Satan's Bushel (18 page)

At first there was apparently nothing strange in the scene below them. But as the minutes passed—one, two, three—anyone who knew how an excited wheat market should come open must have been extremely oblivious not to notice how wrong the omens were. Where were those with glinting eyes and tautened nerves who should now be massed within the pit, gathered on the rim of it, overflowing all around, ready at the sound of a gong to rip the air apart with sound? Where were those who should be running to and fro between the pit and every other point, bringing news and last instructions? One minute yet until the opening and the pit was hardly one-third full. The men already gathered were not tense and poised; they were dilatory and apathetic. They stood in little groups talking together. And on the dial above the pit where price changes are recorded was the sign of September wheat—S E P. Where was the sign of M A Y? Nobody was interested in September wheat. All the gambling was in May wheat. The great corner with the Bank of England behind it and Absalom Weaver astride of it was in May wheat.

And the sign of May had disappeared!

None of this had Weaver noticed. Both his mind and his eyes were in distant focus. He stood in his place at the center of the pit. Once he glanced uneasily at the clock and then at the thin fringe of men around him. Still he was not warned.

The gong struck.

N
o blast of sound assailed the ear. It was as if a cannon had missed fire. Here and there a voice was heard naming September wheat. May was not named at all. Most of those ranged round the pit stood at ease, idly looking on.

“May! May!” called Weaver, with now an alarmed and dazed expression.

There was a moment of stillness. Then a voice said: “Go read what’s on the board. There’s no such thing as May wheat.”

Weaver heard. He walked out of the pit to the bulletin board. There stood the notice of his defeat. He read:

At a special meeting of the directors of the Chicago Board of Trade it was decided to discontinue trading in May wheat. All existing contracts shall be adjusted either by delivery of the property—the actual wheat—or at the settling price to be determined by a special committee to be appointed by the president of the Board. Patriotic duty to the country in this hour of national stress prompted the directors in reaching their conclusion to take this unprecedented action.

(Signed) B
Y THE
P
RESIDENT OF THE
B
OARD
.

Thus the wheat pit was saved. Thus all the gamblers who had sold phantom wheat which they could not deliver were saved. They would be able to settle at a reasonable price, at a price to be determined by themselves. And the greatest wheat corner in all time, the only one that ever had the Bank of England behind it, was beaten by the simple expedient of shutting up the gambling layout.

Weaver stood there before the notice for a long time, motionless, with a fixed expression. Then he turned and walked slowly back to the pit. Standing again at the center of it he held up both hands, all fingers extended, the palms toward himself. This is the buying gesture. Each finger and thumb calls for five thousand bushels. He shouted:

“May wheat!... May wheat!... Is this a wheat market?... I’ll buy May wheat at three-fifty.”

There was no response. The ring stared at him in embarrassment, not knowing how to act.

“At four dollars!” he shouted.

His voice filled that enormous room. All other sound had ceased. The wheat pit now began to fill up with spectators drawn from the corn pit, the cash tables and elsewhere.

“Five!” he shouted.

Voices were lifted against him. Angry voices, saying: “You’re breaking the rules!” “Expel him!” “Bughouse!” “Get the committee!” “Who do you think you are?”

Several approached, meaning evidently to dissuade him gently. He thrust them aside.

“Six,” he shouted. “Six dollars a bushel for May wheat! Eight! Nine! I call you to witness I am bidding nine dollar a bushel for May wheat! Mark it up there. May wheat is nine dollars. Put it up.”

Many were now turning away, some with expressions of disgust, others with morbid faces. He wheeled once all around, sustaining the buying gesture of the extended fingers and inturned palms, and shouted for the last time:

“
Ten!
I bid ten dollars a bushel for May wheat. All you’ve got.”

A committee arrived. Four men pushed their way authoritatively into the pit and surrounded Weaver. He did not resist, for he was through. They led him out of the pit. On the top step his feet stumbled and almost he had fallen; but they held him up and brought him to the gate where Cordelia and Dreadwind were waiting. One of the four whispered to Dreadwind: “Get him home. Keep him away from here. His lamp is out.”

