CHAPTER VI
ADUMBRATIONS
It was about this time that the warnings of coming events began to
fall about us thick and fast. Ernest had already questioned
father's policy of having socialists and labor leaders at his
house, and of openly attending socialist meetings; and father had
only laughed at him for his pains. As for myself, I was learning
much from this contact with the working-class leaders and thinkers.
I was seeing the other side of the shield. I was delighted with
the unselfishness and high idealism I encountered, though I was
appalled by the vast philosophic and scientific literature of
socialism that was opened up to me. I was learning fast, but I
learned not fast enough to realize then the peril of our position.
There were warnings, but I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs.
Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power in
the university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that I
was a too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous
penchant for officiousness and interference in other persons'
affairs. This I thought no more than natural, considering the part
I had played in investigating the case of Jackson's arm. But the
effect of such a sentiment, enunciated by two such powerful social
arbiters, I underestimated.
True, I noticed a certain aloofness on the part of my general
friends, but this I ascribed to the disapproval that was prevalent
in my circles of my intended marriage with Ernest. It was not till
some time afterward that Ernest pointed out to me clearly that this
general attitude of my class was something more than spontaneous,
that behind it were the hidden springs of an organized conduct.
"You have given shelter to an enemy of your class," he said. "And
not alone shelter, for you have given your love, yourself. This is
treason to your class. Think not that you will escape being
penalized."
But it was before this that father returned one afternoon. Ernest
was with me, and we could see that father was angry--
philosophically angry. He was rarely really angry; but a certain
measure of controlled anger he allowed himself. He called it a
tonic. And we could see that he was tonic-angry when he entered
the room.
"What do you think?" he demanded. "I had luncheon with Wilcox."
Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university, whose
withered mind was stored with generalizations that were young in
1870, and which he had since failed to revise.
"I was invited," father announced. "I was sent for."
He paused, and we waited.
"Oh, it was done very nicely, I'll allow; but I was reprimanded.
I! And by that old fossil!"
"I'll wager I know what you were reprimanded for," Ernest said.
"Not in three guesses," father laughed.
"One guess will do," Ernest retorted. "And it won't be a guess.
It will be a deduction. You were reprimanded for your private
life."
"The very thing!" father cried. "How did you guess?"
"I knew it was coming. I warned you before about it."
"Yes, you did," father meditated. "But I couldn't believe it. At
any rate, it is only so much more clinching evidence for my book."
"It is nothing to what will come," Ernest went on, "if you persist
in your policy of having these socialists and radicals of all sorts
at your house, myself included."
"Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted things! He
said it was in poor taste, utterly profitless, anyway, and not in
harmony with university traditions and policy. He said much more
of the same vague sort, and I couldn't pin him down to anything
specific. I made it pretty awkward for him, and he could only go
on repeating himself and telling me how much he honored me, and all
the world honored me, as a scientist. It wasn't an agreeable task
for him. I could see he didn't like it."
"He was not a free agent," Ernest said. "The leg-bar* is not
always worn graciously."
* LEG-BAR--the African slaves were so manacled; also criminals. It
was not until the coming of the Brotherhood of Man that the leg-bar
passed out of use.
"Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the university needed
ever so much more money this year than the state was willing to
furnish; and that it must come from wealthy personages who could
not but be offended by the swerving of the university from its high
ideal of the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence. When
I tried to pin him down to what my home life had to do with
swerving the university from its high ideal, he offered me a two
years' vacation, on full pay, in Europe, for recreation and
research. Of course I couldn't accept it under the circumstances."
"It would have been far better if you had," Ernest said gravely.
"It was a bribe," father protested; and Ernest nodded.
"Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and so
forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious a
character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university
tone and dignity. Not that he personally objected--oh, no; but
that there was talk and that I would understand."
Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said,
and his face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in it:
"There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody
has put pressure on President Wilcox."
"Do you think so?" father asked, and his face showed that he was
interested rather than frightened.
"I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming
in my own mind," Ernest said. "Never in the history of the world
was society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift
changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes
in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and
fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of
society. One can only dimly feel these things. But they are in
the air, now, to-day. One can feel the loom of them--things vast,
vague, and terrible. My mind recoils from contemplation of what
they may crystallize into. You heard Wickson talk the other night.
Behind what he said were the same nameless, formless things that I
feel. He spoke out of a superconscious apprehension of them."
"You mean . . . ?" father began, then paused.
"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing
that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the
shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare
approximate it. What its nature may be I refuse to imagine.* But
what I wanted to say was this: You are in a perilous position--a
peril that my own fear enhances because I am not able even to
measure it. Take my advice and accept the vacation."
* Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it,
there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the
shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has risen up in the
government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many
and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and
held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the
banks." And that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just
before his assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis
approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the
safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an
era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power
of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon
the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a
few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
"But it would be cowardly," was the protest.
"Not at all. You are an old man. You have done your work in the
world, and a great work. Leave the present battle to youth and
strength. We young fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will
stand by my side in what is to come. She will be your
representative in the battle-front."
"But they can't hurt me," father objected. "Thank God I am
independent. Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution
they can wage on a professor who is economically dependent on his
university. But I am independent. I have not been a professor for
the sake of my salary. I can get along very comfortably on my own
income, and the salary is all they can take away from me."
"But you do not realize," Ernest answered. "If all that I fear be
so, your private income, your principal itself, can be taken from
you just as easily as your salary."
Father was silent for a few minutes. He was thinking deeply, and I
could see the lines of decision forming in his face. At last he
spoke.
"I shall not take the vacation." He paused again. "I shall go on
with my book.* You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or
right, I shall stand by my guns."
* This book, "Economics and Education," was published in that year.
Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and one at Asgard. It
dealt, in elaborate detail, with one factor in the persistence of
the established, namely, the capitalistic bias of the universities
and common schools. It was a logical and crushing indictment of
the whole system of education that developed in the minds of the
students only such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic
regime, to the exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and
subversive. The book created a furor, and was promptly suppressed
by the Oligarchy.
"All right," Ernest said. "You are travelling the same path that
Bishop Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up. You'll both be
proletarians before you're done with it."
The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to
explain what he had been doing with him.
"He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him. I
took him through the homes of a few of our factory workers. I
showed him the human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine,
and he listened to their life stories. I took him through the
slums of San Francisco, and in drunkenness, prostitution, and
criminality he learned a deeper cause than innate depravity. He is
very sick, and, worse than that, he has got out of hand. He is too
ethical. He has been too severely touched. And, as usual, he is
unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of ethical
delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured. He feels
it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the
Church and to deliver its message to the masters. He is
overwrought. Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then
there's going to be a smash-up. What form it will take I can't
even guess. He is a pure, exalted soul, but he is so unpractical.
He's beyond me. I can't keep his feet on the earth. And through
the air he is rushing on to his Gethsemane. And after this his
crucifixion. Such high souls are made for crucifixion."
"And you?" I asked; and beneath my smile was the seriousness of the
anxiety of love.
"Not I," he laughed back. "I may be executed, or assassinated, but
I shall never be crucified. I am planted too solidly and stolidly
upon the earth."
"But why should you bring about the crucifixion of the Bishop?" I
asked. "You will not deny that you are the cause of it."
"Why should I leave one comfortable soul in comfort when there are
millions in travail and misery?" he demanded back.
"Then why did you advise father to accept the vacation?"
"Because I am not a pure, exalted soul," was the answer. "Because
I am solid and stolid and selfish. Because I love you and, like
Ruth of old, thy people are my people. As for the Bishop, he has
no daughter. Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless
his little inadequate wail will be productive of some good in the
revolution, and every little bit counts."
I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the noble nature of
Bishop Morehouse, and I could not conceive that his voice raised
for righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate wail.
But I did not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers' ends
as Ernest had. He saw clearly the futility of the Bishop's great
soul, as coming events were soon to show as clearly to me.
It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story,
the offer he had received from the government, namely, an
appointment as United States Commissioner of Labor. I was
overjoyed. The salary was comparatively large, and would make safe
our marriage. And then it surely was congenial work for Ernest,
and, furthermore, my jealous pride in him made me hail the
proffered appointment as a recognition of his abilities.
Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.
"You are not going to . . . to decline?" I quavered.
"It is a bribe," he said. "Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson,
and behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old
trick, old as the class struggle is old--stealing the captains from
the army of labor. Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how many
of its leaders have been bought out in similar ways in the past.
It is cheaper, so much cheaper, to buy a general than to fight him
and his whole army. There was--but I'll not call any names. I'm
bitter enough over it as it is. Dear heart, I am a captain of
labor. I could not sell out. If for no other reason, the memory
of my poor old father and the way he was worked to death would
prevent."
The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He
never could forgive the way his father had been malformed--the
sordid lies and the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order
to put food in his children's mouths.
"My father was a good man," Ernest once said to me. "The soul of
him was good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted by
the savagery of his life. He was made into a broken-down beast by
his masters, the arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your
father. He had a strong constitution. But he was caught in the
machine and worked to death--for profit. Think of it. For profit-
-his life blood transmuted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled
gewgaw, or some similar sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich,
his masters, the arch-beasts."
