IV

Next day was to be the great mass-meeting in celebration of the
Russian revolution; and would you believe it, Lizzie was hoping to
persuade Jimmie to stay away; she had brought Mr. Drew to help
persuade him! Poor Lizzie had visions of everybody in the hall being
carted off to jail, of Jimmie getting up and shouting something,
causing the police to fall on him and beat in his skull with their
clubs. It was in vain he declared that he was going to do nothing
more romantic than sell literature and act as usher. She clasped him
in her arms, weeping copiously, and when he was still obdurate, she
declared that she would go with him. She would try to persuade Mrs.
Drew to take care of the babies for one night.

Old Peter Drew answered that he would be interested to attend the
meeting himself. How would it do for him to come for Lizzie and the
little ones, and leave the latter at his home, and then drive with
Lizzie to the meeting? They could meet Jimmie at the Opera-house,
where he would be spending the day decorating. Then after the
meeting they could all drive back together. "Fine!" said Jimmie, who
had visions of the old soldier becoming infected with revolutionary
fever.

But alas, it did not work out that way. To Jimmie's consternation
the old man turned up at the Opera-house in a faded blue uniform
with brass buttons all over it! Everybody stared, of course; and
they stared all the harder because they saw this military personage
in company with Comrade Higgins. The old boy gazed about at the
swarms of people, many of them with red buttons, the women with red
ribbons or sashes; he gazed at the decorations--the huge flag and
the long red streamers, the banner of the Karl Marx Verein, and the
banner of the Ypsels, or Young Peoples' Socialist League of
Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and
of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers'
Co-operative Society. He turned to Jimmie and said, "Where's the
American flag?"

The Liederkranz sang the Marseillaise, and after the audience had
cheered and waved red handkerchiefs and shouted itself hoarse,
Comrade Gerrity, the chairman, made a little speech. For many years
all Socialists had been accustomed to employ a metaphor by which to
describe conditions in their country, and now they would no longer
be able to use it, for Russia was free, and America would follow her
example when she had the sense. He introduced Comrade Pavel
Michaelovitch, who had come all the way from New York to tell them
the meaning of the greatest event of history. Comrade Pavel, a
slender, frail, scholarly-looking man with a black beard and
black-rimmed spectacles, said a few words in Russian, and then he
talked for an hour in broken English, explaining how the Russians
had won their way to freedom, and now would use it to set free the
rest of the proletariat. And then came Comrade Schultze, of the
Carpet Weavers' Union, assuring them that there was no need to go to
war with Germany, because the German workers had been shown the way
to freedom, and would follow very soon; Schultze knew, because his
brother was editor of a Socialist paper in Leipzig, and he had
inside information as to what was going on in the Fatherland.

Then Comrade Smith, the editor of the Worker, was introduced, and
the trouble began. The young editor wasted no time in preliminaries;
he was an international revolutionist, and no capitalist government
was going to draft him for its bloody knaveries. Never would he be
led out to murder his fellow-workers, whether in Germany, Austria,
Bulgaria or Turkey; the masters of Wall Street would find that when
they set out to drive American free men to the slaughter-pen, they
had made the mistake of their greedy lives. "Understand me,"
declared Comrade Smith--though there seemed so far to have been
nothing in which anyone could possibly have misunderstood
him--"understand me, I am no pacifist, I am not opposed to war--it
is merely that I purpose to choose the war in which I fight. If they
try to put a gun into my hands, I shall not refuse to take it--not
much, for I and my fellow wage-slaves have long wished for guns! But
I shall use my own judgement as to where I aim that gun--whether at
enemies in front of me, or at enemies behind me--whether at my
brothers, the working-men of Germany, or at my oppressors, the
exploiters of Wall Street, their newspaper lackeys and military
martinets!"

The sentences of this speech came like the blows of a hammer, and
they struck forth a clamour of applause from the audience. But
suddenly the cheering crowd became aware that something out of the
ordinary was happening. An aged, white-whiskered man clad in a faded
blue uniform had risen from his seat in the middle of the hall and
was shouting and waving his arms. People near him were trying to
pull him down into his seat, but he would not be squelched, he went
on shouting; and the audience in part fell silent out of curiosity.
"Shame! Shame!" they heard him cry. "Shame upon you!" And he pointed
a trembling finger at the orator, declaring, "You are talking
treason, young man!"

"Sit down!" shrieked the crowd. "Shut up!"

But the old man turned upon them. "Are there no Americans at all in
this audience? Will you listen to this shameless traitor without one
word?"

People caught him by the coat-tails, men shook their fists at him;
at the other side of the hall "Wild Bill" leaped upon a chair,
shrieking: "Cut his throat, the old geezer!"

Two policemen came running down the aisle, and the "old geezer"
appealed to them: "What are you here for, if not to protect the flag
and the honour of America?" But the policemen insisted that he stop
interrupting the meeting, and so the old man turned and stalked out
from the hall. But he did not go until he had turned once more and
shaken his fist at the crowd, yelling in his cracked voice,
"Traitors! Traitors!"




V



Poor Jimmie remained in his seat, overwhelmed. That he, the most
devoted of workers for Socialism, should have been the cause of such
a disgraceful scene--bringing to this revolutionary meeting a man in
the uniform of a killer of the working-class! He could not stay and
face the comrades; before the speaking had finished, he gave Lizzie
a nudge, and the two got up and stole out, dodging everyone they
knew.

