The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  For a long time Tom Harrow and one or two other men like him had been trying to form a union among the men who worked in the Schmidt mills. At the first meeting in the Elks Hall, which had been held almost a year ago, only half a dozen had attended, and they had been frightened. But Tom persevered with British grimness. Tonight, more than two hundred men came.

  Tom was gratified and stimulated. He had a rolling gait, which was exaggerated when he was uplifted or excited. He would then set his shoulders doggedly, and look about him with friendly belligerence. When he stood upon the rough platform at the head of the hall, his Punch-and-Judy aspect was more marked than ever. His dark ugly face with its protruding and elongated jaw was alight with bawdy humor, but with deep underlying determination. The fact that he knew that over half his audience was only indifferently gifted with an understanding of English did not depress him. Shrewd and primitively subtle as he was, he knew that emotion is the language all men understand, and that voice and gesture and attitude can move or inflame any man to the complete satisfaction of the manipulator. He had never heard that an orator needs only emotion, but he knew it.

  A more sensitive man would have been afraid that his unprepossessing physical appearance would have acted in his disfavor with an audience, and being so preoccupied with his fears would have inspired hostility. For men are atavistic, and open fear, instead of arousing sympathy or compassion, merely inflames the instinctive desire of all men to kill. But Tom was never sensitive about his appearance, for he rarely thought about himself at all. He lived externally in all things, whether it was a particularly violent or beautiful day, or other men. He never felt himself an individual, distinct from other individuals. He was in them, and they were in him. Had he been twice as ugly, it would not have impressed him, for he never saw himself either objectively or subjectively. He was emotion, and part of all emotion. This sublime unconsciousness won him fascinated attention whenever he spoke or acted. For he seemed to others merely extensions of themselves.

  The hall was incredibly dirty, narrow, small and drab, and was rented out on numerous occasions to all sorts of activities, with a delightful impartiality. Its tall slits of windows were opaque with dust. The ceiling was unfinished, and the bare beams hung with banners of spider webs and fragments of gay paper festooning. The floor was unbelievably dirty and gritty from constant tobacco spittings and mud. Gas jets appeared along the filthy plastered walls, and their thin hissing yellow flames threw murky shadows over the seated rows of laborers who had come to hear Tom Harrow. They sat in their thick workclothes, for the hall was not heated, and their mingled breath made a visible steam in it. This steam seemed the smoking result of the foul odors in the hall, odors compounded of sweat, grime, unwashed bodies, alcohol, tobacco, and the constant presence of the acids used in the mills. Every man either smoked or chewed, and spat with impartiality.

  Tom stood on his platform, grinning. He looked down at the two hundred uneasy faces, dirty, stained, oxlike and brutish with privation and endless work. The stench did not disturb him, for he had no doubt that he stank likewise. He saw, not stolid and ignorant human beings, fit to arouse the contempt of thinking and more fastidious men, but creatures who suffered and were abused beyond endurance. They were his flesh, whether they were Magyar or Slav, German or American, white or black. From his body there poured out to them his own brotherhood and universality. They were not cattle. They were part of him and he was part of them. Nor did he feel any detachment or superiority. If he aroused them, it was because he himself was first aroused. He was full of angry compassion, for all his grin and his grotesque gestures. It was not that he was full of Messianic passion. He was merely boiling with an infuriated sense of outrage and injustice.

  He saw Franz sitting calmly by the side of Jan Kozak. Franz was puffing on his pipe; his arms were folded upon his breast. Nothing could have been more attentive or impersonal than his attitude. But for some reason Tom’s fury lost its usual objectivity, and strangely enough, became all the more powerful because of this.

  He stamped his feet, waved his arms, and shouted. The deep roar of men’s voices subsided. “If I’m bloody well goin’ to shout my lungs out at you, I want you barstards to listen!” he screamed. “If you don’t want to listen, you can come up here and talk, yourselves!” The voices sank into deep silence. “Now, then,” resumed Tom, glaring about him. “Shut your traps and listen to a better man.”

  Laughter shook the hall. Even those who had hardly understood a word chuckled with approval, knowing what he had said.

