Hitherto, Jimmie Higgins had always refused to take a daily paper.
No capitalist lies for him; he would save his pennies for the
Socialist weeklies! But now he had to have the news, and tired as he
was after the day's work, he would sit on his front porch with his
ragged feet against a post, spelling out the despatches. Then he
would stroll down to the cigar-stand of Comrade Stankewitz, a
wizened-up little Roumanian Jew who had lived in Europe, and had a
map, and would show Jimmie which was Russia, and why Germany marched
across Belgium, and why England had to interfere. It was good to
have a friend who was a man of travel and a linguist--especially
when the fighting became centred about places such as Przemysl and
Przasnyaz!

Then every Friday night would be the meeting of the local. Jimmie
would be the first to arrive, eager to hear every word the better
informed comrades had to say, and thus to complete the education
which Society had so cruelly neglected.

Before the war was many weeks old, Jimmie's head was in a state of
utter bewilderment; never would he have thought it possible for men
to hold so many conflicting opinions, and to hold them with such
passionate intensity! It seemed as if the world-conflict were being
fought out in miniature in Leesville.

At the third meeting after the war began, the prosperous Dr. Service
arose, and in his impressive oratorical voice moved that the local
should send a telegram to the National Executive Committee of the
party, requesting it to protest against the invasion of Belgium;
also a telegram to the President of the United States, requesting
him to take the same action. And then what pandemonium broke loose!
Comrade Schneider, the brewery-worker, demanded to know whether
Local Leesville had ever requested the National Executive Committee
to protest against the invasion of Ireland. Had the Socialist party
ever requested the President of the United States to protect Egypt
and India from oppression?

Comrade Dr. Service, who had remained on his feet, began a
passionate denunciation of the outrages perpetrated by the German
army in Belgium; at which Comrade Schneider's florid face turned
purple. He demanded whether all men did not know that France had
first invaded Belgium, and that the Belgians had welcomed the
French? Weren't all the Belgian forts turned toward Germany? Of
course! answered the doctor. But what of that? Was it a crime for a
man to know who was going to attack him?

The purple-faced brewer, without heeding this question, demanded:
Did not all the world know that the French had begun the war with an
aeroplane bombardment of the German cities? The Comrade Doctor, his
face also purpling, replied that all the world knew this for a tale
sent out by the German propaganda machine. HOW did all the world
know it? roared Schneider. By a cable-censorship controlled by
British gold?

Jimmie was much exicted by this dispute. The only trouble was that
he found himself in agreement with both sides, and with an impulse
to applaud both sides. And also he applauded the next speaker, young
Emil Forster, a pale, slender, and fair-haired youth, a designer in
the carpet-factory. Emil was one who seldom raised his voice in the
meetings, but when he did, he was heard with attention, for he was a
student and a thinker; he played the flute, and his father, also a
member of the local, played the clarinet, so the pair were
invaluable on "social evenings". In his gentle, dispassionate voice
he explained how it was not easy for people in America to understand
the dilemma of the German Socialists in the present crisis. We must
remember that the Germans were fighting, not merely England and
France, but Russia; and Russia was a huge, half-civilized land,
under perhaps the most cruel government in the world. How would
Americans feel if up in Canada there were three hundred millions of
people, ignorant, enslaved, and being drilled in huge armies?

All right, retorted Dr. Service. But then why did not the Germans
fight Russia, and let France and Belgium alone?

Because, answered Emil, the French would not permit that. We in
America thought of France as a republic, but we must remember that
it was a capitalist republic, a nation ruled by bankers; and these
bankers had formed an alliance with Russia, the sole possible aim of
which was the destruction of Germany. France had loaned something
like four billions of dollars to Russia.

And then Schneider leaped up. Yes, and it was that money which had
provided the cannon and shells that were now being used in laying
waste East Prussia, the land of Schneider's birth!




II



The temper of both sides was rising higher and higher, and the
neutrals made efforts to calm the dispute. Comrade Stankewitz,
Jimmie's cigar-store friend, cried out in his shrill eager voice: Vy
did we vant to git mixed up vit them European fights? Didn't we know
vat bankers and capitalists vere? Vat difference did it make to any
vorking man vether he vas robbed from Paris or Berlin? "Sure, I
know," said Stankewitz, "I vorked in both them cities, and I vas
every bit so hungry under Rothschild as I vas under the Kaiser."

Then Comrade Gerrity, organizer of the local, took his turn.
Whatever they did, said Gerrity, they must keep their neutrality in
this war; the one hope of the world just now was in the Socialist
movement--that it would preserve the international spirit, and point
a war-torn world back to peace. Especially just now in Local
Leesville they must keep their heads, for they were beginning the
most important move in their history, the establishment of a weekly
paper. Nothing must get in the way of that!

Yes, said Comrade Service, but they would have to determine the
policy of the paper, would they not? Were they going to protest
against injustice at home, and pay no attention to the most flagrant
act of international injustice in the history of the world? Was a
working man's paper to say nothing against the enslavement of the
working men of Europe by the Kaiser and his militarist crew? He, Dr.
Service, would wash his hands of such a paper.

