CARTER: That shows you ain’t got no rights like you claimed. You can’t control your labour element.
FRANKEL [bitterly]: I’ll control ’em all right! I’ll show ’em who’s their master!
[A man’s head with shaggy hair and ragged whiskers is thrust in at the factory door. This is POLENSKI.]
POLENSKI [ferociously]: Are you goin’ to come out here like a man?
FRANKEL: You bet I’m comin’ out there, Polenski! I’ll show you who’s the man here! You Hunnyacks try to browbeat me!
[As he goes out, babbling fiercely, the howls of a Roman mob are heard greeting him.]
CARTER: I don’t feel no sympathy with him.
NORA: No; I should think not!
[A more distant outbreak of the mob is heard, brief but fierce, and just a moment before it ceases MIFFLIN enters, beaming. He is dressed as usual, with his umbrella and the same old magazines and newspapers under his arm.]
MIFFLIN: Everything is lovely! How do you do, Miss Gorodna! Carter, old fellow! It’s a great morning, a great morning! Mr. Gibson drove me down in his car. It’s wonderful to feel the inspiration it’s going to be for an ex-capitalist to see this place and its harmony. My phrase for it is “harmonized industry.” It will mark an epoch for him.
[GIBSON comes in. MIFFLIN greets him.]
MIFFLIN: Ah, Mr. Gibson! You’ll see a difference! You’ll see a difference!
GIBSON: Yes, I do. Good morning, Miss Gorodna!
NORA [just barely looking round]: Good morning, Mr. Gibson.
MIFFLIN: I was just saying what an inspiration it’s going to be for you to see what we’re doing down here. [Pats CARTER’S shoulder.] These noble fellows are teaching us intellectuals a lesson. I keep going among them; what they’re doing here keeps flowing into me. You’ll get it, Mr. Gibson. You’ll get it, too!
[Beamingly he goes out into the factory.]
CARTER [cordially]: Take a chair, Mr. Gibson. Make yourself right at home!
GIBSON: Thanks!
[He makes a grave tour of inspection of the place, his expression noncommittal; goes about casually without making a point of it; he writes his initials in the dust on a filing case. He turns and looks at NORA thoughtfully; she has not seemed to notice him.]
Do you think I will, Miss Gorodna?
NORA [not looking up]: Do I think you will what?
GIBSON: That I’ll get what Mifflin meant? That it will be an inspiration to me to see this meeting?
NORA: I don’t know what will be an inspiration to you.
GIBSON: I know one thing that is — a brave woman!
[The only sign she gives is that her head bends over her work just a little more.]
Carter, do you think this meeting is going to be an inspiration to me?
CARTER: Well, Mr. Gibson, since the time you give up our rights to us, as Mr. Mifflin says, we’re an inspiration to the whole world. All the time! Yes, sir; and we would be, too, if we could jest git these dog-goned inequalities straightened out. We got this Frankel trouble on our hands, and them wives, and one thing and another, though they ain’t botherin’ me so much as my own rights. But they’re goin’ to git brought up in the meeting. You’ll see!
GIBSON: Is the safe usually kept open?
CARTER [heartily]: Why, yes, sir; open to each and all alike.
GIBSON: Oh, yes, of course! Seems to be some business mail left over here.
CARTER: Oh, yes. But you’ll find every one of ‘em’s been opened; we never miss opening a letter. You see they’s checks in some of ’em.
GIBSON: I see. Then everything is running right along, is it, Carter?
CARTER: Oh, sure! Right along, right along!
[The uproar breaks out again. FRANKEL bursts in, wiping his forehead as before. He hurries to the water filter for more water.]
FRANKEL: By golly! The bloodsuckers! They want my life! They don’t get it! Hello, Mr. Gibson! Well, I am pleased to see you! Say, Mr. Gibson, lemme say something to you. Look here a minute. [He draws GIBSON aside.]
GIBSON: What is it, Frankel?
FRANKEL [hastily, in a low voice]: Mr. Gibson, keep it under your hat, but I got a pretty good interest in this factory right now. What date I’m goin’ to own it I won’t say. But what I want to put up to you: How much would you ask me to manage it for me?
GIBSON: What?
FRANKEL: I wouldn’t be no piker; when it comes to your salary you could pretty near set it yourself.
GIBSON: I’m afraid I’ve already had an offer that would keep me from accepting, Frankel.
