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Jimmie Higgins

by Upton Sinclair · English · Gutenberg #5677 · 613,475 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Jimmie Higgins

Author: Upton Sinclair


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5677]
                Most recently updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMIE HIGGINS ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo






JIMMIE HIGGINS

By Upton Sinclair

London



CONTENTS


I. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE CANDIDATE

II. JIMMIE HIGGINS HEARS A SPEECH

III. JIMMIE HIGGINS DEBATES THE ISSUE

IV. JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH

V. JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER

VI. JIMMIE HIGGINS GOES TO JAIL

VII. JIMMIE HIGGINS DALLIES WITH CUPID

VIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

IX. JIMMIE HIGGINS RETURNS TO NATURE

X. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE OWNER

XI. JIMMIE HIGGINS FACES THE WAR

XII. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS A PATRIOT

XIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS DODGES TROUBLE

XIV. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE ROAD

XV. JIMMIE HIGGINS TURNS BOLSHEVIK

XVI. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE TEMPTER

XVII. JIMMIE HIGGINS WRESTLES WITH THE TEMPTER

XVIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE PLUNGE

XIX. JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS ON KHAKI

XX. JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES A SWIM

XXI. JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS SOCIETY

XXII. JIMMIE HIGGINS WORKS FOR HIS UNCLE

XXIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE HUN

XXIV. JIMMIE HIGGINS SEES THE OTHER SIDE

XXV. JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS INTO DANGER

XXVI. JIMMIE HIGGINS DISCOVERS HIS SOUL

XXVII. JIMMIE HIGGINS VOTES FOR DEMOCRACY






JIMMIE HIGGINS



CHAPTER I

JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE CANDIDATE


I


“Jimmie,” said Lizzie, “couldn't we go see the pictures?”

And Jimmie set down the saucer of hot coffee which he was in the act
of adjusting to his mouth, and stared at his wife. He did not say
anything; in three years and a half as a married man he had learned
that one does not always say everything that comes into one's mind.
But he meditated on the abysses that lie between the masculine and
feminine intellects. That it should be possible for anyone to wish
to see a movie idol leaping into second-story windows, or being
pulled from beneath flying express trains, on this day of destiny,
this greatest crisis in history!

“You know, Lizzie,” he said, patiently, “I've got to help at the
Opera-house.”

“But you've got all morning!”

“I know; but it'll take all day.”

And Lizzie fell silent; for she too had learned much in three years
and a half of married life. She had learned that working men's wives
seldom get all they would like in this world; also that to have a
propagandist for a husband is not the worst fate that may befall.
After all, he might have been giving his time and money to drink, or
to other women; he might have been dying of a cough, like the man
next door. If one could not have a bit of pleasure on a Sunday
afternoon--well, one might sigh, but not too loud.

Jimmie began telling all the things that had to be done that Sunday
morning and afternoon. They seemed to Lizzie exactly like the things
that were done on other occasions before meetings. To be sure, this
was bigger--it was in the Opera-house, and all the stores had cards
in the windows, with a picture of the Candidate who was to be the
orator of the occasion. But it was hard for Lizzie to understand the
difference between this Candidate and other candidates--none of whom
ever got elected! Lizzie would truly rather have stayed at home, for
she did not understand English very well when it was shouted from a
platform, and with a lot of long words; but she knew that Jimmie was
trying to educate her, and being a woman, she was educated to this
extent--she knew the way to hold on to her man.

Jimmie had just discovered a new solution of the problem of getting
the babies to meetings; and Lizzie knew that he was tremendously
proud of this discovery. So long as there had been only one baby,
Jimmie had carried it. When there had come a second, Lizzie had
helped. But now there were three, the total weight of them something
over sixty pounds; and the street-car line was some distance away,
and also it hurt Jimmie in his class-consciousness to pay twenty
cents to a predatory corporation. They had tried the plan of paying
something to a neighbour to stay with the babies; but the first they
tried was a young girl who got tired and went away, leaving the
little ones to howl their heads off; and the second was a Polish
lady whom they found in a drunken stupor on their return.

But Jimmie was determined to go to meetings, and determined that
Lizzie should go along. It was one of the curses of the system, he
said, that it deprived working-class women of all chance for
self-improvement. So he had paid a visit to the “Industrial Store”,
a junk-shop maintained by the Salvation Army, and for fifteen cents
he had obtained a marvellous broad baby-carriage for twins, all
finished in shiny black enamel. One side of it was busted, but
Jimmie had fixed that with some wire, and by careful packing had
shown that it was possible to stow the youngsters in it--Jimmie and
Pete side by side, and the new baby at the foot.

The one trouble was that Jimmie Junior couldn't keep his feet still.
He could never keep any part of him still, the little
jack-in-the-box. Here he was now, tearing about the kitchen,
pursuing the ever-receding tail of the newest addition to the
family, a half-starved cur who had followed Jimmie in from the
street, and had been fed into a semblance of reality. From this
treasure a bare, round tail hung out behind in tantalizing fashion;
Jimmie Junior, always imagining he could catch it, was toddling
round and round and round the kitchen-table, clutching out in front
of him, laughing so that after a while he sat down from sheer
exhaustion.

And Jimmie Senior watched enraptured. Say, but he was a buster! Did
you ever see a twenty-seven months' old kid that could get over the
ground like that? Or make a louder noise? This last because Jimmie
Junior had tried to take a short cut through the kitchen range and
failed. Lizzie swooped down, clasping him to her broad bosom, and
pouring out words of comfort in Bohemian. As Jimmie Senior did not
understand any of these words, he took advantage of the confusion to
get his coat and cap and hustle off to the Opera-house, full of
fresh determination. For, you see, whenever a Socialist looks at his
son, or even thinks of his son, he is hotter for his job of
propagandist. Let the world be changed soon, so that the little
fellows may be spared those sufferings and humiliations which have
fallen to the lot of their parents!




II



“Comrade Higgins, have you got a hammer?” It was Comrade Schneider
who spoke, and he did not take the trouble to come down from the
ladder, where he was holding up a streamer of bunting, but waited
comfortably for the hammer to be fetched to him. And scarcely had
the fetcher started to climb before there came the voice of a woman
from across the stage: “Comrade Higgins, has the Ypsel banner come?”
 And from the rear part of the hall came the rotund voice of fat
Comrade Rapinsky: “Comrade Higgins, will you bring up an extra table
for the literature?” And from the second tier box Comrade Mary Allen
spoke: “While you're downstairs, Comrade Higgins, would you mind
telephoning and making sure the Reception Committee knows about the
change in the train-time?”

So it went; and Jimmie ran about the big hall with his face red and
perspiring; for this was midsummer, and no breeze came through the
windows of the Leesville Opera-house, and when you got high up on
the walls to tie the streamers of red bunting, you felt as if you
were being baked. But the streamers had to be tied, and likewise the
big red flag over the stage, and the banner of the Karl Marx Verein,
and the banner of the Ypsels, or Young People's Socialist League of
Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and
of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers'
Co-operative Society. And because Comrade Higgins never questioned
anybody's right to give him orders, and always did everything with a
cheerful grin, people had got into the habit of regarding him as the
proper person for tedious and disagreeable tasks.

He had all the more on his hands at present, because the members of
this usually efficient local were half-distracted, like a nest of
ants that have been dug out with a shovel. The most faithful ones
showed a tendency to forget what they were doing, and to gather in
knots to talk about the news which had come over the cables and had
been published in that morning's paper. Jimmie Higgins would have
liked to hear what the rest had to say; but somebody had to keep at
work, for the local was in the hole nearly three hundred dollars for
to-night's affair, and it must succeed, even though half the
civilized world had gone suddenly insane. So Jimmie continued to
climb step-ladders and tie bunting.

When it came to lunch-time, and the members of the Decorations
Committee were going out, it suddenly occurred to one of them that
the drayman who was to bring the literature might arrive while there
was nobody to receive it. So Comrade Higgins was allowed to wait
during the lunch hour. There was a plausible excuse--he was on the
Literature Committee; indeed, he was on every committee where hard
work was involved--the committee to distribute leaflets announcing
the meeting, the committee to interview the labour unions and urge
them to sell tickets, the committee to take up a collection at the
meeting. He was not on those committees which involved honour and
edification, such as, for example, the committee to meet the
Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then
it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such
a committee; for he was just an ignorant fellow, a machinist,
undersized and undernourished, with bad teeth and roughened hands,
and no gifts or graces of any sort to recommend him; while on the
Reception Committee were a lawyer and a prosperous doctor and the
secretary of the Carpet-weavers' Union, all people who wore good
clothes and had education, and knew how to talk to a Candidate.

So Jimmie waited; and when the drayman came, he opened up the
packages of books and pamphlets and laid them out in neat piles on
the literature tables, and hung several of the more attractive ones
on the walls behind the tables; so, of course, Comrade Mabel Smith,
who was chairman of the Literature Committee, was greatly pleased
when she came back from lunch. And then came the members of the
German Liederkranz, to rehearse the programme they were to give; and
Comrade Higgins would have liked first rate to sit and listen, but
somebody discovered the need of glue, and he chased out to find a
drug-store that was open on Sunday.

Later on there was a lull, and Jimmie realized that he was hungry.
He examined the contents of his pockets and found that he had
seventeen cents. It was a long way to his home, so he would step
round the corner and have a cup of coffee and a couple of “sinkers”
 at “Tom's”. He first conscientiously asked if anybody needed
anything, and Comrade Mabel Smith told him to hurry back to help her
put out the leaflets on the seats, and Comrade Meissner would need
help in arranging the chairs on the stage.




III



When you went from the Leesville Opera-house and turned West in Main
Street, you passed Heinz's Cafe, which was a “swell” eating-place,
and not for Jimmie; and then the “Bijou Nickelodeon”, with a
mechanical piano in the entrance; and the “Bon Marche Shoe Store”,
which was always having a fire-sale or a removal sale or a
bankruptcy clearing-out; and then Lipsky's “Picture Palace”, with a
brown and yellow cowboy galloping away with a red and yellow maiden
in his arms; then Harrod's “Fancy Grocery” on the corner. And in
each of these places there was a show-card in the window, with a
picture of the Candidate, and the announcement that on Sunday
evening, at eight o'clock, he would speak at the Leesville
Opera-house on “War, the Reason and the Remedy”. Jimmie Higgins
looked at the cards, and a dignified yet joyful pride stirred in his
bosom; for all of them were there because he, Jimmie, had
interviewed the proprietors and obtained their more or less
reluctant consent.

Jimmie knew that on this Sunday, in cities all over Germany,
Austria, Belgium, France and England, the workers were gathering by
millions and tens of millions, to protest against the red horror of
war being let loose over their heads. And in America too--a call
would go from the new world to the old, that the workers should rise
and carry out their pledge to prevent this crime against mankind.
He, Jimmie Higgins, had no voice that anybody would heed; but he had
helped to bring the people of his city to hear a man who had a
voice, and who would show the meaning of this world-crisis to the
working-people.

It was the party's Candidate for President. At this time only
congressional elections were pending, but this man had been
Candidate for President so often that every one thought of him in
that role. You might say that each of his campaigns lasted four
years; he travelled from one end of the land to the other, and
counted by the millions those who heard his burning, bitter message.
It had chanced that the day which the War-lords and Money-lords of
Europe had chosen to drive their slaves to slaughter was the day on
which the Candidate had been scheduled to speak in the Leesville
Opera-house. No wonder the Socialists of the little inland city were
stirred!

Jimmie Higgins turned into “Tom's Buffeteria”, and greeted the
proprietor, and seated himself on a stool in front of the counter,
and called for coffee, and helped himself to “sinkers”--which might
have been called “life-preservers”, they were blown so full of air.
He filled his mouth, at the same time looking up to make sure that
Tom had not removed the card announcing the meeting; for Tom was a
Catholic, and one of the reasons that Jimmie went to his place was
to involve him and his patrons in arguments over exploitation,
unearned increment and surplus value.

But before a discussion could be started, it chanced that Jimmie
glanced about. In the back part of the room were four little tables,
covered with oil-cloth, where “short orders” were served; and at one
of those tables a man was seated. Jimmie took a glance at him, and
started so that he almost spilled his coffee. Impossible; and
yet--surely--who could mistake that face? The face of a medieval
churchman, lean, ascetic, but with a modern touch of kindliness, and
a bald dome on top like a moon rising over the prairie. Jimmie
started, then stared at the picture of the Candidate which crowned
the shelf of pies. He turned to the man again; and the man glanced
up, and his eyes met Jimmie's, with their expression of amazement
and awe. The whole story was there, not to be misread--especially by
a Candidate who travels about the country making speeches, and being
recognized every hour or so from his pictures which have preceded
him. A smile came to his face, and Jimmie set down the coffee-cup
from one trembling hand and the “sinker” from the other, and rose
from his stool.




IV



Jimmie would not have had the courage to advance, save for the other
man's smile--a smile that was weary, but candid and welcoming.
“Howdy do, Comrade?” said the man. He held out his hand, and the
moment of this clasp was the nearest to heaven that Jimmie Higgins
had ever known.

When he was able to find his voice, it was only to exclaim, “You
wasn't due till five-forty-two!”

As if the Candidate had not known that! He explained that he had
missed his sleep the night before, and had come on ahead so as to
snatch a bit during the day. “I see,” said Jimmie; and then, “I
knowed you by your picture.”

“Yes?” said the other, patiently.

And Jimmie groped round in his addled head for something really
worth while. “You'll want to see the Committee?”

“No,” said the other, “I want to finish this first.” And he took a
sip from a glass of milk, and a bite out of a sandwich, and chewed.

So utterly rattled was Jimmie he sat there like a num-skull, unable
to find a word, while the man finished his repast. When it was over,
Jimmie said again--he could do no better--“You want to see the
Committee?”

“No,” was the reply, “I want to sit here--and perhaps talk to you,
Comrade--Comrade--?”

“Higgins,” said Jimmie.

“Comrade Higgins--that is, if you have time.”

“Oh, sure!” exclaimed Jimmie. “I got all the time there is. But the
Committee--”

“Never mind the Committee, Comrade. Do you know how many Committees
I have met on this trip?”

Jimmie did not know; nor did he have the courage to ask.

“Probably you never thought how it is to be a Candidate,” continued
the other. “You go from place to place, and make the same speech
every night, and it seems as if you slept in the same hotel every
night, and almost as if you met the same Committee. But you have to
remember that your speech is new to each audience, and you have to
make it as if you had never made it before; also you have to
remember that the Committee is made up of devoted comrades who are
giving everything for the cause, so you don't tell them that they
are just like every other committee, or that you are tired to death,
or maybe have a headache--”

Jimmie sat, gazing in awe-stricken silence. Not being a man of
reading, he had never heard of “the head that wears a crown”. This
was his first glimpse into the soul of greatness.

The Candidate went on: “And then, too, Comrade, there's the news
from Europe. I want a little time. I can't bring myself to face it!”

His voice had grown sombre, and to Jimmie, gazing at him, it seemed
that all the sorrows of the world were in his tired grey eyes.
“Perhaps I'd better go,” said Jimmie.

“No no,” replied the other, with quick self-recovery. He looked and
saw that Jimmie had forgotten his meal. “Bring your things over
here,” he said; and the other fetched his cup and saucer and plate,
and gulped the rest of his “sinkers” under the Candidate's eyes.

“I oughtn't to talk,” said the latter. “You see how hoarse I am. But
you talk. Tell me about the local, and how things are going here.”

So Jimmie summoned his courage. It was the one thing he could really
talk about, the thing of which his mind and soul were full.
Leesville was a typical small manufacturing city, with a glass
bottle works, a brewery, a carpet-factory, and the big Empire
Machine Shops, at which Jimmie himself spent sixty-three hours of
his life each week. The workers were asleep, of course; but still
you couldn't complain, the movement was growing. The local boasted
of a hundred and twenty members, though of course, only about thirty
of them could be counted on for real work. That was the case
everywhere, the Candidate put in--it was always a few who made the
sacrifice and kept things alive.

Then Jimmie went on to tell about to-night's meeting, the
preparations they had made, the troubles they had had. The police
had suddenly decided to enforce the law against delivering circulars
from house to house; though they allowed Isaac's “Emporium” to use
this method of announcement. The Leesville Herald and Evening
Courier were enthusiastic for the police action; if you couldn't
give out circulars, obviously you would have to advertise in these
papers. The Candidate smiled--he knew about American police
officials, and also about American journalism.

Jimmie had been laid off for a couple of days at the shop, and he
told how he had put this time to good use, getting announcements of
the meeting into the stores. There was an old Scotchman in a real
estate office just across the way. “Git oot!” he said. “So I thought
I'd better git oot!” said Jimmie. And then, taking his life into his
hands, he had gone into the First National Bank. There was a
gentleman walking across the floor, and Jimmie went up to him and
held out one of the placards with the picture of the Candidate.
“Would you be so good as to put this in your window?” he inquired;
and the other looked at it coldly. Then he smiled--he was a good
sort, apparently. “I don't think my customers would patronize your
business,” he said; but Jimmie went at him to take some tickets and
learn about Socialism--and would you believe it, he had actually
shelled out a dollar! “I found out afterwards that it was Ashton
Charmers, the president of the bank!” said Jimmie. “I'd a' been
scared, if I'd a' known.”

He had not meant to talk about himself; he was just trying to
entertain a tired Candidate, to keep him from brooding over a world
going to war. But the Candidate, listening, found tears trying to
steal into his eyes. He watched the figure before him--a bowed,
undernourished little man, with one shoulder lower than the other, a
straggly brown moustache stained with coffee, and stumpy black
teeth, and gnarled hands into which the dirt and grease were ground
so deeply that washing them would obviously be a waste of time. His
clothes were worn and shapeless, his celluloid collar was cracked
and his necktie was almost a rag. You would never have looked at
such a man twice on the street--and yet the Candidate saw in him one
of those obscure heroes who are making a movement which is to
transform the world.




V



“Comrade Higgins,” said the Candidate, after a bit, “let's you and
me run away.”

Jimmie looked startled. “How?”

“I mean from the Committee, and from the meeting, and from
everything.” And then, seeing the dismay in the other's face: “I
mean, let's take a walk in the country.”

“Oh!” said Jimmie.

“I see it through the windows of the railroad-cars, but I don't set
foot on it for months at a time. And I was brought up in the
country. Were you?”

“I was brought up everywhere,” said the little machinist.

They got up, and paid each their ten cents to the proprietor of the
“Buffeteria.” Jimmie could not resist the temptation to introduce
his hero, and show a pious Catholic that a Socialist Candidate had
neither hoofs nor horns. The Candidate was used to being introduced
for that purpose and had certain spontaneous and cordial words which
he had said not less than ten thousand times before; with the result
that the pious Catholic gave his promise to come to the meeting that
night.

They went out; and because some member of the Committee might be
passing on Main Street, Jimmie took his hero by an alley into a back
street; and they walked past the glass-factory, which to the
outsider was a long board fence, and across the Atlantic Western
railroad tracks, and past the carpet-factory, a huge four-story box
made of bricks; after which the rows of wooden shacks began to thin
out, and there were vacant lots and ash-heaps, and at last the
beginning of farms.

The Candidate's legs were long, and Jimmie's, alas, were short, so
he had almost to run. The sun blazed down on them, and sweat,
starting from the Candidate's bald head stole under the band of his
straw hat and down to his wilting collar; so he took off his coat
and hung it over his arm, and went on, faster than ever. Jimmie
raced beside him, afraid to speak, for he divined that the Candidate
was brooding over the world-calamity, the millions of young men
marching out to slaughter. On the placards which Jimmie had been
distributing in Leesville, there were two lines about the Candidate,
written by America's favourite poet:

    As warm heart as ever beat
    Betwixt here and judgement seat.

So they went on for perhaps an hour, by which time they were really
in the country. They came to a bridge which crossed the river Lee,
and there the Candidate suddenly stopped, and stood looking at the
water sliding below him, and at the vista through which it wound, an
avenue of green trees with stretches of pasture and cattle grazing.
“That looks fine,” he said. “Let's go down.” So they climbed a
fence, and made their way along the river for a distance, until a
turn of the stream took them out of sight of the road.

There they sat on a shelving bank, and mopped the perspiration from
their foreheads and necks, and gazed into the rippling current. You
couldn't exactly say it was crystal clear, for when there is a town
every ten miles or so along a stream, with factories pouring various
kinds of chemicals into it, the job becomes too much for the
restoring forces of Mother Nature. But it would take a dirty stream
indeed not to look inviting in midsummer after a four-mile walk. So
presently the Candidate turned to Jimmie, with a mischievous look
upon his face. “Comrade Higgins, were you ever in a swimmin' hole?”

