XI
While Paul was dictating, in sharp, short sentences, the answers to the batch of mail marked "Mining," two cards were brought in to him.
"John Pooley,
President State Federation of Labor."
"R. E. L. Bivens,
Editor, The Adamsville Voice of Labor."
His eyes crinkled into a smile, although the mouth remained a hard fixed line. Pelham must see this pair of blood-suckers at work; that would open the boy's eyes to the dry rot in the practical working out of his labor theorizing.
No, he would see them alone. Perhaps he could get at the son indirectly.
"Send Mr. Kane in."
The company's advertising manager opened the private door as the two labor leaders were adjusting themselves complacently into ample chairs.
"What can I do for you, Pooley?"
"We called to see about the convention special of the Voice, sir. Wouldn't you like a half-page write-up for the company, or yourself? The half is only seventy-five dollars.... It'll go where it'll do lots of good, sir."
Paul directed his gaze to the wheezing, balloon-like figure of the editor. "Has Kane given you enough advertising, Bivens?"
The puffed, greedy face smiled ingratiatingly. "Mr. Kane's been very good to us, sir. At least a quarter of a page weekly."
"How has the Voice of Labor made out?"
"It's made out—that's about all, Mr. Judson. Print paper's gone so high, that only the advertisements has made it go. We expect this special will net a neat sum."
He jingled the Woodmen's emblem at the end of a thick gold chain, thoroughly satisfied with the world. There was an Odd Fellows' button on his coat—fraternal orders strengthened his appeals for the paper.
"Pooley, how do you stand on this mining law down at Jackson?"
The lanky president of the State Federation twisted his lame leg more comfortably under him, and leaned forward, gesticulating diplomatically. "It's both good and bad, Mr. Judson. Some of the boys is very strong for it. But I seen an editorial against it in the Times-Dispatch last week. I figured you might not be for it."
Paul cut through the verbal knot. "How will the Federation go?"
The other shook his head. "No telling. There's a few of them Socialists is delegates—they're for anything to stir up trouble; but nobody pays much attention to them. Then there is others. It'll be pretty even."
"How would you feel if I took the front and back pages, Bivens?"
"That would be fine for both of us, sir."
"Coming out editorially against that law?"
He wheezed deferentially. "It has some bad flaws, sir. I figured on a write-up against it."
"Make it strong, and I'll take the two pages."
Bivens consulted with the other representative of labor. His eager eyes shone greedily. "How would you like us to put you down, Mr. Judson, for the main speech of the convention? 'Proper Legal Safeguards in Mining,' or something like that?... You know, the front and back pages is more expensive. Say five hundred for the two."
Paul watched their well-fed, ever-hungry faces with mental nausea. "All right."
"You'll make the speech?"
He nodded. "Don't forget the editorial."
As they rose, he lifted his check book with studied obviousness. "If those Socialists make trouble, find out what they want. If another advertisement will handle them——" He did not end the sentence.
He stared after their retreating figures. The spokesmen of labor! A herd of dumb, worthless brutes, led by pig-eyed greed! Promising material to have any say as to the destinies of a country!... Well, Pelham would learn.
Paul had a busy month of it. The mining was beginning to pay at last. Two hundred more convicts, more than a hundred negro workers, had been added to the force in the third ramp; its output had begun to exceed the other two.
After he had purchased the ore lands lying on both sides of the former holding, he called Sam Ross, Dudley Randolph, and the Birrell-Florence representatives into conference. Randolph was the only one who held out, when a pool was proposed to cover prices and wages.
"I don't have trouble with my men, Judson; I don't want any. I'm with you in theory, but I can't see any advantage to me in that proposition."
Paul then opened his alternate plan. The working out of the details took two weeks, but the result was the incorporation of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company. Paul Judson's salary as managing vice-president was fifty thousand, in addition to what the dividends would bring.