FRANKEL: When the time comes I’ll git a manager somewhere; no place like this can’t run itself; I seen that much.
GIBSON: Even if I didn’t have an offer, Frankel, I doubt if I’d accept yours. You know I used to have some little trouble here.
FRANKEL: You got my sympathy now! I got troubles myself here. [Hastily drinks another glass of water.] Well, where’s that meeting? They’re late, ain’t they?
CARTER: If they are it’s your fault. Them wops of yours won’t hardly let a body git by out yonder.
[SALVATORE and SHOMBERG come in from the factory, SALVATORE pausing in the doorway to shout in the direction of an audible disturbance in the distance.]
SALVATORE: Oh, shut up; you’ll git your pay!
[Following SALVATORE come SIMPSON and his wife and RILEY. They all speak rather casually but not uncordially to GIBSON. MIFFLIN is with them, his hand on SIMPSON’S shoulder. The outbreak outside subsides in favour of a speech of extreme violence in a foreign language. Italian, Yiddish, or whatever it is, it seems most passionate, and by a good orator. It continues to be heard as the members of the committee take their seats at the big table. MIFFLIN beams and nods at GIBSON; and takes his seat with the committee.]
SHOMBERG [hotly, to MRS. SIMPSON]: Here, you ain’t a member of this committee! Git her chair away from her there, Salvatore! She’s got no right here!
MRS. SIMPSON: Oh, I haven’t?
SHOMBERG: Already twice this morning I got hell from my own wife the way this woman treats her tryin’ to chase her out the factory. You think you’re on this committee?
MRS. SIMPSON [taking a chair triumphantly]: My husband is. I was here last time, and I’m goin’ to keep on.
CARTER [referring to the speech in the factory]: My goodness! We can’t do no work.
RILEY: Frankel, that’s your business to shut ’em up.
FRANKEL: Talkin’ ain’t doin’ no harm. Let ’em talk.
RILEY: Yes, I will! [Goes to the door, and roars]: Cut that out! I mean business! [Shuts the door and returns angrily to his seat.]
CARTER [rapping on the table with a ruler]: The meeting will now come to order! Minutes of the last meeting will now be read by the secretary.
MIFFLIN [to GIBSON, beaming]: You see?
NORA [rising, minute book in hand]: The meeting was called to order by
Chairman Carter, Monday, the —
SALVATORE: Aw, say!
FRANKEL: I object!
SIMPSON: What’s the use readin’ all that? It’s only about what we done at the last meeting.
SALVATORE: We know that ourselves, don’t we?
SHOMBERG: What’d be the use? What’d be the use?
RILEY: All we done was divide up the money.
SALVATORE: Cut it out, cut it out! Let’s get to that!
CARTER: All right, then. I move —
MRS. SIMPSON [shrilly]: You can’t move. The chairman can’t move. If you want to move you better resign!
CARTER: Well, then, somebody ought to move —
MRS. SIMPSON: Cut out the moving. She don’t haf to read ’em, does she?
CARTER: All right, then. Don’t read ’em, Miss Gorodna.
SALVATORE: Well, git some kind of a move on.
CARTER: I was thinkin’ —
NORA [prompting]: The next order —
CARTER: What?
NORA: The next order of business —
CARTER: Oh, yes! The next order of busi
ness —
NORA: Is reports of committees.
CARTER [in a loud, confident voice]: The next order of business is reports of committees. [Takes up some papers and goes on promptly.] The first committee I will report on is my committee. I will state it is very difficult reading, because consisting of figures written by the bookkeeper, and pretty hard to make head or tail of, but —
MRS. SIMPSON: Oh, here, say! We got important things to come up here! ‘Fore we know how much we’re goin’ to divide amongst us we got to settle at once for all and for the last time how it’s goin’ to be divided and how much each family gets.
SALVATORE: Family?
CARTER AND SHOMBERG [together]: Yes — family!
RILEY: You bet — family!
CARTER: Yes, sir!
SIMPSON: You bet we’ll settle how it’s goin’ to be divided!
SALVATORE: Why, even, of course; just like it has been. Ain’t that the principle we struggled for all these years, comrades?
MRS. SIMPSON: Well, it’s not goin’ to be divided even no longer.
SALVATORE [violently]: Yes, it is!
SIMPSON AND CARTER [hotly]: It is not!
SALVATORE: You bet your life it is!
SHOMBERG: I’d sooner wring your neck, you sporty Dago!