And then the members of the local gazed at one another in dismay.
Every man and woman of them knew that the prosperous doctor had
headed the list of subscribers for the soon-to-be-born Leesville
Worker with the sum of five hundred dollars. The thought of losing
this munificent contribution brought consternation even to the
Germans!

But there was one member of the local whom no menace ever daunted.
He rose up now--lean, sallow almost to greenness, with black hair
falling into his eyes, and a cough that racked him at every other
sentence. Bill Murray was his name; "Wild Bill", the papers called
him. The red card he carried had been initialled by the secretaires
of some thirty locals all over the country. He had lost a couple of
toes under a tractor-plough in Kansas, and half a hand in a
tin-plate mill in Alleghany County; he had been clubbed insensible
in a strike in Chicago, and tarred and feathered in a free speech
fight in San Diego. And now he told the members of Local Leesville
what he thought of those tea-party revolutionists who pandered to
the respectability of a church-ridden community. "Wild Bill" had
watched the discussions over "Section Six", the provision in the
constitution of the party against sabotage and violence; the very
same persons who had been enthusiastic for that bit of middle-class
fakery were now trying to line up the local for the defence of the
British sea-power! What the hell difference did it make to any
working man whether or not the Kaiser got a railroad to Bagdad? Of
course, if a man had been to school in Britain, and had a British
wife, and felt himself a British gentleman--you could feel the
shudder that went through the gathering, for everyone knew that this
was Dr. Service--all right, let that man take the first ship across
the ocean and enlist; but let him not try to turn an American
Socialist local into a recruiting-agency for British landlords and
aristocrats.

This brought to his feet Comrade Norwood, the young lawyer who had
helped to put through "Section Six" in the National Convention of
the party. If there were people so keen against this Section, why
couldn't they get out of the party and form an organization of their
own?

"Because," answered Murray, "we prefer sabotage to striking!"

"In other words," continued Norwood, "you stay in the local, and by
a campaign of sneering and personalities you drive your opponents
out!"

"This is the first meeting for some months that we have had the
pleasure of seeing Comrade Norwood," said "Wild Bill", with venomous
placidity. "Perhaps he knew that we were to be asked to raise a
regiment for Kitchener!"

And then again Comrade Stankewitz was on his feet, with distress in
his thin, eager face. "Comrades, all this vill not get us anyvere!
There is but vun question ve have to answer, are ve
internationalists, or are ve not?"

"It seems to me," continued Norwood, "the question is, are we
anti-nationalists?"

"All right!" shrilled the little Jew. "I vill leave it so--I am an
anti-nationalist! Such must all Socialists be!"

"But I don't understand it so," declared the young lawyer. "It is
easy for some who belong to a race which has not had a country for
two thousand years--"

"And who's dealing in personalities now?" sneered "Wild Bill".




III



So matters went in Local Leesville. The upshot of the debate was
that Comrade Dr. Service declared that he washed his hands of the
Socialist Party from that time on. And the Comrade Doctor buttoned
his handsome black coat over his stately chest and stalked out of
the room. The greater part of the remainder of that meeting was
devoted to a discussion of him and his personality and his influence
in the local. He was no Socialist at all, declared Schneider, he was
an English aristocrat, or the next thing to it--his wife had two
brothers in the British Expeditionary Force, and a nephew already
enlisted in the Territorials, and a visiting cousin on the point of
setting out for Canada, as the quickest way of getting into the
mix-up. But in spite of all these damaging circumstances, the local
was not disposed to give up its most generous supporter, and Comrade
Gerrity, the organizer, and Comrade Goldstein of the Ypsels, were
constituted a committee to go and plead with him and try to bring
him back into the fold.

As for Jimmie Higgins, his problem was not so complicated. He had no
relatives anywhere that he knew of; and if he had any "country", the
country had failed to make him aware of the fact. The first thing
the "country" had done for him was to put him into the hands of a
negro woman who fed him gruel and water and gave him no blanket in
winter. To Jimmie this country was an aggregation of owners and
bosses, who made you sweat hard for your wages, and sent the police
to club you if you made any kick. A soldier Jimmie thought of as a
fellow who came to help the police when they got hard pushed. This
soldier walked with his chest out and his nose in the air, and
Jimmie referred to him as a "tin willie", and summed him up as a
traitor to the working-class.

And so it was easy for our little machinist to agree with the
Roumanian Jewish cigar-seller in calling himself an "anti-
nationalist". It was easy for him to laugh and applaud when "Wild
Bill" demanded what the hell difference it made to any working man
whether or not the Kaiser got a railroad to Bagdad. He did not
thrill in the least over the story of the British Army falling back
step by step across France, and holding ten times their number of
invaders. The papers called this "heroism"; but to Jimmie it was a
lot of poor fools who had had a flag waved in their eyes, and had
sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In
one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every
week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured
as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always
believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a
thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the
page. And of the many adventures of Henry Dubb, the most absurd were
when he got himself into a uniform. Jimmie would cut these pictures
out and pass them round in the shop, and among his neighbours in the
row of tenement-shacks where he lived.

