Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  GIBSON: I’d been through school and college and through every department of the factory. That wasn’t hard; it was a pretty run-down factory, Mr. Mifflin.

  MIFFLIN: And then at your father’s death the lives and fortunes, souls and bodies of all these workmen passed into your hands?

  GIBSON: Not quite that; there were only forty-one workmen, and nineteen of them didn’t stay when father died. They got other jobs before I could stop them.

  MIFFLIN: And how many men have you now?

  GIBSON: I believe there are one hundred and seventy-five on the pay roll now.

  MIFFLIN: One hundred and seventy-five [with gusto] labourers!

  GIBSON: Some of them are; some of them are orators.

  MIFFLIN [jovially]: Ah, I’m afraid that’s hard on Miss Gorodna.

  GIBSON [quietly]: She’s both.

  MIFFLIN: I understand you are not fighting the labour unions?

  GIBSON: No. The workmen themselves declined to unionize the factory.

  MIFFLIN: Mr. Gibson, when your father began manufacturing “The Gibson

  Upright” —

  GIBSON: He didn’t. He made a very fine piano — and only a few of them. It was “The Gibson Upright” that saved the factory. You see, with this model we began to get on a quantity-production basis. That’s why the business has grown and is growing.

  MIFFLIN: You mean that “The Gibson Upright” is the reason for the present great prosperity of this plant?

  GIBSON: Yes.

  MIFFLIN: Now be careful, Mr. Gibson; I’m going to ask a trap question. [Wagging his pencil at him.] What is the reason for “The Gibson Upright?”

  GIBSON: Do you mean who designed it?

  MIFFLIN: Oh, no, no, no! I mean who makes them? If someone asked you if you’re the man that makes “The Gibson Upright” wouldn’t you say “Yes?”

  GIBSON: Certainly!

  MIFFLIN [triumphantly]: Ah, there you fell into the trap!

  GIBSON: What’s the matter?

  NORA [with controlled agitation]: It’s the same old matter, Mr.

  Gibson. It’s those men out there that make the piano.

  GIBSON [a little sadly]: Do they?

  NORA: With their hands, Mr. Gibson!

  GIBSON: Is there anything more, Mr. Mifflin?

  MIFFLIN: You couldn’t possibly imagine how much you’ve given me, Mr. Gibson, in these few little answers. It is precisely what I want to get at — the point of view! The point of view is all that is separating the classes from the masses to-day. And I think I have yours already. Now I want to go to the masses if you will permit me.

  GIBSON: Then you might as well stay here.

  MIFFLIN: Ah, but I want to hear the workers talk!

  GIBSON: Well, this is the best place for that! Some of them are waiting now just outside the door. I’ll let you hear them.

  [Goes to the factory door and opens it; two workingmen come in. One is elderly, with gray moustache and beard — CARTER. The other, FRANKEL, is a Hebraic type, eager and nervous; younger.]

  GIBSON: What do you and Frankel want, Carter?

  CARTER [moving his jaw from side to side, affecting to chew to gain confidence]: Well, Mr. Gibson, to come down to plain words — there ain’t no two best ways o’ beatin’ about the bush.

  GIBSON: I know that.

  CARTER: The question is just up to where there ain’t no two best ways out of it. The men in our department is going to walk out to the last one, and if there was any way o’ stoppin’ it by argument I’d tell you. We’re goin’ out at twelve o’clock noon to-day, the whole forty-eight of us.

  GIBSON: Why?

  FRANKEL: “Why,” Mr. Gibson! Did you want to know why?

  GIBSON: Yes, I do. You men signed an agreement with me just eleven days ago —

  FRANKEL [hotly protesting]: But we never understood it when we signed it. How’d we know what we was signing?

  GIBSON: Can’t you read, Frankel?

  FRANKEL: What’s reading got to do with it, when it reads all one way?

  GIBSON: Didn’t you understand it, Carter?

  CARTER: Well — I can’t say I did.

  GIBSON: Why can’t you say it? It was plain black and white.

  CARTER: Well, I was kind o’ foggy about the overtime.

  GIBSON: The agreement was that you were to have time and a half for overtime. What was foggy about that?

  CARTER: Well, I don’t say you didn’t give us what we was askin’ right then; but things have changed since then.

