CHAPTER VI

"Do you hear?" the Irishman roared.

"Do you hear?" the Irishman roared. "What areyou standing there for? Get along and tell your boss I'll put a sheriff over there."

"I guess I have come to stay," I replied easily.

"Come to stay?" he said with a grin. "How much, kid?"

"All you will give me."

"What are you getting?"

"Twenty."

"I'll give you fifteen to drive a wagon," he said offhand, "and I'll fire you in a week if you haven't anything better with you than your cheek."

"All right," I said coolly, not letting him see that I was ruffled by his rough tongue.

In that way I made the second round of the ladder, and went whistling out of Dround's packing-house into the murky daylight of the Stock Yards.

My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a week.

I liked it all. Something told me that here was my field—this square plot of prairie, where is carried on thelargest commissariat business of the world. In spite of its filth and its ugly look, it fired my blood to be a part of it. There's something pretty close to the earth in all of us, if we have the stomach to do the world's work: men of bone and sinew and rich blood, the strong men who do the deeds at the head of the ranks, feed close to the earth. The lowing cattle in the pens, the squealing hogs in the cars, the smell of the fat carcasses in the heavy wagons drawn by the sleek Percherons—it all made me think of the soft, fertile fields from which we take the grain—the blood and flesh that enter into our being.

The bigness of it all! The one sure fact before every son and daughter of woman is the need of daily bread and meat. To feed the people of the earth—that is a man's business. My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a week, but I walked out of the Yards with the swagger of a packer!

FIRST BLOOD

Wholesale—The little envies of life—Learning how to read—What there might be in sausage—Schemes—A rise in life—Big John's favoring eye—Going short of pork—Uncertainty—Five thousand dollars in the bank

I told them all at the supper table that evening how I was going into wholesale with Henry I. Dround & Co. Slocum nodded approvingly, but before any one could say a word of congratulation, Hillary Cox snapped this at me:—

"So you were looking out for yourself with that Carmichael man! I thought the Enterprise wasn't big enough for your talents. A desk in the inside office, I s'pose?"

"Not quite yet," I laughed; but I didn't say how little my job was to be.

Miss Cox had given me up. I don't believe she meant to be disagreeable, but somehow we had become strangers, all at once. There were no more gossips on the front steps or Sunday parties. Ed went to church with her in my place. They were getting very close, those two, and it didn't take a shrewd eye to see what was going to happen sometime soon.

The others were more generous than the little cashier and inclined to make too much of my good fortune. For the first time in my life I had the pleasure of knowing that folks were looking up at me and envying me, and I liked the feeling of consequence. I let them think I was to get big wages.

"I suppose you'll be leaving this ranch before long?" Lou suggested.

"Oh, I shouldn't wonder if I might move over to the Palmer House."

A look of consternation spread over Ma Pierson's face at my joking words. She saw a quarter of her regular income wiped off the slate. After the others had gone I told her it was only a joke, and that I should stay with her "until I got married." She cried a little, and said things were bad with her and getting worse all the time. Lately Lou had taken to going with such kind of men that she had no peace at all. I tried to cheer her up, and it was a number of years after that before I could bring myself to leave her place, although the food got worse and worse, and the house more messy and slack.

Even when, later, I began to make a good deal of money, I did not care to change my way of life. At Ma Pierson's were the only people I knew well in the city, and though Grace, and Lou, and Ed, and Dick weren't the most brilliant folks in the city, they were honest, warm-hearted souls and good enough company. And the law clerk, Slocum, was much more. He meant a good deal to me. He taught me how to read—I mean how to take in ideas as they were thought out by those whoput them in books. He lent me his own books, all marked and pencilled with notes and references, which showed me how a well-trained mind stows away its information, how it compares and weighs and judges—in short, how it thinks.

We had many a good talk, sitting on the dusty stone steps in our shirt sleeves late summer nights, when it was too hot to sleep. He had read a deal of history and politics and economics as well as his law, and when it came to argument, he could shut me up with a mouthful of facts that showed me how small my lookout on the world was. I remember how he put me through his old Mill, making me chew hard at every point until I had mastered the theory; then he fed me Darwin and Spencer, and Stubbs and Lecky, and a lot more hard nuts. And I think that I owe no one in the world quite so much as I do that keen, silent Yankee, who taught me how to read books and know what is in them.