He figured up the value of his stock. Unless it depreciated, he could get out—now—with five million dollars! And this was only the mining rights. He could afford to let Pelham play with a few fool notions, when things broke this way!
On his next conference with the son over progress at the works, well-planned hints gave Pelham the opening to learn of the invitation from John Pooley, and the father's acceptance. "Of course, my opinions don't go as far as yours——"
"I didn't expect that. But this is great news! You'll come out for the new bill, after all?"
"With necessary practical modifications. I'm studying it out now."
Pelham repeated enthusiastically, "It's splendid news!"
At his first opportunity he phoned down to Jane an insistent plea for that afternoon. "You'll have to see me, lady dear; I've something important to tell you."
Was there ever a girl to whom these words, from even a passable lover, or, for that matter, a possible one, did not bring the fluttering fantasy of what woman has been so long taught to consider the one important something that she is to hear? This thought came first to Jane; then, smiling at her overstayed fraction of thinking, she promised the afternoon.
She was on the porch when his wheels slid to a standstill at the curb; he was beside her before she was well out of her chair. "The most amazing thing, Jane!" as urgent fingers levitated her into the seat beside him. "Dad's coming our way!"
Something of his flaring enthusiasm heightened her reply. "You can't be serious! I'd as soon expect Auntie to be a convert!" Her mothering eyes searched his face anxiously. "You aren't teasing me?"
"Indeed not! He's to speak at the state labor convention himself, in favor of proper mining regulations. It's great, Jane! I wouldn't have believed it of him!"
Her mobile lips curved doubtfully. "For your sake, I hope you're right, Pelham. But—how can he? Why, boy, he's on the other side—he must be! How could he line up with our ideas, when it would take money out of his own pocket? Miracles don't happen, I'm afraid. I wish——" She sighed. There was something to admire, almost love, in his hearty zeal over the amazing convert; he was so boyish, so peltingly trustful!
"I'm for it, remember. And I'm his son." Her unsympathetic unbelief widened his gaze.
Her fingers brushed his arm in a fleet unspoken caress. "You're a good boy, Pelham. I haven't gotten over my wonder at you. But—you're pulling against him, in all of this, remember."
"He's decent." Real pain spoke here; his own doubts of the father gave an obstinate tinge to his reception of her objections.
A cynical sureness hardened the eyes for a moment. "Nobody's decent, when his pocket-book's affected." A merry laugh parted her lips. "How unfeeling you must find me! Let's pray I'm entirely wrong. Why not get a look at his speech, before he delivers it?" Incredulous, hope-against-hope eagerness flickered in her face.
This Pelham at once agreed to do. There was some ground for Jane's hesitancy, he reflected; most men, given Paul's position, would have been permanently intractable. But his father, after all, was different.
He could hardly let her go back for supper, although she had promised. A dizzying intemperance drove on his tongue. "I wish I could keep you, now that I have you here," and his eyes dwelt upon her alluring shapeliness; her gaze was intently busied with the panorama of uninspired villas. "You don't know what knowing you has meant to me, Jane. I was in the dumps over the whole business...."
"It's mutual, Pelham. The iron city has chiefly solid iron headpieces, I think. You were a rare find."
He chuckled. "You make the thing too intellectual, at that. I assure you that I wouldn't offer to elope with a suffrage tract, or a skirted treatise on socialism. My offer holds good, if you're willing." Playfully he increased the speed.
"Lauderdale isn't Barkis," she temporized. "Have you known me four weeks, or five?"
"So romance perishes, as the lady grows arithmetical! Love can't be weighed on the iceman's scales."
"Nor can mental dynamite blast it out, Mr. Miner. Modern marriage isn't a thing to venture lightly. Love's blindness was once thought a blessing——"
"It's often a mercy," he slipped in.
"To-day's surgery is curing the blindness. It's all right to mate as birds do, if people could part as easily. But when a heart must be pledged, not only to honeymoon days, but to the petty irks, and the tedious astronomical study of the skyhigh cost of living——It needs reflection."