  Franz looked at the broad squat figure of his friend on the platform. He was somewhat surprised, and interested. In the yellowish and uncertain flare of the gaslights, Tom had taken on an appearance of resolute command and authority. Even while he grinned, as he was doing now, power, compact and aware, emanated from him. His ugly face and bent shoulders, his big arms swinging loosely at his sides, his thick short legs and massive chest, were arresting. The other men must have been impressed by this, for they looked at him in profound silence. Their dull faces begin to stir sluggishly, as though the submerged spirits had risen to the surface of calloused flesh.

  Tom spoke, not loudly, but in a penetrating voice: “Now then, is there a blasted mother’s son among you who knows why we’re ’ere?”

  The men murmured, and looked sheepishly at each other. Tom nodded grimly. “I see lots of faces as never came to meetin’s before. You must’ve ’ad a reason.” He pointed suddenly to some one in the audience. “You, Tomas. Why’d you come, eh?”

  The men tittered, as schoolboys titter when one of their number is singled out for the unpleasant attentions of a teacher. Tomas, a huge lumbering Slovak with a red face and dirty hands, turned an excessively sanguine tint. Tom’s voice prodded him to his feet, and he looked about him sheepishly, smirking. His companions roared their approval of his discomfiture, with all their childlike delight. He finally looked at Tom, with complete embarrassment.

  “I think you get us more money,” he mumbled, and sat down abruptly.

  Tom waited until the thunder of applause and laughter subsided. His face was grim and sardonic. He put his arms akimbo. He nodded vigorously.

  “So, you ‘think I get us more money,’” he mocked, with elaborate derision. “That’s all you mutton heads think of, eh? A few cents more an hour! Well, I might’ve known!”

  The men chuckled uncomfortably, but with bewilderment.

  Then Tom began to curse them, with mingled fury, compassion, understanding and tenderness, and even angry despair. A few cents more an hour! And suppose if by the grace of God they were able to get a few cents more: what then? A few coppers forced from “the bosses” would do no good. The hours and the working conditions would be the same. And if men all over America struck for a few more cents, then the cost of living would rise in proportion and all would be as it had been. Nothing would be gained.

  Franz listened, leaning forward tensely, surprised at this shrewd logic, his respect for his friend rising. Only a few men understood the words, and could ponder on them abstractly. But the vast majority felt the logic emotionally, and understood that their simple request would not get at the heart of the problem which so bedevilled them.

  “It is not the money, damn you!” shouted Tom, with obscene embellishments, and shaking both his fists furiously in the air. “It’s the whole bloody system which ’as got to be changed! The whole bloody idea of the bosses that us chaps that work for ’em is cattle and dogs and swine! With no human rights. Oh yes, they’ll throw us a few coppers extra to shut our mouths, if we yelp loud enough. But does that change anythin’? No! No! Will it change our hours, give us protection when we get nicked in their blasted mills? No! Will it protect us in lay-offs, and us with kids and wives as ’ave got to be fed and sheltered? Will it make the toffs realize that we’ve got human flesh, too, and we bleed like them when we get pinked? Will it make us men with men, arguin’ on a decent man-to-man basis? No! No, you stuffed pigs’ heads!”r />
  He beat his chest with both his fists and glared savagely at the silent listeners below him.

  “You got to get at the root of the stinkin' problem!” he shouted, with renewed passion. “The rotten thinkin’ of the bosses! Until we change that, we’ll get nowhere. And who’s to blame for all this blasted mess? The bosses? Well, a little. But it’s you men at the root of it—you who never thought of yourselves as men! And that’s what I’m here for, shoutin’ my lungs out at you—to make you think of yourselves as men.”

  The men listened, open-mouthed, in utter stupefaction. Then, one by one they looked at each other dumbly, like men awakening to an astounding truth. It is true, said each pair of simple peasant eyes—it is true, I never thought of myself as a man, with a man’s rights and a man’s desires. I was only a beast, working under the cracking of whips. But I am a man! The idea was so amazing, so profound, that they were filled with a passionate astonishment. Their own lives seemed to be laid out before them, from birth to death, a life in which they had never been men, but only laboring, suffering brutes, content if they were fed partially, content if they were allowed to live.