Meantime I was not doing anything wonderful over at the Yards. For several months the big manager scarce looked my way when he came across me, while I drove and made deliveries to the city trade. Dround & Co.'s customers were mostly on the West Side, in the poorer wards along the river, where Jews and foreigners live. I used to wonder why the firm didn't try for a better trade; but later, when I learned something about the private agreements among the packers, I saw why each kept to his own field. I soon came to know our territory pretty well, and got acquainted with the little markets. My experience at the Enterprise gave me anidea that I thought to turn to some account with Dround's manager. One day, as I was driving into the Yards, I met the Irishman, and he threw me a greeting:—

"Hello, kid! What's the good word?" And he climbed affably into the seat beside me to drive up to the office.

Here was my chance, and I took it.

"Why don't Dround's handle sausage?" I said to the manager.

"What do you know about sausage?" he asked.

I told him what I had in mind. When I worked for the Enterprise we used to have trouble in selling our sausage. Women were afraid of it, thinking it was made from any foul scraps in the store. So, to make the customers take it, I hit on the plan when we had fresh sausage meat of putting some of the sausages by in clean little pasteboard boxes, and the next time a particular customer came in I would call her attention to one of the boxes, "which I had put aside for her specially." And she would take it every time. In this way the Enterprise built up a considerable trade in sausages. The same condition existed in other markets, as I knew; good customers were afraid to eat the ordinary sausage. So, I thought, why shouldn't the packing-house put up a superior kind of sausage in nice little boxes, with a fancy name? The marketmen could retail them handily. Carmichael seemed to be impressed with my idea: he asked questions and said he would think it over. That encouraged me to spring another scheme onhim. Dround's trade was in the Jewish quarters, but of course we didn't sell to the real Jews.

"What do you know about sausage?" he asked.

"Why not get some old rabbi and make kosher meat—the real article? Strauss and the other packers don't handle it. We might have the market to ourselves, and it is a big one, too."

"Kid, you've got a head on you," big John said to me with warmth. And I saw myself a member of the firm next week!

It didn't work as easily as that, however. The next time I saw the manager I asked him about sausage and kosher meat, and he scowled. It seems he had presented my ideas to Mr. Henry I. Dround, and that gentleman had turned them down. He was a packer, so the head of the house said, and no cat's-meat man, to retail sausages in paper packages to the public. The same way with the kosher meat idea: his business was the packing business, and the firm wasn't trying any ventures. It seemed to me that Mr. Henry I. Dround lacked enterprise; I felt that his manager would have given my ideas a trial.

It was not long after that, however, before Carmichael took me into the office and made me a kind of helper to him, sending me up and down the city to collect accounts, look after the little markets that traded with Dround's, and try on the sly to steal some other fellow's business—that is, to break secretly one of those trade agreements which the packers were always making together, and always breaking here and there, and, when caught, promising each other to be good, and never doit again—until the next opportunity offered, of course! This was more or less confidential and delicate business, and I was not let into the inside all at once. But I said nothing, and kept my eyes open. I began to know some things about the business, and I could guess a few more. I learned pretty soon that Henry I. Dround & Co. was not one of the strongest concerns in the city; that it was being squeezed in the ribs by the great Strauss over the way—that, if it had not been for the smart Irishman, Strauss might take the bread out of our mouths.

Next to Slocum, I owe big John Carmichael more than I could ever pay in money. He was an ignorant, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed Irishman, who had almost been born in the Yards, and had seen little else than the inside of a packing-house all his life. He couldn't write a grammatical letter or speak an unblasphemous sentence. But it didn't take me long to see that Dround & Co. was Carmichael, the manager, and that I was in the best kind of luck to be there under him, and, so to speak, part way in his confidence....

Well, as I said, I got an inkling from time to time how there was a private agreement between the large firms to carve up the market, retail as well as wholesale, and that when one of the firms felt that they could do it safely they would sneak around the agreement (which, of course, was illegal) and try to steal their neighbors' trade. Carmichael managed this business himself, and now and then, when he saw I knew how to keep my mouth shut, he would trust some detail of it to me.

But I was getting only twenty dollars a week, and norosy prospects. My little schemes of making sausages on a large scale and kosher meat had been turned down. I stowed them away in my mind for future use. Meantime, after working at the Yards for nearly two years, I had managed to lay by about a thousand dollars, what with my savings when I was at the Enterprise. That thousand dollars was in a savings-bank downtown, and it made me restless to think that it was drawing only three and a half per cent, when chances to make big money were going by me all the time just out of my grasp. I kept turning over and over in my mind how I might use that thousand and make it breed money. There were lively times then on the Board of Trade. Nothing much was done in the stock market in Chicago in those early days, but when a man wanted to take his flyer he went into pork or grain. I used to hear more or less about what was being done on the Board of Trade from Dick Pierson, who had been promoted from scrubbing blackboards to a little clerkship in the same office, which operated on the Board.