SALVATORE: Now look here, comrade —
SHOMBERG: Comrade! Who you callin’ comrade? Don’t you comrade me!
MRS. SIMPSON: You dirty little Dago! You got no wife to support! Livin’ a bachelor life of the worst kind, you think you’ll draw down as much as my man does?
SALVATORE [fiercely]: Simpson, I don’t want to hit no lady, but if —
SIMPSON [roaring]: Just you try it!
MIFFLIN [rising in his place, still beaming, and tapping on the table with his fountain pen]: Gentlemen, gentlemen! This is all healthy! It’s a wholesome sign, and I like to see these little arguments. It shows you are thinking. But, of course, it has always been understood that in any such system of ideal brotherhood as we have here we, of course, cling to the equal distribution of all our labours. We —
SALVATORE [fiercely]: We? How do you git in this? Where do you git this we stuff?
FRANKEL: Yes; what you mean — we?
SALVATORE: You ain’t goin’ to edge in here. Your kind’s done that other places. Some soft-handed guy that never done a day’s work in his life but write and make speeches, works in and gits workingmen to elect him at the top and then runs ’em just the same as any capitalist.
MIFFLIN [mildly protesting]: Oh, but you mustn’t —
SALVATORE [sullenly]: That’s all right; I read the news from Russia!
MIFFLIN [firmly beaming]: But I was upholding your contention for an equal distribution.
SALVATORE [much surprised and mollified]: Oh, that’s all right then; I didn’t git you!
MIFFLIN: Right comrade! I’m always for the under dog.
SHOMBERG: Call him an under dog! He’s a loafer and don’t know a trade!
RILEY: He was gettin’ three and a half a day, and now he draws what I do!
MRS. SIMPSON [attacking RILEY fiercely]: Yes, and you’re gettin’ as much as my husband is, and your wife left you seven years ago and you livin’ on the fat of the land; Steinwitz’s pool parlour every night till all hours!
SHOMBERG [attacking her]: Yes, and you and your husband ain’t got no children; we got four. I’d like to know what right you got to draw down what we do — you with your limousine!
CARTER: What business you got to talk, Shomberg? When here’s me with my seven and the three of my married daughter — eleven in all, I got on my shoulders. Do you think you’re goin’ to draw down what I’d ought to?
ALL [shouting]: “Here! We got rights, ain’t we?” “Where’s the justice of it?” “I stand by my rights.” “Nobody’s goin’ to git ’em away from me.” “I bet I git my share.” “Oh, dry up!” “You make me laugh!” And so on.
RILEY [standing up and pounding the table, roaring till they are forced to listen]: You ain’t any of you got the rights of it! The rights of it is — Who does the most work gets the most money. Look at me on that truck!
CARTER [pounding on the table with a ruler]: You set down, Riley! The rights of it ain’t who does the most work; but I’m willin’ to leave it to who does the hardest work.
SIMPSON: No, sir! It’s who does the best work.
CARTER: There ain’t only three men in my department out there that ain’t soldiering on their job. I do twice as much skilled work as any man at this table, and I do it better. [Shouts of “Yes, you do!” “Rats!” “Shut up!”] I’ll leave it to Mr. Gibson; he knows good work if he don’t know nothing else.
[Shouts of “Leave it to nothing!” “How’d he get in this?” “You’re crazy!”]
CARTER [bawling]: Get back to business! We’re running a meeting here!
FRANKEL: For goodness’ sake, we ain’t getting nowhere!
SALVATORE: No, and you ain’t never goin’ to git nowhere long as you try to work big business and privilege on me! We got to keep it like Mr. Mifflin says; it’s a sacred brotherhood, everything divided equal. Let’s get to business and count that money.
FRANKEL: Well, for goodness’ sake, let’s get some system into this meeting!
RILEY: How you goin’ to get any system into it before you settle what’s going to be done about Frankel’s twenty-four shares?
CARTER: Twenty-four? He’s got twenty-six; he got two more yesterday!
MRS. SIMPSON: He’s got thirty-five; he got nine more this morning!
FRANKEL [hotly]: You bet I got thirty-five!
ALL: What! Thirty-five shares!
FRANKEL: Well, ain’t I got thirty-five men workin’ out there?
SIMPSON: How in thunder we goin’ to settle about him holdin’ all them shares?
