CHAPTER XII
On their way to the hall on the Bowery Gerrit Smith and John Brown passed through dimly lighted streets along which were drifting scores of boys and girls, ragged, friendless, homeless, shelterless in the chill night. The strange old man's eyes were fixed on space. He saw nothing, heard nothing of the city's roaring life or the call of its fathomless misery.
He saw nothing even when they passed a house with a red light before which little girls of twelve were selling flowers. Neither of the men, living for a single fixed idea, caught the accent of evil in the child's voice as she stepped squarely in front of them and said:
"What's ye hurry?"
When they turned aside she piped again:
"Won't ye come in?"
They merely passed on. The infinite pathos of the scene had made no impression. That this child's presence on the streets was enough to damn the whole system of society to the lowest hell never dawned on the philanthropist or the man of Action.
The crowd in the hall was not large. The place was about half full and it seated barely five hundred. The masses of the North as yet took no stock in the Abolition Crusade.
They felt the terrific pressure of the problem of life at home too keenly to go into hysterics over the evils of Negro Slavery in the South. William Lloyd Garrison had been preaching his denunciations for twenty-one years and its fruits were small. The masses of the people were indifferent.
But a man was pushing his way to the platform of the little hall to-night who was destined to do a deed that would accomplish what all the books and all the magazines and all the newspapers of the Crusaders had tried in vain to do.
Small as the crowd was, there was something sinister in its composition.
Half of them were foreigners. It was the first wave of the flood of
degradation for our racial stock in the North—the racial stock of John
Adams and John Hancock.
A few workingmen were scattered among them. Fifty or sixty negroes occupied the front rows. Sam had secured a seat on the aisle. Gerrit Smith rose without ceremony and introduced Brown. There were no women present. He used the formal address to the American voter:
"Fellow Citizens:
"I have the honor to present to you to-night a man chosen of God to lead our people out of the darkness of sin, my fellow worker in the Kingdom, the friend of the downtrodden and the oppressed, John Brown."
Faint applause greeted the old man as he moved briskly to the little table with his quick, springing step.
He fixed the people with his brilliant eyes and they were silent. He was slow of speech, awkward in gesture, and without skill in the building of ideas to hold the imagination of the typical crowd.
It was not a typical crowd of American freemen. It was something new under the sun in our history. It was the beginning of the coming mob mind destined to use Direct Action in defiance of the Laws on which the Republic had been built.
There was no mistaking the message Brown bore. He proclaimed that the negro is the blood brother of the white man. The color of his skin was an accident. This white man with a black skin was now being beaten and ground into the dust by the infamy of his masters. Their crimes cried to God for vengeance. All the negro needed was freedom to transform him into a white man—your equal and mine. At present, our brothers and sisters are groaning in chains on Southern plantations. His vaulting metallic tones throbbed with a strange, cold passion as he called for Action.
The vibrant call for bloodshed in this cry melted the crowd into a new personality. The mildest spirit among them was merged into the mob mind of the speaker. And every man within the sound of his voice was a murderer.
The final leap of the speaker's soul into an expression of supreme hate for the Southern white man found its instant echo in the mob which he had created. They demanded no facts. They asked no reasons. They accepted his statements as the oracle of God. They were opinions, beliefs, dogmas, the cries of propaganda only—precisely the food needed for developing the mob mind to its full strength. Envy, jealousy, hatred ruled supreme. Liberty was a catchword. Blood lust was the motive power driving each heart beat.
Brown suddenly stopped. His speech had reached no climax. It had rambled into repetition. Its power consisted in the repetition of a fixed thought. He knew the power of this repeated hammering on the mind. An idea can be repeated until it is believed, true or false. He had pounded his message into his hearers until they were incapable of resistance. It was unnecessary for him to continue. He stopped so suddenly, they waited in silence for him to go on after he had taken his seat.
A faint applause again swept the front of the house. There was something uncanny about the man that hushed applause. They knew that he was indifferent to it. Hidden fires burned within him that lighted the way of life. He needed no torches held on high. He asked no honors. He expected no applause and he got little. What he did demand was submission to his will and obedience as followers.
Gerrit Smith rose with this thought gripping his gentle spirit. His words came automatically as if driven by another's mind.
"Our friend and leader has dedicated his life to the service of suffering humanity. It is our duty to follow. The first step is to sacrifice our money in his cause."
The ushers passed the baskets and Sam's heart warmed as he heard the coin rattle. His eyes bulged when he saw that one of them had a pile of bills in it that covered the coin. He heard the great and good man say that it was for the poor brother in black. He saw visions of a warm room, of clean food and plenty of it.
He was glad he'd come, although he didn't like the look in John Brown's eyes while he spoke. Their fierce light seemed to bore through him and hurt. Now that he was seated and his eyes half closed, uplifted toward the ceiling, he wasn't so formidable. He rather liked him sitting down.
The ushers poured the money on the table and counted it. Sam had not seen so much money together since he piled his five hundred dollars in gold in a stack and looked at it. He watched the count with fascination. There must be a thousand at least.