Cordelia walked on one side of him and Dreadwind on the other, anxiously; he declined support from either of them. When they were outside Dreadwind signaled for a cab. The old man shook his head, pulled away from them and plunged alone into the traffic. From his manner it was evident he had a destination and an errand both. They caught up with him and walked as before, one on each side, a little surprised that he knew his own way and wondering at his air of purpose.

At the door of the La Salle Hotel he turned in.

There in the big ballroom several hundred farmers were assembled. They represented a national grain growers’ association, by whatever the latest name was for that chronic futility. The name is changed every little while. There is no other way to renew the delusion that farming is a business, to sustain the hope that ultimately the producers of food, like the organized producers of all fabricated and glittering things, shall be able to say what they will take and how much they will give. But by any name it is always the same thing. This was the annual convention. The subject was cooperative marketing, temporarily complicated by the idea that on account of the war it was the farmer’s duty to forget everything else and produce to the utmost, regardless of price.

As Weaver entered the ballroom, followed by Cordelia and Dreadwind, the national association of grain growers in annual convention assembled was singing a sacred hymn. A large white badge with a man pinned to it asked Weaver for his ticket of admission. He shook his head and walked toward the platform with his hat on. Many faces regarded him curiously. Before he had reached the platform prayer was announced. He waited in the aisle, still with hat on. When the prayer was finished he mounted the platform by the steps at the end and moved toward the front center, facing the audience. The presiding officer, who was on the point of introducing the first speaker, frowned in perplexity and looked about him as if expecting someone to explain away this apparition. No one offered to do so; and he made a weak intercepting gesture. But Weaver had already passed him and was at the front of the platform.

“Some of you know me,” he said. “I am Absalom Weaver.”

A cheer broke forth. Those who did not know him knew what he was. A wheat-pit gambler on the farmer’s side is a crossroad’s hero. More than that, he is an inverted sign, a contradiction, an angel of darkness fallen upward. News of him travels weirdly. There was hardly a farmer in the country who by this time had not heard or read some legend of him. Out of the cheering his name was lifted up. Words of rude praise and encouragement were howled at him. The presiding officer shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

Weaver laid his hand on the tumult. Instantly it ceased. His manner chilled them. The notion that he had come to show himself and make a speech was succeeded by a sense of original tragedy transacting. And it was a little unreal, as natural drama is, without setting or perspective. He was seen to be touched with that madness which belongs to prophets. It makes people uneasy. It must be staged or have a painted history; then it is real.

Dreadwind’s description of the scene at this moment may have overemphasized its dramatic value. That was as he saw and felt it. To him it was real in all dimensions. Weaver, by an act of rhetorical suspense, by simply holding one cold gesture beyond all expectation, to which you add the strange effect of that unseeing expression peculiar to morbid long-sightedness, stretched his audience to almost the point of groaning. A voice—it might have been that of man or woman—cried hysterically: “What is it?”

Then he spoke in a low penetrating tone.

“Wheat,” he said, “is ten dollars a bushel.”

The tension snapped; the audible reaction was a stupid titter. That was natural enough. No one knew what he meant. It was possibly a verbal hoax. And some relief from the suspense was a reflex necessity. But it moved Weaver to anger.

“Laugh!” he said. “Laugh. You have learned nothing since you were called dust feet two thousand years ago in Greece. Wheat is ten dollars a bushel. I come to tell you this—to tell you I, Absalom Weaver, in the market place this morning offered that price for all the May wheat in the world and there was none to sell me a peck of it—to tell you I am banished from the pit for having done this, that the pit is closed to both buyers and sellers because the price is beyond the control of your enemies—and you laugh! Simple dust feet! Docile dust feet! Do you know what I am talking about? Do you care? What is it you know? The speculator who sells your wheat before it is grown—do you know what he sells? He sells your labor. Do you know how he sells it? He sells it at auction. A few hundred speculators sell the labor of three million farmers—
at auction!
Do you understand? The pharaohs buying and selling slaves did nothing more. All you want of a slave is his labor. Only now it is a little disguised. Therefore, silly dust feet, you do not see it. They pretend to auction off your wheat, not your labor, and this idle distinction deceives you; but it is the same thing. You do not see it.”