Nor did it make much difference in Jimmie's feelings when he read of
German atrocities. To begin with, he did not believe in them; they
were just a part of the poison-gas of war. When men were willing to
stab one another with bayonets, and to blow one another to pieces
with bombs, they would be willing to lie about one another, you
might be sure; the governments would lie deliberately, as one of the
ways of making the soldiers fight harder. What? argued Jimmie: tell
him that Germans were a lot of savages? When he lived in a city with
hundreds of them, and met them all the time at the local?

Here, for instance, was the Forster family; where would you find a
kinder lot of people? They were much above Jimmie in social
standing--they owned their own house and had whole shelves full of
books, and a pile of music as high as yourself; but recently Jimmie
had stopped on a Socialist errand, and they had invited him in to
supper, and there was a thin, worn, sweet-faced little woman, and
four growing daughters--nice, gentle, quiet girls--and two sons
younger than Emil; they had a pot-roast of beef, and a big dish of
steaming potatoes, and another of sauerkraut, and some queer pudding
that Jimmie had never heard of; and then they had music--they were
fairly dippy on music, that family, they would play all night if you
would listen, old Hermann Forster with his stout, black-bearded
face turned up as if he were seeing Heaven. And you wanted Jimmie to
believe that a man like that would carry a baby on a bayonet, or
rape a girl and then cut off her hands!

Or there was Comrade Meissner, a neighbour of Jimmie's, a friendly
little chatter-box of a man who was foreman-in-charge of a dozen
women from as many different races of the earth, packing bottles in
the glass-works. The tears would come into Meissner's pale blue eyes
when he told how he was made to drive these women, sick, or in the
family way, or whatever it might be. And remember, it was an
American superintendent and an American owner who gave Meissner his
orders--not a German! The little man could not quit his job, because
he had a brood of children and a wife with something the matter with
her--nobody could tell what it was, but she took all kinds of patent
medicines, which kept the family poor. Sometimes Lizzie Higgins
would go over to see her, and the two would sit and exchange ideas
about ailments and the prices of food; and meantime Meissner would
come over to where Jimmie was minding the Jimmie babies, and the two
would puff their cobs and discuss the disputes between the
"politicians" and the "direct actionists" in the local. And you
wanted Jimmie to believe that men like Meissner were standing old
Belgian women against the walls of churches and shooting them full
of bullets!




IV



But as the weeks passed, the evidence of atrocities began to pile
in, and so Jimmie Higgins was driven to a second line of defence.
Well, maybe so, but then all the armies were alike. Somebody told
Jimmie the saying of a famous general, that war was hell; and Jimmie
took to this--it was exactly what he wanted to believe! War was a
return to savagery, and the worse it became, the better Jimmie's
argument went. He was not interested in men's efforts to improve
war, by agreeing that they would kill in this way but not in that
way, they would kill this kind of people but not that kind.

These ideas Jimmie got from his fellow members in the local, and
from the Socialist papers which came each week and from the many
speakers he heard. These speakers were men and women of burning
sincerity and with a definite and entirely logical point of view.
Whether they talked about war, crime, prostitution, political
corruption, or any other social evil, what they wanted was to tear
down the old ramshackle structure, and to put in its place something
new and intelligent. You might possibly bring them to admit slight
differences between capitalist governments but when it came to a
practical issue, to an action you found that to these people all
governments were alike--and never so much alike as in war-time!

Nor was there ever such need for Socialist protest! Very quickly it
became apparent that it was not going to be an easy matter for
America to keep out of this world-vortex. Because American working
men did not get a living wage, and could not buy what they produced,
there was a surplus product which had to be sold abroad; so the
business of American manufacturers depended upon foreign markets
--and here suddenly were all the principal trading nations of the
world plunging in to buy all the American products they could, and
to keep their enemies from buying any at all.

A woman speaker came to Leesville a shrewd little body with a sharp
tongue, who had these disputes figured out, and gave them in
dialogue, as in a play. Kaiser Bill says, "I want cotton" John Bull
says, "You shan't have it." Uncle Sam says, "But he has a right to
have it. Get out of the way, John Bull." But John Bull says, "I will
hold up your ships and take them into my ports." Uncle Sam says,
"No, no! Don't do that!" But John Bull does it. And then the Kaiser
says, "What sort of a fellow are you to let John Bull steal your
ships? Are you a coward, or are you secretly a friend of this old
villain? Uncle Sam says, "John Bull, give me my German mail and my
German newspapers, at least. But John Bull answers, "You've got a
lot of German spies in your country--that's why I can't let you have
your mail. You can't have German papers because the Kaiser fills
them full of lies about me." And the Kaiser says, "If John Bull
won't let me have my cotton and my meat and all the rest of it, why
don't you stop sending anything to him?" He waits a while, and then
he says, "If you won't stop sending things to that old villain, I'll
sink the ships, that's all." And Uncle Sam cries, "But that's
against the law!" "Whose law?" says the Kaiser. "What sort of a law
is it that works only one way?" "But there are Americans on those
ships!" cries Uncle Sam. "Well, keep them off the ships!" answers
the Kaiser. "Keep them off till John Bull obeys the law."

