CHAPTER IV
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE
The more I thought of Jackson's arm, the more shaken I was. I was
confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life.
My university life, and study and culture, had not been real. I
had learned nothing but theories of life and society that looked
all very well on the printed page, but now I had seen life itself.
Jackson's arm was a fact of life. "The fact, man, the irrefragable
fact!" of Ernest's was ringing in my consciousness.
It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based
upon blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from
him. Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the
Pole. He had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been
paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid. And I knew
a score of happy complacent families that had received those
dividends and by that much had profited by Jackson's blood. If one
man could be so monstrously treated and society move on its way
unheeding, might not many men be so monstrously treated? I
remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a
week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had
described. And I could see their wan white hands, from which the
blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had
been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the
dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon
my gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my
meditations led me back to him.
Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge
of a precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and
awful revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was
turning over. There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest
was beginning to have on him. And then there was the Bishop. When
I had last seen him he had looked a sick man. He was at high
nervous tension, and in his eyes there was unspeakable horror.
From the little I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his
promise of taking him through hell. But what scenes of hell the
Bishop's eyes had seen, I knew not, for he seemed too stunned to
speak about them.
Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the
world was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and
also I thought, "We were so happy and peaceful before he came!"
And the next moment I was aware that the thought was a treason
against truth, and Ernest rose before me transfigured, the apostle
of truth, with shining brows and the fearlessness of one of Gods
own angels, battling for the truth and the right, and battling for
the succor of the poor and lonely and oppressed. And then there
arose before me another figure, the Christ! He, too, had taken the
part of the lowly and oppressed, and against all the established
power of priest and pharisee. And I remembered his end upon the
cross, and my heart contracted with a pang as I thought of Ernest.
Was he, too, destined for a cross?--he, with his clarion call and
war-noted voice, and all the fine man's vigor of him!
And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting
with desire to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid,
harsh, and meagre life it must have been. And I thought of his
father, who had lied and stolen for him and been worked to death.
And he himself had gone into the mills when he was ten! All my
heart seemed bursting with desire to fold my arms around him, and
to rest his head on my breast--his head that must be weary with so
many thoughts; and to give him rest--just rest--and easement and
forgetfulness for a tender space.
I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I knew well and
had known well for many years. I trapped him behind large palms
and rubber plants, though he did not know he was trapped. He met
me with the conventional gayety and gallantry. He was ever a
graceful man, diplomatic, tactful, and considerate. And as for
appearance, he was the most distinguished-looking man in our
society. Beside him even the venerable head of the university
looked tawdry and small.
And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as the unlettered
mechanics. He was not a free agent. He, too, was bound upon the
wheel. I shall never forget the change in him when I mentioned
Jackson's case. His smiling good nature vanished like a ghost. A
sudden, frightful expression distorted his well-bred face. I felt
the same alarm that I had felt when James Smith broke out. But
Colonel Ingram did not curse. That was the slight difference that
was left between the workingman and him. He was famed as a wit,
but he had no wit now. And, unconsciously, this way and that he
glanced for avenues of escape. But he was trapped amid the palms
and rubber trees.
Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson's name. Why had I brought
the matter up? He did not relish my joke. It was poor taste on my
part, and very inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his
profession personal feelings did not count? He left his personal
feelings at home when he went down to the office. At the office he
had only professional feelings.
"Should Jackson have received damages?" I asked.
"Certainly," he answered. "That is, personally, I have a feeling
that he should. But that has nothing to do with the legal aspects
of the case."
He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.
"Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?" I asked.
"You have used the wrong initial consonant," he smiled in answer.
"Might?" I queried; and he nodded his head. "And yet we are
supposed to get justice by means of the law?"
"That is the paradox of it," he countered. "We do get justice."
"You are speaking professionally now, are you not?" I asked.
Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again he looked
anxiously about him for a way of escape. But I blocked his path
and did not offer to move.
"Tell me," I said, "when one surrenders his personal feelings to
his professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort
of spiritual mayhem?"
I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted,
overturning a palm in his flight.
Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, restrained,
dispassionate account of Jackson's case. I made no charges against
the men with whom I had talked, nor, for that matter, did I even
mention them. I gave the actual facts of the case, the long years
Jackson had worked in the mills, his effort to save the machinery
from damage and the consequent accident, and his own present
wretched and starving condition. The three local newspapers
rejected my communication, likewise did the two weeklies.
I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university,
had gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship
as reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers. He
smiled when I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all
mention of Jackson or his case.
"Editorial policy," he said. "We have nothing to do with that.
It's up to the editors."
"But why is it policy?" I asked.
"We're all solid with the corporations," he answered. "If you paid
advertising rates, you couldn't get any such matter into the
papers. A man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job. You
couldn't get it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising
rates."
"How about your own policy?" I questioned. "It would seem your
function is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who,
in turn, obey the behests of the corporations."
