THE POETS’ STRIKE.
It was just three o’clock on a warm day in August, and the deep silence that prevailed in the Franklin Square Prose and Verse Foundry indicated plainly that something unusual had happened. The great trip-hammer in the basement was silent; there was no whir of machinery on the upper floors; and in the vast, deserted dialect department the busy file was still. It was only in the business office that any signs of life were visible, and there the chiefs of the great establishment were gathered in anxious consultation. Their stern, determined faces indicated that they had taken a stand and had resolved to maintain it, no matter what might happen. From the street came the faint sound of newsboys crying extras. By nightfall the tidings would be carried to the remotest corners of the town.
The poets of the Franklin Square Foundry had been ordered out on strike!
Well might the heads of the various departments look grave, for never before in the history of the factory had there been a strike in its literary department. Down in Pearl Street the poets were congregated in groups, talking over the situation and casting ominous glances at the great window, through which they could faintly distinguish the forms of the men against whose tyranny they had rebelled.
Suddenly a tall form loomed up in the centre of a large group of excited men. It was a master poet who had climbed up on some boxes to address his comrades; and they grew quiet and closed in about him to hear his words.
“Prosers, rhymesters, and dialectists,” exclaimed the master poet, “the time has come for us to make a stand against the oppression of those who call themselves our masters. The time has come for the men who toil day after day in yonder tall factory to denounce the infamous system by which they are defrauded of the greater part of their wretched pittance. You know, of course, that I am speaking of the ruinous competition of scab or non-union labor. See that cart!” he cried, pointing to a square, one-horse vehicle, similar to those employed in the delivery of coal, which had been backed up against the curb in front of the factory.
“Do you know what that cart contains? See those men remove the iron scuttle on the sidewalk, and listen to the roar and rumble as the cart discharges its contents into the cellar beneath the pavement! Is that coal they are putting in with which to feed the tireless engine that furnishes motive power to the factory? No, my friends; that is a load of jokes for the back page of Harper’s Bazar, collected from the sweating-shops about Washington Square and Ninth Street. Do those jokes bear the union label? They do not. Many of them, no doubt, are made by Italians and Chinese, to the shame and degradation of our calling.”
The master poet’s words were received with a howl of rage that reached the ears of the men who were closeted in the business office, and brought a pallor to their stern, set faces.
“There is no time to be lost!” exclaimed one of the firm; “that yell of defiance convinces me that any attempt to introduce non-union poets would precipitate a riot. It will not be safe to do it unless we are prepared for the worst.”
“For my part,” said Mr. Harry Harper, “I believe that it would be a good policy for us to introduce machinery at once, and get rid of those poets, who are forever making new demands on us. The Century people have had machines in operation for some time past, and have found them very satisfactory. We must admit that a great deal of their poetry is as good as our hand-made verses.”
“Do you know,” cried Mr. Alden, “that that Chicago machine they put in some time ago is simply one of Armour’s old sausage-mills remodeled? It is the invention of a man named Fuller, who two years ago was merely an able-bodied workman in the serial shops. It is really a very ingenious piece of mechanism, and when you think that they throw a quantity of hoofs, hair, and other waste particles from the Chicago stock-yards into a hopper, and convert them into a French or Italian serial story of firm, fine texture—well, making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear is nothing to it.”
“Gentlemen,” said the head of the firm, rising as he spoke, and taking from the desk beside him some large cardboard signs, “I do not propose to have my own workmen dictate to me. I am going to hang these signs on our front door and give employment to whomever may apply for it.” The signs were thus inscribed:
HANDS WANTED
ON
SHORT STORIES.
GIRLS WANTED
FOR THE
BAZAR AND YOUNG PEOPLE.
STEADY EMPLOYMENT
FOR
SOBER, INDUSTRIOUS POETS.
TWO RHYMES TO THE QUATRAIN.
But before Mr. Harper could carry out his resolution, a young man, clad in the ordinary working-garb of a poet, hurriedly entered the office, and, placing himself before the chief, exclaimed:
“Stop, sir, before it is too late!”
“And who are you, sir?” demanded the amazed publisher.
“I am Henry Rondeau,” replied the young man, “and although I am only a humble, laboring poet, I feel that I can be of assistance to you to-day. I have a grateful heart, and cannot forget your kindness to me when I was unfortunate.”
“Kindness? I confess that I do not remember any—” began Mr. Harper; but the poet interrupted him with: “Last summer, sir, when I got my fingers frost-bitten by being permitted to shake hands with Mr. Harry Harper, you not only allowed me half-pay, but gave my poor idiot sister a job in the factory as a reader of manuscript, thus enabling us to keep the wolf from the door until I was able to use a scanning-rule again.”
“And a most invaluable assistant she is, too,” cried Mr. Alden, warmly; “she selects all the short stories for the magazine, and I doubt if you could find, even in the office of the Atlantic Monthly, any one with such keen perceptions of what the public do not want as Susan Rondeau, the idiot reader of Franklin Square.”
At this moment a hoarse yell arose from the crowd of strikers beneath the window, and was borne to the ears of those who were gathered in the business office.
“What does that noise mean?” demanded the senior partner, an angry flush suffusing his cheek. “Do they think they can frighten me with yells and threats of violence? I will hang out these signs, and bid them do their worst!”
“Stop! I implore you, stop!” cried Henry Rondeau, as he threw himself before his chief. “The sight of those signs would madden them, and the counsel of the cooler heads, which has thus far controlled them, would be swept away in a moment. And then—the deluge!”
“But we do not fear even death,” cried the courageous publisher.
“Mr. Harper,” continued the young workman, earnestly, “at this very moment the master poet is urging them to desperate measures. He has already in his possession the address and dinner-hour of every gentleman in this room, and—”
“Well, even if dynamite is to be used—”
“And,” pursued Henry Rondeau, “he has threatened to place the list in the hands of Stephen Masset!”
“Merciful heavens!” exclaimed the veteran publisher, as he sank, pale and trembling, in his easy-chair, while his associates wrung their hands in bitter despair; “can nothing be done to prevent it?”
“Yes,” cried the young working-man. “Accept the offer of the Poets’ Union to make a new sliding-scale. Make a few slight concessions to the men, and they will meet you half-way. Put emery wheels in the dialect shop instead of the old-fashioned cross-cut files and sandpaper that now take up so much of the men’s time. Let one rhyme to the quatrain be sufficient at the metrical benches, and—it is a little thing, but it counts—buy some tickets for the poets’ picnic and summer-night’s festival at Snoozer’s Grove, which takes place next Monday afternoon and evening.”
Henry Rondeau’s advice was taken, and to-day the great trip-hammer is at work in the basement of the foundry, and the poets and prose-writers are busy at their benches on the upper floors. The master poet is at work among the rest, and sometimes he chuckles as he thinks of the concessions that were wrung from the foundry-owners by the great August strike. But little does the master poet dream of the vengeance that awaits him—of the awful midnight oath taken by Joseph Harper after he had signed the treaty with his employees.
Not until after death will that oath be fulfilled. Not until the members of the Poets’ Union have borne the remains of their chief to Calvary with a following as numerous as that which accompanies the deceased aunt of a Broadway janitor to her last resting-place—not until then will the surviving members of the firm carry out the sacred trust imposed upon them.
They will collect the poems of the master poet and publish them in a mouse-colored volume—edited by Arthur Stedman.