Outside they stood in perplexity. They thought, of course, that the
old man would have driven away without them; they pictured the long
walk from the trolley-line in the darkness and mud--and with Lizzie
dressed in her only Sunday-go-to-meeting! But when they went to the
place where Mr. Drew had left his buggy, to their surprise they
found him patiently waiting for them. Seeing them hesitate, he said,
"Come! Get in!" They were much embarrassed, but obeyed, and the old
mare started her amble towards home.

They rode for a long time in silence. Finally Jimmie could not stand
it, and began, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Drew. You don't understand--" But
the old man cut him off. "There's no use you and me tryin' to talk,
young man." So they rode the rest of the way without a sound--except
that once Jimmie imagined he heard Lizzie sobbing to herself.

Jimmie really felt terribly about it, for he had for this old
soldier a deep respect, even an affection. Mr. Drew had made his
impression not so much by his arguments, which Jimmie considered
sixty years out of date, as by his personality. Here was one patriot
who was straight! What a pity that he could not understand the
revolutionary point of view! What a pity that he had to be made
angry! It was one more of the horrors of war, which tore friends
apart, and set them to disputing and hating one another.

At least, that was the way it seemed to Jimmie that night, while he
was still full of the speeches he had heard. But at other times
doubts assailed him--for, of course, a man cannot defy and combat a
whole community without sometimes being led to wonder whether the
community may not have some right on its side. Jimmie would hear of
things the Germans had done in the war; they were such dirty
fighters, they went out of their way to do such utterly revolting
and useless, almost insane things! They made it so needlessly hard
for anyone who tried to defend them to think of them even as human
beings. Jimmie would argue that he did not mean to help the Germans;
he would resent bitterly the charges of the Leesville newspapers
that he was a German agent and a traitor; but he could not get away
from the uncomfortable fact that the things he was doing DID have a
tendency to further German interests, at least for a time.

When that was pointed out to him by some patriot in a controversy,
his answer would be that he was appealing to the German Socialists
to revolt against their military leaders; but then the patriot would
begin to find fault with the German Socialists, declaring that they
were much better Germans than Socialists, and citing utterances and
actions to prove it. One German Socialist had stood up in the
Reichstag and declared that the Germans had two ways of
fighting--their armies overcame their enemies in the field, while
their Socialists undermined the morale of the workers in enemy
countries. When that passage was read to Jimmie, he answered that it
was a lie; no such speech had ever been made by a Socialist. He had
no way of proving it was a lie, of course; he just knew it! But
then, when he went away and thought it over, he began to wonder;
suppose it were true! Suppose the German workers had been so drilled
and schooled in childhood that even those who called themselves
revolutionists were patriots at heart! Jimmie would begin to piece
this and that together--things he had heard or read. Certainly these
German Socialists were not displaying any great boldness in fighting
their government!

The answer was that they could not oppose their government, because
they would be put in jail. But that was a pretty poor answer; it was
their business to go to jail--if not, what right had they to expect
Jimmie Higgins to go here in America? Jimmie presented this problem
to Comrade Meissner, who answered that if Jimmie would go first,
then doubtless the German comrades would follow. But Jimmie could
not see why he should be first; and when they tried to clear up the
reason, it developed that down in his heart Jimmie had begun to
believe that Germany was more to blame for the war than America. And
not merely would Comrade Meissner not admit that, but he became
excited and vehement, trying to convince Jimmie that the other
capitalist governments of the world were the cause of the
war--Germany was only defending herself against them! So there they
were, involved in a controversy, just like any two non-revolutionary
people! Repeating over the same arguments which had gone on in the
local between Norwood, the lawyer, and Schneider, the brewer; only
this time Jimmie was taking the side of Norwood! Jimmie found
himself face to face with the disconcerting fact that his devoted
friend Meissner was a German--and therefore in some subtle way
different from him, unable to see things as he did!






CHAPTER XIII

JIMMIE HIGGINS DODGES TROUBLE

I





War or no war, the soil had to be ploughed and seed sown; so John
Cutter came to his tenant and proposed that he should resume his job
as farm-hand. Only he must agree to shut up about the war, for while
Cutter himself was not a rabid patriot, he would take no chances of
having his tenant-house burned down some night. So there was another
discussion in the Higgins family. Lizzie remembered how, during the
previous summer, Jimmie had worked from dawn till dark, and been too
tired even to read Socialist papers, to say nothing of carrying on
propaganda; which seemed to the distracted wife of a propagandist
the most desirable condition possible! Poor Eleeza Betooser--twice
again she had been compelled to take down the stocking from her
right leg, and unsew the bandage round her ankle, and extract
another of those precious yellow twenty-dollar bills; there were
only seven of them left now, and each of them was more valuable to
Lizzie than her eye-teeth.

Jimmie finally agreed that he would gag himself, so far as concerned
this country-side. What was the use of trying to teach anything to
these barnyard fools? They wanted war, let them go to war, and be
blown to bits, or poisoned in the trenches! If Jimmie had
propaganding to do, he would do it in the city, where the
working-men had brains, and knew who their enemies were. So once
more Jimmie harnessed up John Cutter's horses to the plough, and
went out into John Cutter's field to raise another crop of corn for
a man whom he hated. All day he guided the plough or the harrow, and
at night he fed and cared for the horses and the cows, and then he
came home and ate his supper, listening to the rattling of the long
freight-train that went through his backyard, carrying materials for
the making of TNT.

