The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Look at America. A new country, sworn to liberty and opportunity. Are the toffs lyin’ quiet? Like hell they are! They’ll never lie quiet until we put them under the ground, every generation, or shut their mouths. America was a land of independent chaps, until now. Now the toffs are beginnin’ their dirty work again. There’s big cities here now, and factories and mills, good forcin’ ground for slavery. America’s got to fight, every damn last one of us. Each fight we lose makes the next harder. Each time the toffs, as ’ates the people, get stronger. If America’s got to be saved for the American people, it’s got to win all the fights! As plain as the nose on your damned face, Fritzie!”

  Franz smiled involuntarily. He knew that Tom had been speaking the most grave and passionate truth.

  “Look here, Tom, let me speak for a moment. How do the ‘toffs,’ as you call them, get so strong? Because they happen to be born superior, and stronger. It’s still the same old story of the race to the swift and the battle to the strong—”

  Tom exploded into a string of obscenity. He was almost beside himself. “The race to the swift!” he shouted. “The people is the strongest, not the toffs! But the people are peacelovin’, and slow, and they believe lies, because they’re simple and hate rows. The instinct of the people is always good, and ye’re a fool if you don’t know it! But they get lied to, and cheated, and the toffs hire the bloody vicars to help ’em. ‘Be meek,’ say the vicars, noddin’ their silly heads. ‘Be longsufferin’. Your reward ain’t here. It’s in heaven. Suffer all things,’ they says. It’s a God-damned lie!” he shouted, with greater violence. “God didn’t make men to suffer! He didn’t make the earth for just a few! He made it for everybody, and there’s enough on this earth to feed every man, and keep him sheltered. It’s just the bloody toffs who want the whole cursed world! A world of slaves, to keep their beds soft and supplied with strumpets and whores, and their tables full of wines and rich food. Why? Because they hate the people. They know the people make laws to keep the toffs under control. So, they hate laws. They want to make the laws, so the people’ll have nothin’ to say, and keep their blasted heads down!”

  His face was running with sweat. He shook his fists again. “They even try to get God Almighty to help ’em, the bloody pigs! They get the Church to wave the Cross at the people, tellin’ them to be obedient to their masters! But they keep forgettin’ that Jesus was a Man of the people, and hated the toffs. He was a chap as knew what the toffs was, that One! Jesus Christ, there’s nothin’ as they won’t do, to keep the people down, the filthy pigs! Nothin they won’t betray or bury. But the instinct of the people is always right, when they stop to think. It’s the people as fights the fight for freedom, when they understand!”

  Franz spoke reasonably and gently. “Look here, Tom, I want to tell you about myself. My people were poor in Germany. But I saw very clearly that the people deserve their own condition. A few of them can battle their way up out of the mob, and rise to the top. If the others don’t they deserve what they suffer. They haven’t the intelligence to rise.”

  “No!” exclaimed Tom, with increasing passion. “It’s because they’ve been lied to, and they believe anythin’. They’ve been kept in ignorance. Let them see, and you’ll see then how fast they’ll rise! But you’ve got to show ’em. Ye’ve got to show ’em that when the toffs call ’em syndicalists and anarchists, they’re just thinkin’ of themselves.”

  Franz did not speak, but only smiled and shook his head.

  Tom, exhausted, sat down near him, and wiped his face with his bare arms and wrists. He was panting a little. But the look of pale resolution was harder and grimmer on his face.

  “That’s why I’m callin’ this strike. Look how the men’ve been starvin’. Livin’ like rats. We’ve got to win this fight. It’s only one skirmish in the Big Battle as is bein’ fought all over the world, and will always be fought.”

  He turned suddenly to Franz, and said: “Ye’re with us, Fritzie?” His eyes bored into the other’s, with a cold and warning menace.

  Franz shrugged. He stood up. “I gave my promise to you some time ago. If you are bent on this strike, I can do nothing to stop you, I suppose. You are the leader.”