Dick had grown to be a sallow-faced, black-mustached youth who had his sisters' knack of smart dressing, and a good deal of mouth. He was always talking of the deals the big fellows were carrying, and how this man made fifty thousand dollars going short on lard and that man had his all taken away from him in the wheat pit. He was full of tips that he picked up in his office—always fingering the dice, so to speak, but without the cash to make a throw. Dick knew that I had some money in the bank, and he was ever at me to put it upon some deal on margin. Slocum used to chaff him about his tips, and I didn't take his talk very seriously. It was along in the early summer of my third year at Dround's when Dick began to talk about the big deal Strauss was running in pork. Pork was going to twenty dollars a barrel, sure. According to Dick, all any one had to do to make a fortune was to get on the train now. This time his talk made some impression on me; for the boys were saying the same thing over in the office at the Yards. I thought of asking Carmichael about it, but I suspected John might lie to me and laugh to see the "kid" robbed. So I said nothing, but every time I had occasion to go by the bank where I kept my money it seemed to call out to me to do something. And I was hot to do something! I had about made up my mind after turning it over for several weeks, to make my venture in Strauss's corner. Pork was then selling about seventeen dollars a barrel, and there was talk of its going as high as twenty-five dollars by the October delivery.

It happened that the very day I made up my mind to go down to the city and draw out my money I was in the manager's office talking to him about one of our small customers. Carmichael was opening his mail and listening to me. He would rip up an envelope and throw it down on his desk, then let the letter slide out of his fat hand, and pick up another. I saw him grab one letter in a hurry. On the envelope, which was plain, was printed JOHN CARMICHAEL in large letters. As he tore open the enclosure I could see that it was abroker's form, and printed in fat capitals beneath the firm name was the word SOLD, and after it a written item that looked like pork. As Carmichael shoved this slip of paper back in the envelope I took another look and was sure it was pork. I went out of the office thinking to myself: "Carmichael isn't buying any pork this trip: he's selling. What does that mean?"

As I have said, the manager had charge of those private agreements with which the trade was kept together. In this way he came in contact with all our rivals, and among them the great Strauss. After thinking for a time, it was clear to me that the Irishman had some safe inside information about this deal which Dick did not have, nor any one else on the street. That afternoon when I could get off I went down to the bank and drew my money. At first I thought I would take five hundred dollars and have something left in the bank in case I was wrong on my guess. But the nearer I got to the bank the keener I was to make all I could. I took the thousand and hurried over to the office on La Salle Street, where Dick worked. I beckoned him out of the crowd in front of the board and shoved my bunch of money into his hand.

"I want you to sell a thousand barrels of pork for me," I said.

"Gee!" Dick whistled, "you've got nerve. What makes you want to go short of pork?"

"Never you mind," I said; "go on and tell your boss to sell, and there's your margin."

"I'll have to speak to the old man himself about this,"Dick replied soberly. "This ain't any market to fool with."

"Well, if he don't want the business there are others," I observed coolly.

"All right," he called out, "we'll take his deal."

Dick disappeared into the back office, and I had to wait some time. Presently a fat little smooth-shaven man shoved his head through the door and looked me over for a moment with a grin on his face. I suppose he thought me crazy, but he didn't object to taking my money all the same.

"All right," he called out with another grin, "we'll take his deal." And Dick came out from the door and told me in a big voice:—

"All right, old man! We sell a thousand for you."

When I got out into the street I wasn't as sure of what I had done as I had been when I went into the broker's office; but I had too much nerve to admit that I wishedI had my money back in my fist. And I kept my courage the next week, while pork hung just about where it was or maybe went up a few cents. Then it began to slide back just a little—$16.87½, $16.85, $16.80, were the quotations—and so on until it reached $16.50, where it hung for a week. Then it took up its retreat again until it had slid to an even $16. Dick, who congratulated me on my luck, advised me to sell and be content with doubling my money. Strauss was just playing with the street, he said. This was only the end of August: by the middle of September there would be a procession. But my head was set. To be sure, when, after the first of September, pork began to climb, I rather wished I had been content with doubling my money. But I pinned my faith on Carmichael. I didn't believe he was selling yet. For a fortnight at the close of September, pork hung about $16.37½, with little variation either way. Then the last three days of the month, as the time for October deliveries drew near, it began to sag and dropped to $16.10. I hung on.