For the great explosives plant was now working day and night,
keeping the war in Jimmie's thoughts all the time, whether he would
or not. In the midnight hours the trains of finished materials went
out, making Jimmie's windows rattle with their rumble and clatter,
and bearing his fancies away to the battle-line across the seas,
where men were soon to be blown to pieces with the contents of these
cars. One night something went wrong on the track, and the train
stopped in his backyard, and in the morning he saw the cars, painted
black, with the word "danger" in flaming red letters. On top of the
cars walked a man with a club in his hand and a bulge on his hip,
keeping guard.

It appeared that someone had torn up a rail in the night, evidently
for the purpose of wrecking the train; so there came a detective to
Jimmie, while he was working in the field, to cross-question him.
They had Jimmie's record, and suspected him of knowing more than he
would tell. "Aw, go to hell!" exclaimed the irate Socialist. "D'you
suppose, if I'd wanted to smash anything, I'd done it on the place
where I work?" And then, when he went home to dinner, he found that
they had been after Lizzie, and had frightened her out of her wits.
They had threatened to turn them out of their home; Jimmie saw
himself hounded here and there by this accursed war--until it
finished by seizing him and dragging him to the trenches!




II



The new Congress had met, and declared a state of war with Germany,
and the whole country was rushing into arms. Men were enlisting by
hundreds of thousands; but that was not enough for the
militarists--they wanted a conscription-law, so that every man might
be compelled to go. If they were so sure of themselves and their
wonderful war, why weren't they satisfied to let those fight it who
wanted to? So argued the rebellious Jimmie and his anti-militarist
associates. But no! the militarists knew perfectly well that the
bulk of the people did not want to fight, so they proposed to make
them fight. Every energy of the Socialist movement was now
concentrated on the blocking of this conscription scheme.

Local Leesville hired the Opera-house again, organizing a
mass-meeting of protest, and the capitalist papers of the city began
clamouring against this meeting. Was the patriotism and loyalty of
Leesville to be affronted by another gathering of sedition and
treason? The Herald told all over again the story of the gallant old
Civil War veteran who had risen in his seat and shouted his protest
against the incitements of "Jack" Smith, the notorious "red" editor.
The Herald printed a second time the picture of the gallant old
veteran in his faded blue uniform, and the list of battles in which
he had fought, from the first Bull Run to the last siege of
Richmond. Some farmer passing by handed a copy of this paper to
Lizzie, adding that if there was any more treason-talk in this
locality there was going to be a lynching bee. So Jimmie found his
wife in tears again. She was absolutely determined that he should
not go to that meeting. For three days she wept and argued with him,
and for a part of three nights.

It would have been comical if it had not been so tragic. Jimmie
would use the old argument, that if he did not succeed in stopping
the war, he would be dragged into the trenches and killed. So, of
course, Lizzie would become a pacifist at once. What right had the
war to take Jimmie from her? The little Jimmies had a right to their
father! All children had a right to their fathers! But then, after
Lizzie had expressed these tearful convictions, Jimmie would say,
"All right, then, he must go to that meeting, he must do what he
could to prevent the war." And poor Lizzie would find herself
suddenly confronting the terrors of the police with their clubs and
the patriots with their buckets of tar and bags of feathers! No,
Jimmie must not carry on any propaganda, Jimmie must not go to the
meeting! Poor Jimmie would try to pin her down; which way did she
want him killed, by the Germans, or by the police and the mobs? But
Lizzie did not want him killed either way! She wanted him to go on
living!

Jimmie would try to arrange a compromise for the present. He would
go to the meeting, but he would promise not to say a word. But that
did not console Lizzie--she knew that if anything happened, her man
would get into it. No, if he were determined to go, she would go,
too,--even if they had to load the three babies into the
perambulator, and push them two or three miles to the trolley! If
Jimmie tried to make a speech, she would hang on to his coat-tails,
she would clasp her hands over his mouth, she would throw herself
between him and the clubs of the policemen!

So matters stood, when on the afternoon before the meeting there
came a heavy rain, and the road to the trolley was rendered
impossible for a triple-loaded baby-carriage. So there were more
hysterics in the family; Jimmie took his wife's hand in his and
solemnly swore to her that she might trust him to go to this
meeting, he would not do anything that could by any possibility get
him into trouble. He would not try to make a speech, he would not
get up and shout--no matter what happened, he would not say a word!
He would merely sell pamphlets, and show people to their seats, as
he had done at a hundred meetings before. To make sure of his
immunity, he would even leave off the red badge which he was
accustomed to display on Socialist occasions! By these pledges
repeated over and over, he finally succeeded in pacifying his
weeping spouse, and gently removed her clutch on his coat-tails, and
departed, waving his hand to her and the kids.

