Often Grant Adams, hurrying by on his lonely way, paused to tell Laura of a needy family, or to bring a dirty, motherless child to her haven, or to ask her to go to some wayward girl, newly caught in the darker corners of the spider’s web.
Doggedly day by day, little by little, he was bringing the workmen of the Valley to see his view of the truth. The owners were paying spies to spy upon him and he knew it, and the high places of his satisfaction came when, knowing a spy and marking him for a victim, Grant converted him to the union cause. With the booming of the big guns of prosperity in Harvey, he was a sort of undertone, a monotonous drum, throbbing through the valley a menace beneath it all. Once–indeed, twice, as he worked, he organized a demand for higher wages in two or three of the mines, and keeping himself in the background, yet cautiously managing the tactics of the demand, he won. He held Sunday meetings in such halls as the men could afford to hire and there he talked–talked the religion of democracy. As labor moved about in the world, and as the labor press of the country began to know of Grant, he acquired a certain fame as a speaker among labor leaders. And the curious situation he was creating 367gave him some reputation in other circles. He was good for an occasional story in a Kansas City or Chicago Sunday paper; and the Star reporter, sent to do the feature story, told of a lonely, indomitable figure who was the idol of the laboring people of the Wahoo Valley; of his Sunday meetings; of his elaborate system of organization; of his peaceful demands for higher wages and better shop conditions; of his conversion of spies sent to hinder him, of his never-ceasing effort, unsupported by outside labor leaders, unvisited by the aristocracy of the labor world, yet always respecting it, to preach unionism as a faith rather than as a material means for material advancement.
Generally the reporters devoted a paragraph to the question–what manner of man is this?–and intimating more or less frankly that he was a man of one idea, or perhaps broadening the suggestion into a query whether or not a man who would work for years, scorning fame, scorning regular employment and promotion, neglecting opportunities to rise as a labor leader in his own world, was not just a little mad. So it happened that without seeking fame, fame came to him. All over the Missouri Valley, men knew that Grant Adams, a big, lumbering, red-polled, lusty-lunged man with one arm burned off–and the story of the burning fixed the man always in the public heart–with a curious creed and a freak gift for expounding it, was doing unusual things with the labor situation in the Harvey district. And then one day a reporter came from Omaha who uncovered this bit of news in his Sunday feature story:
“Last week the Wahoo district was paralyzed by the announcement that Nathan Perry, the new superintendent of the Independent mines had raised his wage scale, and had acceded to every change in working conditions that the local labor organizations under Adams had asked. Moreover, he has unionized his mine and will recognize only union grievance committees in dealing with the men. The effect of such an announcement in a district where the avowed purpose of the mine operators is to run their own business as they please, may easily be imagined.
“Perry is a civil engineer from Boston Tech., a rich man’s son, who married a rich man’s daughter, and then cut loose from his father and father-in-law because of a political disagreement over the candidacy of the famous Judge Thomas Van Dorn for a judicial nomination a few years ago. Perry belongs to a new type in 368industry–rather newer than Adams’s type. Perry is a keen eyed, boyish-looking young man who has no illusions about Adams’s democracy of labor.
“‘I am working out an engineering problem with men,’ said Perry to a reporter to-day. ‘What I want is coal in the cage. I figure that more wages will put more corn meal in a man’s belly, more muscle on his back, more hustle in his legs, and more blood in his brain. And primarily I’m buying muscle and hustle and brains. If I can make the muscle and hustle and brains I buy, yield better dividends than the stuff my competitors buy, I’ll hold my job. If not, I’ll lose it. I am certainly working for my job.’
“Of course the town doesn’t believe for a moment what Perry says. The town is divided. Part of the town thinks that Perry is an Adams convert and a fool, the other half of the town believes that the move is part of a conspiracy of certain eastern financial interests to get control of the Wahoo Valley properties by spreading dissension. Feeling is bitter and Adams and Perry are coming in for considerable abuse. D. Sands, the local industrial entrepreneur, has raised the black flag on his son-in-law, and an interesting time looms ahead.”
But often at night in Perry’s home in South Harvey, where Morty Sands and Grant Adams loved to congregate, there were hot discussions on the labor question. For Nathan Perry was no convert of Grant Adams.
As the men wrangled, many an hour sat Anne Perry singing the nest song as she made little things for the lower bureau drawer. Sometimes in the evening, Morty would sit by the kitchen stove, sadly torn in heart, between the two debaters, seeing the justice of Grant’s side as an ethical question, but admiring the businesslike way in which Nathan waved aside ethical considerations, damned Grant for a crazy man, and proclaimed the gospel of efficiency.
Often Grant walked home from these discussions with his heart hot and rebellious. He saw life only in its spiritual aspect and the logic of Nathan Perry angered him with its conclusiveness.