“Sure I was!” said Jimmie.

“Where?”

“Everywhere. I was on the road off an' on ten years--till I got
married.”

“Well,” said the Candidate, still smiling, “what do you say?”

“I say sure!” replied Jimmie.

He was almost beside himself with awe, at this unbelieveable strange
fortune, this real comradeship with the hero of his dreams. To
Jimmie this man had been a disembodied intelligence, a dispenser of
proletarian inspiration, a supernatural being who went about the
country standing upon platforms and swaying the souls of multitudes.
It had never occurred to Jimmie that he might have a bare body, and
might enjoy splashing about in cool water like a boy playing
“hookey” from school. The saying is that familiarity breeds
contempt, but for Jimmie it bred rapture.




VI



They walked home again, more slowly. The Candidate asked Jimmie
about his life, and Jimmie told the story of a Socialist--not one of
the leaders, the “intellectuals”, but of the “rank and file”.
Jimmie's father was a working man out of a job, who had left his
family before Jimmie had joined it; Jimmie's mother had died three
years later, so he did not remember her, nor could he recall a word
of the foreign language he had spoken at home, nor did he even know
what the language was. He had been taken in charge by the city, and
farmed out to a negro woman who had eight miserable starvelings
under her care, feeding them on gruel and water, and not even giving
them a blanket in winter. You might not think that possible--

“I know America,” put in the Candidate.

Jimmie went on. At nine he had been boarded with a woodsaw man, who
worked him sixteen hours a day and beat him in addition; so Jimmie
had skipped out, and for ten years had lived the life of a street
waif in the cities and a hobo on the road. He had learned a bit
about machinery, helping in a garage, and then, in a rush-time, he
had got a job in the Empire Machine Shops. He had stayed in
Leesville, because he had got married; he had met his wife in a
brothel, and she had wanted to quit the life, and they had taken a
chance together.

“I don't tell that to everybody,” said Jimmie. “You know--they
mightn't understand. But I don't mind you knowin'.”

“Thank you,” replied the Candidate, and put his hand on Jimmie's
shoulder. “Tell me how you became a Socialist.”

There was nothing special about that, was the answer. There had been
a fellow in the shop who was always “chewing the rag”; Jimmie had
laughed at him--for his life had made him suspicious of everybody,
and if there was any sort of politician, it was just another scheme
of somebody to wear a white collar and live off the workers. But the
fellow had kept pegging away; and once Jimmie had been laid off for
a couple of months, and the family had near starved, and that had
given him time to think, and also the inclination. The fellow had
come along with some papers, and Jimmie had read them, and it dawned
upon him that here was a movement of his fellow-workers to put an
end to their torments.

“How long ago was that?” asked the Candidate, and Jimmie answered
three years. “And you haven't lost your enthusiasm?” This with an
intensity that surprised Jimmie. No, he answered, he was not that
kind. Whatever happened, he would keep pegging away at the task of
freeing labour. He would not see the New Day, perhaps, but his
children would see it; and a fellow would work like the devil to
save his children.

So they came to the city; and the Candidate pressed Jimmie's arm.
“Comrade,” he said, “I want to tell you how much good this little
trip has done me. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“Me?” exclaimed Jimmie.

“You have given me fresh hope and courage, and at a time when I felt
beaten. I got into town this morning, and I'd had no sleep, and I
tried to get some in the hotel and couldn't, because of the horror
that's happening. I wrote a dozen telegrams and sent them off, and
then I was afraid to go back to the hotel-room, because I knew I'd
only lie awake all afternoon. But now--I remember that our movement
is rooted in the hearts of the people!”

Jimmie was trembling. But all he could say was: “I wish I could do
it every Sunday.”

“So do I,” said the Candidate.




VII



They walked down Main Street, and some way ahead they saw a crowd
gathered, filling the pavement beyond the kerb. “What is that?”
 asked the Candidate, and Jimmie answered that it was the office of
the Herald. There must be some news.

The other hastened his steps; and Jimmie, striding alongside, fell
silent again, knowing that the gigantic burden and woe of the world
was falling upon his hero's shoulders once more. They came to the
edge of the crowd, and saw a bulletin in front of the newspaper
office. But it was too far away for them to read. “What is it?” they
asked.

“It says the Germans are going to march into Belgium. And they've
shot a lot of Socialists in Germany.”

“WHAT?” And the Candidate's hand clutched Jimmie's arm.

“That's what it says.”

“My God!” exclaimed the man. And he began pushing his way into the
crowd, with Jimmie in his wake. They got to the bulletin, and stood
reading the typewritten words--a bare announcement that more than a
hundred leading German Socialists had been executed for efforts to
prevent mobilization. They continued staring, until people pushing
behind them caused them to draw back. Outside the throng they stood,
the Candidate gazing into space, and Jimmie gazing at the Candidate,
both of them dumb. It was a fact that they could not have been more
shocked if the news had referred to the members of Local Leesville
of the Socialist Party of America.

The pain in the Candidate's face was so evident that Jimmie groped
about in his head for something comforting to say. “At least they
done what they could,” he whispered.

The other suddenly burst forth: “They are heroes! They have made the
name Socialist sacred for ever!” He rushed on, as if he were making
a speech-so strong becomes a life-time habit. “They have written
their names at the very top of humanity's roll of honour! It doesn't
make any difference what happens after this, Comrade--the movement
had vindicated itself! All the future will be changed because of
this event!”

He began to walk down the street, talking more to himself than to
Jimmie. He was borne away on the wings of his vision; and his
companion was so thrilled that he honestly did not know where he
was. Afterwards, when he looked back upon this scene, it remained
the most wonderful event of his life; he told the story, sooner or
later, to every Socialist he met.

Presently the Candidate stopped. “Comrade,” he said, “I must go to
the hotel. I want to write some telegrams. You explain to the
Committee--I'd rather not see anyone till time for the meeting. I'll
find the way myself.”






CHAPTER II

JIMMIE HIGGINS HEARS A SPEECH

I





In the Opera-house were gathered Comrade Mabel Smith and Comrade
Meissner and Comrade Goldstein, the secretary of the Ypsels, and the
three members of the Reception Committee--Comrade Norwood, the
rising young lawyer, Comrade Dr. Service, and Comrade Schultze of
the Carpet-weavers' Union. To them rushed the breathless Jimmie.
“Have you heard the news?”

“What is it?”.

“A hundred Socialist leaders shot in Germany!”

“Herr Gott!” cried Comrade Schultze, in horror; and everyone turned
instinctively, for they knew how this came home to him--he had a
brother who was a Socialist editor in Leipzig, and who was liable
for the mobilization.

“Where did you see it?” cried Schultze; and Jimmie told what he
knew. And then the clamour broke forth! Others were called from the
back part of the hall, and came running, and there were questions
and cries of dismay. Here, too, it was as if the crime had been
committed against Local Leesville--so completely did they feel
themselves one with the victims. In a town where there was a
brewery, needless to say there were German workers a-plenty; but
even had this not been so, the feeling would have been the same, for
the Socialists of the world were one, the soul of the movement was
its internationalism. The Candidate discovering that Jimmie was a
Socialist had asked and received no further introduction, but had
been instantly his friend; and so it would have been with a comrade
from Germany, Japan, or the heart of Africa--he might not have
known another word of English, the word “Socialist” would have
sufficed.

It was a long time before they thought of any other matter; but
finally someone referred to the trouble which had fallen upon the
local--the Candidate had not showed up. And Jimmie exclaimed, “Why,
he's here!” And instantly all turned upon him. Where? When? How?

“He came this morning.”

“And why didn't you let us know?” It was Comrade Dr. Service of the
Reception Committee who spoke, and with a decided sharpness in his
tone.

“He didn't want anybody to know,” said Jimmie.

“Did he want us to go to the train and think he had failed us?”

Sure enough, it was after train-time! Jimmie had entirely forgotten
both the train and the committee, and now he had not the grace to
hide his offence. All he could do was to tell his story--how he had
spent the afternoon walking in the country with the Candidate, and
how they had gone swimming, and how they had got the news from the
bulletin board, and how the Candidate had acted and what he had
said. Poor Jimmie never doubted but that his own thrill was shared
by all the others; and at the next regular meeting of the local,
when Comrade Dr. Service sat down on some proposition which Jimmie
had ventured to make, the little machinist had not the faintest idea
what he had done to deserve the snub. He was lacking in worldly
sense, he did not understand that a prosperous physician, who comes
into the movement out of pure humanitarianism, contributing his
prestige and his wealth to the certain detriment of his social and
business interests, is entitled to a certain deference from the
Jimmie Higginses, and even from a Candidate.




II



You might have thought that Jimmie would be tired; but this was a
day on which the flesh had no claims. First he helped Comrade Mabel
in depositing upon every seat a leaflet containing a letter from the
local candidate for Congress; then he rushed away to catch a
street-car, and spent his last nickel to get to his home and keep
his engagement with Lizzie. He would not make with her the mistake
he had made with the Committee, you bet!

He found that Lizzie had faithfully carried out her part of the
bargain. The three babies were done up in bright-coloured calico
dresses; she had spent the morning in washing and ironing these
garments--also her own dress, which was half-red and half-green, and
of generous, almost crinoline proportions. Lizzie herself was built
on that scale, with broad hips and bosom, big brown eyes and heavy
dark hair. She was a fine strong woman when she had shed her
bedraggled house gown, and Jimmie was proud of his capability as a
chooser of wives. It was no small feat to find a good woman, and to
recognize her, where Jimmie had found Lizzie. She was five years
older than he, a Bohemian, having been brought to America when she
was a baby. Her former name--you could hardly call it her “maiden”
 name, considering the circumstances--was Elizabeth Huszar, which
she pronounced so that for a long time Jimmie had understood it to
be Eleeza Betooser.

Jimmie snatched a bite of bread and drank a cup of metallic tasting
tea, and packed the family into the baby-carriage, and trudged the
mile and half to the centre of the city. When they arrived, Lizzie
took the biggest child, and Jimmie the other two, and so they
trudged into the Opera-house. On this hot night it was like holding
three stoves in your arms, and if the babies woke up and began to
cry, the parents would have the painful choice of missing something,
or else facing the disgusted looks of everyone about them. In
Belgium, at the “People's House”, the Socialists maintained a
creche, but the American movement had not yet discovered that
useful institution.

Already the hall was half-full, and a stream of people pouring in.
Jimmie got himself and family seated, and then turned his eager eyes
proudly to survey the scene. The would-be-congressman's circulars
which he had placed in the seats were now being read by the sitters;
the banners he had so laboriously hung were resplendent on the
walls; there was a pitcher of ice water on the speaker's table, and
a bouquet of flowers and a gavel for the chairman; the seats in the
rear of the platform for the Liederkranz were neatly ranged, most of
them already occupied by solid German figures topped by rosy German
faces: to each detail of which achievements Jimmie had lent a hand.
He had a pride of possession in this great buzzing throng, and in
the debt they owed to him. They had no idea of it, of course; the
fools, they thought that a meeting like this just grew out of
nothing! They paid their ten cents--twenty-five cents for reserved
seats--and imagined that covered everything, with perhaps even a
rake-off for somebody! They would grumble, wondering why the
Socialists persisted in charging admission for their meetings--why
they could not let people in free as the Democrats and Republicans
did. They would go to Democratic and Republican meetings, and enjoy
the brass band and the fireworks, pyrotechnical and
oratorical--never dreaming it was all a snare paid for by their
exploiters!

Well, they would learn about it to-night! Jimmie thought of the
Candidate, and how he would impress this man and that. For Jimmie
knew scores who had got tickets, and he peered about after this one
and that, and gave them a happy nod from behind his barricade of
babies. Then, craning his neck to look behind him, suddenly Jimmie
gave a start. Coming down the aisle was Ashton Chalmers, president
of the First National Bank of Leesville; and with him-could it be
possible?--old man Granitch, owner of the huge Empire Machine Shops
where Jimmie worked! The little machinist found himself shaking with
excitement as these two tall forms strode past him down the aisle.
He gave Lizzie a nudge with his elbow and whispered into her ear;
and all around was a buzz of whispers--for, of course, everybody
knew these two mighty men, the heads of the “invisible government”
 of Leesville. They had come to find out what their subjects were
thinking! Well, they would get it straight!




III



The big hall was full, and the aisles began to jam, and then the
police closed the doors--something which Jimmie took as part of the
universal capitalist conspiracy. The audience began to chafe; until
at last the chairman walked out upon the stage, followed by several
important persons who took front seats. The singers stood up, and
the leader waved his wand, and forth came the Marseillaise: a French
revolutionary hymn, sung in English by a German organization--there
was Internationalism for you! With full realization of the solemnity
of this world-crisis, they sang as if they hoped to be heard in
Europe.

And then rose the Chairman--Comrade Dr. Service. He was a fine, big
figure of a man, with grey moustache and beard trimmed to a point;
his swelling chest was covered by clean white linen and
tight-fitting broad-cloth, and he made a most imposing chairman,
reflecting credit on the movement. He cleared his throat, and told
them that they had come that evening to listen to one of America's
greatest orators, and that therefore he, the Chairman, would not
make a speech; after which he proceeded to make a speech. He told
them what a grave hour this was, and how the orator would tell them
its meaning, after which he proceeded to tell most of the things
which the orator would tell. This was a weakness of Comrade Dr.
Service--but one hesitated to point it out to him, because of his
black broad-cloth suit and his imposing appearance, and the money he
had put up to pay for the hall.

At last, however, he called on the Liederkranz again, and a quartet
sang a German song and then an encore. And then came Comrade
Gerrity, the hustling young insurance-agent who was organizer for
the local, and whose task it was to make a “collection speech.” He
had humorous ways of extracting money--“Here I am again!” he began,
and everybody smiled, knowing his bag of tricks. While he was
telling his newest funny story, Jimmie was unloading the littlest
infant into Lizzie's spare arm, and laying the other on the seat
with its head against her knee, and getting himself out into the
aisle, hat in hand and ready for business; and as soon as the
organizer ceased and the Liederkranz resumed, Jimmie set to work
gathering the coin. His territory was the reserved-seat section up
in front, where sat the two mighty magnates. Jimmie's knees went
weak, but he did his duty, and was tickled to see each of the pair
drop a coin into the hat, to be used in overthrowing their power in
Leesville!




IV



The hats were taken to the box-office and emptied, and the
collection-takers and the Liederkranz singers resumed their seats.
An expectant hush fell--and then at last there strode out on the
stage the Candidate. What a storm broke out! Men cheered and clapped
and shouted. He took his seat modestly; but as the noise continued,
he was justified in assuming that it was meant for him, and he rose
and bowed; as it still continued, he bowed again, and then again. It
had been the expectation of Comrade Dr. Service to come forward and
say that, of course, it was not necessary for anyone to introduce
the speaker of the evening; but the audience, as if it had read the
worthy doctor's intention, kept on applauding, until the Candidate
himself advanced, and raised his hand, and began his speech.

He did not stop for any oratorical preliminaries. This, he said--and
his voice trembled with emotion--was the solemnest hour that men had
ever faced on earth. That day on the bulletin-board of their local
newspaper he had read tidings which had moved him as he had never
been moved in his life, which had almost deprived him of the power
to walk upon a stage and address an audience. Perhaps they had not
heard the news; he told it to them, and there sprang from the
audience a cry of indignation.

Yes, they might well protest, said the speaker; nowhere on all the
bloody pages of history could you find a crime more revolting than
this! The masters of Europe had gone mad in their lust for power;
they had called down the vengeance of mankind upon their crowned and
coronetted heads. Here to-night he would tell them--and the
speaker's hoarse and raucous voice mounted to a shout of rage--he
would tell them that in signing the death-warrant of those heroic
martyrs, they had sealed the doom of their own order, they had torn
out the foundation-stones from the structure of capitalist society!
The speaker's voice seemed to lift the audience from its seats, and
the last words of the sentence were drowned in a tumult of applause.

Silence fell again, and the man went on. He had peculiar mannerisms
on the platform. His lanky form was never still for an instant. He
hurried from one end of the stage to the other; he would crouch and
bend as if he were going to spring upon the audience, a long, skinny
finger would be shaken before their faces, or pointed as if to drive
his words into their hearts. His speech was a torrent of epigram,
sarcasm, invective. He was bitter; if you knew nothing about the man
or his cause, you would find this repellent and shocking. You had to
know what his life had been--an unceasing conflict with oppression;
he had got his Socialist education in jail, where he had been sent
for trying to organize the wage-slaves of a gigantic corporation.
His rage was the rage of a tender-hearted poet, a lover of children
and of Nature, driven mad by the sight of torment wantonly
inflicted. And if ever he had seemed to you an extremist, too angry
to be excused, here to-night he had his vindication, here to-night
you saw him as a prophet. For now the master-class had torn the mask
from its face, and revealed to the whole world what were its moral
standards! At last men saw their rulers face to face!

They have plunged mankind into a pit of lunacy. “They call it war,”
 cried the speaker; “but I call it murder.” And he went on to picture
to them what was happening in Europe at that hour--he brought the
awful nightmare before their eyes, he showed them homes blown to
pieces, cities given to the flames, the bodies of men pierced by
bullets or torn to fragments by shells. He pictured a bayonet
plunged into the abdomen of a man; he made you see the ghastly deed,
and feel its shuddering wickedness. Men and women and children sat
spellbound; and for once no man could say aloud or feel in his heart
that the pictures of a Socialist agitator were overdrawn--no, not
even Ashton Chalmers, president of the First National Bank of
Leesville, or old Abel Granitch, proprietor of the Empire Machine
Shops!




V



And what was the cause of this blackest of calamities? The speaker
went on to show that the determining motive was not racial jealousy,
but commercial greed. The fountain-head of the war was
world-capitalism, clamouring for markets, seeking to get rid of its
surplus products, to keep busy its hordes of wage-slaves at home. He
analysed the various factors; and now, with the shadow of the
European storm over their heads--now at last men and women would
listen, they would realize that the matter concerned them. He warned
them--let them not think that they were safe from the hoofs of this
war-monster, just because they were three thousand miles away!
Capitalism was a world phenomenon, and all the forces of parasitism
and exploitation which had swept Europe into this tragedy were
active here in America. The money-masters, the profit-seekers, would
leap to take advantage of the collapse over the seas; there would be
jealousies, disputes--let the audience understand, once for all,
that if world-capitalism did not make this a world-war, it would be
only because the workers of America took warning, and made their
preparations to frustrate the conspiracy.

This was what he had come for, this was the heart of his message.
Many of those who listened were refugees from the old world, having
fled its oppressions and enslavements. He pleaded with them now, as
a man whose heart was torn by more suffering than he could bear--let
there be one part of the fair garden of earth into which the demons
of destruction might not break their way! Let them take warning in
time, let them organize and establish their own machinery of
information and propaganda--so that when the crisis came, when the
money-masters of America sounded the war-drums, there might be--not
the destruction and desolation which these masters willed, but the
joy and freedom of the Co-operative Commonwealth!

“How many years we Socialists have warned you!” he cried. “But you
have doubted us, you have believed what your exploiters have told
you! And now, in this hour of crisis, you look at Europe and
discover who are the real friends of humanity, of civilization. What
voice comes over the seas, protesting against war? The Socialist
voice, and the Socialist voice alone! And to-night, once more, you
hear it in this hall! You men and women of America, and you exiles
from all corners of the world, make this pledge with me--make it
now, before it is too late, and stand by it when the hour of crisis
comes! Swear it by the blood of our martyred heroes, those
slaughtered German Socialists--swear that, come what will, and when
and how it will, that no power on earth or in hell beneath the earth
shall draw you into this fratricidal war! Make this resolution, send
this message to all the nations of the earth--that the men of all
nations and all races are your brothers, and that never will you
consent to shed their blood. If the money-masters and the exploiters
want war, let them have it, but let it be among themselves! Let them
take the bombs and shells they have made and go out against one
another! Let them blow their own class to pieces--but let them not
seek to lure the working-people into their quarrels!”

Again and again, in answer to such exhortations, the audience broke
out into shouts of applause. Men raised their hands in solemn
pledge; and the Socialists among them went home from the meeting
with a new gravity in their faces, a new consecration in their
hearts. They had made a vow, and they would keep it--yes, even
though it meant sharing the fate of their heroic German comrades!

