid,”–the eldest Miss Morton, hair, cameo, silk dress, wrinkle, the dratted Calvin kid and all, did or did not look like a siren, according to the point of view of the spectator. If he was seeking the voluptuous curves of the early spring of youth–no: but if he was seeking those quieter and more restful lines that follow a maiden with a true and tender heart, who is a good cook and who sweeps under the sofa, yes.

Mr. Brotherton did not know exactly what he desired. He had been coming to the Morton home on various errands since the girls were little tots. He had seen Emma in her first millinery store hat. He had bought Martha her first sled; he had got Ruth her last doll. But he shook his head. He liked them all. And then, as though to puzzle him more, he had noticed that for two or three years, he had never got more than two consecutive evenings with any of them–or with all of them. The mystery of their conduct baffled him. He sometimes wondered indignantly why they worked him in shifts? Sometimes he had Ruth twice; sometimes Emma and Martha in succession–sometimes Martha twice. He like them all. But he could not understand what system they followed in disposing of him. So as he sat and toyed with his Shriner’s pin and listened to the tales of a tepid schoolmistress’ romance that Emma told, he wondered if after all–for a man of his tastes, she wasn’t really the flower of the flock.

“You know, George,” she was old enough for that, and at rare times when they were alone she called him George, “I’m working up a kind of sorrow for Judge Van Dorn–or pity or something. When I taught little Lila he was always sending her candy and little trinkets. Now Lila is in the grade above me, and do you know the Judge has taken to walking by the schoolhouse at recess, just to see her, and walking along at noon and at night to get a word with her. He has put up a swing and a teeter-totter board on the girls’ playgrounds. This morning I saw him standing, gazing after her, and he was as sad a figure as I ever saw. He caught me looking at him and smiled and said:

“‘Fine girl, Emma,’ and walked away.”

“Lord, Emma,” said Mr. Brotherton, as he brought his big, baseball hands down on his fat knees. “I don’t blame him. Don’t you just think children are about the nicest things in this world?”

Emma was silent. She had expressed other sentiments too recently. Still she smiled. And he went on:

“Oh, wow!–they’re mighty fine to have around.”

But Mr. Brotherton was restless after that, and when the clock was striking ten he was in the hall. He left as he had gone for a dozen years. And the young woman stood watching him through the glass of the door, a big, strong, handsome man–who strode down the walk with clicking heels of pride, and she turned away sadly and hurried upstairs.

“Martha,” she asked, as she took down her hair, “was it ordained in the beginning of the world that all school teachers would have to take widowers?”

And without hearing the answer, she put out the light.

Mr. Brotherton, stalking–not altogether unconsciously down the walk, turned into the street and as he went down the hill, he was aware that a boy was overtaking him. He let the boy catch up with him. “Oh, Mr. Brotherton,” cried the boy, “I’ve been looking for you!”