CHAPTER XXXI.
THE NEW ERA.
From every section of the country the news of the pending election gives promise of a victory for the Independence party. The people have accepted the assurances of Harvey Trueman that he will not countenance violence on the part of the radical element of either the people or the Plutocrats. His conspicuous action at Wilkes-Barre is an incontestible proof of his sincerity, and also demonstrates that the masses are not desirous of reverting to an appeal to force in order to regain their rights. If the man whom the public hails as a deliverer can be elected, all the evils of the Trusts and monopolies, it is believed, can be settled amicably.
So strong has the sentiment in favor of the Independence party become, that for days before the election great parades of the workingmen in the principal cities celebrate the coming victory of the people.
Yet the subsidized press maintains a defiant position, and gloomily predicts that anarchy will prevail upon the announcement of the election of the Independence party's candidates.
This foreboding has little or no effect on the minds of the earnest workers; they are ready to trust their interests to men who have proven themselves honest champions of right, rather than suffer the bondage imposed by the Magnates.
Trueman, since the hour of his marriage, has spent much of his time in Wilkes-Barre. He decides that it is better for him to guide the closing days of the campaign from his home.
After settling the estate of Gorman Purdy, and turning over to the workingmen the mines, furnaces and breakers that were owned by the late Coal King, Harvey and his wife go to live in a comfortable villa in the suburbs.
By her voluntary surrender of the $160,000,000 which the criminal practices of Gorman Purdy had amassed, Ethel becomes the idol of the people, not only of Wilkes-Barre, but of the entire country. She gives substantial proof of the sincerity of her promise made at the grave of her father. This act of altruism does much to avert any reaction of the turbulent elements of the large cities.
The prospect of regaining the public utilities by purchase and the establishment of governmental departments to control them in the interests of the people as a whole, is made bright by the magnificent example that is furnished by the towns of Pennsylvania.
Harvey Trueman establishes the leaders of the Unions as the managers of the mines and breakers. Under his direction the profits of the business are divided proportionately among all the inhabitants of the town in which the works are located; those who work receive as their wage one-half of the net proceeds from the sale of their products. The remaining fifty per cent, is turned into the public treasury.
Had the millions of the Purdy fortune been distributed to the people by a per capita allotment, each man and woman of Wilkes-Barre might have been made independently rich. But this would defeat the ends which Ethel and Harvey wish to attain. They desire to see every citizen prosper according to his or her personal effort. So when every one in Wilkes-Barre is set to work at a profitable trade or occupation, the residue of the fortune, some $125,000,000, is used to establish a similar system of co-operation in neighboring mining districts.
In the thirty days that intervenes between the acts of annihilation and the election, two hundred and fifty thousand miners and other operatives in Pennsylvania are benefiting by the disbursement of the Purdy millions. This army of prosperous men makes the state certain of going to the Independents. The electoral votes of the Keystone state, it is certain, will decide the election.
As an object lesson which speaks more eloquently than words, Harvey adopts a suggestion which Sister Martha had made at the opening of the campaign and which had not been used because of lack of funds.
Biograph pictures of happy and contented miners in Pennsylvania, under the co-operative system, showing them at their work and at their decent homes, surrounded by their families, well fed, and clothed, are obtained in manifold sets. To contrast with these, there are pictures taken from the actual scenes in other parts of the country, showing women harnessed to the plow with oxen; women at work in the shoe factories, the tobacco factories, the sweat-shops. Pictures of the children who operate the looms in the cotton mills and the carpet factories are obtained to be contrasted with those which exhibit children at their proper places in the school room and on the lawns of the city parks.
The pomp of the Plutocrats and the destitution of the masses is portrayed by these striking contrasts.
With this terrible evidence the Independents carry their crusade into every city. The principal public squares of the cities are used to exhibit the biograph pictures. Night after night the crowds congregate to view the pictorial history of the Plutocratic National Prosperity. That which arguments cannot do in the way of weaning men from party prejudice the picture crusade accomplishes.
