CHAPTER VIII
THE SHADOW OF WAR
With the passing of summer, and the long, pleasant fall, winter's desperate night closed about the world. Now it was succeeded, at last, by the dawn of spring, bringing with it the delicate, emerald carpet of growing grain, which later would ripen to a brilliant cloth of gold. Nor was the earth's beautiful spring raiment to be quickly discarded for its summer apparel. The keen winds yielded reluctantly to summer zephyrs, and winter's dread overcast retreated slowly before the rosy light of the ripening season.
If winter's clouds of threatening elemental storms were obstinate, so were the hovering clouds of human troubles. But, unlike the clouds of winter, the latter were growing with the advancing season, growing until the horizon hung with the threat of storm, that was ready to break even the horizon at which the ever optimistic farmer gazed.
It had been a troublous fall in the labor world, and an even more disturbed winter. The dark months of the year had proved a very hotbed for the microbe of industrial unrest, and it had propagated a hundredfold.
As spring dawned, from every corner of the world came the same story. Strike, strike; everywhere, and in every calling, the word had gone forward—Strike! It mattered not the reason. It mattered not the worker's condition. If wages were ample, then strike for less work. If the work was insufficient, then strike for a minimum wage. In any case strike, and see the demands included recognition of labor unions, and particularly recognition of the demagogues who led them.
So the storm-clouds of industrial insurrection were fostered. They threatened, and, rapidly, in almost every direction, the flood of storm burst. Every sane, hard-thinking man asked his neighbor the reason. Every far-sighted man, on both sides, shook his head, and pointed the approach of a hideous reckoning. Every fool looked on and laughed, and, shrugging his shoulders, swam with the tide on the side to which he belonged.
And all the time the demagogues screamed from the house-tops, and claimed the daily press. These carrion of democracy actually belonged to neither side. They did not toil in the mills, nor did they employ labor. Theirs it was to feed upon the carcass of the worker, and wrest power from the hands of those who possessed it. Whatever happened, they must be winners in the game they played. Nor did it matter one iota to them who might be the sufferers by their juggling.
They possessed one marketable commodity, their powers of stirring strife. Nor were they particular to whom they sold. They belonged to a class of their own, an unscrupulous, ambitious, self-seeking race of intelligent creatures, whose sole aim was publicity and power, which, in the end, must yield them that position and plenty which they decried in others. It mattered little to them whether they preached syndication or sauce. Their services must be paid for in the way they desired. Vituperating from the summit of an upturned butter tub, or hurling invective from the cushioned benches of a nation's Assembly of Legislature, it made no difference to them. Anything they undertook must be paid for, at their own market price.
These were the microbes of industrial unrest which had multiplied during the dark months of the year on hotbeds that were rich, and fat, and warm. Their paunches were heavy with the goodly supplies of sustenance which they drew from the bodies of those who, in their blind ignorance and stupidity, were powerless to resist their insidious blandishments.