  But he did not look at Tom Harrow. He thought to himself: He has spoken the truth. I know it is the truth. That is why he must be stopped, no matter what it costs. We dare not let men like him open the people’s eyes. His kind must be silenced all over the world. And all his liking for his friend was consumed in his hatred and fear.

  Later, when he thought he was unobserved, he stole swiftly into the Superintendent’s office and remained there over an hour.

  CHAPTER 27

  It seemed to Franz that the murky lights in the hall were unbearably dazzling. But he knew this was his imagination. He knew it was some feverish blaze in himself which made Tom Harrow’s long dark ugly face gleam and shimmer before him, as the Englishman stood on the platform and spoke to the assembled laborers below the platform. The hall was cold and damp, but thin threads of moisture ran down Franz’s back, and there was a dull throbbing ache in his head.

  A large burly man sat at Franz’s right. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth to the younger man: “So, that’s him, eh? Noisy bastard, ain’t he? Well, we’ll cook his goose, proper.”

  Franz answered, without turning his head: “Remember now, no roughness. That is agreed. You and Collins are just to knock him down and haul him off to the police-station. That was agreed, remember? He must not be hurt. Then, tomorrow, when the men come to the mills, prepared to strike, they will find their leader gone.”

  The burly man nodded. He smirked a little, flexed his beefy fists.

  “That’s our orders. We know ’em. A drunken fight, like. When he gets out, the men’ll have cooled off, eh? You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Franz turned his head then, casually, and looked at the other with his cold and merciless blue eyes. Before that look, the other winced a little.

  “If you or Collins really hurt him, outside of mussing him up enough to book him for drunkenness, I’ll attend to you, myself. You understand that? Please?”

  John Brent nodded solemnly. His pale eye fixed itself on Tom Harrow with a malevolent expression. But the malevolence was for Franz, the “bohunk.” Things had come to a pretty state when a foreigner like this could give orders, and look at a “real” American as though he was dirt.

  Nearby sat Jan Kozak, almost directly behind Franz Stoessel. Franz had looked for the big Hungarian, but had not found him. Jan had entered late, and had taken his seat quietly. Franz, having failed to see him before, concluded that he had not come. For some reason, profound relief invaded him. But Jan had seen him. He leaned forward, to whisper some question to his “friend,” but at that moment the stranger next to Franz leaned sideways and said: “How d’ye know he’ll go along with you? He might change his mind.”

  “We always walk home together, after a meeting. Just follow us a little distance, until we come to a quiet place. When I think it safe, I’ll drop my handkerchief. Then you can close in.”

  Jan Kozak caught the words, understood most of them, though they were said in a low voice, under cover of Tom Harrow’s shouting, and the heavy breathing of the men. For Jan, accustomed to the roaring of the mills, had developed an acute “short” hearing for voices close to him. But his mind was slow. He decided not to speak to Franz just then, wondering stolidly about the identity of the stranger, whom he had never seen before. It was a full five minutes before that slow peasant mind, still dimly echoing with the puzzling words it had heard, came suddenly awake, and alert.

  The big Hungarian sat up on his hard wooden seat, exhaling noisly, glaring at the back of Franz’s large yellow head. His fists clenched on his knees. His teeth gleamed wolfishly between his hairy lips. He heard nothing more of what Tom Harrow was saying. All his peasant concentration was fixed on Franz, and a frightful look began to glitter in his eyes. He crouched there, like a huge
beast waiting to spring. He listened with savage attention. But Franz did not speak to the stranger again. Once Jan lifted his fists and poised them a moment over the other’s serenely unaware head as if to crush it. Then he dropped his fists on his knees, and held them there, like weapons, waiting.

  The slow but violent thoughts curled like smoke through the chambers of his mind. He breathed laboriously as he identified each one, until all his huge body was a seething living mass of hatred and murder. Terrible surprise flashed through him, like lightning. The enemy had been beside him for years, and he had given the enemy his secret. The enemy had been a friend of Tom Harrow, and was now plotting to destroy him. Jan was astounded. His mouth opened, and he gaped stupidly. He moved his head on his bull-like neck, as though strangling. His astonishment increased, as though he had seen something fabulous within the flesh of a familiar form. He was lost in the profound wonderment of his peasant simplicity.

