In the Heart of a Fool

by William Allen White

Nathan Perry, first miner, then pit-boss and finally superintendent, and always member of Local Miners’ Union No. 10, knew what the men were vaguely beginning to see and think. When some man who had been to court to collect damages for a killed or crippled friend, some man who had heard the Judge talk of the assumed risk of labor, some man who had heard lawyers split hairs to cheat working men of what common sense and common justice said was theirs, when some such man cried out in hatred and agony against society, Nathan Perry tried to counsel patience, tried to curb the malice. But in his heart Nathan Perry knew that if he had suffered the wrongs that such a man suffered, he too would be full of wrath and class hatred.

Sometimes, of course, men rose from the pit. Foremen became managers, managers became superintendents, superintendents became owners, owners became rich, and society replied–“Look, it is easy for a man to rise.” Once at lunch time, sitting in the shaft house, Nathan Perry with his hands in his dinner bucket said something of the kind, when Tom Williams, the little Welsh miner, who was a disciple and friend of Grant Adams, cried:

“Yes–that’s true. It is easy for a man to rise. It was easy for a slave to escape from the South–comparatively easy. But is it easy for the class to rise? Was it easy for the slaves to be free? That is the problem–the problem of lifting a whole class–as your class has been lifted, young fellow, in the last century. Why, over in Wales a century ago, a mere tradesman’s son like you–was–was nobody. 395The middle classes had nothing–that is, nothing much. They have risen. They rule the world now. This century must see the rise of the laboring class; not here and there as a man who gets out of our class and then sneers at us, and pretends he was with us by accident–but we must rise as a class, boy–don’t you see?”

And so, working in the mine, with the men, Nathan Perry completed his education. He learned–had it ground into him by the hard master of daily toil–that while bread and butter is an individual problem that no laborer may neglect except at his peril, the larger problems of the conditions under which men labor–their hours of service, their factory surroundings, their shop rights to work, their relation to accidents and to the common diseases peculiar to any trade–those are not individual problems. They are class problems and must be solved–in so far as labor can solve them alone, not by individual struggle but by class struggle. So Nathan Perry came up out of the mines a believer in the union, and the closed shop. He felt that those who would make the class problem an individual problem, were only retarding the day of settlement, only hindering progress.

Rumor said that the truce in the Wahoo Valley was near an end. Nathan Perry did not shrink from it. But Market Street was uneasy. It seemed to be watching an approaching cyclone. When men knew that the owners were ready to stop the organization of unions, the cloud of unrest seemed to hover over them. But the clouds dissolved in rumor. Then they gathered again, and it was said that Grant Adams was to be gagged, his Sunday meetings abolished or that he was to be banished from the Valley. Again the clouds dissolved. Nothing happened. But the cloud was forever on the horizon, and Market Street was afraid. For Market Street–as a street–was chiefly interested in selling goods. It had, of course, vague yearnings for social justice–yearnings about as distinct as the desire to know if the moon was inhabited. But as a street, Market Street was with Mrs. Herdicker–it never talked against the cash drawer. Market Street, the world over, is interested in things as they are. The statuo quo is God and laissez faire is its profit! So 396 Market Street murmured, and buzzed–and then Market Street also organized to worship the god of things as they are.

But Mr. Brotherton of the Brotherton Book & Stationery Company held aloof from the Merchants’ Protective Association. Mr. Brotherton at odd times, at first by way of diversion, and then as a matter of education for his growing business, had been glancing at the contents of his wares. Particularly had he been interested in the magazines. Moreover, he was talking. And because it helped him to sell goods to talk about them, he kept on talking.

About this time he affected flowing negligee bow ties, and let his thin, light hair go fluffy and he wrapped rather casually it seemed, about his elephantine bulk, a variety of loose, baggy garb, which looked like a circus tent. But he was a born salesman–was Mr. Brotherton. He plastered literature over Harvey in carload lots.

One day while Mr. Brotherton was wrapping up “Little Women” and a “Little Colonel” book and “Children of the Abbey” that Dr. Nesbit was buying for Lila Van Dorn, the Doctor piped, “Well, George, they say you’re getting to be a regular anarchist–the way you’re talking about conditions in the Valley?”

“Not for a minute,” answered Mr. Brotherton. “Why, man, all I said was that if the old spider kept making the men use that cheap powder that blows their eyes out and their hands off, and their legs off, they ought to unionize and strike. And if it was my job to handle that powder I’d tie the old devil on a blast and blow him into hamburger.” Mr. Brotherton’s rising emotions reddened his forehead under his thin hair, and pulled at his wind. He shook a weary head and leaned on a show case. “But I say, stand by the boys. Maybe it will make a year of bad times or maybe two; but what of that? It’ll make better times in the end.”

“All right, George–go in. I glory in your spunk!” chirped the Doctor as he put Lila’s package under his arm. “Let me tell you something,” he added, “I’ve got a bill I’m going to push in the next legislature that will knock a hole in that doctrine of the assumed risk of labor, you can drive a horse through. It makes the owners pay for the accidents 397of a trade, instead of hiding behind that theory, that a man assumes those risks when he takes a job.”