It was well for me that I did. October first Strauss began delivering, and he poured pork into the market by the thousand barrels. Pork dropped, shot down, and touched $13. One morning I called at the broker's office and gave the order to buy. I had cleared four thousand dollars in my deal.

It was first blood!

There was about five thousand dollars in the bank that day when I went back to the Yards, and I was as proud as a millionnaire. Somehow, I seemed to forget how Ihad learned the right tip, and thought of myself as a terribly smart young man. Perhaps I looked what I was thinking, for when the manager stepped out of his office a little later and eyed me there was a queer kind of smile on his lips.

"What's happened, kid?" he asked, quizzing me. "Been selling any more pork this morning?"

Then I suspected that somehow he had learned about my little venture in the market. I was doubtful just how he might take it.

"No," I said. "It's the time to buy now, isn't it?"

"Covering?" he chuckled. "Well, that's good. Say, some one telephoned out from Cooper's office for you this morning—about a little deal in pork. I answered the 'phone."

So that was the way he had learned! That fool Dick had got nervous, and been telephoning to me.

"I hope you made it all right," Carmichael added.

"You bet," I answered cheerily. And that was all that was ever said about the matter.

THE BOMB

I become a packer on my own account—What there is in sausage—The Duchess—The Piersons' again—At the Haymarket—The path of the bomb—Another kind of evil

Not long after my little deal in pork Carmichael promoted me. Instead of running around the city to look after the markets, I was sent out on the road to the towns that were building up all along the railroad lines throughout the neighboring states. My business was to secure as many of these new markets as I could, and, wherever it was possible, to dispossess any rival that had got hold before. It gave me a splendid chance to know a great section of our country which was teeming with life.

That five thousand dollars in the bank burned worse than the first thousand. I took no more chances on pork, however, but I managed to turn a dollar here and there, and after a time something rather big came my way. There were a couple of German Jews, the brothers Schunemann, who were trying to run a packing business at Aurora. They had started as small butchers, and had done well; but they wanted to get into the packing business, and they were having a hard time to compete with the big fellows in Chicago. Their little plant wascovered with a mortgage, and Dround and Strauss had taken away most of their trade. The Schunemann brothers were such small fish that they could make no agreements with the large companies, and they weren't important enough to be bought out.

That was what I told one of the brothers when he asked me to say a good word for him with Carmichael. His concern was pretty near bankruptcy then, and it was plainly out of the question for them to go on as they had been without capital. If they had tried to build up a small business indelicatessenand such things, they might have succeeded better. I had never given up the idea of the money that might be made in putting up sausages and preparing kosher meat for the city market. Here, I thought, was just the opportunity. If I could buy out the Schunemann brothers or get a controlling interest, I might try my experiment. The scheme grew in my mind, and I went to Aurora several times to see the brothers. After a while I made the man an offer, and then we talked terms for several months. Slocum advised me and drew up the agreement. I was ready to put my stake into the venture, all that I had in the world. It hurt them to sell me the control of their business for seven thousand dollars, which was all that I could scrape together—and part of that was Slocum's savings, which he lent me.

At last we made the arrangement, and the Schunemann brothers put up the "Duchess" brand of sausage after my plan, and we began to handle kosher meat in a small way. I managed the sausage trade with Dround's business, working the two together very well; for the retailers who dealt with Dround's took to my idea and pushed our Duchess brand, which was packed in nice little boxes. It was a new idea in those days, and nothing takes like something that hasn't been tried before. We began to make money—not a fortune all at once; but the business promised to grow. Thus I became a packer, after a fashion!

In the years that immediately preceded the troublous times of 1886, I was a very busy man and often out of the city, too much engrossed with the growing business on my hands to consider very seriously the disturbances of that period. The fight with labor, which seems to be a necessary feature of our progress, had come a kind of crisis in that year. But the events in Chicago during that crisis are still so near to many of us that even with the rapid forgetfulness of our days they have not quite escaped the memory of thoughtful men.

I remember that now and then, around Ma Pierson's table, the talk turned on the strike over at the harvesting works. We were all on the same side, I guess—the side of capital; there was enough for all of the good things of life, we thought, if men would only stop their kicking and keep at work. Slocum, for all that he was a lawyer, was the only easy one on the strikers: so long as they respected the laws he was with them in their struggle to get all they could from their employers.

"Mr. Renshaw says they're too well off now," Lou observed.

"Who is Mr. Renshaw?" I asked, surprised that Lou should take an interest in such matters.