One of the side lights of the great drama that is being enacted is the sentiment that develops for the Committee of Forty. Memorial societies in the states from which the several committeemen hailed, are formed to give the martyrs, as the forty are now called, a decent burial. Thirty-nine of the martyrs are thus honored by public interment.
The one missing committeeman is William Nevins. He is supposed to be buried in the wrecked tunnel under the English channel. It is impossible to repair the damage done by the explosion; futile efforts are made by sub-marine divers to locate the exact point at which the break in the tunnel was made. The action of the water has totally obliterated the breach. So to the public this watery grave must remain the resting place of the genius who conceived the plan for the restoration of the rights of man.
All of the details of the committee come to light through the papers found on the body of Hendrick Stahl, secretary of the committee. The fact that Nevins was alone responsible for the plan of annihilation and that Trueman knew absolutely nothing of it, is incontestibly established.
This takes away the last argument of the Plutocrats who seek to connect
Trueman with the act of Proscription.
And Nevins? What of him?
He has not kept his pledge to the committee by dying with the Transgressor who was assigned to him. His pledge to God, to follow the committee the day after the atonement, has not been kept.
When October fourteenth dawned, the news of the uprising of the people of Wilkes-Barre and of the part played by Trueman and Ethel, were read by Nevins from the cable dispatches at Calais.
A fear arose in his heart that the plan for the election of Trueman might fail. He delayed ending his life and hastened to New York. Upon his arrival he went as a lodger to a room in a lofty Bowery hotel. From this watch-tower he reviewed the political field. "I shall redeem my pledge to-morrow," he said to himself each day.
The night would find him irresolute, not for his fear of death, but for the dread that some unexpected occurrence might arise to thwart the people in their effort to carry the election by the peaceable use of the ballot.
On the flight before the election Nevins hastens to Chicago. In the crowd at the Independence Headquarters he mingles unobserved. "What news have you from California?" he asks of one of the press committee. This is thought to be the pivotal State. At least this is the claim made by the Plutocrats.
"The indications are that the State will go against us."
"And why so?"
"Because we have not been able to send speakers there, and the Plutocrats wrecked the train which was conveying the biograph pictures. You know the Press of the slope, with but few exceptions, are owned by the Magnates and suppress every bit of news that would be detrimental to them. They have distorted the acts of the Committee of Forty. Out in California the great mass of the people look upon the Independents as a party of Anarchists."
"Trueman can be elected without California, can he not?"
"Elected! Why, he will carry forty States."
"You really believe it?" asks Nevins, earnestly.
"I would wager my life on it," is the instant reply.
Nevins hurries from the headquarters and goes to his room. He writes a letter to Trueman, setting forth his hopes that the interests of the people will ever remain Trueman's actuating principle. With absolute fidelity he tells of the struggle he has undergone since the day he sent Golding to his death, and his reason for procrastinating in ending his life.
When the letter is finished Nevins reads it with evident satisfaction.
"Now I will go to the committee," is his resolve.
A pistol lies on the table. He picks up the weapon. There is no hesitancy in his manner. Death has been a matter which he has contemplated for months, and it holds no terror for him.
"If I have sinned against Thee, O, God," he murmurs, "death would be too mild a punishment for me. I would deserve to be everlastingly damned, to live on this earth and bear the denunciation of my fellowmen.
"My death, like those of the committee who have already fulfilled their pledge, is not suicide, but part of the inevitable price of liberty."
The pistol is raised to his temple. Then a thought flashes upon him. "Your death will come as an ante-climax to the election. It may be the means of defeating the Independents."
This thought causes him to lower the pistol.
"To-morrow," he mutters.
At daybreak Nevins is at the headquarters and remains near the chief operator, eager for every detail of the election.
"What is the weather prediction?" he inquires.
"Generally clear; light local rains on Pacific seaboard."
"I am most intensely interested in the result of the election," Nevins confided to the operator, to explain his presence at headquarters. "I have come all the way from San Francisco to congratulate Trueman on his election."
"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Mr. Trueman is at his home in
Wilkes-Barre."
"Well, I shall telegraph him my congratulations. I want to be the first man in the United States to send him an authoritative message confirming his election. If you can arrange to let me have the news first, when it comes in, and will send my message, I shall be glad to pay you for the service."