--And then in the morning they opened their papers, looking eagerly
for more details about the fate of the heroic German comrades, and
they found none. Day after day, morning and afternoon, they looked
for more details, and found none. On the contrary, to their
unutterable bewilderment, they learned that the leaders of the
German Social-Democracy had voted for the war-budgets, and that the
rank and file of the movement were hammering out the goose-step on
the roads of Belgium and France! They could not bring themselves to
believe it; even yet they have not brought themselves to realize
that the story which thrilled them so on that fatal Sunday afternoon
was only a cunning lie sent out by the German war-lords, in the hope
of causing the Socialists of Belgium and France and England to
revolt, and so give the victory to Germany!






CHAPTER III

JIMMIE HIGGINS DEBATES THE ISSUE

I





The grey flood of frightfulness rolled over Belgium; and every
morning, and again in the afternoon, the front page of the Leesville
newspaper was like the explosion of a bomb. Twenty-five thousand
Germans killed in one assault on Liege; a quarter of a million
Russians massacred or drowned in the swamps of the Masurian Lakes;
so it went, until the minds of men reeled. They saw empires and
civilizations crumbling before their eyes, all those certainties
upon which their lives had been built vanishing as a mist at
sunrise.

Hitherto, Jimmie Higgins had always refused to take a daily paper.
No capitalist lies for him; he would save his pennies for the
Socialist weeklies! But now he had to have the news, and tired as he
was after the day's work, he would sit on his front porch with his
ragged feet against a post, spelling out the despatches. Then he
would stroll down to the cigar-stand of Comrade Stankewitz, a
wizened-up little Roumanian Jew who had lived in Europe, and had a
map, and would show Jimmie which was Russia, and why Germany marched
across Belgium, and why England had to interfere. It was good to
have a friend who was a man of travel and a linguist--especially
when the fighting became centred about places such as Przemysl and
Przasnyaz!

Then every Friday night would be the meeting of the local. Jimmie
would be the first to arrive, eager to hear every word the better
informed comrades had to say, and thus to complete the education
which Society had so cruelly neglected.

Before the war was many weeks old, Jimmie's head was in a state of
utter bewilderment; never would he have thought it possible for men
to hold so many conflicting opinions, and to hold them with such
passionate intensity! It seemed as if the world-conflict were being
fought out in miniature in Leesville.

At the third meeting after the war began, the prosperous Dr. Service
arose, and in his impressive oratorical voice moved that the local
should send a telegram to the National Executive Committee of the
party, requesting it to protest against the invasion of Belgium;
also a telegram to the President of the United States, requesting
him to take the same action. And then what pandemonium broke loose!
Comrade Schneider, the brewery-worker, demanded to know whether
Local Leesville had ever requested the National Executive Committee
to protest against the invasion of Ireland. Had the Socialist party
ever requested the President of the United States to protect Egypt
and India from oppression?

Comrade Dr. Service, who had remained on his feet, began a
passionate denunciation of the outrages perpetrated by the German
army in Belgium; at which Comrade Schneider's florid face turned
purple. He demanded whether all men did not know that France had
first invaded Belgium, and that the Belgians had welcomed the
French? Weren't all the Belgian forts turned toward Germany? Of
course! answered the doctor. But what of that? Was it a crime for a
man to know who was going to attack him?

The purple-faced brewer, without heeding this question, demanded:
Did not all the world know that the French had begun the war with an
aeroplane bombardment of the German cities? The Comrade Doctor, his
face also purpling, replied that all the world knew this for a tale
sent out by the German propaganda machine. HOW did all the world
know it? roared Schneider. By a cable-censorship controlled by
British gold?

Jimmie was much exicted by this dispute. The only trouble was that
he found himself in agreement with both sides, and with an impulse
to applaud both sides. And also he applauded the next speaker, young
Emil Forster, a pale, slender, and fair-haired youth, a designer in
the carpet-factory. Emil was one who seldom raised his voice in the
meetings, but when he did, he was heard with attention, for he was a
student and a thinker; he played the flute, and his father, also a
member of the local, played the clarinet, so the pair were
invaluable on “social evenings”. In his gentle, dispassionate voice
he explained how it was not easy for people in America to understand
the dilemma of the German Socialists in the present crisis. We must
remember that the Germans were fighting, not merely England and
France, but Russia; and Russia was a huge, half-civilized land,
under perhaps the most cruel government in the world. How would
Americans feel if up in Canada there were three hundred millions of
people, ignorant, enslaved, and being drilled in huge armies?

All right, retorted Dr. Service. But then why did not the Germans
fight Russia, and let France and Belgium alone?

Because, answered Emil, the French would not permit that. We in
America thought of France as a republic, but we must remember that
it was a capitalist republic, a nation ruled by bankers; and these
bankers had formed an alliance with Russia, the sole possible aim of
which was the destruction of Germany. France had loaned something
like four billions of dollars to Russia.

And then Schneider leaped up. Yes, and it was that money which had
provided the cannon and shells that were now being used in laying
waste East Prussia, the land of Schneider's birth!




II



The temper of both sides was rising higher and higher, and the
neutrals made efforts to calm the dispute. Comrade Stankewitz,
Jimmie's cigar-store friend, cried out in his shrill eager voice: Vy
did we vant to git mixed up vit them European fights? Didn't we know
vat bankers and capitalists vere? Vat difference did it make to any
vorking man vether he vas robbed from Paris or Berlin? “Sure, I
know,” said Stankewitz, “I vorked in both them cities, and I vas
every bit so hungry under Rothschild as I vas under the Kaiser.”

Then Comrade Gerrity, organizer of the local, took his turn.
Whatever they did, said Gerrity, they must keep their neutrality in
this war; the one hope of the world just now was in the Socialist
movement--that it would preserve the international spirit, and point
a war-torn world back to peace. Especially just now in Local
Leesville they must keep their heads, for they were beginning the
most important move in their history, the establishment of a weekly
paper. Nothing must get in the way of that!

Yes, said Comrade Service, but they would have to determine the
policy of the paper, would they not? Were they going to protest
against injustice at home, and pay no attention to the most flagrant
act of international injustice in the history of the world? Was a
working man's paper to say nothing against the enslavement of the
working men of Europe by the Kaiser and his militarist crew? He, Dr.
Service, would wash his hands of such a paper.

And then the members of the local gazed at one another in dismay.
Every man and woman of them knew that the prosperous doctor had
headed the list of subscribers for the soon-to-be-born Leesville
Worker with the sum of five hundred dollars. The thought of losing
this munificent contribution brought consternation even to the
Germans!

But there was one member of the local whom no menace ever daunted.
He rose up now--lean, sallow almost to greenness, with black hair
falling into his eyes, and a cough that racked him at every other
sentence. Bill Murray was his name; “Wild Bill”, the papers called
him. The red card he carried had been initialled by the secretaires
of some thirty locals all over the country. He had lost a couple of
toes under a tractor-plough in Kansas, and half a hand in a
tin-plate mill in Alleghany County; he had been clubbed insensible
in a strike in Chicago, and tarred and feathered in a free speech
fight in San Diego. And now he told the members of Local Leesville
what he thought of those tea-party revolutionists who pandered to
the respectability of a church-ridden community. “Wild Bill” had
watched the discussions over “Section Six”, the provision in the
constitution of the party against sabotage and violence; the very
same persons who had been enthusiastic for that bit of middle-class
fakery were now trying to line up the local for the defence of the
British sea-power! What the hell difference did it make to any
working man whether or not the Kaiser got a railroad to Bagdad? Of
course, if a man had been to school in Britain, and had a British
wife, and felt himself a British gentleman--you could feel the
shudder that went through the gathering, for everyone knew that this
was Dr. Service--all right, let that man take the first ship across
the ocean and enlist; but let him not try to turn an American
Socialist local into a recruiting-agency for British landlords and
aristocrats.

This brought to his feet Comrade Norwood, the young lawyer who had
helped to put through “Section Six” in the National Convention of
the party. If there were people so keen against this Section, why
couldn't they get out of the party and form an organization of their
own?

“Because,” answered Murray, “we prefer sabotage to striking!”

“In other words,” continued Norwood, “you stay in the local, and by
a campaign of sneering and personalities you drive your opponents
out!”

“This is the first meeting for some months that we have had the
pleasure of seeing Comrade Norwood,” said “Wild Bill”, with venomous
placidity. “Perhaps he knew that we were to be asked to raise a
regiment for Kitchener!”

And then again Comrade Stankewitz was on his feet, with distress in
his thin, eager face. “Comrades, all this vill not get us anyvere!
There is but vun question ve have to answer, are ve
internationalists, or are ve not?”

“It seems to me,” continued Norwood, “the question is, are we
anti-nationalists?”

“All right!” shrilled the little Jew. “I vill leave it so--I am an
anti-nationalist! Such must all Socialists be!”

“But I don't understand it so,” declared the young lawyer. “It is
easy for some who belong to a race which has not had a country for
two thousand years--”

“And who's dealing in personalities now?” sneered “Wild Bill”.




III



So matters went in Local Leesville. The upshot of the debate was
that Comrade Dr. Service declared that he washed his hands of the
Socialist Party from that time on. And the Comrade Doctor buttoned
his handsome black coat over his stately chest and stalked out of
the room. The greater part of the remainder of that meeting was
devoted to a discussion of him and his personality and his influence
in the local. He was no Socialist at all, declared Schneider, he was
an English aristocrat, or the next thing to it--his wife had two
brothers in the British Expeditionary Force, and a nephew already
enlisted in the Territorials, and a visiting cousin on the point of
setting out for Canada, as the quickest way of getting into the
mix-up. But in spite of all these damaging circumstances, the local
was not disposed to give up its most generous supporter, and Comrade
Gerrity, the organizer, and Comrade Goldstein of the Ypsels, were
constituted a committee to go and plead with him and try to bring
him back into the fold.

As for Jimmie Higgins, his problem was not so complicated. He had no
relatives anywhere that he knew of; and if he had any “country”, the
country had failed to make him aware of the fact. The first thing
the “country” had done for him was to put him into the hands of a
negro woman who fed him gruel and water and gave him no blanket in
winter. To Jimmie this country was an aggregation of owners and
bosses, who made you sweat hard for your wages, and sent the police
to club you if you made any kick. A soldier Jimmie thought of as a
fellow who came to help the police when they got hard pushed. This
soldier walked with his chest out and his nose in the air, and
Jimmie referred to him as a “tin willie”, and summed him up as a
traitor to the working-class.

And so it was easy for our little machinist to agree with the
Roumanian Jewish cigar-seller in calling himself an
“anti-nationalist”. It was easy for him to laugh and applaud when “Wild
Bill” demanded what the hell difference it made to any working man
whether or not the Kaiser got a railroad to Bagdad. He did not
thrill in the least over the story of the British Army falling back
step by step across France, and holding ten times their number of
invaders. The papers called this “heroism”; but to Jimmie it was a
lot of poor fools who had had a flag waved in their eyes, and had
sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In
one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every
week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured
as a guileless fool by the name of “Henry Dubb”. Poor Henry always
believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a
thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the
page. And of the many adventures of Henry Dubb, the most absurd were
when he got himself into a uniform. Jimmie would cut these pictures
out and pass them round in the shop, and among his neighbours in the
row of tenement-shacks where he lived.

Nor did it make much difference in Jimmie's feelings when he read of
German atrocities. To begin with, he did not believe in them; they
were just a part of the poison-gas of war. When men were willing to
stab one another with bayonets, and to blow one another to pieces
with bombs, they would be willing to lie about one another, you
might be sure; the governments would lie deliberately, as one of the
ways of making the soldiers fight harder. What? argued Jimmie: tell
him that Germans were a lot of savages? When he lived in a city with
hundreds of them, and met them all the time at the local?

Here, for instance, was the Forster family; where would you find a
kinder lot of people? They were much above Jimmie in social
standing--they owned their own house and had whole shelves full of
books, and a pile of music as high as yourself; but recently Jimmie
had stopped on a Socialist errand, and they had invited him in to
supper, and there was a thin, worn, sweet-faced little woman, and
four growing daughters--nice, gentle, quiet girls--and two sons
younger than Emil; they had a pot-roast of beef, and a big dish of
steaming potatoes, and another of sauerkraut, and some queer pudding
that Jimmie had never heard of; and then they had music--they were
fairly dippy on music, that family, they would play all night if you
would listen, old Hermann Forster with his stout, black-bearded
face turned up as if he were seeing Heaven. And you wanted Jimmie to
believe that a man like that would carry a baby on a bayonet, or
rape a girl and then cut off her hands!

Or there was Comrade Meissner, a neighbour of Jimmie's, a friendly
little chatter-box of a man who was foreman-in-charge of a dozen
women from as many different races of the earth, packing bottles in
the glass-works. The tears would come into Meissner's pale blue eyes
when he told how he was made to drive these women, sick, or in the
family way, or whatever it might be. And remember, it was an
American superintendent and an American owner who gave Meissner his
orders--not a German! The little man could not quit his job, because
he had a brood of children and a wife with something the matter with
her--nobody could tell what it was, but she took all kinds of patent
medicines, which kept the family poor. Sometimes Lizzie Higgins
would go over to see her, and the two would sit and exchange ideas
about ailments and the prices of food; and meantime Meissner would
come over to where Jimmie was minding the Jimmie babies, and the two
would puff their cobs and discuss the disputes between the
“politicians” and the “direct actionists” in the local. And you
wanted Jimmie to believe that men like Meissner were standing old
Belgian women against the walls of churches and shooting them full
of bullets!




IV



But as the weeks passed, the evidence of atrocities began to pile
in, and so Jimmie Higgins was driven to a second line of defence.
Well, maybe so, but then all the armies were alike. Somebody told
Jimmie the saying of a famous general, that war was hell; and Jimmie
took to this--it was exactly what he wanted to believe! War was a
return to savagery, and the worse it became, the better Jimmie's
argument went. He was not interested in men's efforts to improve
war, by agreeing that they would kill in this way but not in that
way, they would kill this kind of people but not that kind.

These ideas Jimmie got from his fellow members in the local, and
from the Socialist papers which came each week and from the many
speakers he heard. These speakers were men and women of burning
sincerity and with a definite and entirely logical point of view.
Whether they talked about war, crime, prostitution, political
corruption, or any other social evil, what they wanted was to tear
down the old ramshackle structure, and to put in its place something
new and intelligent. You might possibly bring them to admit slight
differences between capitalist governments but when it came to a
practical issue, to an action you found that to these people all
governments were alike--and never so much alike as in war-time!

Nor was there ever such need for Socialist protest! Very quickly it
became apparent that it was not going to be an easy matter for
America to keep out of this world-vortex. Because American working
men did not get a living wage, and could not buy what they produced,
there was a surplus product which had to be sold abroad; so the
business of American manufacturers depended upon foreign
markets--and here suddenly were all the principal trading nations of the
world plunging in to buy all the American products they could, and to
keep their enemies from buying any at all.

A woman speaker came to Leesville a shrewd little body with a sharp
tongue, who had these disputes figured out, and gave them in
dialogue, as in a play. Kaiser Bill says, “I want cotton” John Bull
says, “You shan't have it.” Uncle Sam says, “But he has a right to
have it. Get out of the way, John Bull.” But John Bull says, “I will
hold up your ships and take them into my ports.” Uncle Sam says,
“No, no! Don't do that!” But John Bull does it. And then the Kaiser
says, “What sort of a fellow are you to let John Bull steal your
ships? Are you a coward, or are you secretly a friend of this old
villain?” Uncle Sam says, “John Bull, give me my German mail and my
German newspapers, at least. But John Bull answers, “You've got a
lot of German spies in your country--that's why I can't let you have
your mail. You can't have German papers because the Kaiser fills
them full of lies about me.” And the Kaiser says, “If John Bull
won't let me have my cotton and my meat and all the rest of it, why
don't you stop sending anything to him?” He waits a while, and then
he says, “If you won't stop sending things to that old villain, I'll
sink the ships, that's all.” And Uncle Sam cries, “But that's
against the law!” “Whose law?” says the Kaiser. “What sort of a law
is it that works only one way?” “But there are Americans on those
ships!” cries Uncle Sam. “Well, keep them off the ships!” answers
the Kaiser. “Keep them off till John Bull obeys the law.”

Put in this way the situation was easy for any Jimmie Higgins to
understand; and month by month, as the debate continued, Jimmie's
own point of view became clearer. He was not interested in sending
cotton to England, and still less in sending meat. He thought he was
lucky if he had a bit of meat twice a week himself, and it was plain
enough to him that if the fellows who owned the meat were not
allowed to ship it abroad, they might sell it in America at a price
that a working man could pay. Nor was that just greediness on
Jimmie's part; he was perfectly willing to go without meat where an
ideal was involved--look at the time and money and energy he gave to
Socialism! The point was that by sending goods to Europe, you helped
to keep up the fighting; whereas, if you quit, the fools must come
to their senses. So the Jimmie Higginses worked out their
campaign-slogan: “Starve the War and Feed America!”




V



In the third month of the war, disturbing rumours began to run about
Leesville. Old Abel Granitch had taken on a contract with the
Belgian government, and the Empire Machine Shops were going to make
shells. Nothing appeared about this in the local papers, but
everybody claimed to have first-hand knowledge, and although no two
people told the same story, there must be some basis of truth in
them all. And then, one day, to Jimmie's consternation, he heard
from Lizzie that the agent of the landlord had called and served
notice that they had three days to vacate the premises. Old man
Granitch had bought the land, and the Shops were to build out that
way. Jimmie could hardly credit his ears, for he was six city blocks
from the nearest part of the Shops; but it was true, so everyone
declared; all that land had been bought up, and half a thousand
families, children and old people, and sick people, men on their
death-beds and women in child-birth--all had three days in which to
move themselves to new quarters.

Let anyone imagine the confusion, the babel of tongues, the women on
their porches calling to one another, asking and giving advice! The
denunciations and the scoldings and the threats to resort to law!
The raids upon landlords, and how the prices went up! Jimmie hurried
off to Comrade Meissner, who had bought a house and was paying
instalments on it; Meissner, being a Socialist, did not try to
fleece him, but was glad to have help in making his payments. There
were no partitions in the garret which Jimmie rented, but they would
hang curtains and make do somehow, and Lizzie would use Mrs.
Meissner's stove until they could get something fixed upstairs. And
then to the corner grocery, to borrow a hand-cart and get started at
moving the furniture; for to-morrow everybody would be moving, and
you would not be able to get anything on wheels for love or money.
Until after midnight Jimmie and Meissner worked at transporting
babies and bedding and saucepans and chairs and chicken-coops piled
on the hand-cart.

And next morning at the shop, more excitement! It was four years now
that Jimmie had been in the employ of old man Granitch, and in all
that time he had done but one thing; standing in a vast room amid a
confusion of whirling belts and wheels, a roar and screech and
grumble and whirl that completely annulled one of the five senses.
There came in front of him, mechanically propelled, a tray full of
small oblong blocks of steel, which he fed, one with each hand, into
two places in a machine; the machine took these blocks, and rounded
off one end, and ground the rest a little smaller, and put a thread
on it, and it dropped into a tray on the other side, a bolt. Because
Jimmie had to watch the machine, and keep the oil-cups full, his was
classed as semi-skilled labour, and was paid nineteen and a half
cents an hour. Some time ago an expert had studied the process, and
figured that with labour at that price it was one-eighth of a cent
per hour cheaper to have the work done by hand than to instal a
machine to do it; and so for four years Jimmie had his job, standing
on one spot from seven to twelve, and again from twelve-thirty to
six, and carrying home every Saturday night the sum of twelve
dollars and twenty-nine cents. You might have thought that the huge
machine-works would have made it twelve-thirty for good measure;
but if so, you do not understand large scale production.

And now, all of an instant and without warning, Jimmie's precisely
ordered and habitual world came to an end. He was at his post when
the whistle blew, but the machinery did not move. And presently came
the Irish foreman with the curt announcement that the machinery
would never move again, at least not on that spot; it was to be
cleared out of the way, and new machinery set up, and they were to
fall to forthwith with wrenches and hammers and crow-bars to make a
new world!

So for a week they did; and meantime, every night as he went home,
Jimmie saw people's homes being wrecked--roofs falling in clouds of
dust, and gangs of men loading the debris into huge motor-trucks.
Before long they had got acetylene torches, and were working all
night-gangs of labourers who lived in tents on vacant lots outside
the city and kept their canvas cots warm with double shifts of
sleepers. Jimmie Higgins realized the dreadful truth, that in spite
of all the agitation of Socialists, the war had actually come to
Leesville!






