Helen of the Old House

by Harold Bell Wright

"Billy Rand and I perfectly illustrate the equality of dependence, sir," returned the Interpreter. "Billy is as much my superior physically as I am his superior mentally. Without my thinking and planning he would be as helpless as I would be without his good bodily strength. We are each equally dependent upon the other, and from that mutual dependence comes our comradeship in the industry which alone secures for us the necessities of life. I could not make baskets without Billy's labor—Billy could not make baskets without my planning and directing. And yet, sir, you and McIver would set us to fighting each other. You would have Billy deny his dependence upon me and use his strength to destroy me, thus depriving himself of the help he must have if he would live. McIver would have me deny my dependence upon Billy and by antagonizing him with my assumed superiority turn his strength to the destruction of our comradeship by which I also live. Your teaching of class loyalty and class hatred applied to Billy and me would result in the ruin of our basket making and in our consequent starvation."

Again the Interpreter, from his wheel chair, pointed with outstretched arm to the scene that lay with all its varied grades of life—social levels and individual interests—before them. "Look," he said, "to the inequality that is there—inequalities that are as great as the difference between Billy Rand and myself. And yet, every individual life is dependent upon all the other individual lives. The Mill yonder is the basket making of the people. All alike must look to it for life itself. The industries, without which the people cannot exist, can be carried on only by the comradeship of those who labor with their hands and those who work with their brains. In the common dependence all are equal.

"The only equality that your leadership, with its progress of destruction, can insure to American employers and employees is an equality of indescribable suffering and death."

The old basket maker paused a moment before he added, solemnly, "I wonder that you dare assume the responsibility for such a catastrophe. Have you no God, sir, to whom you must eventually account?"

The man's teeth gleamed in a grin of malicious sarcasm. "I should know that you believed in God. Bah! An old woman myth to scare fools and children. I suppose you believe in miracles also?"

"I believe in the miracle of life," the Interpreter answered; "and in the great laws of life—the law of inequality and dependence, that in its operation insures the oneness of all things."

The agitator rose to his feet, and with a shrug of contempt, said, "Very pretty, Mr. Interpreter, very pretty. You watch now from your hut here and you shall see what men who are not crippled old basket makers will do with that little bit of your America out there. It is I who will teach Peter Martin and his comrades in the Mill how to deal with your friend Adam Ward and his class."

"You are too late, sir," said the Interpreter, as the man moved toward the door.

Jake Vodell turned. "How, too late?" Then as he saw Billy Rand rising to his feet, his hand went quickly inside his vest.

The old basket maker smiled as he once more held out a restraining hand toward his companion. "I do not mean anything like that, sir. I told you some time ago that you were defeated in your Millsburgh campaign by Adam Ward's retirement from the Mill. You are too late because you are forced now to deal, not with Adam Ward and Peter Martin, but with their sons."