Put in this way the situation was easy for any Jimmie Higgins to
understand; and month by month, as the debate continued, Jimmie's
own point of view became clearer. He was not interested in sending
cotton to England, and still less in sending meat. He thought he was
lucky if he had a bit of meat twice a week himself, and it was plain
enough to him that if the fellows who owned the meat were not
allowed to ship it abroad, they might sell it in America at a price
that a working man could pay. Nor was that just greediness on
Jimmie's part; he was perfectly willing to go without meat where an
ideal was involved--look at the time and money and energy he gave to
Socialism! The point was that by sending goods to Europe, you helped
to keep up the fighting; whereas, if you quit, the fools must come
to their senses. So the Jimmie Higginses worked out their
campaign-slogan: "Starve the War and Feed America!"




V



In the third month of the war, disturbing rumours began to run about
Leesville. Old Abel Granitch had taken on a contract with the
Belgian government, and the Empire Machine Shops were going to make
shells. Nothing appeared about this in the local papers, but
everybody claimed to have first-hand knowledge, and although no two
people told the same story, there must be some basis of truth in
them all. And then, one day, to Jimmie's consternation, he heard
from Lizzie that the agent of the landlord had called and served
notice that they had three days to vacate the premises. Old man
Granitch had bought the land, and the Shops were to build out that
way. Jimmie could hardly credit his ears, for he was six city blocks
from the nearest part of the Shops; but it was true, so everyone
declared; all that land had been bought up, and half a thousand
families, children and old people, and sick people, men on their
death-beds and women in child-birth--all had three days in which to
move themselves to new quarters.

Let anyone imagine the confusion, the babel of tongues, the women on
their porches calling to one another, asking and giving advice! The
denunciations and the scoldings and the threats to resort to law!
The raids upon landlords, and how the prices went up! Jimmie hurried
off to Comrade Meissner, who had bought a house and was paying
instalments on it; Meissner, being a Socialist, did not try to
fleece him, but was glad to have help in making his payments. There
were no partitions in the garret which Jimmie rented, but they would
hang curtains and make do somehow, and Lizzie would use Mrs.
Meissner's stove until they could get something fixed upstairs. And
then to the corner grocery, to borrow a hand-cart and get started at
moving the furniture; for to-morrow everybody would be moving, and
you would not be able to get anything on wheels for love or money.
Until after midnight Jimmie and Meissner worked at transporting
babies and bedding and saucepans and chairs and chicken-coops piled
on the hand-cart.

And next morning at the shop, more excitement! It was four years now
that Jimmie had been in the employ of old man Granitch, and in all
that time he had done but one thing; standing in a vast room amid a
confusion of whirling belts and wheels, a roar and screech and
grumble and whirl that completely annulled one of the five senses.
There came in front of him, mechanically propelled, a tray full of
small oblong blocks of steel, which he fed, one with each hand, into
two places in a machine; the machine took these blocks, and rounded
off one end, and ground the rest a little smaller, and put a thread
on it, and it dropped into a tray on the other side, a bolt. Because
Jimmie had to watch the machine, and keep the oil-cups full, his was
classed as semi-skilled labour, and was paid nineteen and a half
cents an hour. Some time ago an expert had studied the process, and
figured that with labour at that price it was one-eighth of a cent
per hour cheaper to have the work done by hand than to instal a
machine to do it; and so for four years Jimmie had his job, standing
on one spot from seven to twelve, and again from twelve-thirty to
six, and carrying home every Saturday night the sum of twelve
dollars and twenty-nine cents. You might have thought that the huge
machine-works would have made it twelve-thirty for good measure;
but if so, you do not understand large scale production.

And now, all of an instant and without warning, Jimmie's precisely
ordered and habitual world came to an end. He was at his post when
the whistle blew, but the machinery did not move. And presently came
the Irish foreman with the curt announcement that the machinery
would never move again, at least not on that spot; it was to be
cleared out of the way, and new machinery set up, and they were to
fall to forthwith with wrenches and hammers and crow-bars to make a
new world!

So for a week they did; and meantime, every night as he went home,
Jimmie saw people's homes being wrecked--roofs falling in clouds of
dust, and gangs of men loading the debris into huge motor-trucks.
Before long they had got acetylene torches, and were working all
night-gangs of labourers who lived in tents on vacant lots outside
the city and kept their canvas cots warm with double shifts of
sleepers. Jimmie Higgins realized the dreadful truth, that in spite
of all the agitation of Socialists, the war had actually come to
Leesville!






CHAPTER IV

JIMMIE HIGGINS STRIKES IT RICH

I





It was some time before Jimmie understood the nature of the new
machinery he was helping to set up. It was nobody's business to
explain, for he was only a pair of hands and a strong back; he was
not supposed to be a brain--while as for a soul or a conscience,
nobody was supposed to be that. Russian agents had come to Leesville
with seventeen millions of the money which the Paris bankers had put
up; and so overnight whole blocks of homes were swept out of
existence, and a huge new steel structure was rising, and on the
spot where for four years Jimmie had made certain motions of the
hands, they were preparing to manufacture new machinery for the
quantity production of shell-casings.

When Jimmie had definitely learned what was in process, he was
brought face to face with a grave moral problem. Could he, as an
international Socialist, spend his time making shells to kill his
German comrades? Could he spend his time making the machinery to
make the shells? Would he take the bribe of old man Granitch, a
working man's share of the hideous loot--an increase of four cents
an hour, with the prospect of another four when the works got
started? Jimmie had to meet this issue, just when it happened that
one of his babies was sick, and he was cudgelling his head to think
how he could ever squeeze out of his scanty wage the money to pay
the doctor!

