CHAPTER IX
JIMMIE HIGGINS RETURNS TO NATURE
I
Kumme's bicycle-shop went out of business, and its contents were
sold at auction. Jimmie Higgins watched the process wistfully,
reflecting how, if he had not wasted his substance on Socialist
tracts, if he had saved a bit of his wages like any normal human
being, he might have bought this little business and got a start in
life. But alas, such hopes were not for Jimmie! He must remain in
the condition which the President of his country described as
"industrial serfdom"; he must continue to work for some other man's
profit, to be at the mercy of some other man's whim.
He found himself a job in the railroad shops; but in a couple of
weeks came an organizer, trying to start a union in the place.
Jimmie, of course, joined; how could he refuse? And so the next time
he went to get his pay he found a green slip in his envelope
informing him that the Atlantic Western Railroad Company would no
longer require his services. No explanation was given, and none
sought--for Jimmie was old in the ways of American wage-slavery,
euphemistically referred to as "industrial serfdom".
He got another start as helper to a truckman. It was the hardest
work he had yet done--all the harder because the boss was a dull
fellow who would not talk about politics or the war. So Jimmie was
discontented; perhaps the spring-time was getting into his blood; at
any rate, he hunted through his Sunday paper, and came on an
advertisement of a farmer who wanted a "hand". It was six miles out
in the country, and Jimmie, remembering his walk with the Candidate,
treated himself to a Sunday afternoon excursion. He knew nothing
about farm-work, and said so; but the munition-factories had drained
so much labour from the land that the farmer was glad to get
anybody. He had a "tenant-house" on his place, and on Monday morning
Jimmie hired his former boss--and truckman--to move his few sticks
of furniture; he bade farewell to his little friend Meissner, and
next day was learning to milk cows and steer a plough.
So Jimmie came back to the bosom of his ancient Mother. But alas, he
came, not to find joy and health, not as a free man, to win his own
way and make a new life for himself; he came as a soil-slave, to
drudge from dawn to dark for a hire that barely kept him going. The
farmer was the owner of Jimmie's time, and Jimmie disliked him
heartily, because he was surly-tempered and stingy, abusing his
horses and nagging at his hired man. Jimmie's education in
farm-economics was not thorough enough to enable him to realize that
John Cutter was as much of a slave as himself--bound by a mortgage
to Ashton Chalmers, President of the First National Bank of
Leesville. John drudged from dawn to dark, just as Jimmie did, and
in addition had all the worry and fear; his wife was a sallow and
hollow-chested drudge, who took as many bottles of patent-medicine
as poor Mrs. Meissner.
But Jimmie kept fairly cheerful because he was learning new things,
and because he saw how good it was for the babies, who were getting
fresh air and better food than they had ever had in their little
lives before. All summer long he ploughed and harrowed and hoed, he
tended horses and cows and pigs and chickens, and drove to town with
farm produce to be sold. He would be too tired at night even to read
his Socialist papers; for six months he let the world go its way
unhindered--its way of desperate strife and colossal anguish. It was
the time when the German hordes hurled themselves against the
fortifications of Verdun. For five horrible months they came on,
wave upon endless wave; the people of France set their teeth and
swore, "They shall not pass!" and the rest of civilization waited,
holding its breath.