SALVATORE: Are we goin’ to let him take all that money? Thirty-five —
FRANKEL [leaping up, electrified]: How d’you expect I’m goin’ to pay my men if I don’t get it? Are you goin’ to let me take them thirty-five shares’ profits? No, I guess you ain’t! You ain’t got no say about it! The money’s mine right now! I get it!
SIMPSON: I object!
RILEY [pounding the table]: Look at the ornery little devil! He took advantage of the poor workingmen’s trustfulness, got ’em in debt to him, then went and begun buying over their shares, so they had to leave the shop because he wouldn’t hire ’em to do their own work, but went and hired cheaper men. Listen to the trouble they make among us!
SIMPSON: It’s an undesirable element.
RILEY: He had no right to buy them workmen out in the first place.
SIMPSON: And on top of that we can’t git no work turned out because the fourteen skilled men he’s got in there have gone and started striking just like the unskilled and they tie up everything.
RILEY: I claim he hadn’t no right to buy them shares.
FRANKEL: I didn’t?
ALL [except SHOMBERG]: No, you didn’t!
FRANKEL [hotly at RILEY]: You look here. S’pose you needed money bad?
Ain’t you got a right to sell your share?
RILEY: Sure I have!
FRANKEL: What you talkin’ about, then? Ain’t I got a right to buy anything you got a right to sell?
RILEY: No, you ain’t, because I object to the whole system.
FRANKEL: You do! [Points to SHOMBERG.] Look there! Ask him what he says. He’s got four.
RILEY: I don’t care who’s got what! All I say is I object to the system, and this factory’ll git burned up if them wop workmen stay here jest because he holds them shares!
SIMPSON: You’re right about that, Riley!
SALVATORE: Why, you can’t hear yourself think out in the shops when you might be havin’ a quiet talk with a friend.
RILEY: When them wops gits to talkin’ strike it sounds more like a revolution to me!
SIMPSON: Why, they’re all inflamed up. They know what’s what, all right.
FRANKE
L: What do they know?
SALVATORE: They know you’re drawing down on them shares about five or six times the wages you pay ’em. What I claim is that extra money he makes ought to be divided amongst us.
[Emphatic approval from CARTER, SIMPSON, and RILEY. “Yes sir! You bet! That’s what!”]
FRANKEL: Just try it once!
SIMPSON: Them men ain’t workin’ for you, they’re workin’ for us. Ain’t we the original owners?
FRANKEL: Y-a-a-a-h!
RILEY [pounding the table]: That’s the stuff! We’re the original owners! Any money made on them wops’ wages is ours. We’ll tend to business with them!
[The noise outside has increased deafeningly; there is a loud hammering on the door, which is now flung open, and POLENSKI in patched overalls, a wrench in his hand, enters fiercely, slamming the door behind him. He begins an oration at the door.]
POLENSKI: Don’t we git a hearing? We got to take direct action in this rotten factory before we even get a word in. [Shouts from the committee: “Get out of here, you wop!” “You ain’t got no business here!” “This a committee meeting!”] Committee meeting, my nose! [Shakes his fist at FRANKEL.] Do you know what you’re up against? You’re up against the arm of labour! You monkey with labour a little more the way you have, and you’ll be glad if it’s only a little nitroglycerin that gits you. Hired us for two and a half, did you?
FRANKEL: My goodness, I rose you to three this morning!
POLENSKI: Yes; rose us to three! What do we care you rose us to four, to five, to six. Look what the rest you loafers here at this table is gittin’!
SALVATORE: Here, don’t you bring us in this!
POLENSKI [half screaming]: I won’t? Every one of you is in his class. [Points at FRANKEL.] You sit up here and call yourself a committee, dividin’ up the money and runnin’ this factory that belongs just as much to us men he hired as it does to you! It belongs to us more — because we’re the real workin’men! [Beats his chest.] My God! Don’t the toilers’ wrongs never git avenged? Are we always goin’ to be wage slaves? We demand simple justice. We been workin’ here two dollars and a half a day, now we want the wage scale abolished and double profits for each of us for every day we worked here before we found out what was goin’ on, with you sittin’ up here like kings in your robes, tellin’ the poor man he should have only two dollars and a half a day — sittin’ up here in your pomp with your feet on the neck of labour! [To CARTER]: You, in your fine broadcloth, ridin’ up and down the avenues in limousines with never a thought for the toiler! Don’t think for a minute we deal with this little vampire here. You’re all in the same boat, and the toiling masses will hold every single one of you just as responsible as it does him, you — you capitalists!
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 541