The answer was easy to Comrade Schneider, the stout and sturdy
brewer, who stood up in the local and spoke with bitter scorn of
those Socialists who stayed on in the pay of that old hell-devil,
Granitch. Schneider wanted a strike in the Empire Machine Shops, and
he wanted it that very night! But then rose Comrade Mabel Smith,
whose brother was a bookkeeper for the concern. It was all very well
for Schneider to talk, but suppose someone were to demand that the
brewery-workers should strike and refuse to make beer for
munition-workers? That was a mere quibble, argued Schneider; but the
other denied this, declaring that it was an illustration of what the
worker was up against, with no control of his own destiny, no voice
as to what use should be made of his product. A man might say that
he would have nothing to do with munition-work, and go out into the
fields as a farmer--to raise grain, to be shipped to the armies! The
solidarity of capitalist society was such that nowhere could a man
find work that would not in some way be helping to kill his
fellow-workers in other lands.

Jimmie Higgins talked solemnly to Lizzie of moving to
Hubbardtown--tempted thereto by the signs he saw in an agency which
had been set up in a vacant store on Main Street. The Hubbard Engine
Company was trying to steal old man Granitch's workers, and was
offering thirty-two cents an hour for semi-skilled labour! Jimmie
made inquiry and learned that the company was extending its plant
for gas-engines; for what purpose was not told, but men suspected
that the engines were to go into motor-boats and be used for the
sinking of submarines. So Jimmie decided that Comrade Mabel Smith
was right; he might as well stay where he was. He would take as much
money as he could get and use his new-found prosperity to make
trouble for the war-profiteers. It was the first time in his life
that Jimmie had ever been free from money-fear. He could now get a
job anywhere at good wages, and so he did not care a hang what the
boss might say. He would talk to his fellow-workers, and explain the
war to them; a war of the capitalists at present, but destined
perhaps to turn into another kind of war, which the capitalists
would not find to their taste!




II



It was wonderful, incredible, the thing which had befallen
Leesville. Full of hatred for the system as Jimmie Higgins was, he
could not but be thrilled by what he saw. Thousands of men pouring
into the once commonplace little city--men of a score of races and
creeds, men old and young, white and black--even a few yellow ones!
It was a boom like San Francisco in '49; the money which the Paris
bankers had paid to the Russian government, and which the Russian
government had paid to old man Granitch, spread out in a golden
flood over the city. The speculators raised the price of land, the
house-owners raised rents, the hotels doubled their prices, and even
so, had to put people to bed on pool tables! Even Tom Callahan of
the "Buffeteria"' had to hire two assistants, and build an
extension, and move his kitchen into the back yard.

At night the hordes of strangers roamed the streets, and Lipsky's
"Picture Palace" was packed to the doors, and the "Bon Marche Shoe
Stores" had a new bankruptcy sale every week, and the swinging doors
of the saloons were never still for hours on end. Of course, where
so many men were gathered, there came women--swarms of women--of as
many races as the men. Leesville had some two score churches, and
had kept hitherto a careful pretence of decency; but now all
barriers went down, the police-force of the city was overwhelmed by
the new population--or was it by the golden flood from Paris by way
of Russia? Anyway, you saw sights on Main Street which confirmed
your distrust of war.

Never had there been such an opportunity for Socialist propaganda!
All these hordes of men, collected from the ends of the earth, torn
loose from home ties, from religion, from old habits of every sort,
thrown together promiscuously, living in any old way, ready for any
old thing that might come along! In former days these men had taken
what was handed out to them by their newspaper editors and preachers
and politicians; they had engaged in commonplace and respectable
activities, had lived tame and unadventurous lives. But now they
were making munitions; and you might say what you pleased, but there
was a certain psychological condition incidental to the making of
munitions. An employer could look pious and talk about law and
order, so long as he was setting his men to hoeing weeds or
shingling roofs or grading track; but what could he say to his men
when he was making shells to be used in blowing men to pieces?

So came the Socialist and the Anarchist and the Syndicalist and the
Industrial Unionist. Look at these masters, look at this
civilization they have produced! In the world's oldest centres of
culture ten or twenty millions of wage-slaves have been hurled
together--and then the Socialist or Anarchist or Syndicalist or
Industrial Unionist would describe in detail the bloody and bestial
operations which these ten or twenty millions of men were
performing. And each day's papers would bring fresh details for them
to cite--famine and pestilence, fire and slaughter, poison gas,
incendiary bombs, torpedoed passenger-ships. Look at these pious
hypocrites, the masters, with their refinement, their culture, their
religion! These are the people you are asked to follow, it is for
such as these that you have been chained to the machines all these
weary, toil-crowded years!




III



On every street corner, in every meeting-room, in every spot where
the workers gathered at the noon hour, you would hear such
arguments; and you would find men listening to them--men who perhaps
had never listened to such arguments before. They would nod, and
their faces would become grim--yes, the people up on top must be a
rotten lot! Here in America, supposed to be a land of liberty and
all that--here they were just the same, they were crowding to the
trough to drink the blood that was poured out in Europe. Of course,
they covered their greed with a camouflage of sympathy for the
Allies; but did anybody believe that old man Granitch loved the
Russian government? Certainly nobody in Leesville did; they knew
that he was "getting his", and their hearts hardened with a grim
resolve to "get theirs".

