FORTY-FIVE TREACHEROUS MEN
and he read beneath it:
Theodore Marrin, and the forty-four who went back to
work for him:
Every one of you is a traitor to American citizenship.
Let us use blunt words and call a spade a spade.
Theodore Marrin, you have betrayed your employees.
And then farther down:
No decent human being would work for such a man. He has no right to be an employer—not in such hands should be placed the sacred welfare of men and women. If I were one of Marrin's employees I would prefer the streets to his shop.
Marrin looked up at the forty-four. And he saw that they were more than frightened—they were in an ugly humor, almost ferocious. The article had goaded them into a senseless fury.
Marrin spoke more easily.
"So that's your friend of labor, that's your Joe Blaine. Well, here is what your Joe Blaine has done for you. You're no good to me without the girls. You're all discharged!"
He left them and made madly for the door. The men were chaotic with rage; they arose; their voices went sharp and wild.
"What does that Joe Blaine mean? He takes the bread out of our mouths!
He makes fools of us! He ought to be shot! I spit on him! Curse him!"
One man arose on a chair.
"You fools—you listened to that man, and went on strike—and now you come back, and he makes you lose your jobs. Are you going to be fools now? Are you going to let him get the best of you? He is laughing at you, the pig. The girls are laughing at you. Come on! We will go down and show him—we will assemble before his place and speak to him!"
The men were insane with rage and demon-hate. Vehemently shouting, they made for the stairs, rushed pell-mell down, and sought the street, and turned south through the snow. There were few about to notice them, none to stop them. Policemen were in doorways and odd shelters. And so, unimpeded, the crazed mob made its way.
In the mean time Marrin had come out in his heavy fur coat and stepped into his closed automobile. It went through the storm, easily gliding, turned up West Tenth Street, and stopped before Joe's windows. Marrin hurried in and boldly opened the office door. Billy jumped up to intercept him.
"Mr. Blaine—" he began.
"Get out of my way!" snapped Marrin, and stepped up to Joe.
Joe was brooding at his desk, brooding and writing, his dark face troubled, his big form quite stoop-shouldered.
"Well," said Joe, "what's the matter, Mr. Marrin?"
Marrin tried to contain his rage. He pointed his cane at Joe.
"You've made a mistake, Mr. Blaine."
"It isn't the first one."
"Let me tell you something—"
"I will let you."
Marrin spoke with repression.
"Next time—don't attack both the boss and the men. It's bad policy.
Take sides."
"Oh, I did take sides," said Joe, lightly. "I'm against anything treacherous."
Marrin exploded.
"Well, you'll get yours! And let me tell you something! I've a good mind to sue you for libel and shut up your shop."
Joe rose, and there was a dangerous light in his eyes. His hands were open at his sides, but they twitched a little.
"Then," said Joe, "I'll make it worth your while. If you don't want to be helped out, get out!"
"Very well," sputtered Marrin, and turned, twirling his cane, and made an upright exit.
The sad Slate was paralyzed; Billy was joyous.
But Joe strode into the kitchen, where his mother was quietly reading at the window.
"What is it, Joe?"
"Mother," he said, "that fellow Marrin was in threatening to sue me for libel."
"Could it hurt you?"
"It might. Speaking the truth is always libelous."
Joe's mother spoke softly.
"Your father lost an arm in the war. You can't expect to fight without facing danger. And besides," she laughed easily, "you can always get a job as a printer, Joe."
Joe paced up and down moodily, his hands clasped behind his back.
"If it was only myself—" he murmured, greatly troubled. "I wonder where
Sally is this morning."
"Didn't she come, Joe?"
"No. Not a word from her. I'd hate her to be sick."
"Hadn't you better send over and see?"
"I'll wait a bit yet. And yet—" he sighed, "I just need Sally now."
His mother glanced at him keenly.
"Sally's a wonder," she murmured.
"She is—" He spoke a little irritably. "Why couldn't she have come this morning?"
There were quick steps, and Billy rushed in, his eyes large, his cheeks pale.
"Mr. Joe!" he said breathlessly.
"Yes, Billy."
"There's a lot of men out on the street, and they're beginning to fire snowballs!"
Nathan Slate came in, a scarecrow of fear, teeth chattering.
"Oh, Mr. Joe," he wailed. "Oh, Mr. Joe!"
Joe's mother rose, and spoke under her breath.
"Mr. Slate, sit down at once!"
Slate collapsed on a chair, trembling.
Joe felt as if a fork of lightning had transfixed him—a sharp white fire darting from head and feet and arms to his heart, and whirling there in a spinning ball. He spoke quietly:
"I'll go and see."
It seemed long before he got to the front window. Looking out through the snow-dim pane, he saw the street filled with gesticulating men. He saw some of the faces of the forty-four, but mingled with these were other faces—the faces of toughs and thugs, ominous, brutal, menacing. In a flash he realized that he had been making enemies in the district as well as friends, and it struck him that these were the criminal element in the political gang, hangers-on, floaters, the saloon contingent, who were maddened by his attempt to lead the people away from the rotten bosses. As if by magic they had emerged from the underworld, as they always do in times of trouble, and he knew that the excited East Side group was now flavored with mob-anarchy—that he had to deal, not with men whose worst weapon was words, but with brutes who lusted for broken heads. Some of the faces he knew—he had seen them hanging about saloons. And he saw, too, in that swift scrutiny, that many of the men had weapons; some had seized crowbars and sledges from a near-by street tool-chest which was being used by laborers; others had sticks; some had stones. An ominous sound came from the mob, something winged with doom and death, like the rattling of a venomous snake, with head raised to strike, ready fangs and glittering eyes. He could catch in that paralyzing hum words tossed here and there: "Smash his presses! Clean him out! Lynch him, lynch him! Kill—kill—kill!—"
A human beast had coiled at his door, myriad-headed, insane, bloodthirsty, all-powerful—the mob, that terror of civilization, that sudden reversion in mass to a state of savagery. It boded ill for Joe Blaine. He had a bitter, cynical thought:
"So this is what comes of spreading the truth—of really trying to help—of living out an ideal!"