"You might give me a croûton of comfort. The especial heart I sit beside isn't pledged elsewhere, I hope?"
"Now, really——"
"That's not asking too much."
"It is," the lips pursed grimly. "It's pledged, alas, to the Uplift of the Underdog, the Castigation of the Capitalist Canine, the Manufacture of the Millennium, the Fashioning of the Future's Fascinating Feminism——"
"Enough, enough! But to no single heart," in pleading insistence.
"Nor to no married one neither," she laughed.
"Content, i' faith! Now you may go home to single blessedness and that supper you thoughtlessly promised to grace." But Pelham wondered, more than once, whether the girl's last light retort had hidden a dig at his friendship with Dorothy. Well, Jane had said less than he deserved, at that.
The convention came closer and closer; and still Paul had not had time to prepare the speech, when the son made his requests. The work at the third ramp, and the planning of an opening on the newly purchased crests beyond, kept Pelham's hands exceptionally busy, so that he did not find much time to wonder at his failure to see the expected address.
Three days before the convention, Jane met him with a worried face. "Something's rotten in the environs of the iron Copenhagen, Pelham. I learned about it from comrade Hernandez. One of the few socialist delegates, a Birrell-Florence miner named Jensen—I don't think you've met him—has been offered a direct bribe to oppose the mining bill. Somebody's busy, that's sure."
"That does sound discouraging. Let's go over your mining reports, so that I can get the facts straight. I ought to understand the situation, at least."
They went over the figures together. He began to visualize what the class struggle meant, here in the quiet, placid South. There had been four large mine explosions in the state the year before, the one at Flagg Mines killing a hundred and ninety-two——"And all of it useless, Pelham! The simplest mine safeguards——"
"The owners can't know of them!"
She shut her lips. "They cost something. Every cent cuts down profits. It's cheaper to kill men."
"It's horrible!" In dejected impotence he clenched his hands. The unemotional rows of figures began to acquire a breathing significance. His vivid imagination pictured mangled forms, the bursting hell of explosions, the isolated horror of lonely accident and death, the pallid faces of starving mothers and babies, staining the broad margins of the cheap white paper.
She looked up from the pamphlets, her brows creased. Pelham smothered an impulse to kiss away the slight gravure of worry. "The West, bad as it is in some things, at least has modern laws and safeguards." An unmeant accusation drove in her tones. "The creaky old laws here are not even followed! When was the last inspection of your mines?"
"More than a month ago. The inspector wasn't very thorough, I noticed. They were pronounced safe."
"It ought to be done weekly, at least, beside a daily inspection by your forces. Gas can collect in the coal mines, flaws and cracks in the roofing anywhere—only close inspection will do.... And, then, think of the wages paid here! Can a man live—decently, I mean, so that he can send his children to school, and all, on what you pay? And Judge Florence gets seventy-five thousand salary—outside of his dividends."
"My father gets fifty."
"It's compulsory starvation and death for the ones who really produce the wealth.... We'll see what the convention does."
Pelham missed the opening sessions; but Jane gave him reports of the meetings she witnessed, supplemented by what Hernandez and Jensen told him. It was a heated gathering. Big John Pooley was accused outright of dishonest accounting, by one violent structural iron worker. The oily eloquence of Robert E. Lee Bivens smoothed this over. Each of the administration officials—"the boodle gang," as the noisy radical minority called them—was flayed; the editor of the Voice of Labor received an especial lashing from Jensen, who charged him with deliberately selling out labor's paper to the corporations.
The machinery rolled smoothly. All protests were tombed in safely packed committees.
At last came the final night, with Paul's speech, and consideration of the mining bill afterward, as the only unfinished business.