  GIBSON: What’s changed in eleven days?

  FRANKEL [hotly]: What’s changed? How about them men in the finishin’ department that do piecework?

  GIBSON: Well, what’s changed about them?

  FRANKEL: Well, something is goin’ to change over there.

  GIBSON: We’re talking about your department not understanding the agreement. What’s the finishing department got to do with that?

  FRANKEL: Well, they’re kickin’, too, you bet!

  GIBSON: I’m dealing with your kick now.

  CARTER: Well, o’ course we got to stand with them; if they do piecework overtime they don’t get no more for it.

  GIBSON: I’ll deal with them separately.

  FRANKEL: My goodness, Mr. Gibson, you got to deal with us, too! Not a one of us understood what our last agreement with you was. It’s just agreements and agreements and agreements — you might think we was living just on agreements! By rights we ought to have double time instead of time and a half!

  GIBSON: Time and a half eleven days ago; now you strike for double time! Where does this thing stop? You want double time for overtime; your working day has been reduced; it won’t be long till you want that cut down again.

  FRANKEL: Sure! We want it cut down right now!

  CARTER: Yes, Mr. Gibson; that was another point they told us to bring up before we walk out.

  GIBSON [with growing exasperation]: I suppose you want a six-hour day so you’ll have more overtime to double on me! Then you’ll want a four-hour day, won’t you?

  MIFFLIN [beaming and nodding]: Well, why not, Mr. Gibson?

  GIBSON: What?

  NORA: Why shouldn’t they?

  GIBSON: Why shouldn’t they? But what’s their limit?

  NORA [oratorically]: When the workman shall own his tools!

  MIFFLIN: Of course that means all the tools, Mr. Gibson. You may not know our phrase: “The workman shall own his tools.” It means not only the carpenter’s bench, the plane and the saw, the adze and the auger, but the shop itself. It means that the workmen shall own the factory. It means the elimination of everything and everyone who stands between him and the purchaser, to take toll and unearned profit from the worker, who is really the sole producer of wealth.

  NORA: It means the elimination of capital and the capitalist!

  MIFFLIN: It means that not only should the worker own tools and factory but should sit here in the persons of his chosen and elected fellow workers, as arbiter of his own destiny.

  GIBSON: That is to say, it means the elimination of me.

  MIFFLIN [jovially]: Precisely! Precisely!

  GIBSON [as another workingman strides into the room]: What do you want, Shomberg?

  SHOMBERG: Them new windows in the assembling room — they’re no good.

  GIBSON: We’ve just spent twelve hundred dollars fixing them as you said you wanted them. What’s the matter with them?

  SHOMBERG: They don’t give no light.

  MIFFLIN: None at all?

  SHOMBERG: It’s right next to none at all! The men are goin’ to lay off if they got to work in that room. They’re goin’ out anyway at twelve o’clock.

  FRANKEL: Now look here, Mr. Gibson, if I was running this factory —

  GIBSON: You’re not, Frankel!

  SHOMBERG: Well, why can’t you listen to him? Don’t we even get no hearing? I guess if I was running this factory once, the first thing I’d do I’d anyhow try to listen what the troubles is and make my men co
ntented.

  GIBSON: What would you do if you were running the factory, Carter? You haven’t said.

  CARTER: I ain’t had the chance to say. Now what I’d do, first I’d settle all the grievances so there wouldn’t be no more complaints.

  GIBSON: Well, here’s one coming I might leave to you on that basis.

  [Enter SIMPSON, an elderly worker in overalls and jumper; and SALVATORE, a New Yorkized Italian type, a formerly lighted cigarette dangling from his lips.]

  SALVATORE: Our department’s goin’ to walk out at twelve, noon, Mr.

  Gibson. We ain’t satisfied.

  GIBSON: Why not?

  SALVATORE: Well, we ain’t satisfied, Mr. Gibson; we ain’t satisfied at all.

  GIBSON: You got every demand answered yesterday, Salvatore.

  SALVATORE: Oh, I ain’t talkin’ about no demands. If all them other departments walks out we’re going to stand by ’em! We got plenty to do with our time. Workin’ all the time ain’t so enjoyable.

  GIBSON: So you people are going out again, are you?

