IX
Bunny went back to school, and the oil workers took a hitch in their belts, hanging on by their eye teeth, as the saying is. Meantime, America was in the war, and Congress was passing a series of measures—one providing for a vast “liberty loan,” to pay the war costs, and another for the registering of all men of fighting age, and the drafting of a huge army.
And then began to come wild rumors of a truce with labor. It came first in connection with the railway men, many of whom were on strike for a living wage and better conditions. The railways were absolutely vital to the winning of the war, and so Congress must authorize the Government to intervene in disputes, and make terms with the unions, and see that everybody got a square deal. If such steps were taken for the railway men, they would surely have to be taken for others; the oil workers might get those rights of which the Employers’ Federation was endeavoring to deprive them! The labor press was full of talk about the new deal that was coming, and telegrams came from labor headquarters in Washington, bidding the men at Paradise stand firm.
It was like the “big scene” in the old “ten-twenty-thirty” melodrama that we used to see on the Bowery in our boyhood, in which the heroine is lashed to a log in the saw-mill, and being swiftly drawn to the place where she will be sliced down the middle; the hero comes galloping madly on horseback, and leaps from his steed, and smashes in the door with an axe, and springs to the lever and stops the machinery at exactly the critical instant. Or, if you want to be more high-brow and dignified, it was like the ancient Greek tragedies, in which, after the fates of all the characters have been tied into a hopeless knot, a god descends from the sky in a machine, and steps out, and resolves the perplexities, and virtue is triumphant and vice is cast down. You believe this, because it is in a Greek classic; but you will find it less easy to believe that the “open shop crowd” of California, the whole power of their industrial system, with all the millions of their banks, their political machine and their strike-breaking agencies, their spies and gunmen, and their state militiamen with machine guns and armored cars in the background—that all this terrific power felt its hand suddenly grasped by a stronger hand, and drawn back from the throat of its victim! Another god descended from a machine—a lean old Yankee divinity, with a white goatee and a suit made of red and white stripes with blue stars spangled over it; Uncle Sam himself stretched out his mighty hand, and declared that oil workers were human beings as well as citizens, and would be protected in their rights as both!
The announcement came from labor headquarters in Washington, saying that the oil workers would get a living wage and the eight hour day; a government “conciliator” would be sent out to see to it, and meantime, they were to go back to work, so that the benevolent old gentleman with the white goatee and the red, white and blue suit might have all the oil he needed. The President of the United States was making speeches—oh, such wonderful, convincing speeches, about the war that was to end war, and bring justice to all mankind, and establish the rule of the people and by the people and for the people over all the earth. Such thrills as shook all hearts, such a fervor of consecration! And such rejoicing on the playground of the school-house at Paradise, when the news came that the gunmen would slink back into the slums from which they had come, and that work was to start up at once!
Dad got the news early in the morning, and Bunny danced all over the house, and made as much noise as if it were a football game; and Dad said he felt pretty good himself, it would sure be nice to get those wells on production again, he wouldn’t have been able to hold on another week without them. And Bunny said he’d cut school in the afternoon, and they’d drive out and see the celebration, and make friends with everybody again, and get things started. The first thing they would do was to tear down that barbed wire fence that separated capital from labor! In the new world there would be no more barbed wire and no more bad feeling—the roses would bloom on the hedges in front of the workers’ homes, and there would be a book of the President’s speeches in the reading-room, and all the oil workers would have time to read it!