The last thing he saw through the rain was Jimmie Junior,
flourishing a red handkerchief which Lizzie at the last moment had
extracted from her husband's pocket. The last sound he heard was
Jimmie Junior's voice, shouting:

"You be good now! You shut up!" Jimmie went off, thinking about this
little tike; he was five years old, and growing so that you could
notice the difference overnight. He had big black eyes like his
mother, and a grin full of all the mischief in the world. The things
he knew and the questions he asked! Jimmie and Lizzie never got
tired of talking about them; Jimmie recalled them one by one, as he
trudged through the mud--and, as always, he set his lips and
clenched his hands, and took up anew the task of making the world a
fit place for a working-man's child to grow up in!




III



The principal orator of the evening was a young college professor
who had been turned out of his job for taking the side of the
working-class in his public utterances, and who was therefore a hero
to Jimmie Higgins. This young man had the facts of the war at his
finger-tips; he made you see it as a gigantic conspiracy of
capitalists the world over to complete their grip on the raw
materials of wealth, and on the bodies and souls of the workers. He
bitterly denounced those who had forced the country into the war; he
denounced the Wall Street speculators and financiers who had made
their billions already, and would be making their tens of billions.
He denounced the plan to force men to fight who did not wish to
fight, and his every sentence was followed by a burst of applause
from the throng which packed the Opera-house. If you judged by this
meeting, you would conclude that America was on the verge of a
revolution against the war.

The young professor sat down, wiping the perspiration from his pale
forehead; and then the Liederkranz sang again--only it was not
called the Liederkranz now, it had become known as the "Workers'
Singing Society", out of deference to local prejudice. Then arose
Comrade Smith, editor of the Worker, and announced that after the
collection the orator would answer questions; then Comrade Smith
launched into a speech of his own, to the effect that something
definite ought to be done by the workers of Leesville to make clear
their opposition to being dragged into war. For his part he wished
to say that he would not yield one inch to the war-clamour--he was
on record as refusing to be drafted in any capitalist war, and he
was ready to join with others to agree that they would not be
drafted. The time was short--if anything were to be done, they must
act at once--

And then suddenly came an interruption--this time not from an old
soldier, but from a sergeant of police, who had been standing at one
side of the stage, and who now stepped forward, announcing, "This
meeting is closed."

"What?" shouted the orator.

"This meeting is closed," repeated the other. "And you, young man,
are under arrest."

There was a howl from the audience, and suddenly from the pit in
front of the stage, whence ordinarily the orchestra dispensed sweet
music, there leaped a line of blue-uniformed men, distributing
themselves between the public and the speaker. At the same time down
the centre aisle came a dozen soldiers marching, with guns in their
hands and bayonets fixed.

"This is an outrage!" shouted Comrade Smith.

"Not another word!" commanded the police official; and two policemen
who had followed him grabbed the orator by each arm and started to
lead him off the stage.

Comrade Gerrity leaped to the front of the platform. "I denounce
this proceeding!" he shouted. "We are holding an orderly meeting
here--"

A policeman laid hold of him. "You are under arrest."

Then came Comrade Mabel Smith, sister of the editor of the Worker.
"For shame! For shame!" she cried. And then, to a policeman, "No, I
will not be silent! I protest in the name of free speech! I
declare--" And when the policeman seized her by the arm, she
continued to shout at the top of her lungs, driving the crowd to
frenzy.

There were disturbances all over the audience. Mrs. Gerrity, wife of
the organizer, sprang up in her seat and began to protest. It
happened that Jimmie Higgins was in the aisle not far from her, and
his heart leaped with strange, half-forgotten emotions as he saw
this trim little figure, with the jaunty hat and the turkey feather
stuck on one side. Comrade Evelyn Baskerville, of Greenwich Village,
she of the fluffy brown hair and the pert little dimples and the
bold terrifying ideas, she who had so ploughed up the soul of Jimmie
Higgins and almost broken up the Higgins' home--here she was,
employing a new variety of coquetry, by which she compelled three
soldiers with rifles and bayonets to devote their exclusive
attention to her!

And then Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker lady, who believed in moral
force applied through the ear-drums. She stood in the aisle with her
armful of pamphlets and her red sash over her shoulder, proclaiming,
"In the name of liberty and fair play I protest against this
outrage! I will not see my country dragged into war without
asserting my right of protest! I stand here, in what is supposed to
be a Christian city; I speak in the name of the Prince of Peace--"
and so on, quite a little speech, while several embarrassed young
men in khaki were trying to find out how to hold their rifles and a
shouting Quakeress at the same time.

And then Comrade Schneider, the brewer. He had been up on the stage
with the singers, and now got somehow to the front. "Haf we got no
rights in America left?" he shouted. "Do we in this audience--"

"Shut up, you Hun!" roared someone on the front of the crowd, and
three policemen at once leaped for Comrade Schneider, and grabbed
him by the collar, twisting so hard that the German's face, always
purple when he was excited, took on a dark and deadly hue.

Poor Jimmie Higgins! He stood there with his armful of "War, What
For?"--trembling with excitement, itching in every nerve and sinew
to leap into this conflict, to make his voice heard above the
uproar, to play his part as a man--or even as a Comrade Mabel Smith,
or a Comrade Mary Alien, or a Comrade Mrs. Gerrity, nee Baskerville.
But he was helpless, speechless--bound hand and foot by those solemn
pledges he had given to Eleeza Betooser, the mother of babies.