Slocum looked across the table at me, and Grace quickly began on something else....

Well, on the night of the fourth of May I was on my way to the Piersons' from the Union Station. It was very late, for I had just returned from Aurora, where I had been during the afternoon on my own business. As I got on the street car the men on the platform were talking excitedly about the shooting over at the harvester works. When I reached home, I was surprised to find no one on the steps, the door wide open, and a kind of emptiness in the whole place.

"What's up?" I asked old Pierson.

"That Cox girl's got her cheek blowed open with a bomb or suthin'. Times like this folks can't go gallivantin' about the streets," the old man snarled.

Slocum came in at the sound of my voice and told me what had happened. His face was white, and his long arms still twitched with the horror of what he had seen that night. It seems that Dick Pierson had come home to supper full of the news about the row between the police and the strikers. His talk had worked up the girls,—that is, Hillary Cox and Grace,—for Lou hadn't come home,—until all of them had started off after supper in the direction of the harvester works, where the trouble was reported to be.

His long arms twitched with horror.

Then they had strolled down to the Haymarket, where, instead of the great crowd they had expected to find, there were only some hundreds of men and women listening quietly to several workingmen who were speechifying from a cart. It didn't look very lively, and as a thunder storm was coming up in the north Sloco was for going home. But Ed, who, like a country galoot, was curious to hear what the orator in the cart had to say, pressed up close to the truck, in the front of the crowd, with Hillary Cox on his arm. Suddenly, so Slocum said, there was a shout from somewhere behind them:—

"The police! Look out for the police!"

In the rush that followed, Slocum and Grace were jammed back by the press and separated from the others. He remembered only a little of what happened those next moments. And what he did remember didn't tally with the stories that were told later at the trial. In the darkness of the lowering storm, above the heads of the close-packed, swaying mass in the square, there sounded a dull whir. Then came a terrific explosion. The next thing Slocum knew he was crawling on his hands and knees, groping in the darkness for Grace, while all around them crackled the pistol shots of the police. Then he heard Ed's voice shrieking:—

"The bloody brutes have shot her!"...

"And Hillary?" I asked. "Is it bad?"

"A piece of iron ploughed across her cheek."

"Scar?"

Slocum nodded. (The truth is that if it hadn't been for the ignorant doctor who got hold of the girl first her looks might have been saved. But he took eleven stitches, and there was left a long, ugly, furrowed scar across her pretty face!)

We went up to Slocum's room, and sat there far into the night, discussing what had happened.

"Oh, I suppose you law pills will mouse around in it considerable," I said. "The way to do is to string 'em up to the nearest lamp-post, as they do out West."

As I was saying that, a cab drove up hurriedly in the quiet street and stopped at our door. Slocum and I put our heads out of his window, curious to know what was happening now at two o'clock in the morning. We saw a man get out, then turn and lift a woman from the cab to the street. The woman staggered as she started to walk across the sidewalk.

"It's Lou Pierson!" Slocum exclaimed. He drew in his head suddenly and bolted from the room. I waited long enough to see the man who was with Lou pull the doorbell, and then leave the poor girl half-fallen on the steps, while he went back to the cab and spoke to the driver. Then I followed Slocum downstairs, two steps at a time. Slocum had wrenched open the house door and leaped down the long flight of steps, not pausing at the girl, who was making feeble attempts to rise and calling: "Fred! Fred!" But the man, having given his directions to the driver, paid no attention and got into the cab.

I helped Lou to her feet; she was still calling in a drowsy voice: "Fred! Fred!" I could see Slocum with his hand on the door of the cab. He spoke to the man inside, but I could not hear what he said. Suddenly his hand shot out; there was a tussle, half in and half out of the cab; the driver whipped up his horses, andSlocum was thrown to his knees. He picked himself up holding in his fist something that looked like a necktie.

As Slocum helped me carry the girl up the steps, he said:—

"That's who Renshaw is. A bit of a bomb would be about the right thing for him!"

Generalizations, I have learned, are silly things to play with. But there are some experiences in a man's life that tempt him to make them. It was only a mere accident that the man who was Lou Pierson's companion in the cab that night had taken a prominent part against the striking workmen. But when, later, I was called upon to sit in judgment on some hot-headed fools because they, in their struggle to get an eight-hour day, fomented strife, my thoughts would go back sourly to this example of the men I was expected to side with.