CHAPTER IV

JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH

I





It was some time before Jimmie understood the nature of the new
machinery he was helping to set up. It was nobody's business to
explain, for he was only a pair of hands and a strong back; he was
not supposed to be a brain--while as for a soul or a conscience,
nobody was supposed to be that. Russian agents had come to Leesville
with seventeen millions of the money which the Paris bankers had put
up; and so overnight whole blocks of homes were swept out of
existence, and a huge new steel structure was rising, and on the
spot where for four years Jimmie had made certain motions of the
hands, they were preparing to manufacture new machinery for the
quantity production of shell-casings.

When Jimmie had definitely learned what was in process, he was
brought face to face with a grave moral problem. Could he, as an
international Socialist, spend his time making shells to kill his
German comrades? Could he spend his time making the machinery to
make the shells? Would he take the bribe of old man Granitch, a
working man's share of the hideous loot--an increase of four cents
an hour, with the prospect of another four when the works got
started? Jimmie had to meet this issue, just when it happened that
one of his babies was sick, and he was cudgelling his head to think
how he could ever squeeze out of his scanty wage the money to pay
the doctor!

The answer was easy to Comrade Schneider, the stout and sturdy
brewer, who stood up in the local and spoke with bitter scorn of
those Socialists who stayed on in the pay of that old hell-devil,
Granitch. Schneider wanted a strike in the Empire Machine Shops, and
he wanted it that very night! But then rose Comrade Mabel Smith,
whose brother was a bookkeeper for the concern. It was all very well
for Schneider to talk, but suppose someone were to demand that the
brewery-workers should strike and refuse to make beer for
munition-workers? That was a mere quibble, argued Schneider; but the
other denied this, declaring that it was an illustration of what the
worker was up against, with no control of his own destiny, no voice
as to what use should be made of his product. A man might say that
he would have nothing to do with munition-work, and go out into the
fields as a farmer--to raise grain, to be shipped to the armies! The
solidarity of capitalist society was such that nowhere could a man
find work that would not in some way be helping to kill his
fellow-workers in other lands.

Jimmie Higgins talked solemnly to Lizzie of moving to
Hubbardtown--tempted thereto by the signs he saw in an agency which
had been set up in a vacant store on Main Street. The Hubbard Engine
Company was trying to steal old man Granitch's workers, and was
offering thirty-two cents an hour for semi-skilled labour! Jimmie
made inquiry and learned that the company was extending its plant
for gas-engines; for what purpose was not told, but men suspected
that the engines were to go into motor-boats and be used for the
sinking of submarines. So Jimmie decided that Comrade Mabel Smith
was right; he might as well stay where he was. He would take as much
money as he could get and use his new-found prosperity to make
trouble for the war-profiteers. It was the first time in his life
that Jimmie had ever been free from money-fear. He could now get a
job anywhere at good wages, and so he did not care a hang what the
boss might say. He would talk to his fellow-workers, and explain the
war to them; a war of the capitalists at present, but destined
perhaps to turn into another kind of war, which the capitalists
would not find to their taste!




II



It was wonderful, incredible, the thing which had befallen
Leesville. Full of hatred for the system as Jimmie Higgins was, he
could not but be thrilled by what he saw. Thousands of men pouring
into the once commonplace little city--men of a score of races and
creeds, men old and young, white and black--even a few yellow ones!
It was a boom like San Francisco in '49; the money which the Paris
bankers had paid to the Russian government, and which the Russian
government had paid to old man Granitch, spread out in a golden
flood over the city. The speculators raised the price of land, the
house-owners raised rents, the hotels doubled their prices, and even
so, had to put people to bed on pool tables! Even Tom Callahan of
the “Buffeteria”' had to hire two assistants, and build an
extension, and move his kitchen into the back yard.

At night the hordes of strangers roamed the streets, and Lipsky's
“Picture Palace” was packed to the doors, and the “Bon Marche Shoe
Stores” had a new bankruptcy sale every week, and the swinging doors
of the saloons were never still for hours on end. Of course, where
so many men were gathered, there came women--swarms of women--of as
many races as the men. Leesville had some two score churches, and
had kept hitherto a careful pretence of decency; but now all
barriers went down, the police-force of the city was overwhelmed by
the new population--or was it by the golden flood from Paris by way
of Russia? Anyway, you saw sights on Main Street which confirmed
your distrust of war.

Never had there been such an opportunity for Socialist propaganda!
All these hordes of men, collected from the ends of the earth, torn
loose from home ties, from religion, from old habits of every sort,
thrown together promiscuously, living in any old way, ready for any
old thing that might come along! In former days these men had taken
what was handed out to them by their newspaper editors and preachers
and politicians; they had engaged in commonplace and respectable
activities, had lived tame and unadventurous lives. But now they
were making munitions; and you might say what you pleased, but there
was a certain psychological condition incidental to the making of
munitions. An employer could look pious and talk about law and
order, so long as he was setting his men to hoeing weeds or
shingling roofs or grading track; but what could he say to his men
when he was making shells to be used in blowing men to pieces?

So came the Socialist and the Anarchist and the Syndicalist and the
Industrial Unionist. Look at these masters, look at this
civilization they have produced! In the world's oldest centres of
culture ten or twenty millions of wage-slaves have been hurled
together--and then the Socialist or Anarchist or Syndicalist or
Industrial Unionist would describe in detail the bloody and bestial
operations which these ten or twenty millions of men were
performing. And each day's papers would bring fresh details for them
to cite--famine and pestilence, fire and slaughter, poison gas,
incendiary bombs, torpedoed passenger-ships. Look at these pious
hypocrites, the masters, with their refinement, their culture, their
religion! These are the people you are asked to follow, it is for
such as these that you have been chained to the machines all these
weary, toil-crowded years!




III



On every street corner, in every meeting-room, in every spot where
the workers gathered at the noon hour, you would hear such
arguments; and you would find men listening to them--men who perhaps
had never listened to such arguments before. They would nod, and
their faces would become grim--yes, the people up on top must be a
rotten lot! Here in America, supposed to be a land of liberty and
all that--here they were just the same, they were crowding to the
trough to drink the blood that was poured out in Europe. Of course,
they covered their greed with a camouflage of sympathy for the
Allies; but did anybody believe that old man Granitch loved the
Russian government? Certainly nobody in Leesville did; they knew
that he was “getting his”, and their hearts hardened with a grim
resolve to “get theirs”.

At first they thought they were succeeding. Wages went up, almost
for the asking; never did the unskilled man have so much money in
his pocket, while the man who could pretend to any skill at all
found himself in the plutocratic class. But quickly men discovered
the worm in this luscious war-fruit; prices were going up almost as
fast as wages--in some places even faster. The sums you had to pay
to the landlord surpassed belief; a single working man would be
asked two or three dollars a week for twelve hours' use of a
mattress and blanket, which in the old days he might have got for
fifty cents. Food was scarce and of poor quality; before long you
found yourself being asked to pay six cents for a hunk of pie or a
cup of coffee--and then seven cents, and then ten. If you kicked,
the proprietor would tell you a long tale about what he had to pay
for rent and labour and supplies; and you could not deny that he was
probably right. About the only thing that did not go up was a
postage-stamp; and the Socialist would point to this and explain
that the Post Office was run by Uncle Sam, instead of by Abel
Granitch!

Every rise in price was a fresh stick of fuel for the Socialist
machine, and gave new power to their propaganda of “Starve the War
and Feed America!” The Socialist saw millions of tons of goods being
loaded into steamships and sent to Europe to be destroyed in war; he
saw the workers of Europe becoming enslaved by a bonded debt to a
class of parasites in America, he saw America being drawn closer and
closer to the abyss of the strife. The Socialist loved no part of
this process. He clamoured for an embargo--not merely on munitions,
but on food and everything, until the war-lords of Europe came to
their senses. He urged the workers to strike, and thus force the
politicians to declare the embargo.

Especially, of course, he urged this if he were a German or an
Austrian, a Hungarian or a Bohemian. The latter were subject races,
but they could not in these early days see beyond the fact that
their fathers and brothers and cousins were being killed by the
shells that were made in the Empire Machine Shops. With them stood
also the Jews, who hated the Russian government so bitterly that
nothing else mattered; also the Irish, whose first idea in life was
to pay back John Bull for his sins of several centuries, and whose
second idea was to take part in any sort of shivaree that was going.
It was quite bewildering to Jimmie Higgins; he had wrestled with
Catholics of several nations and got nothing but hard words for his
pains, but now all of a sudden Tom Callahan of the “Buffeteria” and
Pat Grogan of the grocery on the corner made the discovery that
maybe he was not such a fool after all!




IV



As a result of this ferment among the workers, the local had doubled
its membership, and was holding soap-box meetings on a corner off
Main Street on two evenings every week. The plans for the weekly
paper, however, still hung fire. Comrade Dr. Service had lost his
two brothers-in-law, one in the battle of Mons, and the other in the
first frightful gas-attack at Ypres, where whole regiments of men
were caught unprepared and died in awful torments. Also two of his
wife's cousins had paid the price--one was blind, and the other a
prisoner at Ruhleben, the worst fate of all. So Dr. Service made one
last indignant speech in the local, and took his five hundred
dollars to start a chapter of the Red Cross!

But now the Germans and the war-haters in the local were asking
themselves, was Socialism to languish in the city of the Empire
Machine Shops, just because one rich man with an English wife had
proved a renegade? Such a question answered itself! The work of
collecting subscription lists was taken up more vigorously than
ever; and already more than half the lost five hundred had been made
up, when one evening John Meissner came home with a most amazing
story.

It was his custom to stop at Sandkuh's for one glass of beer on his
way home in the evening; and when anybody in the saloon got to
arguing about the war, he would take his chance to put in a little
propaganda. This time he had made a regular speech, declaring that
the workers would soon put an end to the munition-business; and a
fellow had got to talking with him, asking him all sorts of
questions about himself, and about the local. How many members did
it have? How many of them felt as Meissner did? What were they doing
about it? Pretty soon the man had drawn Meissner to a table in the
back part of the place, asking about the proposed paper, and what
its policy was to be; also about the unions in the city, and their
policy, and the personalities of the leaders.

The man had said he was a Socialist, but Meissner did not believe
him. Meissner thought he must be some kind of union organizer. There
had been talk of various unions making an effort to break into the
domain of old man Granitch; and, of course, there was always the I.
W. W. trying to break in everywhere with its programme of the “one
big union”.

Meissner went on to tell how this mysterious stranger had stated to
him that it would be possible to get plenty of money to back the
proposition of a strike in the Empire Shops. The new plant was just
ready to start up, and fresh swarms of men were coming in; what was
wanted was some live fellows to get in with them and agitate for an
eight hour day and a minimum wage scale of sixty cents an hour. Men
who were willing to do that could get good money, and plenty of it;
if the Leesville Worker would advocate such a policy, there was no
reason why it should not start up the very next week, and publish a
big edition and flood the town. The one essential was that
arrangements should be made secretly. Meissner must trust no one
save dyed-in-the-wool “reds”, who would be willing to hustle, and
not say where the pay came from. As earnest of his intentions, the
stranger pulled out a roll of bills, and casually drew off half a
dozen and slipped them into Meissner's hands. They were for ten
dollars each--more money than a petty boss at the glass-works had
ever got into his hands at one time in all his life!

Meissner exhibited the roll, and Jimmie stared with wide-open eyes.
Here indeed was a new development of the war--ten dollar bills for
Socialist propaganda to be picked up in the back rooms of saloons!
What was this fellow's name? And where did he hang out? Meissner
offered to take Jimmie to meet him, and so the two bolted their
suppers and set out at top speed.




V



Jerry Coleman had mentioned several saloons where he was known, and
in one of these they found him, a smooth-faced, smooth-spoken young
fellow whom Jimmie would have taken for a detective or
“spotter”--having had dealings with such in his days “on the road”.
The man wore good clothes, and his finger-nails were cared for,
something which, as we know, is seldom permitted to working-men. But
he did not put on airs, and he bade them call him by his first name.
He talked to Jimmie a while, enough to make sure of his man, and
then he peeled off some more bills, and told Jimmie to find more
fellows who could be trusted. It wouldn't do for any one person to
have too much money, for that would excite suspicion; but if they
would go to work and spend that much for dodgers to be distributed
among the munition-workers, and for street-meetings, and for the
proposed radical paper--well, there was plenty more money in the
place where this had come from.

Where was that place? Jimmie asked; and Jerry Coleman looked wise
and winked. Then, after further consideration, he decided it might
be well to tell them, provided they would pledge themselves not to
mention it to others without his permission. This pledge they gave,
and Jerry stated that he was a national organizer for the American
Federation of Labour, which had resolved to unionize these
munition-plants, and to establish the eight hour day. But it was of
the utmost importance that the bosses should not get wind of the
matter; it must not be revealed to anyone save those whom Coleman
saw fit to trust. He was trusting Jimmie and Meissner, and they
might know that the great labour organization was behind them, and
would see them through regardless of expense. Of course, it would be
expected that they would use the money honestly.

“Gee!” exclaimed Jimmie. “What do you take us for? A bunch of
crooks?”

No, said the other, he was not such a poor judge of character. And
Jimmie remarked grimly that anybody who was looking for easy money
did not go into the business of Socialist agitation. If there was
anything a Socialist could boast of, it was that their workers and
elected officials never touched any graft. Mr. Coleman--that is,
Jerry--would be handed a receipt for every dollar they spent.

It chanced that that same night there was a meeting of the
Propaganda Committee of the local, which consisted of half a dozen
of the most active members. Jimmie and Meissner hurried to this
place, with their new-found wealth burning a hole in their pockets.
They informed the committee that they had been collecting money for
the propaganda fund, and produced before the eyes of the astounded
comrades the sum of one hundred dollars.

It happened that the chairman of the committee had just received
from the National Office of the party in Chicago a sample of a new
leaflet entitled “Feed America First”; this leaflet could be had in
quantities for a very low price, a dollar or two per thousand; as a
result of Jimmie's contribution, a telegram was sent for ten
thousand of the leaflets to be shipped by express. And then there
was a proposition from the state office for Comrade Seaman, author
of a book against war, to speak every night for two weeks in
Leesville. The local had voted to turn down his proposition for lack
of funds; but now, with the new contributions, the propaganda
committee felt equal to the fifty dollars involved. And then there
was the idea of Comrade Gerrity, the organizer, who was conducting
street meetings every Wednesday and Saturday nights; if he could
have an assistant, at fifteen a week, the soap-boxing could go on
every night. John Meissner here put in--he was sure that
contributions could be got for that purpose, provided the decision
was made without delay. So the decision was made.




VI



The meeting was adjourned, and then Meissner and Jimmie went into
conference with Gerrity, the organizer, and Schneider, the brewer,
and Comrade Mary Allen, all three of whom happened to be on the
committee entrusted with the affairs of the Worker. Jimmie explained
that they had met a union organizer--they could not tell about him,
but the committee would have a chance to meet him--who would put up
the balance of the money needed, provided that the paper would be
willing to call at once for a strike of the Empire employees. Could
that promise be made? And Comrade Mary Allen laughed, indicating her
scorn for anybody who could cherish a doubt on that question!
Comrade Mary was a Quaker; she loved all mankind with religious
fervour--and it is astonishing how bitter people can become in the
cause of universal love. Her sharp, pale face flushed, and her thin
lips set, as she answered that the Worker would most surely fight
the war-profiteers, so long as she was on the managing committee!

It was finally decided that Comrade Mary should call on Jerry
Coleman in the morning, and satisfy herself that he really meant
business; if so, she would get the full committee together on the
following evening. The committee had authority to go ahead, as soon
as the necessary fund was made up, so if Coleman was all right,
there was no reason why the first issue of the paper should not
appear next week. Comrade Jack Smith, a reporter on the Herald, the
capitalist paper of Leesville, was to resign and become editor of
the Worker, and he already had his editorials written--had been
showing them about in the local for the past month!

Jimmie and Meissner set out for home, happy in the feeling that they
had accomplished more for Socialism on that one night than in all
the rest of their lives. But then, as they walked, there came
suddenly a clamour of bells on the night air; a fire! They knew the
signals, and counted the strokes, and made the discovery that it was
in the neighbourhood of their own home! An engine went by on the
gallop, with sparks streaming out behind, and they broke into a run.
Before they had gone a couple of blocks, they saw a glare in the
sky, and their hearts were in their throats; poor Meissner panted
that he had neglected to pay his last month's insurance!

But as they ran, in the ever-growing throng of people, they realized
that the fire was too near for their own home; also, it was a bigger
blaze than could have been made by any number of shacks. And
presently there were shouts in the crowd, “It's the Empire! The Old
Shops!” There came a hook and ladder truck, rushing by with
shrieking siren, and then the fire-chief in his automobile with a
fiercely clanging bell; they turned the corner, and far down the
street before them was the building in which for four years Jimmie
had tended the bolt-making machine. They saw that one whole end of
it was a towering, leaping, sweeping pillar of flames!






CHAPTER V

JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER

I





Jimmie Higgins regarded with the utmost resentment the determination
of the war to come to Leesville, in spite of all his labours to keep
it out. Take the most preposterous thing you could imagine--the most
idiotic thing on the face of the earth--take German spies! When
Jimmie heard people talking about German spies, he laughed in their
faces, he told them they were a bunch of fools, they belonged in the
nursery; for Jimmie classed German spies with goblins, witches and
sea-serpents. And here suddenly the bewildered little man found
himself in the midst of a German spy mania, the like of which he
could never have dreamed!

Everybody seemed to take it for granted that the Empire Machine
Shops had been burned by German agents; they just knew it, and by
the time the fire was out they had a hundred various stories to
support their conviction. The fire had leaped from place to place in
a series of explosions; the watchman, who had passed through the
building only two minutes before, had rushed back and seen blazing
gasolene, and had almost lost his life in the sweep of the flames.
And next morning the Leesville Herald was out with letters half a
foot high, telling these tales and insisting that the plant had been
full of German agents, disguised as working men.

Before the day was by the police had arrested a dozen perfectly
harmless German and Austrian labourers; at least that was the way it
seemed to Jimmie, because of the fact that two of the men were
members of the Socialist local. Somebody told Mrs. Meissner that all
the Germans in Leesville were to be arrested, and the poor woman was
trembling with terror. She wanted her husband to run away, but
Jimmie persuaded them that this would be the worst possible course;
so Meissner stayed in the house, and Jimmie kept his mouth shut for
three whole days--an extraordinary feat for him, and a trial more
severe than being in gaol.

He had lost his job--for ever, he thought. But in this again he
misjudged the forces which had taken his life in their grip--the
power of the gold which had come to Leesville by way of Russia. The
day after the fire he received word to report for work again; old
man Granitch was so anxious to keep his workers out of the clutches
of the Hubbard Engine Company that he put them all, skilled and
unskilled, at the job of clearing away the debris of the fire! And
five days later came the first carloads of new material, brought on
motor-trucks, and the rebuilding of the Empire Shops began. Would
you believe it--some of the machinery which had not been damaged too
much in the fire was fixed up, and at the end of a couple of weeks
was starting up again, covered by a temporary canvas shelter, and
with the walls of the new building rising round it!

That was the kind of thing which made America the marvel of the
world. It had made old man Granitch young again, people said; he
worked twenty hours a day in his shirt-sleeves, and the increase in
his profanity was appalling. Even Lacey Granitch, his dashing son,
quitted the bright lights of Broadway and came home to help the old
man keep his contracts. The enthusiasm for these contracts became as
it were the religion of Leesville; it spread even to the ranks of
labour, so that Jimmie found himself like a man in a surf,
struggling to keep his feet against an undertow.




II



The plans for the Worker were delayed, for the reason that when
Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, went to look for Jerry Coleman the
day after the fire, that dispenser of ten dollar bills had
mysteriously disappeared. It was a week before he showed up again;
and meantime fresh events had taken place, both in the local and
outside. To begin with the latter, as presumably the more important,
an English passenger liner, the pride of the Atlantic fleet, loaded
to the last cabin with American millionaires, was torpedoed without
warning by a German submarine. More than a thousand men, women and
children went down, and the deed sent a shudder of horror through
the civilized world. At the meeting of Local Leesville, which
happened to take place the evening afterward, it proved a difficult
matter to get business started.

The members stood about and argued. What could you say about a
government that ordered a crime like that? What could you say about
a naval officer who would carry out such an order? Thus Comrade
Norwood, the young lawyer; and Schneider, the brewer, answered that
the German government had done everything that any reasonable man
could ask. It had published a notice in the New York papers, to the
effect that the vessel was subject to attack, and that anyone who
travelled on her would do so at his peril. If women and children
would ride on munition-ships--

“Munition-ships?” cried Norwood; and then Schneider pointed to a
news-dispatch, to the effect that the Lusitania had had on board a
shipment of cartridge-cases.