"I have the wire that will send him the news," the operator states as he pats a transmitter on the desk before him. "What do you call a fair payment for the message?"
"Twenty-five dollars."
"I'll send your message."
Nevins gives the required sum, and sits at the elbow of the man who is to flash the news of victory to Trueman.
In Wilkes-Barre the day has dawned auspiciously. Trueman is among the first to perform his duty as a citizen. After voting he returns to his home.
With his wife at his side he reads the dispatches that come in by a private wire from headquarters.
"I am happier to-day than I ever was in my life before," Ethel tells him. "And I know that you will be elected."
"I hope your words come true. But whether I am President or not my campaign has not been in vain. I have won the fairest bride in the world, and she and I are doing a real good with a fortune that might have been a curse."
"Now I can understand the words that are a mystery to so many of the rich: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive,'" Ethel says, as she places her hand on her husband's shoulder. "Now I can appreciate the emotion that impelled you to give the one thousand dollar check to the miner's widow." As they sit together, through the long day, they discuss what they will do for the improvement of the people, there is no provision for the repayment of anti-election promises to the managers of trusts; no talk of rewarding henchmen with high offices.
By five in the afternoon the messages begin to announce the forecast in the extreme Eastern states.
"Rhode Island has polled the largest vote in its history. The Independence Party claims the state by fifteen thousand." Harvey reads this with an incredulous smile.
"We can hardly hope to carry Rhode Island," he declares frankly.
"You told me only yesterday that Fall River is going wild over the biograph pictures," Ethel protests.
"The rural vote in Maine is believed to have caused the state to go to the Independents," is the next message that causes Harvey to doubt his senses.
"New Jersey washes its hands of trusts. Trueman carries Newark, Trenton, and Jersey City by overwhelming majorities."
Thus the story of state after state is wired to Wilkes-Barre.
"Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio are claimed to have voted for the people's candidate. The Plutocrats ridicule the assertion, yet have no figures to quote."
At nine o'clock the returns by election districts in the populous cities, begin to arrive.
"In 1238 districts, Greater New York, Trueman leads by a clear majority of 75,000." Harvey reads without comment.
Ten minutes later, this message is received: "Total of 2200 election districts, Greater New York, Trueman's majority 180,000. This makes the state Independent by a safe margin of 100,000."
Harvey Trueman feels for the first time since his nomination that he will be elected. Joy is written on his face.
"Pennsylvania casts its vote for Trueman and co-operation."
It is eleven-thirty. The proverbial "landslide" of politics has occurred. Already the townspeople of Wilkes-Barre are surging about the villa, cheering their champion.
A dozen times Harvey goes to the window to bow his acknowledgments.
Ethel is excited, almost hysterical. With a woman's quick perception she realizes that her husband has triumphed.
Again they stand at the elbow of the telegraph operator who is receiving the messages.
"Chicago—" then there was a break.
"Trueman, have Trueman come to the instrument. Answer. Is Trueman at your elbow?" This message is sent by the operator at headquarters. He has indicated that it is a private message and only the word Chicago is written.
"What's the matter?" asks Trueman, who has noticed the pause.
"It's all right, sir; the operator want's you to get this message immediately." There is another pause.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, INDEPENDENCE PARTY HEADQUARTERS.
To HARVEY TRUEMAN, Greeting:
"You are elected President of the United States by popular acclamation of forty States. I congratulate you. Keep your faith with the people; place them always above the dollar; remember that your office was bought by the blood of patriots, as true as the founders of the Republic; that you owe it to the majority to keep their rights inviolate. I go to inform the Committee of Forty that the Revolution of Reason is victorious.
WILLIAM NEVINS."
As Trueman reads these words and grasps their meaning, Nevins, at the other end of the wire, in distant Chicago, redeems his pledge and drops dead.
The curtain falls on the Tragedy of Life. The struggle for mere existence that has retarded mankind from creation, is at an end. Man enters into possession of his God-given inheritance, equal opportunity, with a valiant leader, and the fairest land in the world in which to begin the building up of a Republic that insures to all men Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.