Poor White: A Novel

by Sherwood Anderson

Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice that have come out of the fields to live in houses that do not belong to them. They live within the dark walls of the houses where only a dim light penetrates, and so many have come that they grow thin and haggard with the constant toil of getting food and warmth. Behind the walls the mice scamper about in droves, and there is much squealing and chattering. Now and then a bold mouse stands upon his hind legs and addresses the others. He declares he will force his way through the walls and conquer the gods who have built the house. “I will kill them,” he declares. “The mice shall rule. You shall live in the light and the warmth. There shall be food for all and no one shall go hungry.”

The little mice, gathered in the darkness out of sight in the great houses, squeal with delight. After a time when nothing happens they become sad and depressed. Their minds go back to the time when they lived in the fields, but they do not go out of the walls of the houses, because long living in droves has made them afraid of the silence of long nights and the emptiness of skies. In the houses giant children are being reared. When the children fight and scream in the houses and in the streets, the dark spaces between the walls rumble with strange and appalling noises.

The mice are terribly afraid. Now and then a single mouse for a moment escapes the general fear. A mood comes over such a one and a light comes into his eyes. When the noises run through the houses he makes up stories about them. “The horses of the sun are hauling wagon loads of days over the tops of trees,” he says and looks quickly about to see if he has been heard. When he discovers a female mouse looking at him he runs away with a flip of his tail and the female follows. While other mice are repeating his saying and getting some little comfort from it, he and the female mouse find a warm dark corner and lie close together. It is because of them that mice continue to be born to dwell within the walls of the houses.

When the first small model of Hugh McVey's plant-setting machine had been whittled out by the half-wit Allie Mulberry, it replaced the famous ship, floating in the bottle, that for two or three years had been lying in the window of Hunter's jewelry store. Allie was inordinately proud of the new specimen of his handiwork. As he worked under Hugh's directions at a bench in a corner of the deserted pickle factory, he was like a strange dog that has at last found a master. He paid no attention to Steve Hunter who, with the air of one bearing in his breast some gigantic secret, came in and went out at the door twenty times a day, but kept his eyes on the silent Hugh who sat at a desk and made drawings on sheets of paper. Allie tried valiantly to follow the instructions given him and to understand what his master was trying to do, and Hugh, finding himself unembarrassed by the presence of the half-wit, sometimes spent hours trying to explain the workings of some intricate part of the proposed machine. Hugh made each part crudely out of great pieces of board and Allie reproduced the part in miniature. Intelligence began to come into the eyes of the man who all his life had whittled meaningless wooden chains, baskets formed out of peach stones, and ships intended to float in bottles. Love and understanding began a little to do for him what words could not have done. One day when a part Hugh had fashioned would not work the half-wit himself made the model of a part that worked perfectly. When Hugh incorporated it in the machine, he was so happy that he could not sit still, and walked up and down cooing with delight.

When the model of the machine appeared in the jeweler's window, a fever of excitement took hold of the minds of the people. Every one declared himself either for or against it. Something like a revolution took place. Parties were formed. Men who had no interest in the success of the invention, and in the nature of things could not have, were ready to fight any one who dared to doubt its success. Among the farmers who drove into town to see the new wonder were many who said the machine would not, could not, work. “It isn't practical,” they said. Going off by themselves and forming groups, they whispered warnings. A hundred objections sprang to their lips. “See all the little wheels and cogs the thing has,” they said. “You see it won't work. You take now in a field where there are stones and old tree roots, maybe, sticking in the ground. There you'll see. Fools'll buy the machine, yes. They'll spend their money. They'll put in plants. The plants'll die. The money'll be wasted. There'll be no crop.” Old men, who had been cabbage farmers in the country north of Bidwell all their lives, and whose bodies were all twisted out of shape by the terrible labor of the cabbage fields, came hobbling into town to look at the model of the new machine. Their opinions were anxiously sought by the merchant, the carpenter, the artisan, the doctor—by all the townspeople. Almost without exception, they shook their heads in doubt. Standing on the sidewalk before the jeweler's window, they stared at the machine and then, turning to the crowd that had gathered about, they shook their heads in doubt. “Huh,” they exclaimed, “a thing of wheels and cogs, eh? Well, so young Hunter expects that thing to take the place of a man. He's a fool. I always said that boy was a fool.” The merchants and townspeople, their ardor a little dampened by the adverse decision of the men who knew plant-setting, went off by themselves. They went into Birdie Spinks' drugstore, but did not listen to the talk of Judge Hanby. “If the machine works, the town'll wake up,” some one declared. “It means factories, new people coming in, houses to be built, goods to be bought.” Visions of suddenly acquired wealth began to float in their minds. Young Ed Hall, apprentice to Ben Peeler the carpenter, grew angry. “Hell,” he exclaimed, “why listen to a lot of damned old calamity howlers? It's the town's duty to get out and plug for that machine. We got to wake up here. We got to forget what we used to think about Steve Hunter. Anyway, he saw a chance, didn't he? and he took it. I wish I was him. I only wish I was him. And what about that fellow we thought was maybe just a telegraph operator? He fooled us all slick, now didn't he? I tell you we ought to be proud to have such men as him and Steve Hunter living in Bidwell. That's what I say. I tell you it's the town's duty to get out and plug for them and for that machine. If we don't, I know what'll happen. Steve Hunter's a live one. I been thinking maybe he was. He'll take that invention and that inventor of his to some other town or to a city. That's what he'll do. Damn it, I tell you we got to get out and back them fellows up. That's what I say.”

On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a carpenter come to his father's store and build in the show window facing Main Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he filled with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and pulleys connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across the field. In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed some dozens of tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork was started and the strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the machine crept slowly forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the ground, the plant dropped into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared and packed the earth about the plant roots. At the top of the machine there was a tank filled with water, and when the plant was set, a portion of water, nicely calculated as to quantity, ran down a pipe and was deposited at the plant roots.

Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field, setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it; he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bidwell was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him. “We're going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for jobs as superintendent and things like that,” he said. “I make no promises. I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the world.”

Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the store. He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.

Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an acre of cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called “the old way,” by hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would be formed in Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into it. He printed an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many offers had come to him to take his project to the city or to other and larger towns. “Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to stick to our own people,” he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew nothing of the article and had never been taken into the lives of the people addressed. A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock subscriptions, and in private conversations Steve whispered of huge profits to be made. The matter was talked over in every household and plans were made for raising money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to lend a certain percentage on the value of the town property and Steve secured a long-time option on all the land facing Turner's Pike clear down to Pickleville. When the town heard of this it was filled with wonder. “Gee,” the loiterers before the store exclaimed, “old Bidwell is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you? There are going to be houses clear down to Pickleville.” Hugh went to Cleveland to see about having one of his new machines made in steel and wood and in a size that would permit its actual use in the field. He returned, a hero in the town's eyes. His silence made it possible for the people, who could not entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve, to let their minds take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.

In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window of the jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along Turner's Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh. They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed as he was always embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich by the power of the man's mind. They thought of him as thinking always great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn't waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost unbelievable wonders.