“A fine lot of munitions!” jeered the lawyer.

Well, was the reply, what were cartridge-cases for, if not to kill
Germans? The Germans had been attacked by the whole world, and they
had to defend themselves. When you looked at Comrade Schneider, you
saw a man who felt himself attacked by the whole world; his face was
red up to the roots of his hair, and he was ready to defend himself
with any weapon he could get hold of.

Comrade Koeln, a big glass-blower, broke into the discussion. The
German government was authority for the statement that the Lusitania
had been armed with guns. And when Norwood hooted at this, every
German in the room was up in arms. What did he have to disprove it?
The word of the British government! Was not “perfidious Albion” a
byword!

“The thing that beats me,” declared the young lawyer, “is the way
you Germans stand up for the Kaiser now, when before the war you
couldn't find enough bad things to say about him.”

“What beats me,” countered Schneider, “is how you Americans stand up
for King George. Every newspaper in Wall Street howling for America
to go into the war--just because some millionaires got killed!”

“You don't seem to realize that the greater number of the men who
lost their lives on that ship were working men!”

“Ho! Ho!” hooted Comrade Stankewitz. “Vall Street loves so the
vorking men!”

Comrade Mary Allen, who loved all men, took up the argument. If
those working men had been killed in a mine disaster, caused by
criminal carelessness and greed for profits; if they had died of
some industrial disease which might easily have been prevented; if
they had been burned in a factory without fire-escapes--nobody in
Wall Street would have wanted to go to war. And, of course, every
Socialist considered this was true; every Socialist saw quite
clearly that the enormity of the Lusitania sinking lay in the fact
that it had reached and injured the privileged people, the people
who counted, who got their names in the papers and were not supposed
to be inconvenienced, even by war. So it was possible for Jimmie
Higgins, even though shocked by what the Germans had done, to be
irritated by the fuss which the Wall Street newspapers made.

Young Emil Forster spoke, and they listened to him, as they always
did. It was a quarrel, he said--and as usual in quarrels, both sides
had their rights and wrongs. You had to balance a few English and
American babies against the millions of German babies which the
British government intended to starve. It was British sea-power
maintaining itself--and of course controlling most of the channels
of publicity. It appealed to what it called “law”--that is to say,
the customs it had found convenient in the past. British cruisers
were able to visit and search vessels, and to take off their crews;
but submarines could not do that, so what the British clamour about
“law” amounted to was an attempt to keep Germany from using her only
weapon. After all, ask yourself honestly if it was any worse to
drown people quickly than to starve them slowly.

And then came “Wild Bill”. This wrangling over German and British
gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that
they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves,
when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the
real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again--that
vas vy he hated var, it divided the vorkers. There was nothing you
could say for var. But “Wild Bill” smiled his crooked smile. There
were several things you could say. War gave the workers guns, and
taught them to use them; how would it be if some day they turned
these guns about and fought their own battles?




III



Comrade Gerrity now took the chair and made an effort to get things
started. The minutes of the last meeting were read, new members were
voted on, and then Comrade Mary Allen rose to report for the Worker
committee. The fund had been completed, the first number of the
paper was to appear next week, and it was now up to every member of
the local to get up on his toes and hustle as never in his life
before. Comrade Mary, with her thin, eager face of a religious
zealot, made everyone share her fervour.

All save Lawyer Norwood. Since the retirement of Dr. Service he was
the chief pro-ally trouble-maker, and he now made a little speech.
He had been agreeably surprised to learn that the money had been
raised so quickly; but then certain uncomfortable doubts having
occurred to him, he had made inquiries and found there was some
mystery about the matter. It was stated that the new paper was to
demand a general strike in the Empire; and of course everybody knew
there were powerful and sinister forces now interested in promoting
strikes in munition factories.

“Wild Bill” was on his feet in an instant. Had the comrade any
objection to munition workers demanding the eight hour day?

“No,” said Norwood, “of course not; but if we are going into a fight
with other people, we surely ought to know who they are and what
their purpose is. I have been informed--there seems to be a little
hesitation in talking about it--that a lot of money has been put up
by one man, and nobody knows who that man is.”

“He's an organizer for the A. F. of L.!” The voice was Jimmie's. In
his excitement the solemn pledge of secrecy was entirely forgotten!

“Indeed!” said Norwood. “What is his name?”

Nobody answered.

“Has he shown his credentials?” Again silence.

“Of course, I don't need to tell men as familiar with union affairs
as the comrades here that every bona-fide organizer for a union
carries credentials. If he does not produce them, it is at least
occasion for writing to the organization and finding out about him.
Has anybody done that?”

Again there was silence.

“I don't want to make charges,” said Norwood--

“Oh, no!” put in “Wild Bill”. “You only want to make insinuations!”

“What I want to do is merely to make sure that the local knows what
it is doing. It is no secret anywhere in Leesville that money is
being spent to cause trouble in the Empire. No doubt this money has
passed through a great many hands since it left the Kaiser's, but we
may be sure that his hands are guiding it to its final end.”

And then what an uproar! “Shame! Shame!” cried some; and others
cried, “Bring your proofs!” The “wild” members shouted, “Put him
out!” They had long wanted to get rid of Norwood, and this looked to
be their chance.

But the young lawyer stood his ground and gave them shot for shot.
They wanted proofs, did they? Suppose they had learned of a
capitalist conspiracy to wreck the unions in the city; and suppose
that the Leesville Herald had been clamouring for “proofs”--what
would they have thought?

“In other words,” shouted Schneider, “you know it's true, yust
because it's Yermany!”

“I know it's true,” said Norwood, “because it would help Germany to
win the war. One doesn't have to have any other evidence--if a
certain thing will help Germany to win the war, one knows that thing
is being done. All you Germans know that, and what's more, you're
proud of it; it's your efficiency that you boast.”

Again there was a cry of “Shame! Shame!” But the cry came from
Comrade Mary, the Quaker lady, and it was evident that she had
expected a chorus, and was disconcerted at being alone.

Young Norwood, who knew his Germans, laughed scornfully. “Just now
your government is selling bonds in America, supposed to be for the
benefit of the families of the dead and wounded. Some of those bonds
have been taken in this city, as I happen to know. Does anybody
really believe the money will reach the families of the dead and
wounded?”

This time the Germans answered. “I belief it!” roared Comrade Koeln.
“And I! And I!” shouted others.

“That money is staying right here in Leesville!” proclaimed the
lawyer. “It is preparing a strike in the Empire!”

A dozen men wanted the floor at once. Schneider, the brewer, got it,
for the reason that he could outbellow anyone else. “What does the
comrade want?” he demanded. “Is he not for the eight hour day?”

“Has he got any of the old man Granitch's money?” shrilled “Wild
Bill”. “Or maybe he doesn't know that Granitch is spending money to
get smart young lawyers to help keep his munition slaves at work?”




IV



Norwood, having thrown the fat into the fire, sat down for a while
and let it blaze. When the Germans taunted him with being afraid to
say what he really meant--that the local should oppose the demand
for the eight hour day--he merely laughed at them. He had wanted to
make them show themselves up, and he had done it. Not merely were
they willing to do the work of the Kaiser--they were willing to take
the Kaiser's pay for doing it!

“Take his pay?” cried “Wild Bill”. “I'd take the devil's pay to
carry on Socialist propaganda!”

Old Hermann Forster rose and spoke, in his gentle sentimental voice.
If it were true that the Kaiser was paying money for such ends, he
would surely find he had bought very little. There were Socialists
in Germany, one must remember--

And then came a shrill laugh. Those tame German Socialists! It was
Comrade Claudel, a Belgian jeweller, who spoke. Would any rabbit be
afraid of such revolutionists as them? Eating out of the Kaiser's
hand--having their papers distributed in the trenches for government
propaganda! Talk to a Belgian about German Socialists!

So you saw the European national lines splitting Local Leesville in
two: on the one side, the Germans and the Austrians, the Russian
Jews, the Irish and the religious pacifists; on the other side, two
English glass-blowers, a French waiter, and several Americans who,
because of college-education or other snobbish weakness, were
suspected of tenderness for John Bull. Between these extreme
factions stood the bulk of the membership, listening bewildered,
trying to grope their way through the labyrinth.

It was no easy job for these plain fellows, the Jimmie Higginses.
When they tried to think the matter out, they were almost brought to
despair. There were so many sides to the question--the last fellow
you met always had a better argument than anyone you had heard
before! You sympathized with Belgium and France, of course; but
could you help hating the British ruling classes? They were your
hereditary enemies--your school-book enemies, so to speak. And they
were the ones you knew most about; since every American jack-ass
that got rich quick and wanted to set himself up above his fellows
would proceed to get English clothes and English servants and
English bad manners. To the average plain American, the word English
stood for privilege, for ruling class culture, the things
established, the things against which he was in rebellion; Germany
was the I. W. W. among the nations--the fellow who had never got a
chance and was now hitting out for it. Moreover, the Germans were
efficient; they took the trouble to put their case before you, they
cared what you thought about them; whereas the Englishman, damn him,
turned up his snobbish nose, not caring a whoop what you or anybody
might think.

Moreover, in this controversy the force of inertia was on the German
side, and inertia is a powerful force in any organization. What the
Germans wanted of American Socialists was simply that they should go
on doing what they had been doing all their lives. And the Socialist
machine had been set up for the purpose of going on, regardless of
all the powers on earth, in the heavens above the earth, or in hell
beneath. Ask Jimmie Higgins to stop demanding higher wages and the
eight hour day! Wouldn't anybody in his senses know what Jimmie
would answer to that proposition? Go chase yourself!




V



But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that Jimmie was
staggered by the idea that he might be getting into the pay of the
Kaiser. It was true that the traditions of the Socialist movement
were German traditions, but they were German anti-Government
traditions: Jimmie regarded the Kaiser as the devil incarnate, and
the bare idea of doing anything the Kaiser wanted done was enough to
make him stop short. He could see also what a bad thing it would be
for the movement to have any person believe that it was taking the
Kaiser's money. Suppose, for example, that a report of this
evening's discussion should reach the Herald! And with the public
inflamed to madness over the Lusitania affair!

After the discussion had proceeded for an hour or so, Norwood made a
motion to the effect that the Worker committee should be instructed
to investigate thoroughly the sources of all funds contributed, and
to reject any that did not come from Socialists, or those in
sympathy with Socialism. The common sense of the meeting asserted
itself, and even the Germans voted for this motion. Sure, let them
go ahead and investigate! The Socialist movement was clean, it had
always been clean, it had nothing to conceal from anyone.

But then came another controversy. Claudel moved that Norwood should
be made a member of the committee; and this, of course, was bitterly
opposed by the radicals. It was an insult to the integrity of the
committee. Then, too, suggested Baggs, an Englishman, perhaps
Norwood might really find out something! The Jimmie Higginses voted
down the motion--not because they feared any disclosures, but
because they felt that a quiet, sensible fellow like Gerrity, their
organizer, might be trusted to protect the good faith of the
movement, and without antagonizing anybody or making a fuss.

The investigation took place, and the result of it was that the
money which Jerry Coleman had contributed for the Worker was quietly
returned to him. But the difference was at once made up by the
Germans in the local, who regarded the whole thing as a put-up job,
an effort to block the agitation for a strike. These comrades took
no stock whatever in the talk about “German gold”; but on the other
hand they were keenly on the alert for the influence of Russian
gold, which they knew was being openly distributed by old Abel
Granitch. And so they put their hands down into their pockets and
dug out their scanty wages, so that the demand for social justice
might be kept alive in Leesville.

The upshot of the whole episode was that the local rejected the
Kaiser's pay, but went on doing what the Kaiser wanted without pay.
This could hardly be considered a satisfactory solution, but it was
the best that Jimmie Higgins was able to work out at this time.




VI



The first issue of the Worker appeared, with Jack Smith's editorial
spread over the front page, calling upon the workers of the Empire
to take this occasion to organize and demand their rights. “Eight
hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for play!”
 proclaimed Comrade Jack; and the Herald and the Courier, stung to a
frenzy by the appearance of a poacher on their journalistic
preserves, answered with broadsides about “German propaganda”. The
Herald got the story of what had happened in the local; also it
printed a picture of “Wild Bill”, and an interview with that terror
of the West, who declared that he was for war on the capitalist
class with the aid of any and every ally that came along--even to
the extent of emery powder in ball-bearings and copper nails driven
into fruit trees.

The Herald charged that the attitude of the Socialists toward
“tainted wealth” was all a sham. What had happened was simply that
the German members of the local were getting German money, and
making it “Socialist money” by the simple device of passing it
through their consecrated hands. As this had been hinted by Norwood
in the local, the German comrades now charged that Norwood had
betrayed the movement to the capitalist press. And so came another
bitter controversy in the local. The young lawyer laughed at the
charge. Did they really believe they could take German money in
Leesville, and not have the fact become known?

“Then you think we are taking German money?” roared Schneider; and
he clamoured furiously for an answer. The other would not answer
directly, but he told them a little parable. He saw a tree, sending
down its roots into the ground, spreading everywhere, each tiny
rootlet constructed for the purpose of absorbing water. And on the
top of the ground was a man with a supply of water, which he poured
out; he poured and poured without stint, and the water seeped down
toward the rootlets, and every rootlet was reaching for water,
pushing toward the places where water was likely to be. “And now,”
 said Norwood, “you ask me, do I believe that tree has been getting
any of that water?”

And here, of course, was the basis of a bitter quarrel. The
hot-heads would not listen to subtle distinctions; they declared
that Norwood was accusing the movement of corruption, he was making
out his anti-war opponents to be villains! He was providing the
capitalist press with ammunition. For shame! for shame! “He's a
stool-pigeon!” shrieked “Wild Bill”. “Put him out, the Judas!”

The average member of the local, the perfectly sincere fellow like
Jimmie Higgins, who was wearing himself out, half-starving himself
in the effort to bring enlightenment to his class, listened to these
controversies with bewildered distress. He saw them as echoes of the
terrible national hatreds which were rending Europe, and he resented
having these old world disputes thrust into American industrial
life. Why could he not go on with his duty of leading the American
workers into the co-operative commonwealth?

Because, answered the Germans, old man Granitch wanted to keep the
American workers as munition-slaves; and to this idea the
overwhelming percentage of the membership agreed. They were not
pacifists, non-resistants; they were perfectly willing to fight the
battles of the working-class; what they objected to was having to
fight the battles of the master-class. They wanted to go on, as they
had always gone, opposing the master-class and paying no heed to
talk about German agents. Jimmie Higgins believed--and in this
belief he was perfectly correct--that even had there been no German
agents, the capitalist papers of Leesville would have invented them,
as a means of discrediting the agitators in this crisis. Jimmie
Higgins had lived all his life in a country in which his masters
starved and oppressed him, and when he tried to help himself, met
him with every weapon of treachery and slander. So Jimmie had made
up his mind that one capitalist country was the same as another
capitalist country, and that he would not be frightened into
submission by tales about goblins and witches and sea-serpents and
German spies.






CHAPTER VI

JIMMIE HIGGINS GOES TO JAIL

I





Every evening now the party held its “soap-box” meetings on a corner
just off Main Street. Jimmie, having volunteered as one of the
assistants, would bolt his supper in the evening and hurry off to
the spot. He was not one of the speakers, of course--he would have
been terrified at the idea of making a speech; but he was one of
those whose labours made the speaking possible, and who reaped the
harvest for the movement.

The apparatus of the meeting was kept in the shop of a friendly
carpenter near-by. The carpenter had made a “soap-box” that was a
wonder--a platform mounted upon four slender legs, detachable, so
that one man could carry the whole business and set it up. Thus the
speaker was lifted a couple of feet above the heads of the crowd,
and provided with a hand-rail upon which he might lean, and even
pound, if he did not pound too hard. A kerosene torch burned some
distance from his head, illuminating his features, and it was
Jimmie's business to see that this torch was properly cleaned and
filled, and to hold it erect on a pole part of the time. The rest of
the time he peddled literature among the crowd--copies of the
Leesville Worker, and five and ten cent pamphlets supplied by the
National Office.

He would come home at night, worn out from these labours after his
daily toil; he would fall asleep at Lizzie's side, and have to be
routed out by her when the alarm-clock went off next morning. She
would get him a cup of hot coffee, and after he had drunk this, he
would be himself again, and would chatter about the adventures of
the night before. There was always something happening, a fellow
starting a controversy, a drunken man, or perhaps a couple of thugs
in the pay of old man Granitch, trying to break up the meeting.

Lizzie would do her best to show that sympathy with her husband's
activities which is expected from a dutiful wife. But all the time
there was a grief in her soul--the eternal grief of the feminine
temperament, which is cautious and conservative, in conflict with
the masculine, which is adventurous and destructive. Here was
Jimmie, earning twice what he had ever earned before, having a
chance to feed his children properly and to put by a little margin
for the first time in his harassed life; but instead of making the
most of the opportunity, he was going out on the streets every
night, doing everything in his power to destroy the golden occasion
which Fate had brought to him! Like the fellow who climbs a tree to
saw off a limb, and sits on the limb and saws between himself and
the tree!

In spite of her best efforts, Lizzie's broad, kindly face would
sometimes become hard with disappointment, and a big tear would roll
down each of her sturdy cheeks. Jimmie would be sorry for her, and
would patiently try to explain his actions. Should a man think only
of his own wife and children, and forget entirely all the other
wives and children of the working-class? That was why the workers
had been slaves all through the ages, because each thought of
himself, and never of his fellows. No, you must think of your class!
You must act as a class--on the alert to seize every advantage, to
teach solidarity and stimulate class-consciousness! Jimmie would use
these long words, which he had heard at meetings; but then, seeing
that Lizzie did not understand them, he would go back and say it
over again in words of one syllable. They had old man Granitch in a
hole just now, and they must teach him a lesson, and at the same
time teach the workers their power. Lizzie would sigh, and shake her
head; for to her, old man Granitch was not a human being, but a
natural phenomenon, like winter, or hunger. He, or some other like
him, had been the master of her fathers for generations untold, and
to try to break or even to limit his power was like commanding the
tide or the sun.




II



Events moved quickly to their culmination, justifying the worst of
Lizzie's fears. The shops were seething with discontent, and
agitators seemed fairly to spring out of the ground; some of them
paid by Jerry Coleman, no doubt, others taking their pay in the form
of gratification of those grudges with which the profit-system had
filled their hearts. Noon-meetings would start up, quite
spontaneously, without any prearrangement; and presently Jimmie
learned that men were going about taking the names of all who would
agree to strike.

The matter was brought to a head by the Empire managers, who, of
course, were kept informed by their spies. They discharged more than
a score of the trouble-makers; and when this news spread at
noon-time, the whole place burst into a flame of wrath. “Strike!
strike!” was the cry. Jimmie was one of many who started a
procession through the yards, shouting, singing, hurling menaces at
the bosses, challenging all who proposed to return to work. Less
than one-tenth of the working force made any attempt to do so, and
for that afternoon the plant of the Empire Machine Shops, which was
supposed to be turning out shell-casings for the Russian government,
was turning out labour-union, Socialist, and I. W. W. oratory.

Jimmie Higgins was beside himself with excitement. He danced about
and waved his cap, he shouted himself hoarse, he almost yielded to
the impulse to jump upon a pile of lumber and make a speech himself.
Presently came Comrades Gerrity and Mary Allen, who had got wind of
the trouble, and had loaded a whole edition of the Worker into a
Ford; so Jimmie turned newsboy, selling these papers, hundreds of
them, until his pockets were bursting with the weight of pennies and
nickels. And then he was pressed into service running errands for
those who were arranging to organize the workers; he carried bundles
of membership-cards and application-blanks, following a man with a
bull voice and a megaphone, who shouted in several languages the
location of union headquarters, and the halls where various foreign
language meetings would be held that evening. Evidently someone had
foreseen the breaking of this trouble, and had been at pains to plan
ahead.

Late in the afternoon Jimmie was witness of an exciting incident. In
one of the shops a number of the men had persisted in returning to
work, and an immense throng of strikers had gathered to wait for
them. They were afraid to come out, but stayed in the building after
the quitting-whistle, while those outside jeered and hooted and the
bosses telephoned frantically for aid. The greater part of the
Leesville police-force was on hand, and in addition, the company had
its own guards and private detectives. But they were needed all over
the place. You saw them at the various entrances, menacing, but not
quite so sure of themselves as usual; their hands had a tendency to
slip back to the bulge on their right hips.