He looked about, and near him in the aisle he saw another man, also
bound hand and foot--bound by the memory of the smash in the face
which had broken his nose and knocked out three of his front teeth!
"Wild Bill" saw a policeman watching him now, eager for another
pretext to leap on him and pound him; so he was silent, like Jimmie.
The two of them had to stand there and see the fundamental
constitutional rights of American citizens set at naught, to see
liberty trampled in the dust beneath the boots of a brutal soldiery,
to see justice strangled and raped in the innermost shrine of her
temple. At least, that was what you had seen if you read the
Leesville Worker; if on the other hand you read the Herald--which
nine out of ten people did--then you learned that the forces of
decency and order had at last prevailed in Leesville, the propaganda
of the Hun was stifled for ever, the mouthers of sedition had felt
the heavy hand of public indignation.




IV



Outside, a crowd gathered to jeer while the prisoners were loaded
into the patrol-wagon; but the police drove them away, keeping
everybody moving, and breaking up several attempts at
street-oratory. Jimmie found himself with half a dozen other
comrades, wandering aimlessly down Main Street, talking over and
over what had happened, each explaining why and how he had not
shared the crown of martyrdom. Some had shouted as loud as the rest,
but had been missed by the police; some had thought it wiser to run
away and live to shout another day; some wanted to start that very
night to print a leaflet and call another mass-meeting. They
adjourned to Tom's "Buffeteria" to talk things over; they took
possession of a couple of tables, and got their due quotas of coffee
and sandwiches, or pie and milk, and had just got fairly started on
the question of raising bail without the help of Comrade Dr.
Service--when suddenly something happened which drove all thoughts
of the meeting out of their minds.

It was like a gigantic blow, striking the whole world at once; a
cosmic convulsion, quite indescribable. The air became suddenly a
living thing, which leaped against your face; the windows of the
little eating-place flew inward in a shower of glass, and the walls
and tables shook as if with palsy. The sound of it all was a vast,
all-pervasive sound, at once far off and near, tailing away in the
clatter and crash of innumerable panes of glass falling from
innumerable windows. Then came silence, a sinister, frightful
silence, it seemed; men stared at one another, crying, "My God!
What's that?" The answer seemed to dawn upon everyone at once: "The
powder-plant!"

Yes, that must be it, beyond doubt. For months they had been talking
about it and thinking about it, speculating as to the probabilities
and the consequences. And now it had happened. Suddenly one of the
company gave a cry, and they turned and stared at his white face,
and realized the terror that clutched his heart. Comrade Higgins,
whose home was so near the place of peril!

"Gee, fellers, I gotta go!" he gasped; and several of the comrades
jumped up and ran with him into the street. If there was a single
pane of glass left intact in Leesville, you would not have thought
it as you trod those pavements.

If Jimmie had been trained in efficiency, and accustomed to spending
money more freely, he might perhaps have found out something by the
telephone or by inquiry at the newspaper offices; but the one thing
he thought of was to take the trolley and get to his home. The
comrades ran with him, speculating with eager excitement, trying to
reassure him--it could be nothing worse than some glass and some
dishes smashed. Some had thought of going all the way with him, but
they remembered they would be too late for the last trolley back,
and they had their jobs in the morning. So they put him on the car
and bade him good-bye.




V



The trolley was packed with people going out to see what had
happened, so Jimmie had plenty of company and conversation on the
way. But when he came to his stop, he got off and walked alone, for
the others were going to the explosives plant, and they rode a mile
or so farther on the car.

Never would Jimmie forget that journey--that walk of nightmares. The
road was pitch-dark, and before he had gone more than half the
distance, he stumbled over something, and fell head-foremost. He got
up, and groped, and discovered that it was a tree, lying prone
across the road. He searched his mind, and remembered a great dead
tree that stood at that spot. Could the explosion have knocked it
down?

He went on, feeling his way more cautiously, yet goaded to greater
speed by his fears. A little way further was a farm-house, and he
went into the yard and shouted, but got no reply. The yard was
covered with shingles, apparently blown from the roof. He went on,
more frightened than ever.

He came to a turn in the road which he knew was less than half a
mile from his home; and here there were several horses and wagons
tied, but no one to answer his calls. The road passed through a
wood; but apparently there was no road any more--the trees had been
picked up bodily and thrown across it. Jimmie had to grope this way
and that, and he ran a piece of broken branch into his cheek, and by
that time was almost ready to cry with fright. He knew that his home
was two miles from the explosives plant, and he could not conceive
how an explosion could have done such damage at such a distance.

He saw a lantern ahead, bobbing this way and that, and he shouted
louder than ever, and finally succeeded in persuading the bearer of
the lantern to wait for him. It proved to be a farmer who lived some
way back; he knew no more than Jimmie did, and they made their way
together. Beyond the woods, the road was littered with loose dirt,
bushes, bits of fence and rubbish, burned black. "It must have been
near here," declared the man, and added words which caused Jimmie's
heart almost to stand still. "It must have been on the railroad
track!"

They came to a little rise, from which in day-time the line of the
railroad was visible. They saw lanterns, many of them, moving here
and there like a swarm of fire-flies. "Come this way," Jimmie begged
of the farmer, and ran towards his home. The road was buried under
masses of earth, as if thousands of steam-shovels had emptied their
contents on it. When they came to where the fence of Jimmie's house
ought to have been, they found no fence, but a slide of loose earth
that had never been there before. Where the apple-tree had been
there was nothing; where the lawn had been there was a pitch down a
hill, and where the house had been was a huge valley, seeming in the
darkness a bottomless abyss!