He was shocked when the head usher leaned over the edge of the platform, and whispered to Smith the total.
"Eighty-five dollars."
Sam glanced sadly at the two rows of negroes in front. There wouldn't be much for each. He took courage in the thought, however, that some of them were well-to-do and wouldn't ask their share. He was sure of this because he had seen three or four put something in the baskets.
Gerrit Smith announced the amount of the collection with some embarrassment and heartily added:
"My check for a hundred and fifteen dollars makes the sum an even two hundred."
That was something worth while. Smith and Brown held a conference about the announcement of another meeting as Sam whispered to the head usher:
"Could ye des gimme mine now an' lemme go?"
"Yours?"
"Yassah."
"Your share of the collection?"
The usher eyed him in scorn.
"To be sho," Sam answered confidently. "Yer tuk it up fer de po' black man. I'se black, an' God knows I'se po'."
"You're a poor fool!"
"What ye take hit up fer den?"
"To support John Brown, not to feed lazy, good-for-nothing, free negroes."
Sam turned from the man in disgust. He was about to rise and shamble back to his miserable pallet when a sudden craning of necks and moving of feet drew his eye toward the door.
He saw a man stalking down the aisle. He carried on his left arm a little bundle of filthy rags. He mounted the platform and spoke to the Chairman:
"Mr. Smith, may I say just a word to this meeting?"
The Philanthropist Congressman recognized him instantly as the most eloquent orator in the labor movement in America. He had met him at a Reform Convention. He rose at once.
"Certainly."
"Fellow Citizens, Mr. George Evans, the leading advocate of Organized
Labor in America, wishes to speak to you. Will you hear him?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" came from all parts of the house.
The man began in quivering tones that held Sam and gripped the unwilling mind of the crowd:
"My friends: Just a few words. I have in my arms the still breathing skeleton of a little girl. I found her in a street behind this building within the sound of the voice of your speaker."
He paused and waved to John Brown.
"She was fighting with a stray cat for a crust of bread in a garbage pail. I hold her on high."
With both hands he lifted the dazed thing above his head.
"Look at her. This bundle of rags God made in the form of a woman to be the mother of the race. She has been thrown into your streets to starve. Her father is a workingman whom I know. For six months, out of work, he fought with death and hell, and hell won. He is now in prison. Her mother, unable to support herself and child, sought oblivion in drink. She's in the gutter to-night. Her brother has joined a gang on the East Side. Her sister is a girl of the streets.
"You talk to me of Negro Slavery in the South? Behold the child of the White Wage Slave of the North! Why are you crying over the poor negro? In the South the master owns the slave. Here the master owns the job. Down there the master feeds, clothes and houses his man with care. Black children laugh and play. Here the master who owns the job buys labor in the open market. He can get it from a man for 75 cents a day. From a woman for 30 cents a day. When he has bought the last ounce of strength they can give, the master of the wage slave kicks him out to freeze or starve or sink into crime.
"You tell me of the white master's lust down South? I tell you of the white master's lust for the daughters of our own race.
"I see a foreman of a factory sitting in this crowd. I've known him for ten years. I've talked with a score of his victims. He has the power to employ or discharge girls of all ages ranging from twelve to twenty-five. Do you think a girl can pass his bead eyes and not pay for the job the price he sees fit to demand?
"If you think so, you don't know the man. I do!"
He paused and the stillness of death followed. Necks were craned to find the figure of the foreman crouching in the crowd. The speaker was not after the individual. His soul was aflame with the cause of millions.
"I see also a man in the crowd who owns a row of tenements so filthy, so dark, so reeking with disease that no Southern master would allow a beast to live in them. This hypocrite has given to John Brown to-night a contribution of money for the downtrodden black man. He coined this money out of the blood of white men and women who pay the rent for the dirty holes in which they die."
A moment of silence that was pain as he paused and a hundred eyes swept the room in search of the man. Again the speaker stood without a sign. He merely paused to let his message sink in the hearts of his hearers.
"My eyes have found another man in this crowd who is an employer of wage slaves. He is here to denounce Chattel Slavery in the South as the sum of all villainies while he practices a system of wage slavery more cruel without a thought morally wrong.
"I say this in justice to the man because I know him. He hasn't intelligence enough to realize what he is doing. If he had he would begin by abolishing slavery in his own household. This reformer isn't a bad man at heart. He is simply an honest fool. These same fools in England have given millions to abolish black slavery in the Colonies and leave their own slaves in the Spittalfield slums to breed a race of paupers and criminals. Why don't a Buxton or a Wilberforce complain of the White Slavery at home? Because it is indispensable to their civilization. They lose nothing in freeing negroes in distant Colonies. They would lose their fortunes if they dared free their own white brethren.
"The master of the wage slave employs his victim only when he needs him. The Southern master supports his man whether he needs him or not. And cares for him when ill. The Abolitionist proposes to free the black slave from the whip. Noble work. But to what end if he deprives him of food? He escapes the lash and lands in a felon's cell or climbs the steps of a gallows.