At first they thought they were succeeding. Wages went up, almost
for the asking; never did the unskilled man have so much money in
his pocket, while the man who could pretend to any skill at all
found himself in the plutocratic class. But quickly men discovered
the worm in this luscious war-fruit; prices were going up almost as
fast as wages--in some places even faster. The sums you had to pay
to the landlord surpassed belief; a single working man would be
asked two or three dollars a week for twelve hours' use of a
mattress and blanket, which in the old days he might have got for
fifty cents. Food was scarce and of poor quality; before long you
found yourself being asked to pay six cents for a hunk of pie or a
cup of coffee--and then seven cents, and then ten. If you kicked,
the proprietor would tell you a long tale about what he had to pay
for rent and labour and supplies; and you could not deny that he was
probably right. About the only thing that did not go up was a
postage-stamp; and the Socialist would point to this and explain
that the Post Office was run by Uncle Sam, instead of by Abel
Granitch!

Every rise in price was a fresh stick of fuel for the Socialist
machine, and gave new power to their propaganda of "Starve the War
and Feed America!" The Socialist saw millions of tons of goods being
loaded into steamships and sent to Europe to be destroyed in war; he
saw the workers of Europe becoming enslaved by a bonded debt to a
class of parasites in America, he saw America being drawn closer and
closer to the abyss of the strife. The Socialist loved no part of
this process. He clamoured for an embargo--not merely on munitions,
but on food and everything, until the war-lords of Europe came to
their senses. He urged the workers to strike, and thus force the
politicians to declare the embargo.

Especially, of course, he urged this if he were a German or an
Austrian, a Hungarian or a Bohemian. The latter were subject races,
but they could not in these early days see beyond the fact that
their fathers and brothers and cousins were being killed by the
shells that were made in the Empire Machine Shops. With them stood
also the Jews, who hated the Russian government so bitterly that
nothing else mattered; also the Irish, whose first idea in life was
to pay back John Bull for his sins of several centuries, and whose
second idea was to take part in any sort of shivaree that was going.
It was quite bewildering to Jimmie Higgins; he had wrestled with
Catholics of several nations and got nothing but hard words for his
pains, but now all of a sudden Tom Callahan of the "Buffeteria" and
Pat Grogan of the grocery on the corner made the discovery that
maybe he was not such a fool after all!




IV



As a result of this ferment among the workers, the local had doubled
its membership, and was holding soap-box meetings on a corner off
Main Street on two evenings every week. The plans for the weekly
paper, however, still hung fire. Comrade Dr. Service had lost his
two brothers-in-law, one in the battle of Mons, and the other in the
first frightful gas-attack at Ypres, where whole regiments of men
were caught unprepared and died in awful torments. Also two of his
wife's cousins had paid the price--one was blind, and the other a
prisoner at Ruhleben, the worst fate of all. So Dr. Service made one
last indignant speech in the local, and took his five hundred
dollars to start a chapter of the Red Cross!

But now the Germans and the war-haters in the local were asking
themselves, was Socialism to languish in the city of the Empire
Machine Shops, just because one rich man with an English wife had
proved a renegade? Such a question answered itself! The work of
collecting subscription lists was taken up more vigorously than
ever; and already more than half the lost five hundred had been made
up, when one evening John Meissner came home with a most amazing
story.

It was his custom to stop at Sandkuh's for one glass of beer on his
way home in the evening; and when anybody in the saloon got to
arguing about the war, he would take his chance to put in a little
propaganda. This time he had made a regular speech, declaring that
the workers would soon put an end to the munition-business; and a
fellow had got to talking with him, asking him all sorts of
questions about himself, and about the local. How many members did
it have? How many of them felt as Meissner did? What were they doing
about it? Pretty soon the man had drawn Meissner to a table in the
back part of the place, asking about the proposed paper, and what
its policy was to be; also about the unions in the city, and their
policy, and the personalities of the leaders.

The man had said he was a Socialist, but Meissner did not believe
him. Meissner thought he must be some kind of union organizer. There
had been talk of various unions making an effort to break into the
domain of old man Granitch; and, of course, there was always the I.
W. W. trying to break in everywhere with its programme of the "one
big union".

Meissner went on to tell how this mysterious stranger had stated to
him that it would be possible to get plenty of money to back the
proposition of a strike in the Empire Shops. The new plant was just
ready to start up, and fresh swarms of men were coming in; what was
wanted was some live fellows to get in with them and agitate for an
eight hour day and a minimum wage scale of sixty cents an hour. Men
who were willing to do that could get good money, and plenty of it;
if the Leesville Worker would advocate such a policy, there was no
reason why it should not start up the very next week, and publish a
big edition and flood the town. The one essential was that
arrangements should be made secretly. Meissner must trust no one
save dyed-in-the-wool "reds", who would be willing to hustle, and
not say where the pay came from. As earnest of his intentions, the
stranger pulled out a roll of bills, and casually drew off half a
dozen and slipped them into Meissner's hands. They were for ten
dollars each--more money than a petty boss at the glass-works had
ever got into his hands at one time in all his life!

