XI.
And so the great strike ended.
Had Salome realized the burden of care which she was taking upon herself, it is doubtful whether she would have assumed it as cheerfully as she did. But as weeks rolled into months, and responsibilities multiplied and cares increased until she became as hard a worker as any in the mills, she did not flinch. She had put her hand to the plough, and it did not once occur to her to turn back.
She went to the office of the mills the day they were opened, and began to study, thoroughly, the details of the business. Villard and Burnham were her teachers, and both were often astonished at her business keenness and cool judgment. She had pressed Marion into service immediately, and always took her to the counting-room, where the two staidthroughout the entire morning, going home to lunch at two, and usually remaining there the rest of the day. But always, whether she was in the house, or out driving, or overseeing the new houses, which were progressing rapidly, Salome’s one thought was the improvement of conditions at the Shawsheen Mills.
When Marion had been with her a week, Salome said to her:
“Marion, I want you to stay with me all the time.”
“I should be so glad,” replied her friend, “but I can’t afford it. I shall have to go out into the world again, before long, to earn my living, dear; but I will stay here as long as I can.”
“You good girl!” was Salome’s answer. “Why not stay here and earn your living? I want a companion, shall very soon need a secretary, and as soon as I get things in running order, ought to have a woman like you to help draw in my people. You need a congenial place at a comfortable salary. Now, why not stay? I will pay you a thousand dollars a year.”
Marion drew a breath of astonishment.
“It isn’t worth that,” she said; “Madame Blanc only paid me seven hundred.”
“Madame Blanc is not fixing a scale of wages for me,” said Salome; “as to your ‘worth,’ my dear, I must judge of that. When we get fairly at work, I shall give you enough to do, and you will find yourself a very busy woman. Besides, if I had a young man to do what I want you to do for me, he would ask a thousand dollars, wouldn’t he? And why shouldn’t you have it? Because you are a woman?”
Marion was not demonstrative. On the contrary, she had a great deal of the true New England reserve; but she got up and went over to her friend, put both arms around her neck and then——cried.
“If you could know what a chance this is for me!” she said at last. “If you had known what a dreary thing existence had become, and what a hopeless prospect I had in the future! And now, to live here and work with you,—in your grand scheme,—Oh, Salome!” And she wept again.
“Then I will put the care of the cottages into your hands first of all,” said Salome, pattingher cheek. “You’ve kept house and know what one ought to be like for an ordinary family,—what things are necessary for the comfort of the household and convenience of the housewife. I don’t. I should be as apt to build expensive music-rooms and leave out the pantries, as any way. Go ahead, and get up as nice houses as you can, at $1,500, $2,000 and $2,500 a piece. Mr. Villard thinks none of the employes will care to buy anything more expensive. Here is the architect’s address,” and she handed Marion a card.
But the building of the model boarding-house was a project too dear to Salome’s heart for her to easily relinquish to others. Her plan, as she had presented it to Villard and Burnham, grew and magnified itself until her co-laborers had to resort to all sorts of arguments to keep her from wild extravagance.
She had begun by planning for the factory girls a house which should be really a home; but as she went about among the operatives, and began to get an inkling of what the young men of the mills really were, of the bare, desolate dens which gave them shelter, she did not wonder that they resorted to the streets forcomfort and amusement. She began to see how the young men and girls who entered the mills could scarcely help drifting into low and unworthy lives; and she grew more determined to do something to raise them to a higher plane of living.
Her grandfather’s manuscripts did not help her much here. In Newbern Shepard’s day, the factory-hand had not sunk to such ignorance or even degradation, as he has, in some instances, in later times; and in those more democratic times, it had not been so hard for him to rise above the level of his kind. In that day, too, it had been possible for him to find a home, in the true sense of the word, with families of a certain degree of refinement. But in Salome’s more modern times, she saw, and grieved, that the factory boarding-places were of the sort that dragged the operatives down and kept them on a lower plane, even, than the Shawsheen tenement system.
She consulted much with the superintendents and with Marion. She visited the large cities and thoroughly examined the young men’s and young women’s various houses and unions. She got ideas from all, but a perfectedplan from none. Finally, she collaborated with her architect, Robert Fales, and soon had her model boarding-house on paper. After that it was only a work of days to begin on the foundations of the institution.
The operatives at the Shawsheen Mills gazed on all these changes with curious interest, which, however, they carefully suppressed when any of their superiors were about. The average independent American citizen, as he exists among working-men, does not care to pose as an object of even partial charity. He delights in crying out against Capital, and clamoring for a share of the Profits; but when it comes to actual taking of what he does not feel he has earned, he is more backward.
The Shawsheen operatives, in spite of the promises which had been made, had gone to work again with little hope that the state of affairs for them would be any better in future than in the past. As days went by, and they saw Salome Shepard come to the mills every morning, and knew that she was personally interested in them as her people, they were skeptical of any results for good. And when they began to hear it whispered that she, a woman, wasthe actual head of the Shawsheen Mills, some of them talked earnestly of leaving. What! they—strong, able-bodied, skilled mechanics—work under a woman?
But they didn’t go. A dull season was upon them, and work scarce. Other mills were shutting down and sending their operatives into two months of enforced idleness. The Shawsheen hands were forced to stay where they were and be thankful for a chance to work.
Then, as the story that they were to be furnished with new and better homes gained credence among them, their first real interest dawned. Many did not believe their conditions would be bettered; many, even, did not care; and most of them grumbled because their rents would probably be high, and said the new buildings were only a means to grind the poor and extort more money from them, to put into a rich woman’s pocket. Such is the thankless task of the philanthropist.
Salome heard something of this, but did not allow the knowledge to disquiet her.
“A few months will convince them,” she said, quietly. “No wonder they are on the lookout for oppression and extortion. As nearas I can judge, this factory has long been run on a plan to warrant them in such a belief.” And this was all she ever said against Otis Greenough’s method of administering affairs at the mills.
As the summer went by, Salome’s friends in the town began to wonder at her extravagant outlay, as they called it. They prophesied that she would soon tire of her new amusement, and leave the houses unfinished, when her projects would fall flat. Some of them came to her and remonstrated, on the ground that her inexperience in financial affairs was cause enough for her leaving the Shawsheen Mills and the employes as they had been. But invariably she replied, that if she had chosen to build herself a million-dollar castle, they would have approved of her; but because she proposed to spend a half-million on the mill property, all of which she felt sure would return to her some day with interest, she was called extravagant and foolish.
“But if you had built the million-dollar house,” said Mrs. Greenough, “it would have been a great thing for the place. Think what an ornament to Shepardtown it would be!”
“And think what an improvement—what a great thing for Shepardtown—it will be to tear away those miserable, tumble-down tenements on Shawsheen alley, and to add a hundred neat and cosy houses to the hill,” she retorted. “And, besides, you haven’t seen my—well, my Institution (I haven’t named it yet). Think what an ornament that will be to the place.”
But as nobody realized what the “Institution” of her dreams was to be, Salome got no sympathy from her friends. Curiosity increased on all hands, as the summer waned and an immense brick structure grew apace on the hill. It had a square, dome-like center, with huge wings on each side. But the workmen were sworn to secrecy, and nobody was allowed to go inside from the time the building was far enough advanced to allow of its entrances being fastened up.