  SIMPSON: I guess it’s a general strike, Mr. Gibson. I’m afraid if you don’t give the boys satisfactory answers the place will close down at noon.

  GIBSON: Have satisfactory answers ever satisfied you?

  SALVATORE: Ain’t we got no right to stand up for our rights?

  FRANKEL: Don’t you get all you can from us? Well, you bet your life we’re goin’ to keep on gettin’ all we can from you!

  GIBSON: Then life isn’t worth anything to either of us — if it’s all fight! Is that to go on forever?

  NORA: No, Mr. Gibson; it’s to go on until the abolition of the wage system!

  MIFFLIN: Good!

  NORA: The struggle with capitalism will continue till the workers take possession of the machinery of production. It is theirs by right; the wealth they produce is morally their own. The parasites who now consume that wealth must be destroyed.

  [Great approval from workmen; almost a cheer. MIFFLIN chuckles and noiselessly claps his hands.]

  GIBSON: I’m the parasite!

  SHOMBERG: Well, do we get any answer?

  GIBSON: Does any one of you men here think he could answer all of these demands satisfactorily?

  SALVATORE: Sure! [All acquiesce: “Sure, sure!”]

  FRANKEL: You can’t put us off any longer with just no little bunch of funny talk!

  GIBSON: I’ll have an answer for you in fifteen minutes. [Turns to his desk.] That’s all.

  SHOMBERG: Better have it before twelve o’clock.

  CARTER [as they go]: Do what you kin, Mr. Gibson. All the departments is worked up pretty unusual.

  GIBSON [wearily dropping back into his chair]: Oh, no, Carter; pretty usual; that’s the trouble.

  MIFFLIN: A splendid manifestation of spirit, Mr. Gibson! I’ll just take advantage of the —

  [GIBSON waves his hand, assenting. MIFFLIN overtakes the group at door, puts his hands on the shoulders of two of the workers; and goes out with them talking eagerly. NORA follows. GIBSON sighs heavily; the telephone bell rings. He takes up the receiver.]

  GIBSON: Who is it?… Wait a minute! [He takes a pad and writes]: “Central Associated Lumber Companies.” … Wait a minute. [Looks at a slip in a pigeonhole of his desk.] Oh, yes, you called me yesterday…. This is Mr. Ragsdale?… No, no, Mr. Ragsdale, I don’t think I’m going to do any business with you. You asked me forty-eight dollars a thousand on 200,000 feet…. No, your coming down half a dollar a thousand won’t do it…. I say seventeen cents won’t do it…. Hold the wire a minute. [Looks for letter in pigeonhole, but finds it in his inside pockets. Then he holds it open, looking at it beside the telephone as he speaks.] Hello!… No; I was right; there’s nothing doing, Mr. Ragsdale, I know where I can get that 200,000 feet at forty-five dollars…. I say I know where I can get that lumber at forty-five dollars…. No; I can get it. There won’t be any use for you to call up again…. Good-bye!

  [He paces the floor again thoughtfully, then abruptly goes to the factory door; opens it and calls.]

  GIBSON: Miss Gorodna!

  [NORA appears in the doorway. She looks at him with disapproving inquiry; then walks in and closes the door. He goes to his desk and touches the rose.]

  GIBSON: Why didn’t you take it this morning? That poor little rosebed in my yard at home; it’s just begun to brighten up. I suppose it thought it was going to send you a June rose every day, as it did last June. You don’t want it?

  NORA [gently, but not abating her attitude]: No, thank you!

  GIBSON: [dropping the rose upon his blotting pad, not into the glass again]: This is the fourth that’s had to wither disappointed.

  NORA [in a low voice]: Then hadn’t you better let the others live?

  GIBSON: I’d like to live a little myself, Nora. Life doesn’t seem much worth living for me as it is, and if your theories are making you detest me I think I’m about through.

  NORA: It’s what you stand for that my theories make me detest — since you used the word.

  GIBSON: Well, what is it that I stand for?

  NORA: Class and class hatred.

  GIBSON: Which class is the hatred coming from?

  NORA: From both!

  GIBSON: Just in this room right now it seems to be all on one side. And lately it has seemed to me to be more and more not so much class as personal; because really, Nora, I haven’t yet been able to understand how a girl with your mind can believe that you and I belong to different classes.