Jimmie and another fellow had got themselves an empty box and were
standing on it, leaning against the wall of the building and
shouting “Ya! Ya!” at every “scab” head that showed itself. They saw
an automobile come in at the gate, its horn honking savagely,
causing the crowd to leap to one side or the other. The automobile
was packed with men, sitting on one another's knees, or hanging to
the running-boards outside. There came a second car, loaded in the
same fashion. They were guards, sent all the way from Hubbardtown;
for of course the Hubbard Engine Company would help out its rivals
in an emergency such as this. That was the solidarity of capitalism,
concerning which the Socialists never wearied of preaching.

The men leaped from the cars, and spread themselves fanwise in front
of the door. They had nightsticks in their hands, and grim
resolution in their faces; they cried, “Stand back! Stand back!” The
crowd hooted, but gave slightly, and a few minutes later the doors
of the building opened, and the first of the timid workers emerged.
There was a howl, and then from somewhere in the throng a stone was
thrown. “Arrest that man!” shouted a voice, and Jimmie's attention
was attracted to the owner of this voice--a young man who had
arrived in the first automobile, and was now standing up in the
seat, from which position he could dominate the throng. “Arrest that
man!” he shouted again, pointing his finger; and three of the guards
leaped into the crowd at the spot indicated. The man who had thrown
the missile started to run, but he could not go fast in the crowd,
and in a moment, as it seemed, the guards had him by the collar. He
tried to jerk away, and they struck him over the head, and laid
about them to keep the rest of the throng at bay. “Take him inside!”
 the young man in the car kept shouting. And one of the guards
twisted his hand in the collar of the wretched stone-thrower, until
he grew purple in the face, and so half-dragged and half-ran him
into the building.




III



The young man in the car turned toward the crowd which was blocking
the way to the exit. “Get those men out of the way!” he yelled to
the guards. “Drive them along--God damn them, they've got no
business in here.” And so on, with a string of dynamic profanity,
which stung both guards and policemen into action, and made them ply
their clubs upon the crowd.

“Do you know who that is?” asked Jimmie's companion on the box.
“That's Lacey Granitch.”

Jimmie started, experiencing a thrill to the soles of his ragged
shoes. Lacey Granitch! In the four years that the little machinist
had worked for the Empire, he had never caught a glimpse of the
young lord of Leesville--something which may easily be believed,
for the young lord considered Leesville “a hole of a town”, and
honoured it with his presence only once or twice a year. But his
spirit brooded over it; he was to Leesville a mythological figure,
either of wonder and awe, or of horror, according to the temperament
of the contemplator. One day “Wild Bill” had arisen in the local,
and held aloft a page from the “magazine supplement” of one of the
metropolitan “yellows”. There was an account of how Lacey Granitch
had broken the hearts of seven chorus-girls by running away with an
eighth. He fairly “ate 'em alive”, according to the account; in
order to give an idea of the atmosphere in which the young hero
abode, the whirl of delight which was his life, the artist of the
Sunday supplement had woven round the border of the page a maze of
feminine ankles and calves in a delirium of lingerie; while at the
top was a supper-table with champagne-corks popping, and a lady clad
in inadequate veils dancing amid the dishes.

This had happened while the local was in the midst of an acrimonious
controversy over “Section Six”. Should the Socialist party bar from
its membership those who advocated sabotage, violence and crime?
Young Norwood was pleading for orderly methods of social
reconstruction; and here stood “Wild Bill”, ripping to shreds the
reputation of the young plutocrat of the Empire Shops. “That's what
you geezers are sweating for! That's why you've got to be good, and
not throw monkey-wrenches in the machinery--so the seven
broken-hearted chorus-girls can drown their sorrows in champagne!”

And now here was the hero of all these romantic escapades, forsaking
the white lights of Broadway, and coming home to help the old man
keep his contracts. He stood in the seat of the automobile, glancing
this way and that, swiftly, like a hunter on the alert for dangerous
game. His dark eyes roamed here and there, his proud face was pale
with anger, his tall, perfectly groomed figure was eloquent of
mastership, of command. He was imperious as a young Caesar, terrible
in his vengeance; and poor Jimmie, watching him, was torn between
two contradictory emotions. He hated him--hated him with a deadly
and abiding hatred. But also he admired him, marvelled at him,
cringed before him. Lacey was a wanton, a cursing tyrant, a brutal
snob; but also he was the master, the conqueror, the proud, free,
rich young aristocrat, for whom all the rest of humanity existed.
And Jimmie Higgins was a poor little worm of a proletarian, with
nothing but his labour-power to sell, trying by sheer force of his
will to lift himself out of his slave-psychology!

There is an old adage that “a cat may look at a king”. But this can
only have been meant to apply to house-cats, cats of the palace,
accustomed to the etiquette of courts; it cannot have been meant for
proletarian cats of the gutter, the Jimmie Higgins variety of red
revolutionary yowlers. Jimmie and his companion stood on their
perch, shouting “Ya! Ya!” and suddenly the crowd melted away in
front of them, exposing them to the angry finger of the young
master. “Get along now! Beat it! Quick!” And Jimmie, poor little
ragged, stunted Jimmie, with bad teeth and toil-deformed hands,
wilted before this blast of aristocratic wrath, and made haste to
hide himself in the throng. But it was with blazing soul that he
went; every instant he imagined himself turning back, defying the
angry finger, shouting down the imperious voice, even smashing it
back into the throat from which it came!




IV



Jimmie did not even stop for supper. The greater part of the night
he worked at helping to organize the strikers, and all next day he
spent arranging Socialist meetings. He worked like a man possessed,
lifted above the limitations of the flesh. For everywhere that day
he carried with him the image of the proud, free, rich young
aristocrat, with his dark eyes roaming swiftly, his tall, perfectly
groomed figure eloquent of mastership, his voice ringing with
challenge. Jimmie was for the time utterly possessed by hatred; and
he saw about him thousands of others sharing the mood and shouting
it aloud. Every speaker who could be found was turned loose to talk
till he was hoarse, and in the evening there was to be half a dozen
street meetings. That was always the way when there were strikes;
then the working man had time to listen--and also the desire!

So came the final crisis, when the little machinist had to show the
stuff he was made of. He was holding aloft the torch at the regular
meeting-place on the corner of Main and Third Streets, and Comrade
Gerrity was explaining the strike and the ballot as two edges of the
sword of labour, when four policemen came suddenly round the corner
and pushed their way through the crowd. “You'll have to stop this!”
 declared one.

“Stop?” cried Gerrity. “What do you mean?”

“There's to be no more street-speaking during the strike.”

“Who says so?”

“Orders from the chief.”

“But we've got a permit.”

“All permits revoked. Cut it out.”

“But this is an outrage!”

“We don't want any argument, young man--”

“But we're within our rights here.”

“Forget it, young feller!”

Gerrity turned swiftly to the throng.

“Fellow-citizens,” he cried, “we are here in the exercise of our
rights as American citizens! We are conducting a peaceable and
orderly political meeting, and we know our rights and propose to
maintain them. We--”

“Come down off that box, young feller!” commanded the officer; and
the crowd hooted and booed.

“Fellow-citizens!” began Gerrity again; but that was as far as he
got, for the policeman seized him by the arm and pulled; and Gerrity
knew the ways of American policemen too well to resist. He came
down--but still talking. “Fellow-citizens--”

“Are you goin' to shut up?” demanded the other, and as Gerrity still
went on orating, he announced: “You are under arrest.”

There were half a dozen Socialists with the party, and this was a
challenge to the self-respect of everyone of them. In an instant
Comrade Mabel Smith had leaped on to the stand. “Fellow workers!”
 she cried. “Is this America, or is it Russia?”

“That'll do, lady,” said the policeman, as considerately as he
dared; for Comrade Mabel wore a big picture-hat and many other signs
of youth and beauty.

“I have a right to speak here, and I mean to speak,” she declared.

“We don't want to have to arrest you, lady--”

“You either have to arrest me, or else allow me to speak.”

“I'm sorry, lady, but it's orders. You are arrested.”

Then came the turn of Comrade Stankewitz. “Vorking men, it is for
the rights of the vorkers ve are here.” And so they jerked him off.

And then “Wild Bill”. This hundred per cent, middle-of-the-road
proletarian had been hanging on the outskirts of the meeting, having
been forbidden by the local to take part in the speaking, because of
the intemperate nature of his utterances; but now, of course, all
rules went down, and Bill leaped on to the shaking platform. “Are we
slaves?” he yelled. “Are we dogs?” And it would seem that the police
thought so, for they yanked him off the platform, and one of them
seized him by the wrist and twisted so that his oration ended in a
shriek of pain.

Then came Johnny Edge, a shy youth with an armful of literature,
which he hung on to in spite of police violence; and then--then
there was one more!

Poor Jimmie! He did not in the least want to get arrested, and he
was terrified at the idea of making even so short a speech as was
here the order of the night. But, of course, his honour was at
stake, there was no way out. He handed his torch to a bystander, and
mounted the scaffold. “Is this a free country?” he cried. “Do we
have free speech?” And Jimmie's first effort at oratory ended in a
jerk at his coat-tail, which all but upset the frail platform upon
which he stood.

There were four policemen, with six prisoners, and a throng about
them howling with indignation, perhaps ready to become violent--who
could say? The guardians of order had been prepared however. One of
them stepped to the corner and blew his whistle, and a minute later
came the shriek of a siren, and round the corner came swinging the
city's big patrol-wagon, the “Black Maria”. The crowd gave way, and
one by one the prisoners were thrust in. One of them, “Wild Bill”,
feeling himself for a moment released from the grip of his captors,
raised his voice, shouting through the wire grating of the wagon: “I
denounce this outrage! I am a free American--” And suddenly Jimmie,
who was next in the wagon, felt himself flung to one side, and a
policeman leaped by him, and planted his fist with terrific violence
full in the orator's mouth. “Wild Bill” went down like a bullock
under the slaughter-man's axe, and the patrol-wagon started up, the
cry of its siren drowning the protests of the crowd.

Poor Bill! He lay across the seat, and Jimmie, who had to sit next
to him, caught him in his arms and held him. He was quivering, with
awful motions like a spasm. He made no sound, and Jimmie was
terrified, thinking that he was dying. Before long Jimmie felt a hot
wetness stealing over his hands, first slimy, then turning sticky.
He had to sit there, almost fainting with horror; he dared not say
anything, for maybe the policeman would strike him also. He sat,
clutching in his arms the shaking body, and whispering under his
breath, “Poor Bill! Poor Bill!”




V



They came to the station-house, and Bill was carried out and laid on
a bench, and the others were stood up before the desk and had their
pedigrees taken. Gerrity demanded indignantly to be allowed to
telephone, and this demand was granted. He routed Lawyer Norwood
from a party, and set him to finding bail; and meantime the
prisoners were led to cells.

They had been there only a couple of minutes when there came
floating through the row of steel cages the voice of a woman
singing. It was Comrade Mabel Smith in that clear sweet voice they
had so often listened to on “social evenings” in the local. She was
singing the Internationale:

    Arise, ye prisoners of starvation.
    Arise, ye wretched of the earth!

The sound thrilled them to the very bones, and they joined in the
chorus with a shout. Then, of course, came the jailer: “Shut up.”
 And then again: “Shut up!” And then a third time: “Will ye shut up?”
 And then came a bucket of water, hurled through the cell bars. It
hit Jimmie squarely in the mouth, and in the words of the poet, “the
subsequent proceedings interested him no more!”

About midnight came Lawyer Norwood and Dr. Service. Both of these
men had protested against the street-speaking at this time; but of
course, when it came to comrades in trouble, they could not resist
the appeal to their sympathies. Such is the difficulty of entirely
respectable and decorous “parlour” Socialists, in their dealings
with the wayward children of the movement, the “impossibilists” and
“direct actionists” and other sowers of proletarian wild oats. Dr.
Service produced a wad of bills and bailed out all the prisoners,
and delivered himself of impressive indignation to the
police-sergeant, while waiting for an ambulance to carry “Wild Bill”
 to the hospital. Jimmie Higgins, who had always hitherto shouted
with the “wild” ones, realized suddenly how pleasant it is to have a
friend who wears black broadcloth, and carries himself like the
drum-major of a band, and is reputed to be worth a couple of hundred
thousand dollars.

Jimmie went home; and there was Lizzie, pacing the floor and
wringing her hands in anxiety--for there had been no way to get word
to her what had happened. She flung herself into his arms, and then
recoiled in fright when, she discovered that he was wet. He told her
the story; and would you believe it--Lizzie, being a woman, and only
in the A-B-C stage of revolutionary education, actually did not know
that it was a glorious and heroic adventure to be arrested! She
thought it a disgrace, and tried to persuade him to keep the
dreadful secret from the neighbourhood! And when she found that he
was not through yet, but had to go to court in the morning and be
tried, she wept copiously, and woke up Jimmie Junior, and started
him to bawling. She was only to be pacified when Jimmie Senior
agreed to take off his wet clothes at once, and drink a cup or two
of boiling hot tea, and let himself be covered up with blankets, so
that he might not die of pneumonia before he could get to court.

Next morning there was a crowded court-room and a stern and solemn
judge frowning over his spectacles, and Lawyer Norwood making an
impassioned defence of the fundamental American right of free
speech. It was so very thrilling that Jimmie could hardly be kept
from applauding his own lawyer! And then Comrade Dr. Service arose,
and in his most impressive voice gave the professional information
that “Wild Bill's” nose had been broken, and three of his front
teeth knocked out, and that he was in the hospital and unable to
come to court; and all the other prisoners were called upon to
testify what “Wild Bill” had done to bring this fate upon him. The
policeman who had struck the blow testified that the prisoner had
resisted arrest; a second policeman testified, “I seen the prisoner
hit him first, your Honour,”--which caused Comrade Mabel Smith to
cry out, “Oh, the ungrammatical prevaricator!” The upshot of the
trial was that each of the defendants was fined ten dollars. Comrade
Gerrity led off with an indignant refusal to pay the fine; the rest
of them followed suit--even Comrade Mabel! This caused evident
distress of mind to the judge, for Comrade Mabel with her indignant
pink cheeks and her big picture-hat looked more than ever the lady,
and it is a fact known even to judges that American jails have not
been constructed for ladies. The matter was settled by Lawyer
Norwood paying her fine, in spite of her protests, and her demand to
be sent to jail.




VI



The five men were led away, over the “Bridge of Sighs”, as it was
called, to the city jail, where they had their pedigrees taken
again, and their pictures and their finger-prints--which for the
first time impressed upon their minds the fact that they were
dangerous criminals. Their clothes were taken away, and shirts and
trousers given them, whose faded blue colour seemed to have been
impregnated with the misery of scores of previous wearers. They were
led through steel-barred doors, and along dark, steel-barred
passages to one of the “tanks”. A “tank”, you discovered, was one
floor of this four-storied packing box; on each side of it were a
row of a dozen barred cells, each with four bunks, so that the total
maximum population which might be crowded into the central space of
the “tank” was ninety-six; however, this only happened on Monday
mornings, when the “drunks” had all been brought in, and before the
courts had had time to sort them out.

After you had lain down on your bunk for a few minutes, or had
leaned against the wall of the “tank”, you felt an annoying stinging
sensation somewhere on you. You began to rub and scratch; before
long you would be rubbing and scratching in a dozen different
places, and then you would observe your neighbour watching you with
a grin. “Seam-squirrels?” he would say; and he would bid you take
off your coat, and engage in the popular hunting game of the
institution. Jimmie remembered having heard a speaker refer to the
city jail as the “Leesville Louseranch”; he had thought that a good
joke at the time, but now it seemed otherwise to him.

It was splendid to stand up in court and to take your stand as a
martyr; but now Jimmie discovered, as many an unfortunate has
discovered before him, that being a martyr is not the sport it is
cracked up to be. There were no heroics now, no singing. If you even
so much as hummed, they took you out and shut you up in a dark hole
called the “cooler”! Nor could you read, for there was no light in
your cell, and perpetual twilight in the central gathering place of
the “tank”. Apparently the only things the authorities of Leesville
wished you to do were to hunt “seam-squirrels”, to smoke cigarettes,
to “shoot craps”, and to make the acquaintance of a variety of
interesting young criminals, so that when you were ready to resume
your outside life you might decide whether you wanted to be a
hold-up man, a safe-cracker, a forger, or a second-story operator.

Jimmie Higgins, of course, brought a different psychology from that
of the average jail-inmate. Jimmie could do his kind of work just as
well in jail as anywhere else; and barring the torment of vermin,
the diet of bread and thin coffee and ill-smelling greasy soup, and
the worry about his helpless family outside, he really had a happy
time-making the acquaintance of tramps and pickpockets, and
explaining to them the revolutionary philosophy. A man who went in
to remedy social injustice all by himself could never get very far.
It was only when he realized himself as a member of a class, and
stood as a class and acted as a class, that he could accomplish a
permanent result. Some of the workers had discovered this, and had
set out to educate their fellows. They brought the wondrous message,
even to those in jail; holding out to them the vision of a world
made over in justice and kindness, the co-operative commonwealth of
labour, in which every man should get what he produced, and no man
could exploit his fellows.




VII



Three days passed, and then one afternoon Jimmie was summoned to see
a visitor. He could guess who the visitor was, and he went with his
heart in his throat, and looked through the dark mesh of wire, and
saw Lizzie standing--stout, motherly Lizzie, now very pale, and
breathing hard, and with tears running in little streamlets down her
cheeks. Poor Lizzie, with her three babies at home, and her plain,
ordinary, non-revolutionary psychology, which made going to jail a
humiliation instead of a test of manhood, a badge of distinction!
Jimmie felt a clutch in his own throat, and an impulse to tear down
the beastly wire mesh and clasp the dear motherly soul in his arms.
But all he could do was to screw his face into a dubious smile.
Sure, he was having the time of his life in this jail! He wouldn't
have missed it for anything! He had made a Socialist out of
“Dead-eye Mike”, and had got Pete Curley, a fancy “con” man, to
promise to read “War, What For?”

There was only one thing which had been troubling him, and that was,
how his family was getting on. They had had practically nothing in
the house, he knew, and poor Meissner could not feed four extra
mouths. But Lizzie, also screwing her face into a smile, assured him
that everything was all right at home, there was no need to worry.
In the first place, Comrade Dr. Service had sent her a piece of
paper with his name written on it; it appeared that this was called
a cheque, and the groceryman had exchanged it for a five dollar
bill. And in the next place there was a domestic secret which Lizzie
had to confide--she had put by some money, without letting Jimmie
know it.

“But how?” cried Jimmie, in wonder--for he had thought he knew all
about his household and its expenses.

So Lizzie explained the trick she had played. Jimmie had committed
an extravagance, treating her to a new dress out of his increased
earnings: a gorgeous contrivance of several colours, looking like
silk, even if it wasn't. Lizzie had stated that the cost was fifteen
dollars, and he, the dupe, had believed it! The truth was she had
bought the dress in a second-hand shop for three dollars, and had
put twelve dollars away for the time of the strike!

And Jimmie went back to his “tank”, shaking his head and
philosophizing: “Gee! Can you beat these women?”






CHAPTER VII

JIMMIE HIGGINS DALLIES WITH CUPID

I





The strike was over when Jimmie came out of jail; it had been
settled by the double-barrelled device of raising the wages of the
men and putting their leaders behind bars. Jimmie presented himself
at his old place of working, and the boss told him to go to hell; so
Jimmie went to Hubbardtown, and stood in the long line of men
waiting at the gate of the engine company. Jimmie knew about
black-lists, so when his time came to be questioned, he said his
name was Joe Aronsky, and he had last worked in a machine-shop in
Pittsburg; he had come to Hubbardtown because he had heard of high
pay and good treatment. While he was answering these questions, he
noticed a man sitting in the corner of the room studying his face,
and he saw the boss turn and glance in that direction. The man shook
his head, and the boss said: “Nothin' doin'.” So Jimmie understood
that the Hubbard Engine Company was taking measures to keep its
shops clear of the agitators from Leesville.

He spent a couple of days trying other places in his home town, but
all in vain--they had him spotted. At the brewery they were slower
than elsewhere--they took him on for two hours. Then they found out
his record, and “fired” him; and Jimmie “kidded” the boss, saying
that they were too late--he had already given a Socialist leaflet to
every man in the room!