  “It is our world, too!” screamed Tom, literally dancing up and down the platform. “Who said it was just their world? They did, and you agreed with them! Now, it’s time for us to disagree. Is it going to be a struggle? Yes, a terrible struggle! But what in hell is worth anythin’, if you don’t struggle for it? What man got anythin’, without fightin’ for it? But ain’t it worth fightin’ for? Answer me, you chaps!”

  They roared out at him, not obediently, but with spontaneous and indignant agreement. They were still in the throes of their tremendous and revealing astonishment. Some rose to their feet, and looked about at their fellows, their faces flushed, their fists doubled. And Tom looked down at them, smiling in grim satisfaction, and nodding.

  Franz sat with folded arms. He looked only at Tom. A smooth sheath of flesh hid his thoughts. But he thought to himself: He is dangerous. Much more dangerous than the usual labor agitator.

  A vast and sudden exhilaration filled the hall. Men muttered and gasped, breathed heavily, shifted on their wooden chairs. The dim gaslight showed scores of flashing eyes and working faces. Manhood stirred at last, violently, under the flesh of patient beasts.

  Then one man shouted: “Mister, what we got to do?”

  The men roared their eager agreement, and they stared at Tom avidly.

  He smiled, satisfied. “We got to organize, first. Every last bloody mother’s son of us. Not one here and there. But all of us.”

  He spoke for a long time, but no one became restive or bored. They listened to him urgently. He told them of the Knights of Labor, of the great labor wars that were taking place in the mines and the mills in other cities. He told them of the frightful vengeance of the industrialists, and the detectives that clubbed and killed men and women and children. He told them of bought courts and oppressions and pitched battles in open streets. He told them of children working in factories and mills.

  “We’re wakin’ up!” he screamed. “All over America, we’re wakin’ up! Not altogether, not in a body, but in groups. America, that was meant for all men, as was built for all men, got in the hands of the bosses, who said it was meant just for them! And we was just created by Almighty God to help them get the fat of the land. ‘No!’ we say. ‘We wasn’t. We was created for ourselves, too. We was created to get some happiness out of livin’. We’ll do our job and our duty. But we are men, too. The earth is ours, too. We want our rights.’” He paused, looked down at them with his black and glittering eyes. He smiled, and there was something terrible in his smile. “‘Give us our rights, as men,’ we say. ‘For, if you don’t, we’ll take ’em. And you won’t like what we’ll do when we take ’em.’”

  Franz and Tom walked home together. The night had cleared. Frost hung in the air, and the stars, above the drab rooftops, were clear and sharp.

  “Well, I’ve done a good night’s work,” chuckled Tom, at last.

  Franz said, with curiosity: “And you, Tom, what are you going to get out of all this?”

  Tom looked at him with astonishment. “What am I goin’ to get?”

  Franz shrugged. “Come, now. You know what I mean. You’ve got a good tongue, Tom. You can do things with men. You know all this. What do you want?”

  Tom stopped in the middle of the street. His homely face had paled, but his eyes sparkled dangerously at his friend. He spoke in a low voice:

  “What d’ye think I’m after?”

  Franz smiled frankly, though he was annoyed and uncomfortable.

  “Oh, don’t strike attitudes with me, Tom! You’ve got the beginning of a strong union, now, among the men, and it will get stronger, if nothing stops it. If nothing happens to you.” He paused. “Tom, I know that no man does anything out of real altruism. I’ve lived long enough to know that. So, in your own words, I ask you: ‘What are you after?’”

  Tom was silent. He stared piercingly at his friend. His pale face became gray. But his eyes were pinpoints of concentration. He licked his lips. Moments passed, as they stood under a street lamp, looking at each other.

  Then an expression of quiet savagery came over Tom’s features. He took Franz’s arm, and they resumed their walking. They did not speak. They came to Tom’s house, and halted again. Then Tom looked at Franz, and there was a deadly gleam in his eyes.

  “You’ll keep your mouth shut,” he said, and his words were not a question.