Meissner exhibited the roll, and Jimmie stared with wide-open eyes.
Here indeed was a new development of the war--ten dollar bills for
Socialist propaganda to be picked up in the back rooms of saloons!
What was this fellow's name? And where did he hang out? Meissner
offered to take Jimmie to meet him, and so the two bolted their
suppers and set out at top speed.




V



Jerry Coleman had mentioned several saloons where he was known, and
in one of these they found him, a smooth-faced, smooth-spoken young
fellow whom Jimmie would have taken for a detective or
"spotter"--having had dealings with such in his days "on the road".
The man wore good clothes, and his finger-nails were cared for,
something which, as we know, is seldom permitted to working-men. But
he did not put on airs, and he bade them call him by his first name.
He talked to Jimmie a while, enough to make sure of his man, and
then he peeled off some more bills, and told Jimmie to find more
fellows who could be trusted. It wouldn't do for any one person to
have too much money, for that would excite suspicion; but if they
would go to work and spend that much for dodgers to be distributed
among the munition-workers, and for street-meetings, and for the
proposed radical paper--well, there was plenty more money in the
place where this had come from.

Where was that place? Jimmie asked; and Jerry Coleman looked wise
and winked. Then, after further consideration, he decided it might
be well to tell them, provided they would pledge themselves not to
mention it to others without his permission. This pledge they gave,
and Jerry stated that he was a national organizer for the American
Federation of Labour, which had resolved to unionize these
munition-plants, and to establish the eight hour day. But it was of
the utmost importance that the bosses should not get wind of the
matter; it must not be revealed to anyone save those whom Coleman
saw fit to trust. He was trusting Jimmie and Meissner, and they
might know that the great labour organization was behind them, and
would see them through regardless of expense. Of course, it would be
expected that they would use the money honestly.

"Gee!" exclaimed Jimmie. "What do you take us for? A bunch of
crooks?"

No, said the other, he was not such a poor judge of character. And
Jimmie remarked grimly that anybody who was looking for easy money
did not go into the business of Socialist agitation. If there was
anything a Socialist could boast of, it was that their workers and
elected officials never touched any graft. Mr. Coleman--that is,
Jerry--would be handed a receipt for every dollar they spent.

It chanced that that same night there was a meeting of the
Propaganda Committee of the local, which consisted of half a dozen
of the most active members. Jimmie and Meissner hurried to this
place, with their new-found wealth burning a hole in their pockets.
They informed the committee that they had been collecting money for
the propaganda fund, and produced before the eyes of the astounded
comrades the sum of one hundred dollars.

It happened that the chairman of the committee had just received
from the National Office of the party in Chicago a sample of a new
leaflet entitled "Feed America First"; this leaflet could be had in
quantities for a very low price, a dollar or two per thousand; as a
result of Jimmie's contribution, a telegram was sent for ten
thousand of the leaflets to be shipped by express. And then there
was a proposition from the state office for Comrade Seaman, author
of a book against war, to speak every night for two weeks in
Leesville. The local had voted to turn down his proposition for lack
of funds; but now, with the new contributions, the propaganda
committee felt equal to the fifty dollars involved. And then there
was the idea of Comrade Gerrity, the organizer, who was conducting
street meetings every Wednesday and Saturday nights; if he could
have an assistant, at fifteen a week, the soap-boxing could go on
every night. John Meissner here put in--he was sure that
contributions could be got for that purpose, provided the decision
was made without delay. So the decision was made.




VI



The meeting was adjourned, and then Meissner and Jimmie went into
conference with Gerrity, the organizer, and Schneider, the brewer,
and Comrade Mary Allen, all three of whom happened to be on the
committee entrusted with the affairs of the Worker. Jimmie explained
that they had met a union organizer--they could not tell about him,
but the committee would have a chance to meet him--who would put up
the balance of the money needed, provided that the paper would be
willing to call at once for a strike of the Empire employees. Could
that promise be made? And Comrade Mary Allen laughed, indicating her
scorn for anybody who could cherish a doubt on that question!
Comrade Mary was a Quaker; she loved all mankind with religious
fervour--and it is astonishing how bitter people can become in the
cause of universal love. Her sharp, pale face flushed, and her thin
lips set, as she answered that the Worker would most surely fight
the war-profiteers, so long as she was on the managing committee!

It was finally decided that Comrade Mary should call on Jerry
Coleman in the morning, and satisfy herself that he really meant
business; if so, she would get the full committee together on the
following evening. The committee had authority to go ahead, as soon
as the necessary fund was made up, so if Coleman was all right,
there was no reason why the first issue of the paper should not
appear next week. Comrade Jack Smith, a reporter on the Herald, the
capitalist paper of Leesville, was to resign and become editor of
the Worker, and he already had his editorials written--had been
showing them about in the local for the past month!

Jimmie and Meissner set out for home, happy in the feeling that they
had accomplished more for Socialism on that one night than in all
the rest of their lives. But then, as they walked, there came
suddenly a clamour of bells on the night air; a fire! They knew the
signals, and counted the strokes, and made the discovery that it was
in the neighbourhood of their own home! An engine went by on the
gallop, with sparks streaming out behind, and they broke into a run.
Before they had gone a couple of blocks, they saw a glare in the
sky, and their hearts were in their throats; poor Meissner panted
that he had neglected to pay his last month's insurance!

