TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.
Why and how the money-getting spirit has become the ruler of American life and thought no analyzer of social conditions has yet made plain. That New York might be monopolist in this respect could well be conceived, for the Dutch were traders by birthright and New Amsterdam arose to this one end. But why the Puritan colony, whose first act before even the tree stumps were brown in their corn-fields was the founding of a college, and whose corner-stone rested on a book,—why these people should have come to represent a spirit of bargaining and an aptitude for getting on unmatched by the keenest-witted Dutchman hath no man yet told us.
The sharpest business men of the present are chiefly “Yankees;” and if “Jew” and “a hard bargain” are counted synonymes, “New-Englander” has equal claim to the place. The birthplace and home of all reform, New England is the home also of a greed born of hard conditions and developing a keenness unequalled by that of any other bargainer on earth. The Italian, the Greek, the Turk, find a certain æsthetic satisfaction in bargaining and do it methodically, but always picturesquely and with a relish unaffected by defeat; but with the Yankee it is a passionate, absorbing desire, sharpening every line of the face and felt even in the turn of the head or shoulders, and in every line of the eager, restless figure. Success assured softens and modifies these tendencies. Defeat aggravates them. One meets many a man for whom it is plain that the beginning of life held unlimited faith that the great city meant a fortune, the sanguine conviction passing gradually into the interrogative form. The fortune is still there. Thus far the conviction holds good, but his share in it has become more and more problematical. The flying and elusive shadow still holds for him the only real substance, but his hands have had no power to grasp or detain, and the most dogged determination gives way at last to the sense of hopeless failure. For this type may be the ending as cheap clerk or bookkeeper, with furtive attempts at speculation when a few dollars have been saved, or a retreat toward that remote West which has hidden effectually so many baffled and defeated lives. There may also come another ending, and the feverish, scheming soul lose its hold on the body, which has meant to it merely a means of getting and increasing money.
It is this latter fate that came to a man who would have no place in this record save for the fact that his last querulous and still-questioning days were lived side by side with a man who had also sought money, and having found it had chosen for it certain experimental uses by means of which siphon he was presently drained dry. For him also had been many defeats. A hospital ward held them both, and the two beds were side by side, the one representing a patience that never failed, yet something more than patience. For the face of this man bore no token of defeat. It was rather triumph that looked at moments from the clear eyes that had also an almost divine pity as they turned toward the neighbor who poured out his story between paroxysms of coughing, and having told it once, proceeded to tell it again, his sole and final satisfaction in life being the arraignment of all living. The visitor who came into the ward was pinned on the instant, the fiery eyes demanding the hearing which was the last gift time held for him. It was a common story often told, this slow, inevitable descent into poverty. Its force lay in the condensed fury of the speaker, who looked on the men he had known as sworn conspirators against him, and cursed them in their going out and coming in with a relish that no argument could affect. What his neighbor might have to tell was a matter of the purest indifference. It was impossible even to ask his story; and it remained impossible until a day when arraignment was cut short and the disappointed, bitter soul passed on to such conditions as it had made for itself.
“You’ve got the best of me. They all do,” he said in dying, with a last turn of the sombre eyes toward his neighbor. “You ought to have gone first by a week, and there you are. But this time I guess it’s just as well. I don’t seem to want to fight any longer, and I’m glad I’m done. It’s your turn next. Good—”
The words had come with gasps between and long pauses. Here they stopped once for all. Good had found him; the only good for the child of earth, who, having failed to learn his lesson here, must try a larger school with a different system of training. The empty bed was not filled at once. A screen shut it off. There was time now to hear other words than the passionate railings that had monopolized all time. The sick man mended a little, and in one of the days in which speech was easier gave this record of his forty years:—
“It’s a fact, I believe, that the sons of reformers seldom walk in the same track. My father was one of the old Abolitionists, and an honest one, ready to give money when he could and any kind of work when he couldn’t. It was a great cause. I cried over the negroes down South and went without sugar a year or so, and learned to knit so that I could knit some stockings for the small slaves my own size. But by the time I was eight years old it was plain enough to me that there were other kinds of slavery quite as bad, and that my own mother wore as heavy bonds as any of them. She was a farmer’s wife, and from year’s end to year’s end she toiled and worked. She never had a cent of her own, for the butter money was consecrated to the cause, and she gave it gladly. My father had no particular intention to be unkind. He was simply like a good two-thirds of the farmers I have known,—much more careful of his animals than of his wife. A woman was so much cooking and cleaning and butter-making force, and child-bearing an incident demanding as little notice as possible. It is because of that theory that I am five inches shorter than any of our tribe. My mother was a tall, slender woman, with a springy step and eyes as clear as a brook. I see them sometimes as I lie here at night.