  Franz nodded, smiling as though with amusement. He went on his way, alone. Tom watched him until he was out of sight. His heart was thudding wearily, and painfully.

  “I should never have took him there,” he thought. “A chap like that—he’ll never understand.”

  In all his turbulent and precarious life, Tom had never experienced fear. Now he knew it, acrid and sick on his tongue. He did not fully understand what he feared. But depression lay heavily on him when he unlocked his door and entered his house.

  Dolly was waiting for him. As usual, a kettle steamed, in anticipation, on the fire. “A cup of tea, lass!” cried Tom, kissing her. “God, I could do with a cup of tea, tonight!”

  CHAPTER 18

  Irmgard drew back the heavy draperies across the window of Mrs. Schmidt’s bedroom, and looked out at the clear colorless December day. The rains had washed the sky and the earth, fading them but clarifying them also. But she did not see the long quiet street beneath her, nor the dun lawns and stark empty trees. She saw the hills and fields of her home, sleeping under a pale autumn sun. Her eyes dimmed with nostalgia; the hand on the draperies tightened as on an unbearable pang. She had been in America for eight weeks, and this was the first time that homesickness and grief had been allowed to race over her in dark waves. Expecting little of life, she had endured existence calmly. Never had she hoped for much, nor expected radiance at the next dawn. Consequently, her life had been filled with a monotonous peace, a sort of lofty and indifferent serenity. If pleasure had come—a beautiful day with the grass knee-high, and dusty, and humming with insects, or hot coffee on a cold night, or spring woods full of white spectral shadows and the scent of wet earth—then she had accepted it with a sudden faint thrilling of the heart which still could not disturb the deep unexpectant placidity beneath. If there was something static and lifeless, something without youth or joy, in all this, there had also been few shocks, few assaults on the spirit, and little sorrow.

  Even when her father had died, she had not felt this sudden disintegration of self-control, this sudden torture that ran through her heart like a thin knife. Her cool mind was frightened at this, as at the betrayal of an ally. Once before, she had felt something keen and devastating and destructive in her flesh and her spirit, and that had been on the night when Franz had come to her room. She had been able to regain self-control almost immediately afterwards, but the wound quivered and ached for days afterwards. Then the pain had almost gone, to be renewed by nostalgia.


  Mingled with her acute suffering was mortification, and fear. Her hand tightened on the draperies still more. Her body felt alternately cold and hot, as though it had been attacked by some physical illness. She gritted her teeth and her young smooth face became like carved stone.

  Mrs. Schmidt stirred in the depths of her pillows, and half lifted her haggard head, with the gray-streaked dark hair dangling against her gaunt cheeks. She blinked her eyes in the wan bright light of the morning.

  “What is the weather, Irmgard?” she asked, in her faint peevish voice.

  “Very nice, Madam,” replied Irmgard. The girl drew a deep breath, and turned with dignity from the window. “Perhaps we can ride today.” She approached the bed, tall, serene, composed, her golden hair in braids about her head. Mrs. Schmidt watched her come, gratefully. Strength came to her from the touch of Irmgard’s hands, peace with her slow reluctant smile, calm from her gentleness and placidity. Irmgard was able to make the stoniest pillow soft, and to ease the most vague, persistent pain in thin shriveled limbs.

  “I do not think I am well enough to drive today,” said Mrs. Schmidt, closing her eyes restfully while Irmgard brushed and braided her hair. Irmgard smiled slightly. She was accustomed to these complaints, and had learned not to heed them very much.

  “Perhaps you will feel better after your coffee,” she said, softly. She brought a bowl of warm water and a linen towel, and proceeded to wash the sick face and hands. “It is so beautiful a day. A drive will do you much good.”

  “I am sure I am not well enough,” sighed Mrs. Schmidt.

  “You did not sleep well?”

  “Very poorly,” replied Mrs. Schmidt, sighing again. Irmgard knew this was not true. She had given her mistress her hot milk the night before, and had slipped into her room several times in the darkness. Mrs. Schmidt had been sleeping like the proverbial baby. “Such dreams!” exclaimed the invalid, with a shiver.