VI



Jimmie was distracted. He grabbed the lantern from the other man,
and ran this way and that, looking for some of the familiar
landmarks of his home--the chicken-house, the pig-sty, the back
fence with the broken elm tree in the corner, the railroad beyond.
He could not believe that he had come to the place at all--he could
not credit the reality of such nightmare sights as his eyes reported
to him. He rushed about, stumbling over mountains of upheaved brown
dirt, sliding down into craters that were filled with a strange,
penetrating odour which caused his eyes to smart; and then
clambering out again and running after men with lanterns, shouting
questions at them and not waiting for an answer. It seemed to him
that if he ran just a little farther he must surely find the house
and the other things he was looking for; but he found nothing but
more craters and more mountains of dirt; and little by little the
horrible truth became clear to him, that all the way down the
railroad track, as far as he could see or run, this gigantic trough
extended, a valley of raw dirt with mountains on each side, crowned
here and there with wheels and axles and iron trucks of blown-up
freight-cars, and filled in the bottom with the deadly fumes of
trinitrotoluol!

Jimmie cried out to the men and women with lanterns, asking had they
seen his wife and babies. But no one had seen them--no one had
notified them of the impending explosion! Jimmie was sobbing,
calling out distractedly; he ran out to the road, and after much
searching found a charred tree-stump which gave him his precise
bearings, so that he knew where the house should have been, and
could assure himself that it was precisely where that frightful
slope started down into the abyss. He slid around on this slope,
calling aloud, as if he expected the spirits of his loved ones might
have remained there, defying all the power of suddenly expanding
gases. He ran back across the road and called, as if they might have
fled that way.

At last he ran into Mr. Drew; old Mr. Drew, who a couple of weeks
before had taken Eleeza Betooser and her three little ones driving
in his buggy! That memory was the nearest Jimmie could get to them,
and so he clutched the old soldier's arm, and held on to it, weeping
like a little child.

The old man tried to draw him away, to get him to his home. But
Jimmie must stay on the spot, he was held by a spell of horror. He
wandered about, dragging Mr. Drew with him, pleading with people to
no purpose; now and then he would break out with curses against
war-makers, and especially those who made explosives and transported
them in freight-trains through other men's back-yards. For once
people heard him without threats of lynching.

So on through this night of anguish. Jimmie lost old man Drew in the
darkness, and was all alone when the dawn came, and he could see the
sweep of desolation about him, and the awe-stricken faces of the
spectators. Soon afterwards came the climax. He saw a crowd
gathered, and as he came up, this crowd parted for him. Nobody
seemed to want to speak, but they all watched, as if curious to see
what he would do. One of the men bore a burden, wrapped in a
horse-blanket; Jimmie gazed, and after a moment's hesitation the man
threw back part of the blanket and there before Jimmie's eyes was a
most horrible sight--a human leg, a large white leg, the lower half
covered with a black stocking tied at the top with a bit of tape. It
was such a leg as you see in the windows of stores where they sell
pretty things for ladies; only this leg was soft, mangled at the
top, smeared with blood, and partly charred black. One glance was
enough for Jimmie, and he put his hands over his eyes and turned and
ran--out to the road and away, away--anywhere from this place of
nightmares!




VII



Jimmie's whole world was wiped out, ended. He had no place to go, no
care what became of him. He stumbled on till he came to the
trolley-track, and got on the first car which came along. It was
pure chance that it happened to be going back to Leesville, for
Jimmie had no longer any interest in that city. When the car came to
the barn, he got out and wandered aimlessly, until he happened to
pass a saloon where he had been accustomed to meet Jerry Coleman,
distributor of ten-dollar bills. Jimmie went in and ordered a drink
of whisky; he did not tell the saloon-keeper what had happened, but
took the drink to a table and sat down by himself. When he had
finished, he ordered another, because it helped him not to think; he
sat there at the table, drinking steadily for an hour or more. And
so upon his confused mind there dawned a strange, a ghastly idea,
climax of all that night of horror. Which leg of Lizzie was it the
man had been carrying wrapped in a horse-blanket? The right leg or
the left? If it was the left leg, why, nothing; but if it was the
right, why then, under the stocking was sewed a bandage, and in that
bandage was wrapped a package containing seven faded yellow
twenty-dollar bills!

And what would they do about it? Would they bury the leg without
investigation? Or would the man who had found it happen to undress
it? And what was Jimmie to do? A hundred and forty dollars was not
to be sneezed at by a working-man--it was more money than he had
ever had in his life before, or might ever have again. But could he
go to the man and say, "Did you find any money on my wife's leg?"
Could he say, "Please give me my wife's leg, so that I can undress
it and unsew the bandage and get the money that I was paid for
keeping quiet about the surgical operation on Lacey Granitch, that
was done in my house before it was blown to pieces by the
explosion."

Jimmie thought it all over while he took a couple more drinks, and
finally settled it to himself: "Aw, hell! What do I want with money?
I ain't a-goin' to live no more!"