"Your inspired leader, the speaker of this evening, has found his most enthusiastic support in New England.
"No doubt.
"In Lowell, Massachusetts, able-bodied men in the cotton mills are receiving 80 cents a day for ten hours' work. Women are receiving 32 cents a day for the same. At no period of the history of this republic has it been possible for a human being to live in a city and reproduce his kind on such wages. What is the result? The racial stock that made the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a civilized state is perishing. It is being replaced from the slums of Europe. The standard of life is dragged lower with each generation.
"The negro, you tell me, must work for others or be flogged. The poor white man at your door must work for others or be starved. The negro is subject to a single master. He learns to know him, if not to like him. There is something human in the touch of their lives. The poor white man here is the slave of many masters. The negro may lead the life of a farm horse. Your wage slave is a horse that hasn't even a stable. He roams the street in the snows of winter. He is ridden by anybody who wishes a ride. He is cared for by nobody. Our rich will do anything for the poor except to get off their backs. The negro has a master in sickness and health. The wage slave is honored with the privilege of slavery only so long as he can work ten hours a day. He is a pauper when he can toil no more.
"Your Abolitionist has fixed his eye on Chattel Slavery in the South. It involves but three million five-hundred thousand negroes. The system of wage slavery involves the lives of twenty-five million white men and women.
"Slavery was not abolished in the North on moral grounds, but because, as a system of labor it was old-fashioned, sentimental, extravagant, inefficient. It was abolished by the masters of men, not by the men.
"The North abolished slavery for economy in production. There was no sentiment in it. Wage slavery has proven itself ten times more cruel, more merciless, more efficient. The Captain of Industry has seen the vision of an empire of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. He has seen that the master who cares for the aged, the infirm, the sick, the lame, the halt is a fool who must lag behind in the march of the Juggernaut. Only a fool stops to build a shelter for his slave when he can kick him out in the cold and find hundreds of fresh men to take his place.
"Two years ago the Chief of Police of the City of New York took the census of the poor who were compelled to live in cellars. He found that eighteen thousand five hundred and eighty-six white wage slaves lived in these pest holes under the earth. One-thirteenth of the population of the city lives thus underground to-day. Hundreds of these cellars are near the river. They are not waterproof. Their floors are mud. When the tides rise the water floods these noisome holes. The bedding and furniture float. Fierce wharf rats, rising from their dens, dispute with men, women and children the right to the shelves above the water line.
"There are cellars devoted entirely to lodging where working men and women can find a bed of straw for two cents a night—the bare dirt for one cent. Black and white men, women and children, are mixed in one dirty mass. These rooms are without light, without air, filled with the damp vapors of mildewed wood and clothing. They swarm with every species of vermin that infest the animal and human body. The scenes of depravity that nightly occur in these lairs of beasts are beyond words.
"These are the homes provided by the master who has established 'Free' Labor as the economic weapon with which he has set out to conquer the world.
"And he is conquering with it. The superior, merciless power of this system as an economic weapon is bound to do in America what it has done throughout the world. The days of Chattel Slavery are numbered. The Abolitionist is wasting his breath, or worse. He is raising a feud that may drench this nation in blood in a senseless war over an issue that is settled before it's raised.
"Long ago the economist discovered that there was no vice under the system of Chattel Slavery that could not be more freely gratified under the new system of wage slavery.
"You weep because the negro slave must serve one master. He has no power to choose a new one. Do not forget that the power to choose a new master carries with it power to discharge the wage slave and hire a new one. This power to discharge is the most merciless and cruel tyranny ever developed in the struggle of man from savagery to civilization. This awful right places in the hand of the master the power of life and death. He can deprive his wage slave of fuel, food, clothes, shelter. Life is the only right worth having if its exercise is put into question. A starving man has no liberty. The word can have no meaning. He must live first or he cannot be a man.
"The wage slave is producing more than the chattel slaves ever produced, man for man, and is receiving less than the negro slave of the South is getting for his labor to-day.
"Your system of wage slavery is the cunning trick by which the cruel master finds that he can deny to the worker all rights he ever had as a slave.
"If you doubt its power, look at this bundle of rags in my hands and remember that there are five thousand half-starved children homeless and abandoned in the streets of this city to-night.
"Find for me one ragged, freezing, starving, black baby in the South and
I will buy a musket to equip an army for its invasion—"
He paused a moment, turned and gazed at the men on the platform and then faced the crowd in a final burst of triumphant scorn.
"Fools, liars, hypocrites, clean your own filthy house before you weep over the woes of negroes who are singing while they toil—"
A man on an end seat of the middle aisle suddenly sprang to his feet and yelled:
"Put him out!"
Before Gerrit Smith could reach Evans with a gift of five dollars for the sick child which he still held in his arms the crowd had become a mob.
They hustled the labor leader into the street and told him to go back to hell where he came from.
Through it all John Brown sat on the platform with his blue-gray eyes fixed in space. He had seen, heard or realized nothing that had passed. His mind was brooding over the plains of Kansas.