“I said to myself when I was ten that I’d have things easier for her before she died. I said it straight ahead while I was working my way up in the village store, for I would not farm, and when she died I said it to her in the last hour I ever heard her voice: ‘What I couldn’t do for you, mother, I’ll do for all women as long as I am on the earth.’
“I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned some woman was having a hard time, and some brute was making it for her. I knew it was partly their own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and decent, but custom and tradition, the law and the prophets, were all against them. I watched it all I could, but I was deep in trying to get ahead and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams and my fancies, there was a money-making streak in me. It’s a lost vein. You may search as you will and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good returns. I left the village at twenty-one and went to Philadelphia, and the small savings I took with me from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change, but the old Quaker who owned it knew my father and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and settled for life if I liked.
“Well, here it was again. This man was honest and clean. He meant to do fairly by all mankind, and he tried to. He had some secrets in his methods that made his soap the best in the market. The chief secret was honest ingredients, but it was famous. If you’ve ever been in a soap-factory you know what it is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in paper as fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room was filled with girls who did the work. They were not the best order of girls. The wages a week were from three to five dollars, and they were at it from seven A. M. to six P. M. There was a good woman in the office,—a woman with a head as well as a heart,—and she did the directing and disciplining. It was no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and the creatures began squabbling together, but she managed it, and by night they were always meek enough. You’re likely to be meek when you’ve carried soap ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery as glass or glare ice. They picked it up as it cooled, wrapped it in paper, and had it in boxes, five pounds to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color and then it ate off their finger tips till they bled. They could not wear gloves, for that would have interfered with the packing.
“Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They were big, hearty girls. They had to be to do that work, but my heart ached for them as they filed out at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but to get home and into bed. Very few stayed on. The smart ones graduated into something better. The stupid ones fell back and tried something easier. But as I watched them and it came over me how untrained and helpless they were, and how every chance of learning was cut off by the long labor and the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed them something: shorter hours; better wages; some sort of share in the money we were making. Friend Peter shook his head when I began to hint these things. ‘They fare well enough,’ he said. ‘Thee must not get socialistic notions in thy head.’ ‘I know nothing about socialism,’ I said. ‘All I want is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out for it for the black brother and sister; why not for the white?’
“‘Thee is talking folly,’ he said and would make no other answer.
“It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to me. We did make it in a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at twenty-five, and better off every month; and I said to myself, the money would have a curse on it if those who helped to earn it had no share. I talked to the men in the boiling department. It takes brains to be a good soap-maker. We kept to the old ways, simply because what they call improvement in soap-making, like many another improvement, has been the cheapening the product by the addition of various articles that lower the quality. Experience has to teach. Theoretical knowledge isn’t much use save as foundation. A man must use eyes and tongue, and watch for the critical moment in the finishing like a lynx.
“Well, I beat my head against that wall of obstinacy till head and heart were sore. It was enough to the old Quaker that he paid promptly and did honest work; and when I told him at last that his gains were as fraudulent as if he cheated deliberately, he said, ‘Then thee need share them no longer. Go thy way for a hot-headed fool.’