Pooley, using his gavel vigorously, secured general quiet. He spoke of the honor paid by having as their distinguished visitor the wide-awake vice-president of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company. "Every act in his life marks Paul Judson as a friend of labor. Many of you do not know that he holds a union card—the printers elected him to honorary membership more than a year ago. He is one of us. His problems are our problems. He is turning the splendid force of his intellect to a solution of the labor question which will help employer and employee alike. A gentleman of sterling integrity, a leader among leaders——" The fulsome eulogy continued for a quarter of an hour.
Jane, who sat beside Pelham, sniffed audibly at most of the speech. He had asked his mother to go with them; but she had been too busy planning a dance at the country club, which Paul was giving for Sue, to take the evening off. He would have Jane to look after, his mother reminded him.
The boy was irritated at his companion's attitude. The glamor of the situation, with his father as the recognized champion of labor, fitted smoothly into his own rebellious dreams. With this support, he could achieve his rosiest plannings.
Paul rose to speak, alert, dignified, commanding.
He paid tribute to the audience, and to the hosts of labor they represented. They were particularly fortunate, he said, in their leadership; under the sane, conservative guidance of such men they were sure to reflect credit on the city, the state, the entire South.
"I believe in you. I believe in the work you are doing. You are the brawn and the backbone of our free white Anglo-Saxon democracy, the flower of the world's peoples. And the backbone"—he smiled embracingly—"is as necessary as the head; the brawn is as essential as the brain.
"There are some—socialists, anarchists, or whatever you choose to call them—who are working for a body without a head, brawn without a brain. You can find such bodies in the morgue. The decapitated socialist state is a corpse."
There was a burst of applause at this. Pelham went chill all over, as he realized how unpopular socialism would be made to appear. And—his father speaking!
"We have passed, as a people, out of the black gloom, our heritage from a red war of brother against brother, into the golden sunshine of a new day, a day of prosperity and plenty, an hour of progress and enlightenment. While the rest of the world is torn with war, peace is upon us; our products, sold to the warring world, assure an unprecedented prosperity to us. Beware lest the evil counselor, the plausible deceiver, the wily plotter creep in, and our ears lend attention to his seductive tones! This is no time for the disorganizer. We, as well as you, are fighting for the best things of life—peace, freedom, and the welfare of every one, capitalist and laborer alike, and a whole-souled, complete understanding and brotherhood between all of us!"
The applause was noisily demonstrative. One delegate, who had attended too many sub-conventions in various bars, started down the aisle to shake the hand of "brother Judson." The vigorous pilotage of two ushers steered him into the safer harbor of the street.
After the interruption, Paul turned to his topic. "I favor state mining regulation—and the stricter the better, always conserving the full liberty of the individual to make his free contract. That present joke at Jackson—that so-called mining law, which would bankrupt every mine owner, and drive into unemployment and starvation every mine employee in the state—I know that none of you can be so blind to your own interest as to favor it.
"I hope that you will go on record as favoring a sane, reasonable law—one protecting your employer's profit, so that your wages will be safe."
He branched into a technical discussion of the flaws of the law, emphasizing what labor would lose in every case if the proposed changes were made. There were growls of dissent from some quarters—even Pelham, sick at heart, hissed one of his statements; but the applause overwhelmed the disagreement. Benignant John Pooley, seated at the speaker's right, led the handclapping at every pause.
"It's up to you," Paul's tones sharpened, grew crisper. "You have it in your power to go on record against it, or for it. If against it, you assure a continuation of the present helpful and hopeful laws—not perfect, by any means, but laws which will be constantly bettered by an intelligent legislature, representative of the whole people. Or you can favor it—and thereby favor, instead of prosperity and progress, bankruptcy for the owners, spiritual bankruptcy for its supporters, and, worse than all, a wide-spread business depression, which will force capital elsewhere, slow down and stop the wheels of industry, drive the storekeepers out of business, and drag your own wives and families into want, poverty, ultimate degradation and death.
