V
In the third month of the war, disturbing rumours began to run about
Leesville. Old Abel Granitch had taken on a contract with the
Belgian government, and the Empire Machine Shops were going to make
shells. Nothing appeared about this in the local papers, but
everybody claimed to have first-hand knowledge, and although no two
people told the same story, there must be some basis of truth in
them all. And then, one day, to Jimmie's consternation, he heard
from Lizzie that the agent of the landlord had called and served
notice that they had three days to vacate the premises. Old man
Granitch had bought the land, and the Shops were to build out that
way. Jimmie could hardly credit his ears, for he was six city blocks
from the nearest part of the Shops; but it was true, so everyone
declared; all that land had been bought up, and half a thousand
families, children and old people, and sick people, men on their
death-beds and women in child-birth--all had three days in which to
move themselves to new quarters.
Let anyone imagine the confusion, the babel of tongues, the women on
their porches calling to one another, asking and giving advice! The
denunciations and the scoldings and the threats to resort to law!
The raids upon landlords, and how the prices went up! Jimmie hurried
off to Comrade Meissner, who had bought a house and was paying
instalments on it; Meissner, being a Socialist, did not try to
fleece him, but was glad to have help in making his payments. There
were no partitions in the garret which Jimmie rented, but they would
hang curtains and make do somehow, and Lizzie would use Mrs.
Meissner's stove until they could get something fixed upstairs. And
then to the corner grocery, to borrow a hand-cart and get started at
moving the furniture; for to-morrow everybody would be moving, and
you would not be able to get anything on wheels for love or money.
Until after midnight Jimmie and Meissner worked at transporting
babies and bedding and saucepans and chairs and chicken-coops piled
on the hand-cart.
And next morning at the shop, more excitement! It was four years now
that Jimmie had been in the employ of old man Granitch, and in all
that time he had done but one thing; standing in a vast room amid a
confusion of whirling belts and wheels, a roar and screech and
grumble and whirl that completely annulled one of the five senses.
There came in front of him, mechanically propelled, a tray full of
small oblong blocks of steel, which he fed, one with each hand, into
two places in a machine; the machine took these blocks, and rounded
off one end, and ground the rest a little smaller, and put a thread
on it, and it dropped into a tray on the other side, a bolt. Because
Jimmie had to watch the machine, and keep the oil-cups full, his was
classed as semi-skilled labour, and was paid nineteen and a half
cents an hour. Some time ago an expert had studied the process, and
figured that with labour at that price it was one-eighth of a cent
per hour cheaper to have the work done by hand than to instal a
machine to do it; and so for four years Jimmie had his job, standing
on one spot from seven to twelve, and again from twelve-thirty to
six, and carrying home every Saturday night the sum of twelve
dollars and twenty-nine cents. You might have thought that the huge
machine-works would have made it twelve-thirty for good measure;
but if so, you do not understand large scale production.
And now, all of an instant and without warning, Jimmie's precisely
ordered and habitual world came to an end. He was at his post when
the whistle blew, but the machinery did not move. And presently came
the Irish foreman with the curt announcement that the machinery
would never move again, at least not on that spot; it was to be
cleared out of the way, and new machinery set up, and they were to
fall to forthwith with wrenches and hammers and crow-bars to make a
new world!
So for a week they did; and meantime, every night as he went home,
Jimmie saw people's homes being wrecked--roofs falling in clouds of
dust, and gangs of men loading the debris into huge motor-trucks.
Before long they had got acetylene torches, and were working all
night-gangs of labourers who lived in tents on vacant lots outside
the city and kept their canvas cots warm with double shifts of
sleepers. Jimmie Higgins realized the dreadful truth, that in spite
of all the agitation of Socialists, the war had actually come to
Leesville!
