CHAPTER XI.
IT would be unjust in this narrative to class David Baldwin, the Congressman, with his brother, Zechariah. David meant to be just. Whatever of justice there was in the relations of the Baldwins to their workmen was usually credited by the workmen to Congressman Baldwin, and probably they were right. Such reforms as had been granted in the mills had usually been secured by appealing from Zechariah, the resident manager, to David, whose public duties kept him much of the time in Washington. David Baldwin was generous. If there was anything of the “milk of human kindness� in the treatment of the Baldwin workmen it was due largely to David.
Zechariah Baldwin was generous when he thought his generosity would make a big display, and be heralded in the public press. In the church and in the press, especially the religious press, the name of Zechariah Baldwin was acclaimed loudly as a philanthropist. In private circles, particularly among his own workmen, in those small circles where the laborer dared to speak his honest feelings, he was oftener spoken of as a “skinflint,� or simply a “skin,� a term in common use which is full of meaning, and that not of the best kind. Zechariah Baldwin was the last to raise the wages of his help and the first to cut them down.
David Baldwin was rarely known, where the decision lay with himself alone, to refuse any reasonable request of a workingman. While his public gifts were not as large, nor trumpeted as loudly as his brother’s, still, the unfortunate employee or neighbor who needed help, knew where to get it. But David was absent much of the time, either in Washington, performing his official duties as Congressman, or attending to large financial interests outside of Papyrus. Hence it happened that Zechariah Baldwin was usually the boss of Papyrus and political independence was not tolerated among the workmen. Few workingmen had ever remained long in Papyrus after showing in any way their independence of the Baldwins.
Zechariah Baldwin defended the position of the paper manufacturers in this way:
“We have built up the town; we own it and we claim the moral right to drive out of it any man who is offensive to us. That one-eyed Wycliff is a mischief-maker and trouble-breeder and he has got to get out.�
But Wycliff did not get out. He did not even promise to get out. He seemed to have no intention of getting out. The methods which usually succeeded in driving a workingman out of town—blacklisting him in all the Baldwin industries and warning other employers not to hire him—these methods had failed utterly in the case of John Wycliff.
“We cannot tolerate him much longer,� said Zack Baldwin. Certainly not. Where one workingman dares to do his own thinking and to express his own opinions there is danger that others will catch the distemper. What if they should form a union and demand the same wages paid elsewhere for the same work? Such a thing was not to be thought of for an instant.
“We must fight the devil with fire,� said Zack Baldwin. Accordingly he offered a few Papyrus roughs a large sum if they would drive Wycliff out of town. He was not particular as to the means employed, so long as they avoided publicity and arrest. Zack Baldwin’s own son, Jehu, might be classed with other Papyrus roughs, in spite of a thin veneer of polished manners, which high society and the schools had given him. It is highly probable that the means employed to rid the town of Wycliff might have been violent but for an unexpected incident.
Zechariah Baldwin met an old acquaintance from the West at the Taconic House, the only hotel in Papyrus, and, of course, the property of the Baldwins.