Babbit (44 page)

  I

  
T
HE strike which
turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and red, began late
in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in
protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of
dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in
demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the
truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was
nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a
general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls
through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that
made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded
by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A
line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company
was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling
drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while
telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved
bricks.

  The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon,
who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore
Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through
crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence
Drum the shoe merchant - a round and merry man who told stories at
the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog
- was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt
tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little
mouth petulant as he piped to chattering groups on corners. "Move
on there now! I can't have any of this loitering!"

  Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against
the strikers. When mobs raided the news-stands, at each was
stationed a militiaman, a young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with
eye-glasses, bookkeeper or grocery-clerk in private life, trying to
look dangerous while small boys yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!"
and striking truck-drivers inquired tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was
fighting in France, was you in camp in the States or was you doing
Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be careful of that bayonet,
now, or you'll cut yourself!"

  There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything
but the strike, and no one who did not take sides. You were either
a courageous friend of Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of
the Rights of Property; and in either case you were belligerent,
and ready to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy.

  A condensed-milk plant was set afire - each side
charged it to the other - and the city was hysterical.

  And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly
liberal.

  He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing,
and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot.
He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested
strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about
these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on
their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was
troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said, but in a doubtful
croak.

  For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian
Church announced a sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the
Saviour Would End Strikes." Babbitt had been negligent about
church-going lately, but he went to the service, hopeful that Dr.
Drew really did have the information as to what the divine powers
thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the large, curving,
glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink.

  Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers
hell! Ordinarily, I don't believe in a preacher butting into
political matters - let him stick to straight religion and save
souls, and not stir up a lot of discussion - but at a time like
this, I do think he ought to stand right up and bawl out those
plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!"

  "Yes - well - " said Babbitt.

  The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the
intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:

  "During the untoward series of industrial
dislocations which have - let us be courageous and admit it boldly
- throttled the business life of our fair city these past days,
there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific
prevention of scientific - SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell you that
the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the
attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed
which were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh,
yes, they were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism!
They were going to destroy the church; they were going to prove the
world was created and has been brought to its extraordinary level
of morality and civilization by blind chance. Yet the church stands
just as firmly to-day as ever, and the only answer a Christian
pastor needs make to the long-haired opponents of his simple faith
is just a pitying smile!

  "And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the
natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no
matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but
a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor
courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or
those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together.
But I certainly am criticizing the systems in which the free and
fluid motivation of independent labor is to be replaced by
cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and government
commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.

  "What is not generally understood is that this whole
industrial matter isn't a question of economics. It's essentially
and only a matter of Love, and of the practical application of the
Christian religion! Imagine a factory - instead of committees of
workmen alienating the boss, the boss goes among them smiling, and
they smile back, the elder brother and the younger. Brothers,
that's what they must be, loving brothers, and then strikes would
be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!"

  It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh,
rot!"

  "Huh?" said Chum Frink.

  "He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just
as clear as mud. It doesn't mean a darn thing."

  "Maybe, but - "

  Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the
service kept glancing at him doubtfully, till Babbitt was
nervous.

  II

  The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday
morning, but Colonel Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said.
When Babbitt drove west from his office at ten that morning he saw
a drove of shabby men heading toward the tangled, dirty district
beyond Court House Square. He hated them, because they were poor,
because they made him feel insecure "Damn loafers! Wouldn't be
common workmen if they had any pep," he complained. He wondered if
there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the starting-point of
the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known as Moore
Street Park, and halted his car.

  The park and streets were buzzing with strikers,
young men in blue denim shirts, old men with caps. Through them,
keeping them stirred like a boiling pot, moved the militiamen.
Babbitt could hear the soldiers' monotonous orders: "Keep moving -
move on, 'bo - keep your feet warm!" Babbitt admired their stolid
good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin soldiers," and "Dirty dogs -
servants of the capitalists!" but the militiamen grinned and
answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving, Billy!"

  Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated
the scoundrels who were obstructing the pleasant ways of
prosperity, admired Colonel Nixon's striding contempt for the
crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum, that rather puffing
shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully clamored, "Great
work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the strikers filing
from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They can't stop our
peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the posters, but the
strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled off, a thin
unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of soldiers.
Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be any
violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.

  Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman,
was Seneca Doane, smiling, content. In front of him was Professor
Brockbank, head of the history department in the State University,
an old man and white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished
Massachusetts family.

  "Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in
with the strikers? And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get
mixed up with this bunch. They're parlor socialists! But they have
got nerve. And nothing in it for them, not a cent! And - I don't
know 's ALL the strikers look like such tough nuts. Look just about
like anybody else to me!"

  The militiamen were turning the parade down a side
street.

  "They got just as much right to march as anybody
else! They own the streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American
Legion does!" Babbitt grumbled. "Of course, they're - they're a bad
element, but - Oh, rats!"

  At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during
lunch, while the others fretted, "I don't know what the world's
coming to," or solaced their spirits with "kidding."

  Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in
khaki.

  "How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil
Gunch.

  "Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side
streets and separated 'em and they got discouraged and went
home."

  "Fine work. No violence."

  "Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my
way, there'd be a whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then
the whole thing would be over. I don't believe in standing back and
wet-nursing these fellows and letting the disturbances drag on. I
tell you these strikers are nothing in God's world but a lot of
bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle 'em
is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat up the whole lot of
'em!"

  Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence,
they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice
any bombs."

  Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe
you'd like to take charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon
what innocents the strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!"
Drum strode on, while all the table stared at Babbitt.

  "What's the idea? Do you want us to give those
hell-hounds love and kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones.

  "Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to
take the bread and butter away from our families?" raged Professor
Pumphrey.

  Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on
sternness like a mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair
seemed cruel, his silence was a ferocious thunder. While the others
assured Babbitt that they must have misunderstood him, Gunch looked
as though he had understood only too well. Like a robed judge he
listened to Babbitt's stammering:

  "No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I
just mean - Strikes me it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em.
Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's got the fine Italian hand. And that's why
he's colonel. Clarence Drum is jealous of him."

  "Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt
Clarence's feelings, George. He's been out there all morning
getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he wants to beat the tar out
of those sons of guns!"

  Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew
that he was being watched.

  III

  As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink
protesting to Gunch, " - don't know what's got into him. Last
Sunday Doc Drew preached a corking sermon about decency in business
and Babbitt kicked about that, too. Near 's I can figure out -
"

  Babbitt was vaguely frightened.

  IV

  He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking
from the rostrum of a kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From
newspaper pictures he knew that the speaker must be the notorious
freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of whom Seneca Doane had
spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant hair, weather-beaten
cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:

  " - if those telephone girls can hold out, living on
one meal a day, doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you
big hulking men ought to be able - "

  Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was
watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically
drove on, while Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the
way.

  V

  "There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was
complaining to his wife, "that think if workmen go on strike
they're a regular bunch of fiends. Now, of course, it's a fight
between sound business and the destructive element, and we got to
lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge us, but doggoned
if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go calling 'em
dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down."