This letter pleased me more than I can tell. This kind old lady, now eighty-two, had faith in me and feels that her faith was justified. Now, then, can I believe that life is meaningless,—that there is no plan, and that all man's efforts are foredoomed to failure?
CHAPTER XXXIII. I MEET THE INDUSTRIAL CAPTAINS
Elwood, Indiana, was a small village that had been called Duck Creek Post-Office until the tin mill and other industries began making it into a city. In my capacity as president of the local union and head of the wage mill committee, I was put in personal contact with the heads of these great industrial enterprises. This was my first introduction to men of large affairs.
I approached them with the inborn thought that they must be some sort of human monsters. The communist books that Comrade Bannerman had given me taught me to believe that capitalists had no human feelings like ordinary mortals. I therefore expected to find the mill-boss as cunning as the fox and ape combined. I supposed that his word would be worthless as a pledge and would be given only for the purpose of tricking me. His manners I expected to be rude; he would shout at me and threaten me, hoping to take away my courage and send me back to my fellows beaten.
What I found, of course, was a self-possessed man, the model of courtesy and exactness. He differed from us men in one respect. His mind was complex instead of simplex. That is, he could think on two sides of a question at the same time. He had so trained his mind by much use of it that it was as nimble as the hands of a juggler who can keep several objects tossing in the air at the same time. We men were clumsy thinkers, and one thing at a time was all we could handle without fumbling it.
The great manufacturer never showed any emotion. He was never angry, domineering, sneering or insulting. He kept these emotions under control because they could do him no good, and because they would give pain to others. We fellows never hesitated to show how we felt. We would jibe one another, laugh at a fellow to his chagrin, and when we were angry bawl each other out unmercifully. For a fellow to smile when he was angry and not let the other fellow know it, was a trick we had not learned. That a bloodthirsty, cruel capitalist should be such a graceful fellow was a shock to me. I saw from the start that the communist picture of a capitalist as a bristling, snorting hog was the farthest thing from the truth. The picture was drawn by malice and not from a desire to tell the truth.
I learned that when Mr. Reid and his fellows gave their word they never broke it. It was hard to get a promise from them, but once they made a promise they always fulfilled it. If they said they would meet us at a certain hour, they were always there on the minute. They were patient, firm and reasonable, and they always treated us as their equals.
They always gave us the reasons for the stand they took. At first I doubted their sincerity, but in the end I learned that the reasons they cited were the true reasons. At first they thought that they would have to guard themselves against roguery and double-dealing on the part of the tin workers. This showed that they had had unpleasant experiences. For, men who knew their business as well as they did must surely have had some cause for their suspicion. Baseless suspicion is a trait of ignorant men, and these men were not ignorant. A burnt child dreads the fire.
I decided to take them as my models, to learn all their virtues and let them know that I was as square in my dealings with them as they were with me. I studied their business as thoroughly as I studied the case of the men. I soon got from them all the concessions we had demanded when we called the strike. It was fortunate for us that the strike was cancelled, for we kept our jobs and in due course got all the things that we were going to strike for.