The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport

by Ida M. Tarbell

What would Sabinsport do? Dick asked himself the question a little anxiously. Would she foregather at the Opera House?

She would not. At eight o’clock on the evening that the meeting was called that great forum contained, not the whole town and the mines and mills, as the Rev. Mr. Pepper had been declaring all day that it would be, but, by actual count, just two hundred people, of whom the Rev. Richard Ingraham was one, for ever since the beginning of his life in Sabinsport, he had made it a practice not only to attend but to take part in all discussions, whether held in opera houses or on street corners.

But, as it turned out, the two hundred were not to be allowed to take their vote on peace or war in the orderly, quiet way which Dick himself insisted they should have, for, before nine o’clock, a great tramping was heard outside, and into the hall burst all of the active youth of Sabinsport and at least half of its middle aged. They carried banners on which were written in bold letters, “Right is more precious than peace,” “The world must be made safe for democracy,” “Germany is a menace to mankind,” “Germany wars against peace, we war against Germany.” They not only carried their banners, but they brought their orators, who, stationed in the galleries and on the floor, submerged the protests of the Rev. Mr. Pepper and friends and turned the gathering into a rousing declaration that, so far as Sabinsport was concerned, she was in the war to a finish.

Each successive task the Government set provoked a similar wave of protest. For days currents of unrest would run through the town, but when the moment of decision came always Sabinsport answered overwhelmingly in favor of the Government. There was the draft. As the day of registration approached, the Rev. Mr. Pepper and his friends prophesied riots; and, if not riots, at least a very general refusal to register—but every man appeared. They came from the shops and mines and banks and schools—a full quota. It was unbelievable. Why were there such alarms of revolt before, if in the end there was to be complete acceptance? Reuben Cowder had his theory.

“I tell you, Dick, the same gang are at work in this town that stirred up the feeling against munition-making, that brought that Peace Council here and so nearly put it over. I expect Pepper and his friends to protest. That’s all right, they belong here. That’s the way they feel. We can gauge what they say, answer back. I rather think they’re good for us, but it’s not Pepper that is making the stir now. There’s somebody spreading rumors of discontent that do not exist. Who printed those handbills that rained all over town the morning of Registration Day, denouncing the draft as a form of slavery? Pepper didn’t. He was as surprised as the police. Why can’t we get our fingers on them?”

But clever as he was, he did not get his fingers on them. Waves of discontent, threats of riots and strikes, protests against liberty loans and food laws, continued to agitate the town, filling it with anxiety and irritation. They kept her distrustful of herself, unhappy in her undertaking, but never did they turn her from her resolve to do her full part. Indeed, it seemed to Dick sometimes as if the direct result was to drive those of the town who felt the deepest foreboding, the gravest doubt, to work the harder, thus really increasing the amount accomplished. It was this that explained why, in this admixture of irritation, Sabinsport almost always did more than her part. The rumors and prophecies that she would not respond this time nerved her to fuller efforts.

Just how things would have worked out in Sabinsport, just when and how the war would have found its way to her heart and she would have come to have the supporting uplift of realizing the greatness of the enterprise to which she was pledged, Dick never quite decided, for what did happen was so largely shaped by the news that came to them in the end of June that, in the country twenty-five miles away, the Government had decided to place one of the sixteen great cantonments in which the boys that had been drafted were to be trained into an army.

Sabinsport herself had had nothing to do with securing the cantonment. It was the only thing that had happened in that part of the State in the last two or three decades in which neither Cowder nor Mulligan had had a hand. It was certain shrewd and powerful gentlemen of the City that had persuaded the authorities that this was the most perfect spot in the Union in which to place 50,000 men.

Luckily, it was a very good spot, though probably if it had been very bad, it would have been selected, given the power that was behind its support. The land was rolling, naturally drained, the river which flowed close by gave, by filtering, a splendid water supply. An important trunk line ran within five miles of the camp, making almost ideal transportation conditions possible, and this same trunk line ran through Sabinsport.

It was announced that the camp was to be ready in twelve weeks for 40,000 men. The town, accustomed to building in a fairly large scale, gasped in amazement. Some jeered, others protested. It couldn’t be done. It would take twelve months, not weeks, to make the place habitable.