"I haven't anything to do with that." He looked uncomfortable for
the moment, then brightened as he saw his way out. "I, myself, do
not write untruthful things. I keep square all right with my own
conscience. Of course, there's lots that's repugnant in the course
of the day's work. But then, you see, that's all part of the day's
work," he wound up boyishly.
"Yet you expect to sit at an editor's desk some day and conduct a
policy."
"I'll be case-hardened by that time," was his reply.
"Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right
now about the general editorial policy."
"I don't think," he answered quickly. "One can't kick over the
ropes if he's going to succeed in journalism. I've learned that
much, at any rate."
And he nodded his young head sagely.
"But the right?" I persisted.
"You don't understand the game. Of course it's all right, because
it comes out all right, don't you see?"
"Delightfully vague," I murmured; but my heart was aching for the
youth of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst into
tears.
I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in
which I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that
were beneath. There seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and
I was aware of a thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer who had
ingloriously fought his case. But this tacit conspiracy grew
large. Not alone was it aimed against Jackson. It was aimed
against every workingman who was maimed in the mills. And if
against every man in the mills, why not against every man in all
the other mills and factories? In fact, was it not true of all the
industries?
And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank back from my
own conclusions. It was too terrible and awful to be true. But
there was Jackson, and Jackson's arm, and the blood that stained my
gown and dripped from my own roof-beams. And there were many
Jacksons--hundreds of them in the mills alone, as Jackson himself
had said. Jackson I could not escape.
I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most
of the stock in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as I
had shaken the mechanics in their employ. I discovered that they
had an ethic superior to that of the rest of society. It was what
I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master ethic.* They
talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and
right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my
youth and inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all I had
encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely that their
conduct was right. There was no question about it, no discussion.
They were convinced that they were the saviours of society, and
that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew
pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working
class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by
their wisdom, provided for it.
* Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, ON
LIBERTY, wrote: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large
portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its
class feelings of superiority."
Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my
experience. He looked at me with a pleased expression, and said:
"Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for
yourself. It is your own empirical generalization, and it is
correct. No man in the industrial machine is a free-will agent,
except the large capitalist, and he isn't, if you'll pardon the
Irishism.* You see, the masters are quite sure that they are right
in what they are doing. That is the crowning absurdity of the
whole situation. They are so tied by their human nature that they
can't do a thing unless they think it is right. They must have a
sanction for their acts.
* Verbal contradictions, called BULLS, were long an amiable
weakness of the ancient Irish.
"When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must
wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or
ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is
right. And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the
weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the
thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always
comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They
even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One
of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that
they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency.
Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of
the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the
divine right of kings--commercial kings in their case.*
* The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the president of
the Anthracite Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with the enunciation of
the following principle: "The rights and interests of the laboring
man will be protected by the Christian men to whom God in His
infinite wisdom has given the property interests of the country."
"The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely
business men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists
nor sociologists. If they were, of course all would be well. A
business man who was also a biologist and a sociologist would know,
approximately, the right thing to do for humanity. But, outside
the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only
business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set
themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and
all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an
excruciating laugh at their expense."
I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs. Wickson and
Mrs. Pertonwaithe. They were society women.* Their homes were
palaces. They had many homes scattered over the country, in the
mountains, on lakes, and by the sea. They were tended by armies of
servants, and their social activities were bewildering. They
patronized the university and the churches, and the pastors
especially bowed at their knees in meek subservience.** They were
powers, these two women, what of the money that was theirs. The
power of subsidization of thought was theirs to a remarkable
degree, as I was soon to learn under Ernest's tuition.
* SOCIETY is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage of the
times to denote the gilded drones that did no labor, but only
glutted themselves at the honey-vats of the workers. Neither the
business men nor the laborers had time or opportunity for SOCIETY.
SOCIETY was the creation of the idle rich who toiled not and who in
this way played.
** "Bring on your tainted money," was the expressed sentiment of
the Church during this period.
They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about
policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were
swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands--the ethic
of their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears
did not understand.
Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable
condition of Jackson's family, and when I wondered that they had
made no voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they
thanked no one for instructing them in their social duties. When I
asked them flatly to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The
astounding thing about it was that they refused in almost
identically the same language, and this in face of the fact that I
interviewed them separately and that one did not know that I had
seen or was going to see the other. Their common reply was that
they were glad of the opportunity to make it perfectly plain that
no premium would ever be put on carelessness by them; nor would
they, by paying for accident, tempt the poor to hurt themselves in
the machinery.*
* In the files of the OUTLOOK, a critical weekly of the period, in
the number dated August 18, 1906, is related the circumstance of a
workingman losing his arm, the details of which are quite similar
to those of Jackson's case as related by Avis Everhard.
And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with
conviction of the superiority of their class and of themselves.
They had a sanction, in their own class-ethic, for every act they
performed. As I drove away from Mrs. Pertonwaithe's great house, I
looked back at it, and I remembered Ernest's expression that they
were bound to the machine, but that they were so bound that they
sat on top of it.
