Grant signed the boy’s book, read the telegram, and stood dumbly gazing at the fire, as he held the sheet in his hand.
465The fire popped and snapped and the little blaze grew stronger when a log dropped in two. A customer came in–picked up a magazine–called, “Charge it, please,” then went out. The door slammed. Another customer came and went. Miss Calvin stepped back to Mr. Brotherton. The bell of the cash register tinkled. Then Grant Adams turned, looked at the minister absently for a moment, and handed him the sheet. It read:
“I have pledged in writing five more votes than are needed to make you the caucus nominee and give you a majority on the joint ballot to-night for United States Senator. Come up first train.”
It was signed “James Nesbit.” The preacher dropped his hand still holding the yellow sheet, and looked into the fire.
“Well?” asked Grant.
“You say,” returned John Dexter, and added: “It would be a great opportunity–give you the greatest forum for your cause in Christendom–give you more power than any other labor advocate ever held in the world before.”
He said all this tentatively and as one asking a question. Grant did not reply. He sat pounding his leg with his claw, abstractedly.
“You needn’t be a mere theorist in the Senate. You could get labor laws enacted that would put forward the cause of labor. Grant, really, it looks as though this was your life’s chance.”
Grant reached for the telegram and read it again. The telegram fluttering in his hands dropped to the floor. He reached for it–picked it up, folded it on his claw carefully, and put it away. Then he turned to the preacher and said harshly:
“There’s nothing in it. To begin: you say I’ll have more power than any other labor leader in the world. I tell you, labor leaders don’t need personal power. We don’t need labor laws–that is, primarily. What we need is sentiment–a public love of the under dog that will make our present laws intolerable. It isn’t power for me, it isn’t clean politics for the State, it isn’t labor laws that’s my job. My job, 466dearly beloved,” he hooked the minister’s hand and tossed it gently, “my job, oh, thou of little faith,” he cried, as a flaming torch of emotion seemed to brush his face and kindle the fanatic glow in his countenance while his voice lifted, “is to stay right down here in the Wahoo Valley, pile up money in the war chest, pile up class feeling among the men–comradeship–harness this love of the poor for the poor into an engine, and then some day slip the belt on that engine–turn on the juice and pull and pull and pull for some simple, elemental piece of justice that will show the world one phase of the truth about labor.”