On Jefferson Street, an out of the way part of the town, was a
bicycle-shop kept by an old German named Kumme. One of the comrades
told Jimmie that he wanted a helper, and Jimmie went there and got a
job at two dollars a day. That was poor pay at present prices, but
Jimmie liked the place, because his boss was a near-Socialist, a
pacifist--for all countries except Germany. He got round it by
saying that every nation had a right to defend itself; and Germany
was the nation which had been attacked in this war. A good part of
the energies of the old man went into proving this to his customers;
if there were any customers who did not like it, they could go
elsewhere.

Those who came were largely Germans, and so Jimmie was kept fully
supplied with arguments against the munitions industry, which they
called a trade in murder, and in favour of the programme of “Feed
America First”. Among those who frequented the place was Jerry
Coleman, who was still on the job, and as well supplied with
ten-dollar bills as ever. He had now revealed himself as an
organizer for a new propaganda society, called “Labour's National
Peace Council”. Inasmuch as Labour and Peace were the phrases upon
which Jimmie lived, he saw no reason why he should not back this
organization. Coleman assured Jimmie he hated the Kaiser, but that
the German “people” must be defended. So Jimmie became, without
having the least idea of it, one of the agencies whereby the Kaiser
was subsidizing social discontent in America.

But Jimmie was more careful now in his agitations. He had brought
such distress into his home by his jail sentence, that he had been
forced to make promises to Lizzie. Her anxiety for her children
could no longer be kept to herself; and this caused a certain amount
of friction between them, and sent Jimmie out grumbling at his lot
in life. What was the use of trying to educate a woman, who could
see no farther than her own kitchen-stove? When you wanted to be a
world-saviour, to walk tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops of
heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to the commonplace,
taking all the zest and fervour out of your soul! The memories of
“seam-squirrels” and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup
had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie's mind, and he
lived again the sublime hour when he had confronted the court and
stood for the fundamental rights of an American citizen. He wanted
to have that act of daring appreciated at its true value. Poor,
blind, home-keeping Lizzie, who could not fulfil these deeper needs
of her husband's soul!

Jimmie had been, so far in his married life, as well domesticated as
could be expected of a proletarian propagandist. He had yearned to
own a home of his own, and meantime had manifested his repressed
wish by getting a big packing-box and some broken shingles, and
building a model play-house for Jimmie Junior in the back yard. He
had even found time on his tired and crowded Sundays to start a
garden in midsummer, the season when the local was least active. But
now, of course, the war had come to obsess his mind, driving him to
terror for the future of humanity, tempting him to martyrdoms and
domestic irritations.




II



It was at this critical period in Jimmie's life that there appeared
in Leesville a vivid young person by the name of Evelyn Baskerville.
Evelyn was no tired kitchen slave--with her fluffy brown hair, her
pert little dimples, her trim figure, her jaunty hat with a turkey
feather stuck on one side of her head. Evelyn was a stenographer and
proclaimed herself an advanced feminist; at her first visit she set
the local upside down. It happened to be “social evening”, when all
the men smoked, and this “free” young thing took a cigarette from
her escort and puffed it all over the place. This, of course, would
not have made a stir in great centres of culture such as London and
Greenwich Village; but in Leesville it was the first time that the
equality of women had been interpreted to mean that the women should
adopt the vices of the men.

Then Evelyn had produced from her handbag some leaflets on Birth
Control, and proposed that the local should undertake their
distribution. This was a new subject in Leesville, and while the
members supposed it was all right, they found it embarrassing to
have the matter explained too fully in open meeting. Evelyn wanted a
“birth strike”, as the surest means of ending the war; she wanted
the Worker to take up this programme, and did not conceal her
contempt for reactionaries in the movement who still wanted to
pretend that babies were brought by storks. The delicate subject was
finally “tabled”, and when the meeting adjourned and the members
walked home, everyone was talking about Miss Baskerville--the men
mostly talking with the men, and the women with the women.

Pretty soon it became evident that the vivid and dashing young
person was setting her cap for Comrade Gerrity, the organizer. As
Gerrity was an eligible young bachelor, that was all right. But
then, a little later, it began to be suspected that she had designs
upon Comrade Claudel, the Belgian jeweller. Doubtless she had a
right to make her choice between them; but some of the women were of
the opinion that she took too long to choose; and finally one or two
malicious ones began to say that she had no intention of
choosing--she wanted both.

And then fell a thunderbolt into Jimmie's life. It was just after
his arrest when fame still clung to him; and after the meeting
Comrade Baskerville came up and engaged him in conversation. How did
it feel to be a jailbird? When he told her that it felt fine, she
bade him not be too proud--she had served thirty days for picketing
in a shirt-waist strike! As she looked at him, her pretty brown eyes
sparkled with mischief, and her wicked little dimples lost no
curtain-calls. Poor, humble Jimmie was stirred to his shoe-tips, for
he had never before received the attentions of such a fascinating
creature--unless perchance it had been to sell her a newspaper, or
to beg the price of a sandwich in his tramp days. Here was one of
the wonderful things about the Socialist movement, that it broke
down the barriers of class, and gave you exciting glimpses of higher
worlds of culture and charm!

Comrade Baskerville continued to flash her dimples and her wit at
Jimmie, despite the fact that Comrade Gerrity and Comrade Claudel
and several other moths were hovering about the candle-flame, and
all the women in the local watching out of the corners of their
eyes. Finally, to Jimmie's unutterable consternation, the vivid
young goddess of Liberty inquired, “Wouldn't you like to walk home
with me, Comrade Higgins?” He stammered, “Yes”; and they went out,
the young goddess plying him with questions about conditions in the
jail, and displaying most convincing erudition on the subject of the
economic aspects of criminology--at the same time seeming entirely
oblivious to the hoverings of the other moths, and the disgust of
the unemancipated ladies of Local Leesville.




III



They walked down the street together, and first Comrade Baskerville
shivered with horror at the “seam-squirrels”, and then exclaimed
with delight over the conversion of “Dead-eye Mike” to Socialism,
and then made merry over the singing of the Internationale in the
police-station. Had she discovered a “character” in this seemingly
insignificant little machinist? At any rate, she plied him with
questions about his past life and his ideas. When he told her of his
starved and neglected childhood, she murmured sympathetically, and
it seemed to the fascinated Jimmie that here was a woman who
understood instinctively all the cravings of his soul. She laid her
hand on his arm, and it was as if an angel were touching
him--strange little thrills ran like currents of electricity all
over him.

Yes, Comrade Baskerville could appreciate his sufferings, because
she had suffered too. She had had a stepmother, and had run away
from home at an early age and fought her own way. That was why she
stood so firmly for woman's emancipation--she knew the slavery of
her sex through bitter experience. There were many men who believed
in sex-equality as a matter of words, but had no real conception of
it in action; as for the women--well, you might see right here in
the local the most narrow, bourgeois ideas dominating their minds.
Jimmie did not know what ideas Comrade Baskerville meant, but he
knew that her voice was musical and full of quick changes that made
him shiver.

He was supposed to be taking her home; but he had no idea where she
lived, and apparently she had no idea either, for they just wandered
on and on, talking about all the wonderful new ideas that were
stirring the minds of men and women. Did Comrade Higgins believe in
trial marriages? Comrade Higgins had never heard of this wild idea
before, but he listened, and bravely concealed his dismay. What
about the children? The eager feminist answered there need not be
any children. Unwanted children were a crime! She proposed to get
the working-class women together and instruct them in the technique
of these delicate matters; and meantime, lacking the women, she was
willing to explain it to any inwardly embarrassed and quaking man
who would lend his ear.

Suddenly she stopped and cried, “Where are we?” And there came a
peal of merry laughter, as she discovered they had gone far astray.
They turned and set off in the right direction, and meantime the
lecture on advanced feminism continued. Poor Jimmie was in a
panic--tumbled this way and that. He had considered himself a
radical, because he believed in expropriating the expropriators; but
these plans for overthrowing the conventions and disbanding the
home--these left him aghast. And trilled into his ear by a vivid and
amazing young thing with a soft hand upon his arm and a faint
intoxicating perfume all about her! Why was she telling these things
to him? What did she mean? What? WHAT?




IV



They came to the house where she lived. It was late at night, and
the street was deserted. It was up to Jimmie to say good night, but
somehow he did not know how to say it. Comrade Evelyn gave him her
hand, and for some reason did not take it away again. Of course it
would not have been polite for Jimmie to have pushed it away. So he
held it, and looked at the shadowy form before him, and felt his
knees shaking. “Comrade Higgins,” said the brave, girlish voice, “we
shall be friends, shall we not?” And of course, Jimmie answered that
they would--always! And the girlish voice replied, “I am GLAD!” And
then suddenly it whispered, “Good night!” and the shadowy form
turned and flitted into the house.

Jimmie walked away with the strangest tumult in his soul. It was
something which the poets had been occupied for centuries in trying
to portray, but Jimmie Higgins had no acquaintance with the poets,
and so it was a brand new thing to him, he was left to experience
the shock of it and to resolve the problems of it all alone. To be
rolled and tossed about like a man in a blanket at a college
ragging! To be a prey to bewilderment and fear, hope and longing,
despair and rebellion, delicious excitement, angry self-contempt
and tormenting doubt! Truly did that poet divine who first conceived
the symbol of the mischievous little god, who steals upon an
unsuspecting man and shoots him through the heart with a sharp and
tormenting arrow!

The worst of it was, Jimmie couldn't tell Lizzie about it. The first
time in four years that he had had a trouble he could not tell
Lizzie! He even felt ashamed, as he came home and crawled into
bed--as if he had done some dreadful wrong to Lizzie; and yet, he
would have been puzzled to tell just what the wrong was, or how he
could have avoided it. It was not he who had made the young feminist
so delicious and sweet and frank and amazing. It was not he who had
made the little god, and brewed the poison for the arrow's tip. No,
it was some power greater than himself that had prepared this
situation, some power cruel and implacable, which plots against
domestic tranquillity; perhaps it was some hireling of capitalism,
which will not permit a propagandist of social justice to do his
work in peace of soul.

Jimmie tried to hide what was going on; and of course--poor, naive
soul--he had never learned to hide anything in his life, and now was
too late to begin. The next time the local met, the women were
saying that they were disappointed in Comrade Higgins; they had
thought he was really devoted to the cause, but they saw now he was
like all the rest of the men--his head had been turned by one smile
on a pretty face. Instead of attending to his work, he was following
that Baskerville creature about, gazing at her yearningly, like a
moon-calf, making a ninny of himself before the whole room. And he
with a wife and three babies at home, waiting for him and thinking
he was hustling for the cause. When the meeting adjourned, and the
Baskerville creature accepted the invitation of Comrade Gerrity to
escort her home, the dismay of Comrade Higgins was so evident as to
be ludicrous to the whole room.




V



In the interest of common decency it was necessary for the women of
the local to take action on this matter. At least, a couple of them
thought so, and quite independently and without pre-arrangement they
called on Lizzie next day and told her that she should come more
frequently to meetings, and keep herself acquainted with the new
ideas of advanced feminism. And so when Jimmie came home that night,
he found his wife dissolved in tears and there was a most harrowing
scene.

For poor Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser, had had no
chance whatever to familiarize herself with the new ideas of
advanced feminism. Her notions of “free unions” had been derived
from a quite different world, whose ideas were not new, but on the
contrary very, very old, and were “advanced” only on the road to
perdition. She judged Jimmie's behaviour according to thoroughly old
standards, and she was broken-hearted, overwhelmed with grief and
shame. He was like all the rest of men--and when she had fondly
thought he was different! He despised her and spit upon her--a woman
he had picked up in a brothel.

Poor Jimmie was stunned. He was conscious of no disrespect for
Lizzie, it had not occurred to him to think that she might take the
matter that way. But so she had taken it, beyond doubt, and with
intensity that frightened him. He would not have believed that so
many tears could stream from one woman's eyes--nor that his good,
broad-faced, honest wife could be so abject in her misery. “Oh, I
knowed it, I knowed it all along--it would be that way! I hadn't
never ought to married you--you know I told you so?”

“But, Lizzie!” pleaded the husband. “You're mistaken. That hadn't
nothin' to do with it.”

She turned upon him wildly, her fingers stuck out as if she would
claw him. “You mean to tell me if you hadn't 'a married a woman off
the street, you'd 'a gone chasin' a fluffy-haired girl? If you'd 'a
had a decent wife, that you knowed had some rights--”

“Lizzie!” he protested in consternation. “Listen here--”

But she was not to be stopped. “Everybody said I was a fool; but I
went an' done it, 'cause you swore you'd never hold it up to me! An'
I went an' had them children”--Lizzie swept her arm at the
children, as if to wipe them off the earth, to which they had come
by a cruel mistake.

Jimmie Junior, who was old enough to know that something serious was
happening, and whose instinct was all against being wiped off the
earth, began to howl wildly; and that set off the little ones--soon
they were all three of them going at the top of their lungs.
“Boo-hoo-hoo!”

It was truly a terrible climax to a romance. Jimmie, almost
distracted, seized the hand of his injured spouse. “It's all
nonsense!” he cried. “What they been tellin' you! I ain't done a
thing, Lizzie! I only walked home with her one night.”

But Lizzie answered that one night was plenty enough--she knew that
from intimate and hateful experience. “And I know them fluffy-headed
kind that frizzes their hair. What does she want to walk home at
night with married men fer? And talkin' about the things she does--”

“She don't mean no harm, Lizzie--she's tryin' to help workin' women.
It's what's called birth control--she wants to teach women--”

“If she wants to TEACH women, why don't she TALK to the women!
What's she all the time talkin' to MEN fer? You think you can tell
me tales like that--me, that's been what I have?” And Lizzie went
off into another fit, worse than ever.




VI



Jimmie found that it was with romance as with martyrdom--there was
a lot of trouble about it which the romancers did not mention. He
really felt quite dreadful, for he had a deep regard for this mother
of his little ones, and he would not have made her suffer for
anything. And she was right, too, he had to admit--her shots went
deep home. “How'd you feel, if you was to find out I'd been walkin'
home with some man?” When it was put to him that way, he realized
that he would have felt very badly indeed.

A flood of old emotions came back to him. He went in memory with his
group of roystering friends to the house of evil where he had first
met Elizabeth Huszar, pronounced Eleeza Betooser. She had taken him
to her room, and instead of making herself agreeable in the usual
way, had burst into tears. She had been ill-treated, and was
wretchedly lonely and unhappy. Jimmie asked why she did not quit the
life, and she answered that she had tried more than once, but she
could not earn a living wage; and anyhow, because she was big and
handsome, the bosses would never let her alone, and what was the
difference, if you couldn't keep away from the men?

They sat on the bed and talked, and Jimmie told her a little about
his life, and she told about hers--a pitiful and moving story. She
had been brought to America as an infant; her father had been killed
in an accident, and her mother had supported several children by
scrub-work. Lizzie had grown up in a slum on the far east side of
New York, and she could not remember a time when she had not been
sexually preyed upon; lewd little boys had taught her tricks, and
men would buy her with candy or food. And yet there had been
something in her struggling for decency; of her own volition she had
tried to go to school, in spite of her rags; and then, when she was
thirteen she had answered an advertisement for work as a nursemaid.
That story had made an especial impression upon Jimmie--it was truly
a most pitiful episode.

Her place of employment had been a “swell” apartment, with a
hall-boy and an elevator--the most wonderful place that Lizzie had
ever beheld; it was like living in Heaven, and she had tried so hard
to do what she was told, and be worthy of her beautiful mistress and
the lovely baby. But she had been there only two days when the
mistress had discovered vermin on the baby, and had come to Lizzie
and insisted on examining her head. And of course she had found
something. “Them's only nits!” Lizzie had said; she had never heard
of anybody who did not have “nits” in their hair. But the beautiful
lady had called her a vile creature, and ordered her to pack up her
things and get out of the house at once. And so Lizzie had had to
wait until she became an inmate of a brothel before anybody took the
trouble to teach her how to get the “nits” out of her hair, and how
to bathe, and to clean her finger-nails and otherwise be physically
decent.

Jimmie recalled all that, and he fell on his knees before his wife,
and caught her two hands by main force, and swore to her that he had
not done any wrong; he went on to tell her exactly what wrong he had
done, which was the best way to convince her that he had not done
any worse. He vowed again and again that he would never, never dally
with Cupid again--he would see Comrade Baskerville at once and tell
her it was “all off”.

And so Lizzie looked up through her tears. “No,” she said, “you
don't need to see her at all!”

“What shall I do, then?'”

“Just let her alone--don't tell her nothin'. She'll know it's off
all right.”




VII



But when you have a dead romance, you cannot leave it to rot on the
highway; you are driven irresistibly to bury it decently. In spite
of his solemn promises, Jimmie found himself thinking all the time
about Comrade Baskerville, and how he would act when he met her next
time--all the noble and dignified speeches he would make to her. He
must manage to be alone with her; for of course he could not say
such things with the jealous old hags of the local staring at him.
The best thing, he decided, would be to tell her the frank and
honest truth; to tell her about Lizzie, and how good and worthy she
had been, and how deeply he realized his duty to her. And then tears
would come into Comrade Baskerville's lovely eyes, and she would
tell him that she honoured his high sense of marital responsibility.
They must renounce; but of course they would be dear and true
friends--always, always. Jimmie was holding her hands, in his fancy,
as he said these affecting words: Always! Always! He knew that he
would have to let go of the hands, but he was reluctant to do so,
and he had not quite got to the point of doing it when, walking down
Jefferson Street on his way home from work--behold, in front of him
a trim, eager little figure, tripping gaily, with a jaunty hat with
a turkey-feather stuck on one side! Jimmie knew the figure a block
away, and as he saw it coming nearer, his heart leaped up and hit
him in the bottom part of his neck, and all his beautiful speeches
flew helter-skelter out of his head.

She saw him, and the vivid, welcoming smile came upon her face. She
came up to him, and their hands clasped. “Why!” she cried. “What a
pleasant meeting!”

Jimmie gulped twice, and then began, “Comrade Baskerville--” And
then he gulped again, and began, “Comrade Baskerville--”

She stopped him. “I'm not Comrade Baskerville,” she declared.

He could not get the meaning of these unexpected words.

“What?” he said.

“Haven't you heard the news?” she said, and beamed on him. “I'm
Comrade Mrs. Gerrity.”

He stared at her, utterly bewildered. “I've been that for
twenty-four whole hours! Congratulate me!”

Little by little the meaning of the words began to dawn in Jimmie's
stupid head. “Comrade Mrs. Gerrity!” he echoed. “But--but--I thought
you didn't believe in marriage.”

There came the most bewitching smile, a smile decorated with two
rows of pearly white teeth. “Don't you understand, Comrade Higgins?
No woman believes in marriage--until she meets the right man.”

This was much too subtle. Jimmie was still gaping open-mouthed.
“But then, I thought--I thought--” he stopped again; for in truth,
he had not known quite what he thought, and anyway, it seemed futile
to try to formulate it now.

But, of course, she knew, without his telling her; she knew the
meaning of his look of dismay, and of his stammering words. Being a
kind little creature, she laid her hand on his arm. “Comrade
Higgins,” she said, “don't think I'm too mean!”

“Mean?” he cried. “Why, no! What? How--”

“Try to imagine you were a girl, Comrade Higgins. You can't propose
to a man, can you?”

“Why, no--that is--”

“That is, not if you want him to accept! You have to make him do it.
And maybe he's shy, and don't do it, and you have to put the idea in
his head for him. Or maybe he's not sure he wants you, and you have
to make him realize how very desirable you are! Maybe you have to
scare him, making him think you're going to run off with somebody
else! Don't you see how it is with a girl?”

Jimmie was still bady dazed, but he saw enough to enable him to
stammer, “Yes.” And Comrade Baskerville--that is, Comrade Mrs.
Gerrity--gave him her hand again.

“Comrade Higgins,” she said, “you're a dear, sweet fellow, and you
won't be too angry with me, will you? We'll be friends, won't we,
Comrade Higgins?”

And Jimmie clasped the soft, warm hand, and gazed into the shining
brown eyes, and he made a part of the wonderful speech which he had
been planning as he walked. He said: “Always! Always!”






CHAPTER VIII

JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

I





The world struggle continued with constantly increasing ferocity.
All summer long the Germans hammered at the French and British
lines; while the British hammered at the gates of Constantinople,
and the Italians at the gates of Trieste. The Germans sent their
giant airships to drop loads of bombs on London and their submarines
to sink passenger-steamers and hospital-ships. Each fresh outrage
against international law became the occasion of more letters of
protest from the United States, and of more controversies in the
newspapers, and in Congress, and in Kumme's bicycle-shop on
Jefferson Street, Leesville.