  The ponderous but killing wrath of the simple man began to rise in him, not swiftly, but like the slow piling of stones, each settling heavily into place before the next was added. He could hear the dull building in his mind, the inexorable rising. And then he mounted the wall he had built, and looked down at it upon Franz Stoessel. Franz, happily, did not know that death sat behind him, waiting.

  Franz, years later, remembered, with smiling amusement, how he had sat and sweated that night, repeating desperately, over and over to himself, a sort of incantation: “When a man has decided upon a course, nothing but death should be allowed to halt him. No natural hesitations, no weaknesses, no human considerations, are to be permitted. One moment’s faltering can set up a fatal habit of a lifetime of faltering. The first step is often the last.” He smiled, in those later years, at a weaker and younger Franz, who could still be touched by human considerations and softer pangs. Only an old and a successful man could permit himself, with safety, to indulge in gestures of generosity and kindness and conscience. For, by then, his position was impregnable, and it did not matter that the gestures had no heart behind them, but only calculation for effect. Once the heart was involved, the man was lost.

  As he sat there that night, willing himself to strength and coldness, he heard nothing of Tom’s opening words and shouts. Everything blurred before him, became nothing but a vague background against which he struggled with the colossal and unmanned forces which emerged from himself in a last desperate strife. Finally, exhausted, purged of all emotion and pain, he came to the surface of reality and listened.

  Tom’s dark face was transfigured. His eyes flashed and sparkled, as he gestured furiously, and marched back and forth on the resounding wooden platform on which he stood. Sometimes he squatted on his haunches, to rise, to throw up his clenched fists. Sometimes his voice dropped to a murmur, became almost inaudible, thereafter to mount swiftly to a peak of passion and exhortation. The men listened, not moving, mouths open, breathing heavily. He was like a wind that moved them in waves by its own force, swaying them backwards and forwards.

  “Men!” he shouted, shaking his fists, impelling his audience with his eyes, his voice, his burning dark face, his hands. “It’s Us or Them! Always, it’s been Us or Them! There’s never been anything else in all the world, from the time that there’s been more than one blasted chap on the face of the earth! Always there’s been the eater, and the one that’s been eaten! Always, there’s been the tiger in one man, and the lamb in the other. That’s the God’s truth. You can read it in the Bible, for yerselves. But, are we goin’ to stand by and let all the lambs, as wants peace and a little grub, to be eaten by the tigers? No! By God, no! I’m a one as believes the lambs ’as as good a right to live as the tigers. And a better right, too. Jesus Christ was a lamb, but he made the tigers run. For a little while, anyway.”

  He paused. His words were crude, and without the eloquence of polished orators. But what they lacked in eloquence, they gained in passion, solemnity and sincere feelings. He panted a little. The men looked at him, and waited, their faces dark and flushed with anger and understanding.

  He began to speak again, and now his voice rose almost savagely, and with a wild inspiration.

  “You chaps think this is just a strike, for a little more money, for a little better right to live in peace and comfort, with your women and your babbies. But it’s not! By God, it’s not! It’s more than a strike. Every strike is more than just this. It’s a blow and a fight for human rights, everywhere in the world, wherever there’s a man alive, whether it’s in black Russia, or Poland, or Germany, or France, or China, or England or America. Everywhere a strike is lost, even if it’s just in this town, men everywhere have lost that much right to live. Everywhere a strike is won, the black man and the yellow man, the red man and the white man, have won one more fight against Them! Against the tigers.

  “Remember, when you go out tomorrow, you don’t just go out for your bloody selves. You go out for all chaps, everywhere. Think of it! You are involved in a world-struggle, for men that breathe everywhere! Not just for a few more pennies, to buy yourselves a little more beer, or more bread for your kids. But for your brothers in every corner of the whole blasted world!”