THE TRIAL OF THE ANARCHISTS

The terror of good citizens—Henry Iverson Dround—Righteous indignation—Leaders of industry get together "to protect society"—A disagreeable duty—Selecting the jury—The man from Steele's—What is evidence?—What is justice?—In behalf of society—Life is for the strong—All there is in it!—I take my side

The morning after the fourth of May the city was sizzling with excitement. From what the papers said you might think there was an anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the police, having nothing better, fed them lies. At the Yards, men were standing about in little groups discussing the rumors; they seemed really afraid to go into the buildings.

In front of our office a brougham was drawn up—an unusual sight at any time, and especially at this hour.It was standing close to the door, and as I picked my way through the crowd I looked in at the open window. My eyes met the eyes of a woman, who was leaning against the cushioned back of the carriage. She was dressed in a white, ruffled gown that appeared strange there in the yards, and her eyes were half closed, as if she were napping or thinking thoughts far removed from the agitated city. But when I came closer she gave me the sharpest look I ever saw in a woman's eyes. It was a queer face, dark and pale and lifeless—except for that power of the eyes to look into you. I stopped, and my lips opened involuntarily to speak. As I went on upstairs, I wondered who she could be.

My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:—

"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very foundations of our free country—"

"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around in a nest of rattlers."

"Let them do their worst! Let them blow up this building! Let them dynamite my house! I should call myself a craven, a poltroon, if I wavered for one moment in my duty as a citizen."

Carmichael sighed and bit off the end of a fat cigar that he had been rolling to and fro in his mouth. Heseemed to give his boss up, as you might a talkative schoolboy.

Henry Iverson Dround was a tall, dignified gentleman, with thick gray hair, close-cut gray whiskers, and a grizzled mustache. He always dressed much better than most business men of my acquaintance, with a sober good taste. The chief thing about him was his manners, which, for a packer, were polished. I knew that he had been to college: there was a tradition in the office that he had gone into the business against his will to please his father, who had begun life as a butcher in the good old way and couldn't understand his son's prejudices. Perhaps that explains why all the men in the house thought him haughty, and the other big packers were inclined to make fun of him. However that might be, Mr. Dround had a high reputation in the city at large for honorable dealing and public spirit. There was little set afoot for the public good that Henry I. Dround did not have a hand in.

I had met the chief once or twice, big John having called his attention to me, but he never seemed to remember my existence. To-day Mr. Dround blew out of the manager's office pretty soon and brushed against my desk. Suddenly he stopped and addressed me in his thin, high voice:—

"What do you think, Mr. Harrington, of this infernal business?"

My answer was ready, pat, and sufficiently hot to please the boss. He turned to Carmichael, who had followed him.

"That is what young America is thinking!"

Carmichael put his tongue into his cheek instead of spitting out an oath; but after Mr. Dround had gone, he growled at me:—

"That's all right for young America, but I am no damn fool, either! My father saw the riots back home in Dublin. It's no good sitting too close on the top of a chimney—maybe you'll set the house on fire. The police? The police are half thieves and all blackguards! They got this up for a benefit party, most likely. Why, didn't they kill more'n twice as many men over at McCormick's only the other day, just because the boys were making a bit of a disturbance? And nobody said anything about it! What are they kicking for, anyway?"

Mr. Dround's view, however, was the one generally held. That very evening there was a meeting of the prominent men of the city to take counsel together how anarchy might be suppressed with a strong hand. We little people heard only rumors of what took place in that gathering, but it leaked out that there had been two minds among those wealthy and powerful men—the timid and the bold. The timid were overridden by the bolder-hearted. Good citizens, like Strauss and Vitzer, so Carmichael told me with a sneer, talked strong about encouraging the district attorney to do his duty, and raised a fund to pay for having justice done.

"It means that some of those rats the police have been ferreting out of the West Side saloons will hang to make them feel right. The swells are bringing pressure to bear, and some one must be punished. It's grand!"

He chuckled bitterly at his own wit. But the swells meant business, and when Henry I. Dround was drawn for the grand jury, to indict those anarchists that the police had already netted, big John swore:—

"He needn't have done that! There are plenty to do the fool things. It's his sense of duty, I s'pose, damn him! It's some of his duty to come over here and help us make enough money to keep his old business afloat!"

The Irishman thought only of the business, but Henry I. Dround was not the man to let any personal interest stand in the way of what he considered his duty to society. Perhaps he was a little too proud of his sacrifices and his civic virtues. Some years later he told me all about that grand jury. All I need say here is that this famous trial of the anarchists was engineered from the beginning by prominent men to go straight.

