The Harbor Part 56

"Still the one man in a million," I said.

"Yes," said Dillon, "his day isn't over, it has only just begun. He may have his bad points--I'll admit he has--but compared to all the little men his vision is wide and it goes deep. And if they'll only leave him alone and give him a chance, he'll take me and the other engineers, and the chemists and doctors and lawyers, and he'll make a world--he's doing it now--where ignorance and poverty will in time be wiped completely out."

"They're not going to leave him alone," I said. "I'm sure of that now.

Whether he grafts or whether he's honest won't make any difference. The crowd is going to pull him down. Because it's not democracy. The trouble with all your big men at the top is that they're trying to do for the crowd what the crowd wants to do for itself. And it may not do it half so well--but all the time it will be learning--gathering closer every year--and getting a spirit compared to which your whole clean clear efficiency world is only cold and empty!"

He must have caught the look in my eyes.

"You're thinking that I'm getting old," he said softly. "I and all the men like me who have been building up this country. You're thinking that we're all following on after your father into the past." As I looked back I felt suddenly humble. Dillon's voice grew appealing and kind.

"But you belong with us, Billy," he said. "It was under us you won your start. And what I want now," he added, "is not only for Eleanore's sake, but your own. I want you to try to write again about all the work we are doing and see what it will do for you. Why not give it another chance?

You're not afraid of it, are you?"

"No," I said, "I'm not afraid--and I'll give it another chance if you like--I don't want to be narrow about it, G.o.d knows. But before I tackle anything else I'll finish my story of the strike."

"All right," he agreed. "That's all I ask. Now suppose you take Eleanore up to the mountains and write your strike article up there. Let me loan you a little just at the start."

"How much money have _you_ in the bank?"

"Enough to send Eleanore where she belongs."

"Eleanore belongs right here," said a voice from the other room, and presently Eleanore appeared. She surveyed us both with a scorn in her eyes that made us quake a little. "I never heard," she went on calmly, "of anything quite so idiotic. Go home, Dad, and go to bed, and please drop this insane idea that I'm afraid of July in New York, or of August or September. Do you know what you're going to do to-morrow, both of you poor foolish boys? You're going sensibly to work and worry about nothing at all. And to-morrow night we're all three of us going to forget how it feels to work or think, and get on an open trolley and go down and hear Harry Lauder. Thank Heaven he happens to be in town. To hear you talk you'd think the whole American people had forgotten how to laugh.

"Now Billy," she ended smoothly, "go to the icebox and get two bottles of nice cool beer--and make me a tall gla.s.s of lemonade. And don't use too much sugar."

CHAPTER IV

The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out.

But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to trial.

I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the full penalty for their crimes!

In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee, the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades and big ma.s.s meetings of labor.

Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I took it to my editor.

"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad."

"It's the truth," I remarked.

"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer, we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want to see _you_ stand for this--in our magazine or anywhere else--it means too much to you as a writer. Look out, my boy," he added, with a return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For G.o.d's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter spoiled."

I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd, an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs.

"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it.

"No," he replied. "It's too d.a.m.n mild. You've given too much to the other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired."

"I don't believe it will," I said.

"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized world, is coming in the next ten years."

"I don't believe that."

"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your efficiency father-in-law."

"So you don't feel you can sign this?"

"No."

That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest honoraria.

In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office.

"I'm ready now to be sane," I said.

"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where you can grind till you get yourself right."

"Till I get back where I was, you mean?"

"Yes, if you can," he answered.

I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd made.

"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive, and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it about each kind of harbor. But I need the money--my wife is going to have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of the truth away."

"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look like a ghost."

"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job."

"Tell me about it."

I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes.

"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until I did.

"It won't do," she said, when I had finished.

"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing in sight. It will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a year."

"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into."

"It's settled now. Please leave it alone."