  Incredible, ridiculous, mad words! Mystic words spoken to cattle, who could not possibly understand. This fool was exhorting dull beasts to take up the bright sword of a transcendental mission, to gird themselves for a holy Crusade, full of mysticism, myths and glory! Franz smiled deeply in himself. This fool, Harrow, believed that canaille had souls and comprehension beyond their bellies and their lusts and their brutishness. He thought he could make them see beyond their animal-flesh and their feeble appetites. He thought he could make men of dogs, and angels of oxen. He no longer seemed dangerous to Franz. Men who were dangerous were men who could speak to swine in their own language. He had now spoken beyond their understanding and their desires, and so, he had lost them. He was no longer to be feared.

  Franz, still smiling contemptuously, looked about him at the faces of the listening peasants and laborers. Then, he was filled with a furious astonishment and disbelief. He looked at those dull faces and small expressionless eyes, and saw a terrible dawning comprehension and vision. It was like seeing crude images of stone, unfinished and uncouth and without humanity, suddenly awakening to flesh and passion and exaltation, slowly, to be sure, but surely awakening.

  The men were utterly silent, not shuffling their feet, hardly breathing. But the dull and heavy faces had a strange and exalted light upon them, the shadow of an inner and passionate vision, beyond self—most strangely beyond self. Each simple peasant seemed suddenly in communication with a mysterious power, and touched with a mysterious fire. Every eye was an individual pool of light, wide and glistening. The thick and calloused flesh trembled with a selfless radiance. The stolid cattle saw a vision rising over the dark hills of their formless lives, and for the first time they saw beyond themselves to a world of all men, all brothers, all creation. They were part of this world. What they did and thought was of the most vital and momentous importance to it. It gave them a trembling and vehement sense of universal brotherhood, of deep love, of mission, of grandeur, of significance. It was incredible that these simple and illiterate men, involved in the deep subterranean preoccupation of beastlike individualism, could stand up as living souls and understand the vision.

  So might the poor, illiterate peasants and shepherds have listened to the Sermon on the Mount, to the Man who spoke on the shores of Galilee. Like them, these beasts and cattle were aroused to love and passionate importance and sacrifice. They lost themselves, but in doing so, they gained the world. The vague and unformed souls took stature upon themselves, the stature of men, with the light of heroism transforming thick flesh and heavy hands to the very substance of the angels.

  Tom Harrow felt, without analysis, without cold logic, that man must lose himself in the flood of all men, if he would be strong and invincible, if he would become fully a man. And he knew that even the most brutish beast could be aroused
to this understanding, that he could be made to comprehend that everything he did affected men everywhere. In that individual sense of importance there was no selfishness, but only love and strength and grandeur.

  So, this uncouth Englishman had aroused his brotherbeasts to fanaticism and stern self-sacrifice. Ah, he was more dangerous than Franz had suspected! Such men were a danger to a ruthless world, set on exploitation and inexorable self-gain. He was a danger to the tigers everywhere, the tigers who had a right to devour and destroy and rend, for very reason of their tigerhood. He was the mouthpiece of the lambs, who were born only to feed the strong. He was the fool who had set out, in his puny strength, to upset the very laws of nature, to reverse the race, to undo the battle.

  Franz was still incredulous, but filled with a gathering and infuriated anger. He felt himself threatened, menaced, ambushed.

  Tom was still speaking. His audience was breathless, moved, stired. Franz saw clenched fists and shining eyes and exalted smiles. He was almost weeping, and feeling his emotion, they wept with him.

  “So remember, lads, that tomorrow it’s just the old fight between Us and Them. Between men and the tigers. We’ll win! We’ll win if we want to win! Nothin’ is goin’ to stop us but ourselves.”

  Franz touched the sleeve of the burly man. “It’s over,” he said. “You know what you have to do.” And he looked at Tom Harrow with the eyes of a relentless and savage enemy, an enemy who felt himself assailed and mortally threatened.