Youth Challenges

by Clarence Budington Kelland

Rangar went white with rage. Animosity toward this young man he had harbored since the beginning; it flowered into hatred. But he dared not voice it. It was not in Hangar's nature to be open, to fight without cover. If he spoke, the check for six months' salary might be withdrawn, so, uttering none of the venom that flooded to his lips, he went away…. Rangar was the sort of man who vows to get even. …

That evening Bonbright sat in his window and watched the army of his employees surge out of the big gate and fill the street. Five thousand of them…. It was a sight that always fascinated him, as it had that first evening when he saw them, and came to a realization of what it meant to be overlord to such a multitude. More than ever he realized it now—for he was their overlord. They were his men. It was he who gave them the work that kept them alive; he who held their happiness, their comfort, their very existence in the hollow of his hand…. And he knew that in every one of those five thousand breasts burned resentment toward him. He knew that their most friendly feeling toward him was suspicion.

It was easy to rebuild a plant; it was simple to construct new mills with every device that would make for efficiency. That was not a problem to awe him. It needed but the free expenditure of money, and there was money in plenty…. But here was a task and a problem whose difficulty and vastness filled him with misgiving. He must turn that five thousand into one smooth-running, willing whole. He must turn their resentment, their bitterness, their suspicion, into trust and confidence. He must solve the problem of capital and labor…. An older, more experienced man might have smiled at Bonbright—at his daring to conceive such a possibility. But Bonbright dared to conceive it; dared to set himself the task of bringing it about.

That would be his work, peculiarly. No one could help him with it, for it was personal, appertaining to him. It was between Bonbright Foote and the five thousand.

It was inevitable that he should feel bitterness toward his father, for, but for his father, his work would now be enormously more simple. If these men knew him as he was—knew of his interest in them, of his willingness to be fair—he would have had their confidence from the start. His father had made him appear a tyrant, without consideration for labor; had made him a capitalist of the most detestable type. It was a deep-seated impression. It had been proven. The men had experienced it; had felt the weight of Bonbright's ruthless hand…. How could he make them believe it was not his hand? How could he make them believe that the measures taken to crush the strike had not been his measures; that they had been carried out under his name but against his will? It sounded absurd even to himself. Nobody would believe it.

Therefore he must begin, not at the beginning, but deeper than the beginning. He could not start fairly, but under a handicap so great as to make his chances of winning all but negligible…. It would be useless to tell his men that he had been but a figurehead. For him the only course was to blot out what had gone—to forget it—and to start against odds to win their confidence. It would be better to let them slowly come to believe he was a convert—that there had been a revolution in his heart and mind. Indeed, there was no other way. He must show them by daily studied conduct that he was not what they feared he was….

He did not know what he was himself. His contact with Malcolm Lightener's workingmen had given him certain sympathies with the theories and hopes of labor; but they had made him certain of fallacies and unsoundness in other theories and ambitions. He was not the romantic type of wealthy young man who, in stories, meets the under dog and loves him, and is suddenly converted from being an out-and-out capitalist to the most radical of socialists. It was not in him to be radical, for he was steadied by a quietly running balance wheel…. He was stubborn, too. What he wanted was to be fair, to give what was due—and to receive what was HIS due…. He could not be swayed by mawkish sentimental sympathy, nor could he be bullied. Perhaps he was stiff-necked, but he was a man who must judge of the right or wrong of a condition himself. Perhaps he was too much that way, but his experiences had made him so.

If his men tried to bulldoze him they would find him immovable. What he believed was right and just he would do; but he had his own set notions of right and justice. He was sympathetic. His attitude toward the five thousand was one of friendliness. He regarded them as a charge and a responsibility. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the responsibility…. But, on the other hand, he recognized that the five thousand were under certain responsibilities and obligations to him. He would do his part, but he would demand their part of them.

His father had been against unions. Bonbright was against unions. His reason for this attitude was not the reason of his father. It was simply this: That he would not be dictated to by individuals who he felt were meddling in his affairs. He had arrived at a definite decision on this point: his mills should never be unionized…. If his men had grievances he would meet with them individually, or committees sent by them—committees of themselves. He would not treat with so-called professional labor men. He regarded them as an impertinence. Whatever differences should arise must be settled between his men and himself—with no outside interference. This was a position from which nothing would move him…. It will be seen he was separated by vast spaces from socialism.

He called together his superintendents and department foremen and took them into his confidence regarding his plans for improving and enlarging the plant. They came, if not with an air of hostility, at least with reserve, for they were nearer to the men than they were to Bonbright. They shared the prejudices of the men. Some of them went away from the meeting with all of their old prejudices and with a new belief that Bonbright added hypocrisy to his other vices; some withheld judgment, some were hopeful. Few gave him implicit belief.