And as she rode another and more terrible kind of revolt against the machine began in the town of Bidwell. It began in fact before Tom with his new motor left the Butterworth farm, it began before the summer moon came up, before the gray mantle of night had been laid over the shoulders of the hills south of the farmhouse.
Jim Gibson, the journeyman harness maker who worked in Joe Wainsworth's shop, was beside himself on that night. He had just won a great victory over his employer and felt like celebrating. For several days he had been telling the story of his anticipated victory in the saloons and store, and now it had happened. After dining at his boarding-house he went to a saloon and had a drink. Then he went to other saloons and had other drinks, after which he swaggered through the streets to the door of the shop. Although he was in his nature a spiritual bully, Jim did not lack energy, and his employer's shop was filled with work demanding attention. For a week both he and Joe had been returning to their work benches every evening. Jim wanted to come because some driving influence within made him love the thought of keeping the work always on the move, and Joe because Jim made him come.
Many things were on the move in the striving, hustling town on that evening. The system of checking on piece work, introduced by the superintendent Ed Hall in the corn-cutting machine plant, had brought on Bidwell's first industrial strike. The discontented workmen were not organized, and the strike was foredoomed to failure, but it had stirred the town deeply. One day, a week before, quite suddenly some fifty or sixty men had decided to quit. “We won't work for a fellow like Ed Hall,” they declared. “He sets a scale of prices and then, when we have driven ourselves to the limit to make a decent day's pay, he cuts the scale.” Leaving the shop the men went in a body to Main Street and two or three of them, developing unexpected eloquence, began delivering speeches on street corners. On the next day the strike spread and for several days the shop had been closed. Then a labor organizer came from Cleveland and on the day of his arrival the story ran through the street that strike breakers were to be brought in.
And on that evening of many adventures another element was introduced into the already disturbed life of the community. At the corner of Main and McKinley Streets and just beyond the place where three old buildings were being torn down to make room for the building of a new hotel, appeared a man who climbed upon a box and attacked, not the piece work prices at the corn-cutting machine plant, but the whole system that built and maintained factories where the wage scale of the workmen could be fixed by the whim or necessity of one man or a group of men. As the man on the box talked, the workmen in the crowd who were of American birth began to shake their heads. They went to one side and gathering in groups discussed the stranger's words. “I tell you what,” said a little old workman, pulling nervously at his graying mustache, “I'm on strike and I'm for sticking out until Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth fire Ed Hall, but I don't like this kind of talk. I'll tell you what that man's doing. He's attacking our Government, that's what he's doing.” The workmen went off to their homes grumbling. The Government was to them a sacred thing, and they did not fancy having their demands for a better wage scale confused by the talk of anarchists and socialists. Many of the laborers of Bidwell were sons and grandsons of pioneers who had opened up the country where the great sprawling towns were now growing into cities. They or their fathers had fought in the great Civil War. During boyhood they had breathed a reverence for government out of the very air of the towns. The great men of whom the school-books talked had all been connected with the Government. In Ohio there had been Garfield, Sherman, McPherson the fighter and others. From Illinois had come Lincoln and Grant. For a time the very ground of the mid-American country had seemed to spurt forth great men as now it was spurting forth gas and oil. Government had justified itself in the men it had produced.
And now there had come among them men who had no reverence for government. What a speaker for the first time dared say openly on the streets of Bidwell, had already been talked in the shops. The new men, the foreigners coming from many lands, had brought with them strange doctrines. They began to make acquaintances among the American workmen. “Well,” they said, “you've had great men here; no doubt you have; but you're getting a new kind of great men now. These new men are not born out of people. They're being born out of capital. What is a great man? He's one who has the power. Isn't that a fact? Well, you fellows here have got to find out that nowadays power comes with the possession of money. Who are the big men of this town?—not some lawyer or politician who can make a good speech, but the men who own the factories where you have to work. Your Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth are the great men of this town.”
The socialist, who had come to speak on the streets of Bidwell, was a Swede, and his wife had come with him. As he talked his wife made figures on a blackboard. The old story of the trick by which the citizens of the town had lost their money in the plant-setting machine company was revived and told over and over. The Swede, a big man with heavy fists, spoke of the prominent citizens of the town as thieves who by a trick had robbed their fellows. As he stood on the box beside his wife, and raising his fists shouted crude sentences condemning the capitalist class, men who had gone away angry came back to listen. The speaker declared himself a workman like themselves and, unlike the religious salvationists who occasionally spoke on the streets, did not beg for money. “I'm a workman like yourselves,” he shouted. “Both my wife and myself work until we've saved a little money. Then we come out to some town like this and fight capital until we're busted. We've been fighting for years now and we'll keep on fighting as long as we live.”
As the orator shouted out his sentences he raised his fist as though to strike, and looked not unlike one of his ancestors, the Norsemen, who in old times had sailed far and wide over unknown seas in search of the fighting they loved. The men of Bidwell began to respect him. “After all, what he says sounds like mighty good sense,” they declared, shaking their heads. “Maybe Ed Hall isn't any worse than any one else. We got to break up the system. That's a fact. Some of these days we got to break up the system.”
Jim Gibson got to the door of Joe's shop at half-past seven o'clock. Several men stood on the sidewalk and he stopped and stood before them, intending to tell again the story of his triumph over his employer. Inside the shop Joe was already at his bench and at work. The men, two of them strikers from the corn-cutting machine plant, complained bitterly of the difficulty of supporting their families, and a third man, a fellow with a big black mustache who smoked a pipe, began to repeat some of the axioms in regard to industrialism and the class war he had picked up from the socialist orator. Jim listened for a moment and then, turning, put his thumb on his buttocks and wriggled his fingers. “Oh, hell,” he sneered, “what are you fools talking about? You're going to get up a union or get into the socialist party. What're you talking about? A union or a party can't help a man who can't look out for himself.”
The blustering and half intoxicated harness maker stood in the open shop door and told again and in detail the story of his triumph over his employer. Then another thought came and he spoke of the twelve hundred dollars Joe had lost in the stock, of the plant-setting machine company. “He lost his money and you fellows are going to get licked in this fight,” he declared. “You're all wrong, you fellows, when you talk about unions or joining the socialist party. What counts is what a man can do for himself. Character counts. Yes, sir, character makes a man what he is.”