A snowball hit the window before him, a soft crash and spread of drip, and there rose from the mob a fiendish yell that seemed itself a power, making the heart pound, dizzying the brain.
Joe turned. His mother was standing close to him, white as paper, but her eyes flashing. She had not dared speak to Joe, knowing that this fight was his and that he had passed out of her hands.
He spoke in a low, pulsing voice.
"Mother, I want you to stay in back!"
She looked at him, as if drinking her fill of his face.
"You're right, Joe," she whispered, and turned and went out.
Billy was standing at the stove, a frightened boy, but he gripped the poker in his hand.
"Billy," said Joe, quietly, "run down and tell Rann to keep 'em out of the press-room."
Billy edged to the door, opened it, and fled.
Joe was quite alone. He sat down at his desk and took up the telephone.
"Hello, Central!" his voice was monotonous in its lowness and tenseness.
"Hello!"
"Give me police headquarters—quick!"
Central seemed startled.
"Police—? Yes, right away! Hold on!—Here they are!"
"Hello! Police headquarters!" came a man's voice.
"This is Joe Blaine." Joe gave his address. "There's a riot in front of the house—a big mob. Send over a patrol wagon on the jump!"
At that moment there was a wild crash of glass, and a heavy stone sang through the air and knocked out the stove-pipe—pipe and stone falling to the floor with a rumble and rattle—and from the mob rose murderous yells.
So Joe was able to add:
"They've just smashed my window with a stone. You'd better come damn fast."
"Right off!" snapped Headquarters.
Joe put down the telephone, and stepped quietly over the room and out into the hall. Even at that moment the hall door burst wide and a frenzied push and squabble of men poured forth upon him. In that brief glimpse, in the dim storm-light, Joe saw faces that were anything but human—wild animals, eyes blood-shot, mouths wide, and many fists in the air above their heads. There was no mercy, no thought, nothing civilized—but somehow the demon-deeps of human nature, crusted over with the veneer of gentler things, had broken through. Worse than anything was the crazy hum, rising and rising, the hoarse notes, the fierce discord, that beat upon his brain as if to drown him under.
Joe tried to shout:
"Keep back! I'll shoot! Keep back!"
But at once the rough bodies, the terrible faces were upon him, surrounding him, pushing him. He seized a little man who was jumping for his throat—seized and shook the little beast.
"Get back!" he cried.
Fists pushed into his eyes, blows began to rain upon his body and his head. He ducked. He felt himself propelled backward by an irresistible force. He felt his feet giving way. Warm and reeking breath blew up his nostrils. He heard confused cries of: "Kill him! That's him! We've got him!" Back and back he went, the torn center of a storm, and then something warm and sweet gushed over his eyes, earth opened under him and he sank, sank through soft gulfs, deeper and deeper, far from the troublous noise of life, far, far—into an engulfing blackness.
The flood poured on, gushing down the stair-way, at the foot of which
Rann and his two men stood, all armed with wrenches and tools.
Rann shouted.
"I'll break the head of any one who comes!"
The men in advance tried to break away, well content to leave their heads whole, but those in the rear pushed them on. Whack! whack! went the wrench—the leader fell. But then with fierce screams the mob broke loose, the three men were swept into the vortex of a fighting whirlpool. Some one opened the basement gate from the inside and a new stream poured in. The press-room filled—crowbars got to work—while men danced and wildly laughed and exulted in their vandal work. Then suddenly arose the cry of, "Police!" Tools dropped; the mob turned like a stampede of cattle, crushed for the doors, cried out, caught in a trap, and ran into the arms of blue-coated officers….
When Joe next opened his eyes and looked out with some surprise on the same world that he was used to, he found himself stretched in his bed and a low gas-flame eyeing him from above. He put out a hand, because he felt queer about the head, and touched bandages. Then some one spoke in his ear.
"You want to keep quiet, Mr. Blaine."
He looked. A doctor was sitting beside him.
"Where's mother?" he asked.
"Here I am, Joe." Her voice was sweet in his ears.
She was sitting on the bed at his feet.
"Come here."
She took the seat beside him and folded his free hand with both of hers.
"Mother—I want to know what's the matter with me—every bit of it."
"Well, Joe, you've a broken arm and a banged-up head, but you'll be all right."
"And you—are you all right?"
"Perfectly."
"They didn't go in the kitchen?"
"No."
"And the press?"
"It's smashed."
"And the office?"
"In ruins."
"How about Rann and the men?"
"Bruised—that's all."
"The police came?"
"Cleaned them out."
There was a pause; then Joe and his mother looked at each other with queer expressions on their faces, and suddenly their mellow laughter filled the room.
"Isn't it great, mother? That's what we get!"
"Well, Joe," said his mother, "what do you expect?"
Suddenly then another stood before him—bowed, remorseful, humble. It was Sally Heffer, the tears trickling down her face.
She knelt at the bedside and buried her face in the cover.
"It's my fault!" she cried. "It's my fault!"
"Yours, Sally?" cried Joe, quite forgetting the "Miss." "How so?"
"I—I went to Marrin's and got the girls out."
"Got the girls out?" Joe exclaimed. "Where are they?"
"On the street."
"Bring them into the ruins," said Joe, "and organize them. I'm going to make a business of this thing."
Sally looked up aghast.
"But I—I ought to be shot down. It's I that should have been hurt."
Joe smiled on her.
"Sally! Sally! what an impetuous girl you are! What would I do without you?"