The hatred and the rage of all kinds of men during those months while the anarchists were on our hands, before they were finally hanged or sent to prison, is hard to understand now at this distance from the event. That bomb in its murderous course had stirred our people to the depths of terror and hate: even easy-going hustlers like myself seemed to look at that time in the face of an awful fate. The pity of it all was—I say it now openly and advisedly—that our one motive was hate. Stamp this thing out! that was the one cry. Few stopped to think of justice, and no one of mercy. We were afraid, and we hated.

Finally it came time for the trial; thevenirefor the jury was issued. One night, to my consternation, I founda summons at the house. When I showed it to a fellow-clerk at the office the next morning, he whistled:—

"I thought I saw the bailiff in here yesterday, looking around for likely men. They are after a safe jury this time, sure!"

I asked Carmichael to use his influence to get me excused, as I knew he usually did for the boys when they were summoned for jury duty. But all he said was:—

"You're a nervy youngster. You'd better do the thing, if you are accepted."

"It means weeks, maybe months, off," I objected.

"We'll make that all right: you won't lose nothing by it. But you mustn't mind finding a stick of dynamite under your bed when you go home after the trial," he grinned.

"I guess there's no trouble with my nerve," I said stiffly, thinking he was chaffing me. "But I don't want the job, all the same."

"Well, you'll have to see the old man this time. Maybe he can get you off."

So I went into Mr. Dround's private office and made my request. The chief asked me to take a chair and handed me a cigar. Then he began to talk about the privileges and duties of citizenship. From another man it might have been just slobber, but Henry I. Dround meant it, every word.

"Why don't you serve?" I asked him pretty bluntly.

He flushed.

"I haven't been drawn. Besides, it has been thoughtwiser not to give the jury too capitalistic a character. This is a young man's duty. And I understand from Mr. Carmichael that you are one of the most energetic and right-minded of our young men, Mr. Harrington."

From another man it might have been just slobber, but Henry I. Dround meant it, every word.

He stood facing the window and talked along for some time in a general way. His talk was rather simple and condescending, but kind. He spoke of the future before me, of my having the right influence in the community. When I left him I knew perfectly well that the house expected me to serve on that jury if I was chosen, and that Mr. Dround would take personally the warmest interest in a young man who had the courage to do his duty "in behalf of society," as he kept saying.

Still I hoped to escape. I was tolerably far down the list. So day after day I listened to the wrangle among the lawyers over the selection of the jurors. It was clear enough from the start that the State wanted only one kind of man on that jury—an intelligent, well-to-do clerk or small manufacturer. No laboring man need apply: his class was suspect. As a clerk in Steele's store said to me while we waited our turn:—

"That bailiff came into our place and walked down past our department with the manager. I heard him say to Mr. Bent: 'I'm running this case. Let me tell you there won't be no hung jury.'"

"Do you want to serve?" I asked the man from Steele's.

"Well, I do and I don't." Then he leaned over and whispered into my ear: "It looks to me that there might be a better place for me at Steele's if everything goes off to suit and I am a part of it!" He nudged me and pulled a straight face. "I guess they ought to be hanged, all right," he added, as if to square himself with what he was ready to do.

After the defence had used up its challenges, which naturally was pretty soon, the real business of getting the jury began. Much the same thing happened in every case. First the man said he was prejudiced so that he couldn't render a fair verdict on the evidence. Then his Honor took him in hand and argued with him to convince him that his scruples were needless. His Honor drove him up and down hill until the man was forced to admit that he had some sense of fairness and could be square and honest if he tried hard. And then he was counted in. In every case it went pretty much as it did in the case of the man from Steele's.

"I feel," so the man from Steele's said, "like any other good citizen does. I feel that some of these men are guilty; we don't know which ones, of course. We have formed this opinion by general report from thenewspapers. Now, with that feeling it would take some very positive evidence to make me think that these men were not guilty, if I should acquit them.... But I should act entirely upon the testimony."

"But," said the defence, "you say that it would take positive evidence of their innocence before you could consent to return them not guilty?"

"Yes, I should want some strong evidence."

"Well, if that strong evidence of their innocence was not introduced, then you want to convict them?"

"Certainly!"

Then the judge took him in hand, and after a time his Honor got him to say:—

"I believe I could try the case on the evidence alone, fairly."

And so they took him, and they took me in the same way, when it came my turn.