He paused and focused his eyes at them. Voices, not many, called: “Aye, aye. We see it.... Yes.... Go on.”

“Do you buy the labor of others at auction?” Weaver continued. “A plow is labor, as a bushel of wheat is labor. When you buy a plow do you buy it at auction? Or do you say, when you buy a plow, ‘What will you take for it?’ The price of the plow is fixed by those who have learned to sell their own labor. They tell you this is necessary. They tell you it is necessary to fix the price of everything you buy and then to auction off your labor, the sweat of your face, for what it will bring—and you believe them.

“Why do they sell your produce at auction? Why do a few hundred speculators thus appoint themselves to sell your labor? Why, for gain. There is no other reason. They sell your wheat before you sow it. They sell it while you tend it. Then when you reap it they say to you, ‘There is too much wheat. There is a surplus. You have made more breadstuff than people want.’ And with saying this they beat you down until you give up your wheat at a price below that at which they have already sold it. And you believe them when they say this is necessary.”

Voices: “No! No! We don’t believe it. It isn’t so.”

“You do,” said Weaver. “You may not know it, but you do. The chains of bondage are imaginary. What holds the bondsman is his fear. You are afraid. If in one instant you could overthrow the auction and destroy those who all these years have been selling away your labor, would you dare? You would be afraid. They are about to be self-destroyed. The Lord hath set them in your hand. Did you know it? I find you singing songs of deliverance. I find you praying. They neither sing nor pray. To save themselves they close the auction, shut up the wheat pit which they have made you believe was an economic necessity, calling it now a patriotic duty to do so, and here ye sit by the rivers of Babylon twanging the harp of despair. When they are saved they will open the pit again. They are not afraid. I tell you all this and ye laugh.”

Directly in front of Weaver a gaunt man rose up. He was made in Weaver’s image, had somewhat of his manner, and spoke in a strong voice without effort.

“We did not laugh,” he said. “Not at that. Say no more about it. You tell us many things we know. Tell us something we don’t know. What shall we do with our surplus wheat? How shall we dispose of it? Tell us that.”

“And you say you do not believe them,” said Weaver, full of scorn. “What shall you do with our surplus? You ask me that and still say you do not believe them. Hear me! There is no surplus. There never was a surplus. Where is it if there ever was? I have held in my hands some grains of wheat as old as the pyramids. If ground into meal they would still make excellent bread. Wheat is imperishable. Since the beginning of civilization man has been producing it diligently. Why have we no store of it? All that man has been able to produce of it in thousands of years has been eaten up, saving only seed for the next crop. Never since Abraham came out of Ur to farm in the land of Shinar would there have been, if one crop failed, more than six and a half bushels between man and starvation. And you talk of a surplus! There is only the idea of a surplus. The idea of it is the invisible chain that binds you to the auction. It is the fear with which they have clothed your neck. It is the mythical stone they have condemned you to roll uphill forever. There is no surplus. Yet you are continually running from it, competing with one another to deliver yourselves into the hands of the auctioneers lest one shall come last with a bushel of wheat that cannot be sold at all. And there is no surplus. The utmost there can ever be is a little wheat over from a fat year to lie against the want of a lean year. You call this a surplus?”

The gaunt man rose again. “What shall we do with that,” he asked, “that little over from the fat year? For we see that in the fat years we are worse off than ever, the little wheat that shall be over uneaten making a low price for all that is eaten.”

“Keep it,” said Weaver. “Keep what is over until the world’s belly swells with hunger. Then it will pay. Joseph kept grain seven years in a mud storehouse. It does not spoil. I know what you will say. You will say you cannot keep it. You have borrowed money at the bank. You are called upon to pay it back. Therefore you must sell that bushel which breaks the price of the whole crop. They are demanding it in the market place. I say, do not grow that Satan’s bushel. See to it. But if it be you have grown it, or your neighbor hath produced it, and they plow your backs too hard to make you give it up against yourselves at the auction... if you cannot keep it”—here he paused to shape his period—“then kill it, and the Lord forgive you.”