  NORA: You don’t! So long as capital exists you and I are in warring classes, Mr. Gibson.

  GIBSON: What are they?

  NORA: Capitalist and proletariat. You can’t get out of your class and I don’t want to get out of mine.

  GIBSON: Nora, the law of the United States doesn’t recognize any classes — and I don’t know why you and I should. We both like Montaigne and Debussy. You’ve even condescended to laugh with me at times about something funny in the shop. Of course not lately; but you used to. In everything worth anything aren’t we really in the same class?

  NORA: We are not. We never shall be — and we never were! Even before we were born we weren’t! You came into this life with a silver spoon. I was born in a tenement room where five other people lived. My father was a man with a great brain. He never got out of the tenements in his life; he was crushed and kept under; yet he was a well-read man and a magnificent talker; he could talk Marx and Tolstoi supremely. Yet he never even had time to learn English.

  GIBSON: I wish you could have heard what my father talked for English!

  Half the time I couldn’t understand him myself. He was Scotch.

  NORA: Your father wasn’t crushed under the capitalistic system as mine was. My father was an intellectual.

  GIBSON: Mine was a worker. They both landed at Castle Garden, didn’t they?

  NORA: What of that? Mine remained a thinker and a revolutionist; yours became a capitalist.

  GIBSON: No; he got a job — in a piano factory.

  NORA: Yes, and took advantage of the capitalistic system to own the factory.

  GIBSON: Before he did own it he worked fourteen hours a day for twelve years. That’s why he owned it.

  NORA: How many hours a day do you work, Mr. Gibson?

  GIBSON: I have worked twenty-four; sometimes fourteen, sometimes two; usually six.

  NORA: In other words, when you want to work.

  GIBSON: I’ve learned to do things my father never learned to do, and it commands a higher return.

  NORA: You take a higher return!

  GIBSON: You mean I don’t deserve it?

  NORA: Can it be possible that you think you deserve as much as any of these workers? You don’t so much as touch one of these pianos that bring you your return. I do! I work on them with my hands. Do you think you deserve as much as I?

  GIBSON: No; I don’t go so far as that.

  NORA: Don’t talk to me as a woman! My work is pleasant enough now; but what work d
id I have to do before I got this far? I worked sixteen hours a day, and when I was only a child at that! Twelve hours I was sewing, and four I studied. If my father hadn’t known music and taught me a little your capitalistic system would have me sewing twelve hours a day still!

  GIBSON: Yes, Nora; when we learn how to do something we get better pay for it.

  NORA: We do? Do you really think that? That we get paid for what we do?

  GIBSON: Yes; that’s what I think.

  NORA: Then what do you get paid for? For nothing in the world but owning this factory. You’re paid because you’re a capitalist!

  GIBSON: Is that all?

  NORA: Why, look at the state the factory’s in! The discontent you saw in those men — that’s the fault of the capitalistic system! There aren’t twenty workmen in the place that are contented.

  GIBSON: You’re right about that; and they never will be.

  NORA: Not until the system’s changed. What are you going to do about it?

  GIBSON [with quiet desperation]: They’ve driven me as far as they can. If they walk out I’ll walk out. I can stand it if they can.

  NORA: You’d close down? Your only solution is to take the bread out of these men’s mouths?

  GIBSON: If they walk out I’ll walk out!

  NORA [trembling]: You coward!

  GIBSON: That’s fair?

  NORA: You’ll let us starve because you haven’t the courage to come to the right solution! Don’t you mind starving us?

  GIBSON: You mean you’d starve if I quit.

  NORA [vehemently]: No; but because you’d close the factory.

  GIBSON: Oh, the factory could run if I quit, could it?

  NORA: That’s the capitalist! They think it’s capital that runs the factories!

  GIBSON: And I’m the capital, am I?

  NORA: What in the world else? [Touches the piano.] You think you produce this wealth because you’ve got your money in it? You pass out a pittance to those who do produce it, and when they ask for more than a pittance you take their tools away from them! If they rebel you set the police on them. That’s capital — and that’s you, Mr. Gibson!

  GIBSON: Nora, you told me not to speak to you as a woman.

  NORA: I mean it!

  GIBSON: I’m going to disregard it. Couldn’t you get your theories out of your mind for a while and make a little room there for me?