“I went. There was an opening in New York, and I had every detail at my fingers’ ends. I went in with a man a little older, who seemed to think as I did, and who did, till I made practical application of my theories. I had studied everything to be had on the subject. I had mastered a language or two in my evenings, for I lived like a hermit; but now I began to talk with every business man, and try to understand why competition was inevitable. I was in no haste. I admitted that men must be trained to co-operate, but I said, ‘We shall never learn by waiting. We must learn by trying.’ I tried to bring in other soap-makers, and one or two listened; but most of them were using the cheap methods,—increasing the quantity and lowering the quality. Some of the men had come on to me from Philadelphia, and were bound to stay, but it was hard on them. They had to go into tenement-houses, for there were no homes for them such as building associations in Philadelphia make possible for every workman. But I took a house and divided it up and made it comfortable, and I lived on the lower floor myself, so that kept them contented. I fitted up a room for a reading-room, and twice a week had talks; not lectures, but talks where every man had a chance to speak five minutes if he would, and to ask questions. I coaxed the women to come. I wanted them to understand, and two or three took hold. I made a decent place for them to eat their dinners, and put these women in charge. I put in an oil-stove and a table and seats, and gave them coffee and tea at two cents a cup, and tried to have them care for the place. That has been done over and over by many an employer who pities his workers; and nine times out of ten the same result follows. The animal crops out. They were rough girls at any time, yet, taken one by one, behaved well enough. But I’ve seen boys and girls at a donation party throw cheese and what not on the carpet and rub it in deliberately, and I don’t know that one need wonder that lunch-rooms in store or factory turn into pig-pens, and the few decent ones can make no headway.
“I spoke out to them all, but it was no more than the wind blowing, and at last even I gave it up. There was no conscience in them to touch. They wanted shorter hours and more money, when they had got to the point of seeing that I was trying to help, but they had no notion of helping back. With my men it worked, and they talked down the women sometimes. But when a bad year came,—for soap has its ups and downs like everything else,—most of them struck, and the wise ones could make no headway. ‘It’s a losing game,’ my partner said; ‘if you want to go on you must go on alone.’
“I did go on alone. He left and took his capital with him. The best men stayed with me and swore to take their chances. The soap was good, and I made a hit in one or two fancy kinds, but I could not compete with men who used mean material and turned out something that looked as well at half the price. My money melted away, and a fire—set, they told me, by a man I had discharged for long-continued dishonesty—finished me. I had the name of stirring up strife for the manufacturers, because I tried to teach my workers the principle of co-operation, and begged for it where I could. It hurt my business standing. Men felt that I must be a fool. I had worked for it with such absorption that I had had little time for any joy of life. I had neither wife nor child, though I longed for both. I would not have ease and happiness alone. I wanted it for my fellows. To-day it might be. Ten years ago it only the thought of a dreamer, and I made no headway.
“The fire left me stranded. I went in as superintendent of some new works, but went out in a month, for I could not consent to cheat, and fraud was in every pound sent out. I tried one place and another with the same result. Competition makes honesty impossible. A man would admit it to me without hesitation, but would end: ‘There’s no other way. Don’t be a fool. You can’t stand out against a system.’
“‘I will stand out if it starves me,’ I said. ‘I will not sell my soul for any man’s hire. The time is coming when this rottenness must end. Make one more to fight it now.’
“Men looked at me pitifully. ‘I was throwing away chances,’ they said. ‘Why wouldn’t I hear reason? We were in the world, not in Utopia.’
“‘We are in the hell we have made for all mankind,’ I said. ‘The only real world is the world which is founded on truth and justice. Everything else falls away.’
“Everything else has fallen away. I was never strong, and a year ago I was knocked down in a scrimmage. Some bullies from one of the factories set on my men—mine no longer, but still preaching my doctrine. Somehow I was kicked in the chest and a rib broken, and this saved me probably from being sent up as a disturber of the peace. The right lung was wounded, and consumption came naturally. They nursed me—Tom’s wife and sister, good souls—till I refused to burden them any longer and came here in spite of them. It has been a sharp fight. I seem to have failed; yet the way is easier for the next. Co-operation will come. It must come. It is the law of life. It is the only path out of this jungle in which we wander and struggle and die. But there must be training. There must be better understanding. I would give a thousand lives joyfully if only I could make men and women who sit at ease know the sorrow of the poor. It is their ignorance that is their curse. Teach them; study them. Care as much for the outcast at home as for the heathen abroad. And, oh, if you can make anybody listen, beg them for Christ’s sake, for their own sake, to hearken and to help! Beg them to study; not to say with no knowledge that help is impossible, but to study, to think, and then to work with their might. It is my last word,—a poor word that can reach none, it may be, any more, and yet, who knows what wind of the Lord may bear it on, what ground may be waiting for the seed? I shall see it, but not now. I shall behold it, and it will be nigh, in that place to which I go. Work for it; die for it if need be; for man’s hope, man’s life, if ever he knows true life, has no other foundation.”