CHAPTER XIV

JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE ROAD

I





Jimmie Higgins was wandering down the street, when he ran into "Wild
Bill", who was, of course, greatly surprised to see his friend in a
drunken condition. When he heard the reason, he revealed an
unexpected side of his nature. If you judged "Wild Bill" by his
oratory, you thought him a creature poisoned through and through, a
soul turned rancid with envy, hatred and malice and all
uncharitableness. But now the tears came into his eyes, and he put
his arm over Jimmie's shoulder. "Say, old pal, that's bum luck! By
God, I'm sorry!" And Jimmie, who wanted nothing so much as somebody
to be sorry with, clasped Bill in his arms, and burst into tears,
and told over and over again how he had gone to what had been his
home, and found only a huge crater blown out by the explosion, and
how he had gone about calling his wife and babies, until at last
they had brought him one leg of his wife.

"Wild Bill" listened, until he knew the story through and then he
said, "See here, old pal, let's you and me quit this town."

"Quit?" said Jimmie, stupidly.

"Every time I open the front of my face now, the police jump in it.
Leesville's a hell of a town, I say. Let's get out."

"Where'll we go?"

"Anywhere--what's the diff? It's coming summer. Let's slam the
gates."

Jimmie was willing--why not? They went back to the lodging-house
where Bill lived, and he tied up his worldly goods in a
gunny-sack--the greater part of the load consisting of a diary in
which he had recorded his adventures as leader of an unemployed army
which had started to march from California to Washington, D.C., some
four years previously. They took the trolley, and getting off in the
country, walked along the banks of the river, Jimmie still sobbing,
and Bill in the grip of one of his fearful coughing spells. They sat
down beside the stream not so far from where Jimmie had gone in
swimming with the Candidate; he gave a touching account of this
adventure, but fell asleep in the middle of it, and Bill wandered
off and begged some food at a farm-house, using his cough as a
convenient lever for moving the heart of the housewife. When night
came, they sought the railroad and got on board a southward-moving
freight; so Jimmie Higgins went back to the tramps life, at which he
had spent a considerable part of his youth.

But there was a difference now; he was no longer a blind and
helpless victim of a false economic system, but a revolutionist,
fully class-conscious, trained in a grim school. The country was
going to war, and Jimmie was going to war on the country. The two
agitators got off the train at a mining-village, and got a job as
"surface men", and proceeded to preach their gospel of revolt to the
workers in a lousy company boarding-house. When they were found out,
they "jumped" another freight, and repeated the performance in
another part of the district.

The companies were too vigilant for there to be any chance of a
strike; but "Wild Bill" whispered to the young workers that he knew
a trick worth two of that--he would teach them the art of "striking
on the job"! This idea, of course, had great charm for embittered
men; enabling them to pay back the boss, while at the same time
continuing on his pay-roll. Bill had read whole books in which the
theory and practice of "sabotage" were worked out, and he could tell
any sort of workman tricks to make his employer sweat under the
collar. If you worked in a machine-shop, you dropped emery-powder
into the bearings; if you worked on a farm, you drove copper nails
into the fruit-trees, which caused them to die; if you packed
apples, you stuck your thumb-nail into one, which made sure that the
whole box would be rotten when it arrived; if you worked in a
saw-mill, you drove a spike into a log; if you worked in a
restaurant, you served double portions to ruin the boss, and spit in
each portion to make sure the customer did not derive any benefit.
All these things you did in a fervour of exaltation, a mood of
frenzied martyrdom, because of the blaze of hate which had been
fanned in your soul by a social system based upon oppression and
knavery.




II



To Jimmie, living the obscure and comparatively peaceful life of a
Socialist propagandist, the question of "sabotage, violence and
crime" had been a more or less academic one, about which the
comrades debated acrimoniously, and against which they voted by a
large majority. But now Jimmie was out among the "wobblies", the
"blanket-stiffs"--the unskilled workers who had literally nothing
but their muscle-power to sell; here he was in the front-line
trenches of the class war. These men wandered about from one job to
another, at the mercy of the seasons and the fluctuations of
industry. They were deprived of votes, and therefore of their status
as citizens; they were deprived of a chance to organize, and
therefore of their status as human beings. They were lodged in
filthy bunk-houses, fed upon rotten food, and beaten or jailed at
the least word of revolt. So they fought their oppressors with any
and every weapon they could lay hands on.

In the turpentine-country, in a forest, Jimmie and his pal came to a
"jungle", a place where the "wobblies" congregated, living off the
country. Here around the camp-fires Jimmie met the guerillas of the
class-struggle, and learned the songs of revolt which they
sang--some of them parodies on Christian hymns which would have
caused the orthodox and respectable to faint with horror. Here they
rested up, and exchanged data on the progress of their fight, and
argued over tactics, and cussed the Socialists and the other
"politicians" and "labour-fakirs", and sang the praises of the "one
big union", and the "mass strike", and "direct action" against the
masters of industry. They told stories of their sufferings and their
exploits, and Jimmie sat and listened. Sometimes his eyes were wide
with consternation, for he had never met men so desperate as these.

