CHAPTER V
JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER
I
Jimmie Higgins regarded with the utmost resentment the determination
of the war to come to Leesville, in spite of all his labours to keep
it out. Take the most preposterous thing you could imagine--the most
idiotic thing on the face of the earth--take German spies! When
Jimmie heard people talking about German spies, he laughed in their
faces, he told them they were a bunch of fools, they belonged in the
nursery; for Jimmie classed German spies with goblins, witches and
sea-serpents. And here suddenly the bewildered little man found
himself in the midst of a German spy mania, the like of which he
could never have dreamed!
Everybody seemed to take it for granted that the Empire Machine
Shops had been burned by German agents; they just knew it, and by
the time the fire was out they had a hundred various stories to
support their conviction. The fire had leaped from place to place in
a series of explosions; the watchman, who had passed through the
building only two minutes before, had rushed back and seen blazing
gasolene, and had almost lost his life in the sweep of the flames.
And next morning the Leesville Herald was out with letters half a
foot high, telling these tales and insisting that the plant had been
full of German agents, disguised as working men.
Before the day was by the police had arrested a dozen perfectly
harmless German and Austrian labourers; at least that was the way it
seemed to Jimmie, because of the fact that two of the men were
members of the Socialist local. Somebody told Mrs. Meissner that all
the Germans in Leesville were to be arrested, and the poor woman was
trembling with terror. She wanted her husband to run away, but
Jimmie persuaded them that this would be the worst possible course;
so Meissner stayed in the house, and Jimmie kept his mouth shut for
three whole days--an extraordinary feat for him, and a trial more
severe than being in gaol.
He had lost his job--for ever, he thought. But in this again he
misjudged the forces which had taken his life in their grip--the
power of the gold which had come to Leesville by way of Russia. The
day after the fire he received word to report for work again; old
man Granitch was so anxious to keep his workers out of the clutches
of the Hubbard Engine Company that he put them all, skilled and
unskilled, at the job of clearing away the debris of the fire! And
five days later came the first carloads of new material, brought on
motor-trucks, and the rebuilding of the Empire Shops began. Would
you believe it--some of the machinery which had not been damaged too
much in the fire was fixed up, and at the end of a couple of weeks
was starting up again, covered by a temporary canvas shelter, and
with the walls of the new building rising round it!
That was the kind of thing which made America the marvel of the
world. It had made old man Granitch young again, people said; he
worked twenty hours a day in his shirt-sleeves, and the increase in
his profanity was appalling. Even Lacey Granitch, his dashing son,
quitted the bright lights of Broadway and came home to help the old
man keep his contracts. The enthusiasm for these contracts became as
it were the religion of Leesville; it spread even to the ranks of
labour, so that Jimmie found himself like a man in a surf,
struggling to keep his feet against an undertow.