But as they ran, in the ever-growing throng of people, they realized
that the fire was too near for their own home; also, it was a bigger
blaze than could have been made by any number of shacks. And
presently there were shouts in the crowd, "It's the Empire! The Old
Shops!" There came a hook and ladder truck, rushing by with
shrieking siren, and then the fire-chief in his automobile with a
fiercely clanging bell; they turned the corner, and far down the
street before them was the building in which for four years Jimmie
had tended the bolt-making machine. They saw that one whole end of
it was a towering, leaping, sweeping pillar of flames!






CHAPTER V

JIMMIE HIGGINS HELPS THE KAISER

I





Jimmie Higgins regarded with the utmost resentment the determination
of the war to come to Leesville, in spite of all his labours to keep
it out. Take the most preposterous thing you could imagine--the most
idiotic thing on the face of the earth--take German spies! When
Jimmie heard people talking about German spies, he laughed in their
faces, he told them they were a bunch of fools, they belonged in the
nursery; for Jimmie classed German spies with goblins, witches and
sea-serpents. And here suddenly the bewildered little man found
himself in the midst of a German spy mania, the like of which he
could never have dreamed!

Everybody seemed to take it for granted that the Empire Machine
Shops had been burned by German agents; they just knew it, and by
the time the fire was out they had a hundred various stories to
support their conviction. The fire had leaped from place to place in
a series of explosions; the watchman, who had passed through the
building only two minutes before, had rushed back and seen blazing
gasolene, and had almost lost his life in the sweep of the flames.
And next morning the Leesville Herald was out with letters half a
foot high, telling these tales and insisting that the plant had been
full of German agents, disguised as working men.

Before the day was by the police had arrested a dozen perfectly
harmless German and Austrian labourers; at least that was the way it
seemed to Jimmie, because of the fact that two of the men were
members of the Socialist local. Somebody told Mrs. Meissner that all
the Germans in Leesville were to be arrested, and the poor woman was
trembling with terror. She wanted her husband to run away, but
Jimmie persuaded them that this would be the worst possible course;
so Meissner stayed in the house, and Jimmie kept his mouth shut for
three whole days--an extraordinary feat for him, and a trial more
severe than being in gaol.

He had lost his job--for ever, he thought. But in this again he
misjudged the forces which had taken his life in their grip--the
power of the gold which had come to Leesville by way of Russia. The
day after the fire he received word to report for work again; old
man Granitch was so anxious to keep his workers out of the clutches
of the Hubbard Engine Company that he put them all, skilled and
unskilled, at the job of clearing away the debris of the fire! And
five days later came the first carloads of new material, brought on
motor-trucks, and the rebuilding of the Empire Shops began. Would
you believe it--some of the machinery which had not been damaged too
much in the fire was fixed up, and at the end of a couple of weeks
was starting up again, covered by a temporary canvas shelter, and
with the walls of the new building rising round it!

That was the kind of thing which made America the marvel of the
world. It had made old man Granitch young again, people said; he
worked twenty hours a day in his shirt-sleeves, and the increase in
his profanity was appalling. Even Lacey Granitch, his dashing son,
quitted the bright lights of Broadway and came home to help the old
man keep his contracts. The enthusiasm for these contracts became as
it were the religion of Leesville; it spread even to the ranks of
labour, so that Jimmie found himself like a man in a surf,
struggling to keep his feet against an undertow.




II



The plans for the Worker were delayed, for the reason that when
Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, went to look for Jerry Coleman the
day after the fire, that dispenser of ten dollar bills had
mysteriously disappeared. It was a week before he showed up again;
and meantime fresh events had taken place, both in the local and
outside. To begin with the latter, as presumably the more important,
an English passenger liner, the pride of the Atlantic fleet, loaded
to the last cabin with American millionaires, was torpedoed without
warning by a German submarine. More than a thousand men, women and
children went down, and the deed sent a shudder of horror through
the civilized world. At the meeting of Local Leesville, which
happened to take place the evening afterward, it proved a difficult
matter to get business started.

The members stood about and argued. What could you say about a
government that ordered a crime like that? What could you say about
a naval officer who would carry out such an order? Thus Comrade
Norwood, the young lawyer; and Schneider, the brewer, answered that
the German government had done everything that any reasonable man
could ask. It had published a notice in the New York papers, to the
effect that the vessel was subject to attack, and that anyone who
travelled on her would do so at his peril. If women and children
would ride on munition-ships--

"Munition-ships?" cried Norwood; and then Schneider pointed to a
news-dispatch, to the effect that the Lusitania had had on board a
shipment of cartridge-cases.

"A fine lot of munitions!" jeered the lawyer.

Well, was the reply, what were cartridge-cases for, if not to kill
Germans? The Germans had been attacked by the whole world, and they
had to defend themselves. When you looked at Comrade Schneider, you
saw a man who felt himself attacked by the whole world; his face was
red up to the roots of his hair, and he was ready to defend himself
with any weapon he could get hold of.