This is scarcely the place to tell the story of that famous trial. It has kept me too long as it is. The trial of the anarchists was an odd accident in my life, however, which, coming, as it did, when I had my foot placed on the ladder of fortune, had something to do with making me what I am to-day. Up to this time I had never reflected much upon the deeper things of life. The world seemed good to me—a stout, hearty place to fight in. I had made money in the scheme of things as they are, and I found it good. I wanted to make some more money, and I had little patience with the kickers who tried to upset the machine. But I had not reasonedit out. There in the court room, and later shut up in the jury quarters, day after day, cut off from my usual habits, I thought over some of the real questions of our life, and made for myself a kind of philosophy.

To-day, after the lapse of eighteen years, I can see it all as I saw it then: the small, dirty court room; the cold, precise face of the judge; the faces of the eight men whom the police had ferreted out of their holes for us to try. There wasn't much dignity in the performance: some pretty, fashionably dressed girls sat up behind the judge, almost touching elbows with his Honor. They came there as though to the play, whispering and eating candy. There was the wrangling among the lawyers, snarling back and forth to show their earnestness. But my eyes came back oftenest to the faces of those eight men, for whose lives the game was being played. Two were stupid; three were shifty; but the other three had an honest glow, a kind of wild enthusiasm, that came with their foreign blood, maybe. They were dreamers of wild dreams, but no thugs!

From the start it seemed plain that the State could not show who threw that fatal bomb, nor who made it, nor anything about it: the best the State could do would be to prove conspiracy. The only connection the lawyers could establish between those eight men and the mischief of that night was a lot of loose talk. His Honor made the law—afterward he boasted of it—as he went along. He showed us what sedition was, and that was all we needed to know. Then we could administer the lesson. Now that eighteen years have passed,that looks to me like mighty dangerous law. Then I was quick enough to accept it.

When we filed into the court room the last morning to listen to the judge's charge, the first face I saw was that of Hillary Cox. A big red scar, branching like a spider's web, disfigured her right cheek. It drew my eyes right to her at once. All her color and the plump, pretty look of health had gone for good. She looked old and sour and excited. And I wished she hadn't come there: it seemed as though she was waiting for her revenge for the loss of her youth and good looks. She was counting on me to give it to her! Ed sat beside her, holding her hand in a protecting way. He was an honest, right-feeling sort of fellow, and I guessed that her loss of good looks would make no difference in his marrying her.

Near the district attorney sat Mr. Dround. He listened to the judge's charge very closely, nodding his head as his Honor made his points and rammed conviction into us....

"In behalf of society"—his phrase ran in my head all through the trial. That was the point of it all—a struggle between sensible folks who went about their business and tried to get all there was in it—like myself—and some scum from Europe, who didn't like the way things are handed out in this world. We must hang these rebels for an example to all men. To be sure, the police had killed a score or two of their kind—"rioters," they were called: now we would hang these eight in a proper, legal, and ordinary way. And then back to business! I suppose that the world seemed to me so good aplace to hustle in that I couldn't rightly appreciate the complaint of these rebels against society. And at any rate I was convinced that we sensible folks who had the upper hand could not tolerate any bomb foolishness. "In behalf of society"—yes, before we had left our seats in the court room my mind was made up: guilty or not, these men must suffer for their foolish opinions, which were dead against the majority.

Thus I performed my duty to society.

When our verdict was ready, and we came in to be discharged, I saw Hillary Cox again. As the foreman rose to give our verdict, her scarred face flushed with excitement, and an ugly scowl crept over her brow. I turned away. Queer thoughts came into my mind—for the bad air and the weeks of close confinement had made me nervous, I suppose.... Society! I seemed to see old Strauss with his puffy, ashen face, and his broad hands that hooked in the dollars, dirty or clean, and Vitzer, who kept our honorable council on his pay-roll for convenience, and the man who had been with Lou Pierson that night, and many others. Were they better men before the eyes of God these eight misguided fools whom we were about to punish? Who did the most harm to society, they or that pale-faced Fielden, who might have been a saint instead of an anarchist?...

The judge was still making remarks; the jury were listening restlessly; the prisoners at the bar seemed little interested in the occasion. I kept saying to myself: "Society! In behalf of society! I have done my duty inbehalf of society." But what was this almighty society, anyhow, save a lot of fools and scamps with a sprinkling of strong souls, who were fighting for life—all of them fighting for what only a few could get? My eyes rested on Hostetter's face in the crowd. His jaw was hanging open, and he was staring at the judge, trying to understand it all. Poor Ed!Hewouldn't have much show in the scramble if society didn't protect him. Suddenly a meaning to it all came to me like a great light. The strong must rule: the world was for the strong. It was the act of an idiot to deny that truth. Yes, life was for the strong, all there was in it! I saw it so then, and I have lived it so all my life....

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