For example, "Strawberry" Curran--named for his red hair and
innumerable freckles--an Irish boy with the face of a choir-singer,
and eyes that must have been taken straight out of the blue vault of
Heaven. This lad told about a "free speech fight" in a far Western
city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they
had got back at him. "We bumped him off all right," said
"Strawberry"; it was a favourite phrase of his--whenever anybody
got in his way, he "bumped him off". And then "Flathead Joe", who
came from the Indian country, was moved to emulation, and told how
he had put dynamite under the supports of a mine-breaker, and the
whole works had slid down a slope into a canyon a mile below. And
then a lame fellow, "Chuck" Peterson, told about the imprisonment of
two strike-leaders in the hop-country of California, and of the
epidemic of fires and destruction that had plagued that region for
several years since.

All such things these men talked about quite casually, as soldiers
would talk about the events of the last campaign. This class-war had
been going on for ages, and had its own ethics and its own
traditions; those who took part in it had their heroisms and
sublimities, precisely like any other soldiers. They would have been
glad to come into the open and fight, but the other side had all the
guns. Every time the "wobblies" succeeded in organizing the workers
and calling a big strike, all the agencies of capitalist repression
were called in--they were beaten by capitalist policemen, shot by
capitalist sheriffs, starved and frozen in capitalist jails, and so
their strike was crushed and their forces scattered. After many such
experiences, it was inevitable that the hot-headed ones should take
to secret vengeance, should become conspirators against capitalist
society. And society, forgetting all the provocations it had given,
called the "wobblies" criminals, and let it go at that. But they
were a strange kind of criminal, serving a far-off dream. They had
their humours and their humanities, their literature and music and
art. Among them were men of education, graduates of universities
both in America and abroad; you might hear one of the group about
these camp-fires telling about slave-revolts in ancient Egypt and
Greece; or quoting Strindberg and Stirner, or reciting a scene from
Synge, or narrating how he had astounded the family of some lonely
farm-house by playing Rachmaninoff's "Prelude" on a badly
out-of-tune piano.

Also you met among them men who had kept their gentleness, their
sweetness of soul, men of marvellous patience, whose dream of human
brotherhood no persecution, no outrage had been able to turn sour.
They clung to their vision of a world redeemed, made over by the
outcast and lowly; a vision that was brought to the world by a
certain Jewish Carpenter, and has haunted mankind for nineteen
hundred years. The difference was that these men knew precisely how
they meant to do it; they had a definite philosophy, a definite
programme, which they carried as a gospel to the wage-slaves of the
world. And they knew that this glad message would never die--not all
the jails and clubs and machine-guns in the country could kill it,
not obloquy and ridicule, not hunger and cold and disease. No! for
the workers were hearing and understanding, they were learning the
all-precious lesson of Solidarity. They were forming the "one big
union", preparing the time when they would take over industry and
administer it through their own workers' councils, instead of
through the medium of parliaments and legislatures. That was the
great idea upon which the Industrial Workers of the World was based;
it was this they meant by "direct action", not the sinister thing
which the capitalist newspapers made out of the phrase.




III



The country was going into its own war, which it considered of
importance, and it called upon Jimmie Higgins and the rest of his
associates to register for military service. In the month of June
ten million men came forward in obedience to this call--but Jimmie,
needless to say, was not among them. Jimmie and his crowd thought it
was the greatest joke of the age. If the country wanted them, let it
come and get them. And sure enough, the country came--a sheriff, and
some thirty farmers and turpentine-workers sworn in as deputies and
armed with shot-guns and rifles. Should their sons go overseas to be
killed in battle, while these desperadoes continued to camp out on
the country, living on hogs and chickens which honest men had worked
to raise? They had wanted to break up this "jungle" for some time;
now they could do it in the name of patriotism. They surrounded the
camp, and shot one man who tried to slip out in the darkness, and
searched the rest for weapons, and then loaded them into half a
dozen automobiles and took them to the nearest lock-up.

So here was Jimmie, confronting a village draft-board. How old was
he? The truth was that Jimmie did not know definitely, but his guess
was about twenty-six. The draft-limit being thirty, he swore that
he was thirty-two. And what were they going to do about it? They
didn't know where he had been born, and they couldn't make him
tell--because he didn't know it himself! His face was lined with
many cares, and he had a few grey hairs from that night of horror
when his loved ones had been wiped out of existence.

These farmers knew how to tell the age of a horse, but not how to
tell the age of a man!

"We'll draft ye anyhow!" vowed the chairman of the board, who was
the local justice of the peace, an old fellow with a beard like a
billy-goat.

"All right," said Jimmie, "but you'll get nothin' out o' me."

"What d'ye mean?"

"I mean I wouldn't fight; I'm a conscientious objector to war."

"They'll shoot ye!"

"Shoot away!"

"They'll send you to jail for life."

"What the hell do I care?"

It was difficult to know what to do with a person like that. If they
did put him in jail, they would only be feeding him at the expense
of the community, and that would not help to beat the Germans. They
could see from the flash in his eyes that he would not be an easy
man to break. Local interest asserted itself, and the old fellow
with the wagging beard demanded: "If we let ye go, will ye get out
o' this county?"

"What the hell do I care about your old county?" replied Jimmie.

So they turned him loose, and "Wild Bill" also, because it was
evident at a glance that he was not long for this world and its
wars. The two of them broke into an empty freight-car, and went
thundering over the rails all night; and lying in the darkness,
Jimmie was awakened by a terrified cry from his companion, and put
out his hand and laid it in a mess that was hot and wet.