In this last place, to be sure, the discussions were rather
one-sided. Practically all who came there regarded the munitions
industry as an accursed thing, and made no secret of their glee at
the misfortunes which befell it; at shipyards which caught fire and
burned up, at railroad bridges and ships at sea destroyed by
mysterious explosions. Kumme, a wizened-up, grizzle-haired old
fellow with a stubby nose and a bullet-head, would fall to cursing
in a mingling of English and German when anyone so much as mentioned
the fleets of ships that went across the water, loaded with shells
to kill German soldiers; he would point a skinny finger at whoever
would listen to him, declaring that the Germans in this country were
not slaves, and would protect their Fatherland from the perfidious
British and their Wall Street hirelings. Kumme took a newspaper
printed in German, and a couple of weeklies published in English for
the promotion of the German cause; he would mark passages in these
papers and read them aloud--everything that the mind of man could
recall or invent that was discreditable to Britain, to France and
Italy, to Wall Street, and to the nation which allowed Wall Street
to bamboozle and exploit it. There were many Americans who had
“muck-raked” their own country in the interests of social reform,
and had praised the social system of Germany. These arguments the
German propagandists now found useful, and Jimmie would take them to
the Socialist local and pass them about. From the meeting of the
local he and Meissner would go to the saloon where they had
rendezvous with Jerry Coleman, who would distribute more ten-dollar
bills to be used in the printing of anti-war literature.

Old Kumme had a nephew by the name of Heinrich, who paid him a visit
now and then. He was a tall, fine-looking fellow, who spoke much
better English than his uncle, and wore better clothes. Finally he
came to stay, and Kumme announced that he was to help in the shop.
They didn't need any help that Jimmie could see, and certainly not
from a fellow like Heinrich, who couldn't tell a spoke from a
handle-bar; but it was none of Jimmie's business, so Heinrich put on
working clothes, and spent a couple of weeks sitting behind the
counter conversing in low tones with men who came to see him. After
a while he took to going out again, and finally announced that he
had secured a job in the Empire.




II



And then to the hangers-on in the shop there was another
addition--an Irish working man named Reilly. The Irishman was a
peculiar problem in the war--the thorn of the Allied conscience, the
weak spot in their armour, the broken link in their chain of
arguments; and so every German was happy when an Irishman entered
the room. This fellow Reilly came to have a punctured tyre mended,
and stopped to tell what he thought about the world-situation. Old
man Kumme slapped him over the back, and shook him by the hand, and
told him he was the right sort, and to come again. So Reilly took to
hanging about; he would pull from his pocket a paper called
Hibernia, and Kummc would produce from under the counter a paper
called Germania, and the two would denounce “perfidious Albion” by
the hour. Jimmie, bending over the straightening of a sprocket,
would look up and grin, and exclaim, “You bet!”

It was winter-time, and darkness came early, and Jimmie was doing
his work by electric light in the back of the shop, when Reilly came
and mysteriously drew him into a corner. Did he really mean what he
said about hatred of war, and willingness to fight against it? The
Empire Shops were now turning out thousands of shell-casings every
day, to be used in the murder of men. It was useless to try to start
a strike, there were so many spies at work, and they fired every man
who opened his mouth; if an outsider tried it they would send him to
jail--for, of course, old Granitch had the city government in his
vest-pocket.

All this was an old story to Jimmie; but now the Irishman went on to
a new proposition. There was a way to stop the work of the Empire, a
way that had been tried in other places, and had worked. Reilly knew
where to get some T.N.T.--an explosive many times more powerful than
dynamite. They could make bombs out of the steel tubing of bicycles,
and Jimmie, knowing the Empire Shops as he did, could find a way to
get in and arrange matters. There was big money in it--the fellows
who did that job might live on Easy Street the rest of their lives.

Jimmie was stunned. He had been perfectly sincere in classifying
German spies with sea-serpents; and here was a sea-serpent right
before his eyes, raising his head through the floor of Kumme's
bicycle-shop!

Jimmie answered that he had never had anything to do with that sort
of thing. That wasn't the way to stop war; that was only making more
war. The other began to argue with him, showing that it wouldn't
hurt anybody; the explosion would take place at night, and all that
would be damaged would be Abel Granitch's purse. But Jimmie was
obdurate; fortunately one thing that had been incessantly pounded
into his head at the local was that the movement could not use
conspiracy, it must work by open propaganda, winning the minds and
consciences of men.

First the Irishman became angry, and called him a coward and a
molly-coddle. Then he became suspicious, and wanted to know if
Jimmie would sell him out to the Empire. Jimmie laughed at this; he
had no love for Abel Granitch--the damned old skunk might do his own
spying. Jimmie would simply have nothing to do with the matter, one
way or the other. And so the project was dropped; but the little
machinist was moved to keep his eyes open after that, and he made
note of how many Germans, all strangers, were making the shop a
meeting-place; also the quick intimacy which had developed between
the Irishman and Heinrich, Kumme's nephew, who held himself so
straight and had no back to his head.

Matters came to a climax with startling suddenness--the explosion
of a bomb, though not the kind which Jimmie was expecting. It was an
evening in February, just as he was about to close up, when he saw
the door of the shop open, and four men walk in. They came with a
peculiar, business-like air, two of them to the puzzled Jimmie, and
the other two to Kumme. One turned back the lapel of his coat,
showing a large gold star, and announcing, “I am an agent of the
government, and you are under arrest.” And at the same time the
other seized Jimmie's arms and slipped a pair of handcuffs over his
wrists. He passed his hands over his prisoner, a ceremony known as
“frisking”; and at the same time the other men had seized Kumme.
Jimmie saw two more men enter at the rear door of the shop, but they
had nothing to do, for both Jimmie and Kumme had been too much
startled to make any move to escape.

They were led out to an automobile, shoved in and whirled away. No
questions were answered, so after a bit they stopped asking
questions and sat still, reflecting upon all the sins they had ever
committed in their lives, and upon the chances of these sins being
known to the police.




III



Jimmie thought he was going to jail, of course; but instead they
took him to the Post Office building, to an upstairs room. Kumme was
taken to another room, and Jimmie did not see him again; all that
Jimmie had time to know or to think about was a stern-faced young
man who sat at a desk and put him on a griddle. “It is my duty to
inform you that everything you state may be used against you,” said
this young man; and then, without giving Jimmie a chance to grasp
the meaning of these words he began firing questions at him. All
through the ordeal the two detectives stood by his side, and in a
corner of the room, at another desk, a stenographer was busily
recording what he said. Jimmie knew there were such things as
stenographers--for had he not come near falling in love with one
only a short time before?

“Your name?” said the stern-faced young man; and then, “Where do you
live?” And then, “Tell me all you know about this bomb-conspiracy.”

“But I don't know nothin'!” cried Jimmie.

“You are in the hands of the Federal government,” replied the young
man, “and your only chance will be to make a clean breast. If you
will help us, you may get off.”

“But I don't know nothin'!” cried Jimmie, again.

“You have heard talk about dynamiting the Empire Shops?”

“Y--yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“A man--” Jimmie got that far, and then he recollected the promise
he had given. “I--I can't tell!” he said.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn't be right.”

“Do you believe in dynamiting buildings?”

“No, sir!” Jimmie put into this reply a note of tense sincerity, and
so the other began to argue with him. Atrocious crimes had been
committed all over the country, and the government wished to put a
stop to them; surely it was the duty of a decent citizen to give
what help he could. Jimmie listened until a sweat of anxiety stood
out on his forehead; but he could not bring himself to “peach” on
fellow working men. No, not if he were sent to jail for ten or
twenty years, as the stern-faced young man told him might happen.

“You told Reilly you wouldn't have anything to do with bombs?” asked
the young man; and Jimmie answered “Sure, I did!” And his poor head
was so addled that he didn't even realize that in his reply he had
told what he had been vowing he would never tell!

The questioner seemed to know all about everything, so it was easy
for him to lead Jimmie to tell how he had heard Kumme cursing the
Empire Shops, and the country, and the President; how he had seen
Kumme whispering to Reilly, and to Germans whose names he had not
learned, and how he had seen Heinrich, Kumme's nephew, cutting up
lengths of steel tubing. Then the questioner asked about Jerry
Coleman. How much money had Jimmie got, and just what had he done
with it? Jimmie refused to name other people; but when the young man
made the insinuation that Jimmie might have kept some of the money
for himself, the little machinist exclaimed with passionate
intensity--not one dollar had he kept, nor his friend Meissner
either; they had given statements to Jerry Coleman, and this though
many a time they had been hard up for their rent. The police could
ask Comrade Gerrity and Comrade Mary Allen, and the other members of
the local.

So the questioner led Jimmie on to talk about the Germans in the
movement. Schneider, the brewer, for example--he was one of those
who cursed the Allies most vehemently, and he had been in this
bomb-conspiracy. Jimmie was indignant; Comrade Schneider was as good
a Socialist as you could find, and Socialists had nothing to do with
bombs! But young Emil Forster--he had been making explosives in his
spare hours, had he not? At which Jimmie became still more outraged.
He knew young Emil well; the boy was a carpet-designer and musician,
and if anybody had told such tales about him, they were lying, that
was all. The questioner went on for an hour or so, tormenting poor
Jimmie with such doubts and fears; until finally he dropped a little
of his sternness of manner, and told Jimmie that he had merely been
trying him out, to see what he knew about various men whose
pro-German feelings had brought them under suspicion. No, the
government had no evidence of crime against Schneider or Forster, or
any of the bona-fide Socialists. They were just plain fools, letting
themselves be used as tools of German plotters, who were spending
money like water to make trouble in munition factories all over the
country.




IV



The questioner, who explained himself as a “special agent” of the
Department of Justice, went on to read Jimmie a lecture. A sincere
man like himself ought to be ashamed to let himself be taken in by
German conspirators, who were trying to break up American industry,
to lead American labour by the nose.

“But they want to stop the making of munitions!” cried Jimmie.

“But's that's only so that Germany can make more munitions!”

“But I'm opposed to their being made in Germany, too!”

“What can you do to stop it in Germany?”

“I'm an international Socialist. When I oppose war in my own
country, I help the Socialists to oppose it in other countries. I
ain't a-going to stop--not so long as I've got any breath left in
me!” And here was Comrade Jimmie, delivering a sermon on pacifism to
the “special agent” of the government, who held his fate in his
hands! But no one was going to defend war to Jimmie Higgins and not
be answered--even though Jimmie might go to jail for the rest of his
life!

The young man laughed--more genially than Jimmie would have thought
possible at the start of this grilling. “Higgins,” he said, “you're
a good-natured idiot. You can thank your lucky stars that one of the
men you trusted happened to be a government detective. If we didn't
know the truth about you, you might have had a hard time clearing
yourself.”

Jimmie's jaw had fallen. “A government detective! Who is the
government detective?”

“Reilly,” said the young man.

“Reilly? But it was him that tempted me!”

“Well, congratulate yourself that you resisted temptation!”

“But maybe he tempted Heinrich, too!”

“No, Heinrich didn't have to be tempted. It was on account of
Heinrich that we began the investigation. He has been making
explosives and planting them all over the country. His name isn't
Heinrich, and he isn't a nephew of Kumme; his name is von Holtz, and
he's a Prussian officer, a personal friend of the Kaiser.”

Jimmie was speechless. For the love of Mike! He had been sitting in
the back part of old Kumme's bicycle-shop, filling his pipe from
the tobacco-pouch of a personal friend of the Kaiser. He had called
this personal friend of the Kaiser a fool and a jackass, informing
him that a real mechanic could put a ball-bearing together while he,
the personal friend of the Kaiser, was spitting on his hands. Could
you beat it?

Mr. Harrod, the “special agent”, informed Jimmie that he would have
to testify as to what he knew; and Jimmie was so indignant at the
way he had been taken in that he was willing to do so. He would have
to give bond to appear, added the other; did he know anyone who
would vouch for him? Jimmie racked his harassed brain. Comrade Dr.
Service might consent, if he were quite sure that Jimmie had not
really meant to help the Germans. Mr. Harrod kindly consented to
give this assurance, and called up Dr. Service, whom he seemed to
know, and told him the circumstances. Dr. Service finally said that
he would put up a couple of thousand dollars to guarantee Jimmie's
appearance before the grand jury and at the trial. Mr. Harrod added
that if Dr. Service would promise to come in the morning and attend
to the matter, the government would take his word and let the
witness go for the night. The doctor promised, and Jimmie was told
that he was free till ten o'clock next morning. He went out like a
skylark escaping from a cage!




V



He had been warned not to talk to anyone, so he told Lizzie that he
had been kept late to make repairs on a motor-cycle. And next
morning he got up at the usual hour, to avoid exciting suspicion,
and went and stared at the shop, which was locked up, with a
policeman on guard. He bought a copy of the Leesville Herald, and
read the thrilling story of the German plot which had been unearthed
in Leesville. There were half a dozen conspirators under arrest, and
more than a dozen bombs had been found, all destined to be set off
in the Empire Shops. Franz Heinrich von Holtz, who had blown up a
bridge in Canada and put an infernal machine on board a big Atlantic
liner, had been nailed at last!

Half an hour before time, Jimmie was waiting at the Post Office
building, and when Comrade Dr. Service arrived, they went in and
signed the bond. Coming out again, the grim and forbidding doctor
ordered Jimmie into his car, and oh, what a dressing-down he did
give him! He had Jimmie where he wanted him--right over his
knees--and before he let him up he surely did make him burn! The
little machinist had been so cock-sure of himself; going ahead to
end the war, by stopping the shipping of munitions, and paying no
heed to warnings from men older and wiser than himself! And now see
what he had got himself in for--arrested with a gang of fire-bugs
and desperadoes, under the control and in the pay of a personal
friend of the Kaiser!

Poor Jimmie couldn't put up much of a defence: he was cowed, for
once. He could only say that he had had no evil intention--he had
merely been agitating against the trade in munitions--a wicked
thing--

“Wicked?” broke in the Comrade Doctor. “The thing upon which the
freedom of mankind depends!”

“W--what?” exclaimed Jimmie; for these words sounded to him like
sheer lunacy.

The other explained. “A nation that means to destroy its neighbours
sets to work and puts all its energies into making guns and shells.
The free peoples of the world won't follow suit--you can't persuade
them to do it, because they don't believe in war, they can't realize
that their neighbours intend to make war. So, when they are attacked
their only chance for life is to go out into the open market and buy
the means of defence. And you propose to deprive them of that
right--to betray them, to throw them under the hoofs of the
war-monster! You, who call yourself a believer in justice, make
yourself a tool of such a conspiracy! You take German money--”

“I never took no German money!” cried Jimmie, wildly.

“Didn't Kumme pay you money?”

“But I worked in his shop--I done my ten hours a day right
straight!”

“And this fellow Jerry Coleman? Hasn't he given you money?”

“But that was for propaganda--he was agent for Labour's National
Peace Council--”

And the Comrade Doctor fairly snorted. “How could you be such an
ass? Don't you read the news? But no--of course, you don't--you
only read German dope!” And the Comrade Doctor drew out his
pocket-book, which was bursting with clippings, and selected one
from a New York paper, telling how the government was proceeding
against the officials of an organization called “Labour's National
Peace Council” for conspiring to cause strikes and violence. The
founder of the organization was a person known as “the Wolf of Wall
Street”; the funds had been furnished by a Prussian army officer, an
attache of the German legation, who had used his official immunity
to incite conspiracy and wholesale destruction of property in a
friendly country. What had Jimmie to say to that?

And poor Jimmie for once had nothing to say. He sat, completely
crushed. Not merely the money which he had got from Kumme on
Saturday night, but also the ten-dollar bills which Jerry Coleman
had been slipping into his hand--they, too, had come from the
Kaiser! Was the whole radical movement to be taken over by the
Kaiser, and Jimmie Higgins put out of his job?






CHAPTER IX

JIMMIE HIGGINS RETURNS TO NATURE

I





Kumme's bicycle-shop went out of business, and its contents were
sold at auction. Jimmie Higgins watched the process wistfully,
reflecting how, if he had not wasted his substance on Socialist
tracts, if he had saved a bit of his wages like any normal human
being, he might have bought this little business and got a start in
life. But alas, such hopes were not for Jimmie! He must remain in
the condition which the President of his country described as
“industrial serfdom”; he must continue to work for some other man's
profit, to be at the mercy of some other man's whim.

He found himself a job in the railroad shops; but in a couple of
weeks came an organizer, trying to start a union in the place.
Jimmie, of course, joined; how could he refuse? And so the next time
he went to get his pay he found a green slip in his envelope
informing him that the Atlantic Western Railroad Company would no
longer require his services. No explanation was given, and none
sought--for Jimmie was old in the ways of American wage-slavery,
euphemistically referred to as “industrial serfdom”.

He got another start as helper to a truckman. It was the hardest
work he had yet done--all the harder because the boss was a dull
fellow who would not talk about politics or the war. So Jimmie was
discontented; perhaps the spring-time was getting into his blood; at
any rate, he hunted through his Sunday paper, and came on an
advertisement of a farmer who wanted a “hand”. It was six miles out
in the country, and Jimmie, remembering his walk with the Candidate,
treated himself to a Sunday afternoon excursion. He knew nothing
about farm-work, and said so; but the munition-factories had drained
so much labour from the land that the farmer was glad to get
anybody. He had a “tenant-house” on his place, and on Monday morning
Jimmie hired his former boss--and truckman--to move his few sticks
of furniture; he bade farewell to his little friend Meissner, and
next day was learning to milk cows and steer a plough.

So Jimmie came back to the bosom of his ancient Mother. But alas, he
came, not to find joy and health, not as a free man, to win his own
way and make a new life for himself; he came as a soil-slave, to
drudge from dawn to dark for a hire that barely kept him going. The
farmer was the owner of Jimmie's time, and Jimmie disliked him
heartily, because he was surly-tempered and stingy, abusing his
horses and nagging at his hired man. Jimmie's education in
farm-economics was not thorough enough to enable him to realize that
John Cutter was as much of a slave as himself--bound by a mortgage
to Ashton Chalmers, President of the First National Bank of
Leesville. John drudged from dawn to dark, just as Jimmie did, and
in addition had all the worry and fear; his wife was a sallow and
hollow-chested drudge, who took as many bottles of patent-medicine
as poor Mrs. Meissner.

But Jimmie kept fairly cheerful because he was learning new things,
and because he saw how good it was for the babies, who were getting
fresh air and better food than they had ever had in their little
lives before. All summer long he ploughed and harrowed and hoed, he
tended horses and cows and pigs and chickens, and drove to town with
farm produce to be sold. He would be too tired at night even to read
his Socialist papers; for six months he let the world go its way
unhindered--its way of desperate strife and colossal anguish. It was
the time when the German hordes hurled themselves against the
fortifications of Verdun. For five horrible months they came on,
wave upon endless wave; the people of France set their teeth and
swore, “They shall not pass!” and the rest of civilization waited,
holding its breath.




II



The only chance Jimmie had to talk about these matters was of a
Saturday night when he strolled up to the store at a near-by
cross-roads. The men he met here were of a new type to him--as
different from factory people as if they came from another planet.
Jimmie had been taught to laugh at them as “hayseeds”;
intellectually he regarded them as relics of a vanished age so, of
course, he could not listen to their talk very long without “butting
in”. He began with the declaration that the Allies were as bad as
the Germans. He got away with that, because they had all been taught
to hate the “Britishers” in their school-books, and they didn't know
very much about Frenchmen and “Eye-talians”. But when Jimmie went on
to say that the American government was as bad as the German
government--that all governments were run by capitalists, and all
went to war for foreign markets and such plunder--then what a
hornet's nest he brought about his ears! “You mean to say American
armies would do what them Proosians done in Belgium?” And when
Jimmie answered “Yes,” an indignant citizen rose from his seat on a
cracker-box, and tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Look here,
young feller, you better run along home. You'll git yerself a coat
of tar and feathers if you talk too much round these parts.”

So Jimmie shut up for a while; and when he went out with his armful
of purchases, an aged, white-whiskered patriarch who had been
listening got up and followed him out. “I'm going your way,” he
said. “Git in with me.” Jimmie climbed into the buggy; and while the
bony old mare ambled along through the summer night the driver asked
questions about Jimmie's life. Where had he been brought up? How had
it been possible for a man to live all his life in America, and know
so little about his native land?

Peter Drew was this old farmer's name, and he had been in the first
battle of Bull Run, and had fought with the Army of Northern
Virginia all the way to Richmond. So he knew how American armies
behave; he could tell Jimmie about a million free men who had rushed
to arms to save their nation's integrity, and had made a clean job
of it, and then gone qu

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