CHAPTER IV
JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH
I
It was some time before Jimmie understood the nature of the new
machinery he was helping to set up. It was nobody's business to
explain, for he was only a pair of hands and a strong back; he was
not supposed to be a brain--while as for a soul or a conscience,
nobody was supposed to be that. Russian agents had come to Leesville
with seventeen millions of the money which the Paris bankers had put
up; and so overnight whole blocks of homes were swept out of
existence, and a huge new steel structure was rising, and on the
spot where for four years Jimmie had made certain motions of the
hands, they were preparing to manufacture new machinery for the
quantity production of shell-casings.
When Jimmie had definitely learned what was in process, he was
brought face to face with a grave moral problem. Could he, as an
international Socialist, spend his time making shells to kill his
German comrades? Could he spend his time making the machinery to
make the shells? Would he take the bribe of old man Granitch, a
working man's share of the hideous loot--an increase of four cents
an hour, with the prospect of another four when the works got
started? Jimmie had to meet this issue, just when it happened that
one of his babies was sick, and he was cudgelling his head to think
how he could ever squeeze out of his scanty wage the money to pay
the doctor!
The answer was easy to Comrade Schneider, the stout and sturdy
brewer, who stood up in the local and spoke with bitter scorn of
those Socialists who stayed on in the pay of that old hell-devil,
Granitch. Schneider wanted a strike in the Empire Machine Shops, and
he wanted it that very night! But then rose Comrade Mabel Smith,
whose brother was a bookkeeper for the concern. It was all very well
for Schneider to talk, but suppose someone were to demand that the
brewery-workers should strike and refuse to make beer for
munition-workers? That was a mere quibble, argued Schneider; but the
other denied this, declaring that it was an illustration of what the
worker was up against, with no control of his own destiny, no voice
as to what use should be made of his product. A man might say that
he would have nothing to do with munition-work, and go out into the
fields as a farmer--to raise grain, to be shipped to the armies! The
solidarity of capitalist society was such that nowhere could a man
find work that would not in some way be helping to kill his
fellow-workers in other lands.
Jimmie Higgins talked solemnly to Lizzie of moving to
Hubbardtown--tempted thereto by the signs he saw in an agency which
had been set up in a vacant store on Main Street. The Hubbard Engine
Company was trying to steal old man Granitch's workers, and was
offering thirty-two cents an hour for semi-skilled labour! Jimmie
made inquiry and learned that the company was extending its plant
for gas-engines; for what purpose was not told, but men suspected
that the engines were to go into motor-boats and be used for the
sinking of submarines. So Jimmie decided that Comrade Mabel Smith
was right; he might as well stay where he was. He would take as much
money as he could get and use his new-found prosperity to make
trouble for the war-profiteers. It was the first time in his life
that Jimmie had ever been free from money-fear. He could now get a
job anywhere at good wages, and so he did not care a hang what the
boss might say. He would talk to his fellow-workers, and explain the
war to them; a war of the capitalists at present, but destined
perhaps to turn into another kind of war, which the capitalists
would not find to their taste!