"The smoke from those mining settlements and furnace stacks upon the mountain above our iron city is the symbol of life—life for all of us. It is the pillar of smoke by day, the cloud of fire by night. This bill"—and he pointed an imperative finger first at the chairman, and then over the audience—"this bill will clear the sky of that smoke, and leave those mines and furnaces to rot and rust into scrap-iron. Take your choice. I believe that you cannot fail to take the wise, the sane, the brotherly, the prosperous way, for all of us, for Adamsville and the nation."
Before he could settle into his chair, and while the applause thundered at its fullest, Jensen was on his feet, shouting a demand that the chair recognize him. Pooley blandly motioned him again and again into his seat. The applause persisted.
"A question, Mr. Chairman! A question, Mr. Chairman!"
The president could ignore him no longer. "Delegate Jensen."
"Will the speaker answer a question?"
Paul, suave and collected, smilingly consented.
"Isn't it a fact that"—Jensen's voice choked in his throat, in his mad eagerness to make his point—"that the mine safeguards here are behind every state in the union? That the men are paid less, and suffer more accidents? How can there be harmony between capital and labor? Don't we both want the same thing?" His words crowded over each other; his growing incoherence was unintelligible to most of the audience. He waved a pamphlet at the speaker. "I have in my hand the latest federal mining report——"
"Aw, hire a hall, Swedey!" an ugly-faced satellite of Pooley's cut in.
The audience laughed, releasing tense feelings.
"I will do my best to answer the questions," Paul began. He picked up a paper from the desk before him. "I have here the report referred to. It is a fact that the monetary wage here is slightly lower than in most states. But the purchasing price of money is almost twice that in some Western states."
There was some applause at this.
Paul went on. "As to safeguards, that bill takes away your chief safeguard—your job."
He sat down. The jubilant audience calloused their hands noisily.
The district delegate of the miners, Jack Bowden, rose gracefully. "Isn't it also a fact, Mr. Judson, that the Birrell-Florence mines have recently installed safety devices not required by the law?"
Paul did not know it, but he bowed agreeably. "So I have understood."
Pelham writhed. Even after his father's manifestly unfair speech, he had expected intellectual honesty from him. He had dodged both parts of Jensen's question. Surface brilliancy—but the questions were still unanswered. The intense disappointment in his father wracked him with physical pain.
As she felt Pelham's body commence to rise, Jane's hand clenched his arm. "Don't do it; it will only make a scene. Let's leave."
Ignoring the pleading grasp, he rose unsteadily. Against the walls of his chest his heart pounded irregularly; he feared for a flashed instant that it would burst its way out, and he would fall dead. Gripping the seat ahead more tightly, he found his voice. "Mr. Speaker——"
Paul looked at him, for the moment surprised and displeased. The cautious smile reappeared faintly.
"About this question of wages. Isn't it a fact that, the smaller the dividends, the larger the wages? Both come from the same fund, the wealth produced; doesn't the prosperity of one cut against the prosperity of the other? So that, for labor to get its full product, profit must be abolished, and coöperation introduced?"
There was a gasp of surprise from the few in the audience who recognized the pale figure as the speaker's son. A scattering rattle of applause shook parts of the crowd.
Paul moistened his lips, and explained: "The questioner asks, will not labor's prosperity come when profit has been abolished, and coöperation substituted. There is something to be said for that as an air-spun theory. It has never worked in practice. We—all of us—must feed on our daily bread, not on economic theories," he finished with crisp decisiveness.
There was a generous hand at this.
Pelham's quiet words to Jane whistled between clenched teeth. "All untrue, all unfair. A thing cannot be good in theory and bad in practice. Something is wrong with a theory, if it does not take into account all facts, all reality. He can't even think honestly!"
She squeezed his hand in the darkness.
In dazed agony he sat—his father had left unperceived by the stage exit—while the delegates, their discussion carefully guided by the administration machine, voted, three to one, against the mining law on which he and Jane had built such hopeful fancies.
The summer stars hung muddily above the western horizon when he ran his car into the garage, and slipped quietly up to his room.
The rest of the Cottage was dark.