V.
Not for a week could enough new help be hired to even make a show of opening the Shawsheen Mills. Labor Unions were a comparatively new thing in this country, and were not so thoroughly organized as now; and a few of the old operatives, rather than starve, were glad to go back into the mills on any condition. But the great majority refused with indignation to give up their claims, and proceeded to “make things hot,” as they expressed it, for the “scabs” and “mudsills.”
Work was attempted in the mills, although many looms stood silent and the spinning-mules were entirely deserted. Thread for warp was procured from a neighboring city at no small expense and the mills were run at a loss, to prove the agent’s assertion that “he wouldshow them who was manager of the Shawsheen Mills.”
This sort of thing was kept up four days. On the fifth morning, the operatives went as usual to the mill, but the machinery, after a few insufficient groans, gave up in despair and settled into utter quiet.
What was the matter?
There was a great hurrying to and fro, and a close examination of belts and machinery. Word was soon brought up from the basement. The engines had been tampered with; on each of them the belts had been cut. The jocularly inclined said the “engines had joined the Union;”—while everybody wondered what effect this stroke would have on the agent.
The premises were examined and the night-watchman questioned. Evidently the deed had been done by some one familiar with the place, but there was not the slightest clue. He had done well his work, and the mills were stopped for repairs.
Otis Greenough blustered about and cursed the whole business; but he was farther than ever from a compromise, declaring that he would yet beat them with their own weapons.
The night-watch was doubled and the mills were opened again the next day. But the employers were fighting a desperate party and little calculated their strength. The man who had succeeded so well in his first attempt to stop the mills risked himself again; and on the second morning the machinery again refused to start. This time a small wheel had been removed from each engine and carried away. The water-wheel had long been in partial disuse and could not be trusted without the engines. Hence, there was nothing to be done but to stop again for repairs. This time it was a week before the engines were in running order. And yet, not a word passed between the agent and the strikers.
The night-watch were discharged and new ones engaged. A special police was secured to patrol the mill-yard, and when the mills were again opened, it was with the avowed determination to keep them going in spite of every earthly power.
The next morning, notwithstanding the positive assertions of police and night-watch that no one had been near the mills, every band connecting the looms to the machineryabove was cut in half a dozen places. Then the superstitious operatives whispered among themselves that unseen agencies were linked with the Union, and that the strikers must succeed in the end; and many of the fainthearted went over to the new labor party.
“It is of no use trying to run the mills in this way,” said Mr. Burnham. “We have already lost several thousand dollars. We must compromise.”
“Never,” said Mr. Greenough. “The terms of Floyd Shepard’s will grant me absolute power here, and so long as I live, it shall never be said that an educated, trained and levelheaded business man was overcome by a lot of ignorant bullies and agitators. These Labor Unions all over the State need an example. There is money enough in the mill treasury to fight them until they starve themselves out. No other mill or corporation about here will hire them, and it is only a matter of weeks or months when absolute poverty forces them to yield. Not one inch will I give in to them. They shall come back as beggars, glad to accept work at even lower wages than they have ever had. I’ll teach them a lesson.”
Geoffrey Burnham turned away full of anger that a flourishing business should be destroyed by one man’s obstinacy. John Villard went back to the silent looms, full of righteous indignation, not only at the total disregard of practical business interests, but at the want of humanity and philanthropy and Christian charity, which by his subordinate position he must seem to countenance.
Weeks lengthened themselves into months, and still the Shawsheen Mills were closed.
Salome Shepard, after spending the holiday season with friends in New York, came home, satiated with social success, and a little tired of the endless pursuit of pleasure. Still the mills lay idle and Otis Greenough refused to talk any more with her on the subject of the strike. And the terms of her father’s will held her powerless, even had she chosen to exercise her authority.
But she chafed under the knowledge that two thousand people, who were in a sense dependent upon her for their daily bread, were out of work in the midst of a hard winter.
One day she went to walk down among the people who were suffering, now, for a principle.
She was amazed at the gaunt, hungry look of the old men; and self-accused at the pinched and wan faces of the few children who played in the narrow streets. Unthinking, she had put on a seal-skin cloak. It was a cold day, and furs, to her, were only a natural accompaniment to the frosts of winter.
But going down the uncared-for side-walk, she rebuked herself, noting the single shawl and calico dress of an old woman who was wearily making her way a few paces in front of her. Presently the woman stopped, seized with a paroxysm of coughing.
Salome came up with her, and looked into the white face, which told of hard times.
“Madam,” she said, respectfully, “can I be of any assistance to you? Shall I not help you home?”
Her tone and manner were exactly the same she would have used to any of her aunt’s friends. It did not occur to her to be patronizing or condescending.
The old woman stared at her. She was not used to being addressed as “Madam.”
“Yes’m,” she said, presently. “I live up to the other end of the street. If the coughwasn’t so bad, an’ my side didn’t ketch me so! But if I can git back to my own chair ag’in——”
Another fit of coughing seized her, and interrupted the “garrulousness of uncultured old age.” Salome waited until she got breath again and then took her by the arm, accommodating her steps to the feebler ones.
Here and there a surprised face peered curiously at her through a dirty window, knowing who she was, and wondering that she condescended to walk with old Granny Lancaster. Everywhere a general air of poverty, perhaps of actual hunger, impressed this woman, who had inherited the tumble-down tenement houses on each side.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but do you eat nourishing food enough? Good beef-steak and roast-beef would help your cough more than medicine.”
The old woman laughed, a grating, cackling laugh.
“Beef-steak and roast-beef ain’t for the likes o’ me,” she said. “Meat of any kind ain’t for us in times o’ strikes. May the Lord above send us oatmeal enough to keep us throughtill the mills open ag’in is all I ask. Here’s my house. Much ’bleeged, lady.”
Salome wanted to go inside the rickety old door and follow the woman up the dirty stairway, but she did not say so, and the old woman hobbled up the steps without asking her in.
Salome felt impulsively in her pocket, and drawing out her porte-monnaie, emptied its contents into the dirty, emaciated palm of Granny Lancaster. Then she turned and walked rapidly back home.
The next day Otis Greenough called on her.
“My dear,” he said, after an hour or two passed in desultory conversation, “may I beg that you will keep away from the operatives? Impulsive and injudicious charity does them more harm than anything else. No doubt the part of Lady Bountiful seems a pleasant and desirable one, but, just now, you are not fitted for it.”
“What do you mean, sir?” asked she in a puzzled tone.
“For instance,” he went on, “the money you gave a certain old woman on the corporation yesterday was taken by her son-in-law last night, and furnished him an opportunityfor a glorious old drunk. I beg your pardon for using their phraseology. He was arrested before morning for drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”
“I do not comprehend,” she stammered. “The woman said they had no meat. She was actually suffering for nourishing food. I gave the money, impulsively it is true, but that they need not go hungry.”
“Now, you see, my dear,” he answered, “just how much encouragement one gets in trying to do anything for the laboring classes. They turn upon you and use the goodness of your heart and your generous motives to drag themselves down to a lower depth of degradation. Good-day, my dear, and don’t be led away by your feelings.”
Salome stood looking after him, heart-sick and discouraged. The world—her part of it, at least—was all wrong, and she, with plenty of money and an awakening desire to help, was powerless. She ordered the pony phaeton again and started for a drive. She obeyed a sudden impulse to go through the factory precincts. There were evidences of a suppressed excitement. Knots of desperate-looking menstood about. But they hushed their voices as she drew near, and stood in sullen silence as she passed.
“There is evidently something in the wind,” she thought, urging the pony to quicken his pace.
She did not know that the committee from the Labor Union had that morning made a third attempt to treat with her agent and failed.
“No compromise,” was still his watchword.
“I’ll send for Marion Shaw,” she said to herself, on her way home an hour later. “She is a practical, sensible, business-like woman. Perhaps she will know of some way to help me to help others. And she needs rest.”
This idea so inspired her that she arrived home quite elated, and stated her plan to Mrs. Soule at dinner-time with much animation.
But later in the evening, the groups of men she had seen on “the corporation” came back to her mind and caused her a certain feeling of uneasiness. What had they been talking about so excitedly as she drew near?
It was one of those suddenly warm nights in January that succeed, in our fickle climate,a bitter cold day, and Salome felt an unaccountable desire to be in the open air. She threw on a warm wrap and hood, and saying nothing, went out on the piazza, and crossed the lawn to a favorite walk of hers in summer—a path under a long group of fir-trees down by the street at the back of the house.
After a few turns, she heard a peculiar whistle which was answered by another.
She withdrew still more into the shadow and waited. Presently two men met.
“Well, what’s the news?” eagerly asked one.
“Sh—sh! not so loud,” replied the other. “It’s all right, and better than we expected.”
“Why—how better?” asked the first.
They spoke lower, so that Salome could scarcely catch the tones.
“Because,” the first was saying, “the old man himself has gone down to the mill.”
“Whe—e—w!”
“Yes. What on earth possessed him? But then that’s none of our affairs. If he wants to run the risk of losing his life—that’s his business, not mine.”
“Well, but,” and the first voice had a timidnote, “that’s going too far—we were only to blow up the mill—not to kill anybody.”
“Can’t help that. Fifteen minutes more, if everything works well, and old man Greenough’s day is over. Jim’s just about lighting the fuse, I reckon, now. It’s an awful long one, but the fire’ll creep round there in time.”
“What about the police?”
“He’s all right. We’ve fixed him.”
The voices grew fainter and ceased altogether, only the dull sound of the men’s footsteps reaching her as they passed down the hill away from the grounds.
Salome stood an instant, rooted to the spot. What was this horrible thing she had heard?
The factory to be blown up?
She must go for help.
And Mr. Greenough down there, risking his life?
No. There was no time to get help.
“Fifteen minutes more, if everything works well, and old man Greenough’s day is over.”
The whole plot flashed across her bewildered brain. She dashed through the back-gate and down the deserted street towards the mills. Itwas a ten minutes’ walk across that way, but she ran,—flew,—tore down the lonely road in less than half that time.
Otis Greenough might be an unreasonable, hot-headed, obstinate agent, but he was her father’s friend and had loved and petted her when she was a motherless child.
What could she do? Raise an alarm? Call for help? Rouse everybody?
But the fuse was already lighted.
Where was it?
Under the office window most likely, since they knew that the old agent was in there.
She came in sight of that window. There was a dim light there. All else was dark. The south wind moaned dismally.
She hurried faster and came nearer the office window. Under it was another window with a broken pane, from which hung something she instantly divined as the fuse.
Yes. A fiery spark crept closer and closer to the wall.
By the time she reached the window it was out of her reach.
Oh, God! could she do nothing?
She had been sewing on some dainty trifleearlier in the evening, and a pair of small scissors still hung at her waist.
Closer drew the spark of fire to the broken window pane, whence it would disappear to work its fearful errand. It seemed to twinkle and mock at her in fiendish delight. She grasped the jutting window-frame and jumped upon the broad sill.
Thank God, she had it at last. One snip of her scissors, and the spark of fire dropped harmlessly to the ground. She turned slightly to step off the window-ledge. Her foot slipped and she fell, a white, faint heap upon the ground.