Part 2

"Do _you_ prefer wealth to fame? Anybody can be rich. But famous? Which would you rather hear: _There goes Miss $80,000-a-year Goodchild or That is that wonderful Goodchild girl everybody is talking about?_"

She didn't know what to answer, the question being a direct one and she a woman. But this did not injure Hendrik in her eyes; for women actually love to be compelled to be silent in order to let a man speak--at certain times, about a certain subject. Her father, after the immemorial fashion of unintelligent parents, answered for her. He said, stupidly: "It never hurts to have a dollar or two, dear Mr. Rutgers."

"Dollar or two! Why, there are poor men whose names on your list of directors would attract more depositors to this bank than the name of the richest man in the world. Even for your bank, between St. Vincent de Paul and John D. Rockefeller, whom would you choose? Dollars! When you can _dream_!" Hendrik's eyes were gazing steadily into hers. She did not think he was at all lunatical. But George G. Goodchild had reached the limit of his endurance and even of prudence. He rose to his feet, his face deep purple.

However, Providence was in a kindly mood. At that very moment the door opened and a male stenographer appeared, note-book in hand. Civilization does its life-saving in entirely unexpected ways, even outside of hospitals.

"_Au revoir_, Miss Goodchild. Don't forget the name, will you?"

"I won't," she promised. There was a smile on her flower-lips and firm resolve in her beautiful eyes. It mounted to Hendrik's head and took away his senses, for he waved his hand at the purple president, said, with a solemnity that thrilled her, "_Pray for your future son-in-law!_" and walked out with the step of a conqueror. And the step visibly gained in majesty as he overheard the music of the spheres:

"Daddy, who is he?"

At the cashier's desk he stopped, held out his hand, and said with that valiant smile with which young men feel bound to announce their defeat, "I'm leaving, Mr. Coster."

"Good morning," said Coster, coldly, studiously ignoring the outstretched hand. Rutgers was now a discharged employee, a potential hobo, a possible socialist, an enemy of society, one of the dangerous Have-Nots. But Hendrik felt so much superior to this creature with a regular income that he said, pityingly: "Mr. Coster, your punishment for assassinating your own soul is that your children are bound to have the hearts of clerks. You are now definitely nothing but a bank cashier. That's what!"

"Get out!" shrieked the bank cashier, plagiarizing from a greater than he.

The tone of voice made the private policeman draw near. When he saw it was Hendrik to whom Mr. Coster was speaking, he instantly smelled liquor. What other theory for an employee's loud talking in a bank? He hoped Hendrik would not swear audibly. The bank would blame it on the policeman's lack of tact.

"_Au revoir._" And Hendrik smiled so very pleasantly that the policeman, whose brains were in his biceps, sighed with relief. At the same time the whisper ran among the caged clerks in the mysterious fashion of all bad news--the oldest of all wireless systems!

_Hendrik Rutgers was fired!_

Did life hold a darker tragedy than to be out of a job? A terrible world, this, to be hungry in.

As Hendrik walked into the cage to get his few belongings, pale faces bent absorbingly over their ledgers. To be fed, to grow comfortably old, to die in bed, always at so much per week. Ideal! No wonder, therefore, that his erstwhile companions feared to look at what once had been a clerk. And then, too, the danger of contagion! A terrible disease, freedom, in a money-making republic, but, fortunately, rare, and the victims provided with food, lodging, and strait-jackets at the expense of the state. Or without strait-jackets: bars.

Hendrik got his pay from the head of his department, who seemed of a sudden to recall that he had never been formally introduced to this Mr. H. Rutgers. This filled Hendrik at first with great anger, and then with a great joy that he was leaving the inclosure wherein men's thoughts withered and died, just like plants, for the same reason--lack of sunshine.

On his way to the street he paused by his best friend--a little old fellow with unobtrusive side-whiskers who turned the ledger's pages over with an amazing deftness, and wore the hunted look that comes from thirty years of fear of dismissal. To some extent the old clerk's constant boasting about the days when he was a reckless devil had encouraged Hendrick.

"Good-by, Billy," said Hendrik, holding out his hand. "I'm going."

Little old Billy was seen by witnesses talking in public with a discharged employee! He hastily said, "Too bad!" and made a pretense of adding a column of figures.

"Too bad nothing. See what it has done for you, to stay so long. I laid out old Goodchild, and the only reason why I stopped was I thought he'd get apoplexy. But say, the daughter-- She is some peach, believe me. I called him papa-in-law to his face. You should have seen him!"

Billy shivered. It was even worse than any human being could have imagined.

"Good-by, Rutgers," he whispered out of a corner of his mouth, never taking his eyes from the ledger.

"You poor old-- No, Billy! Thank you a thousand times for showing me Hendrik Rutgers at sixty. Thanks!" And he walked out of the bank overflowing with gratitude toward Fate that had hung him into the middle of the street. From there he could look at the free sun all day; and of nights, at the unfettered stars. It was better than looking at the greedy hieroglyphics wherewith a stupid few enslaved the stupider many.

He was free!

He stood for a moment on the steps of the main entrance. For two years he had looked from the world into the bank. But now he looked from the bank out--on the world. And that was why that self-same world suddenly changed its aspect. The very street looked different; the sidewalk wore an air of strangeness; the crowd was not at all the same.

He drew in a deep breath. The April air vitalized his blood.

This new world was a world to conquer. He must fight!

The nearest enemy was the latest. This is always true. Therefore Hendrik Rutgers, in thinking of fighting, thought of the bank and the people who made of banks temples to worship in.

All he needed now was an excuse. There was no doubt that he would get it. Some people call this process the autohypnosis of the great.

Two sandwich-men slouched by in opposite directions. One of them stopped and from the edge of the sidewalk stared at a man cleaning windows on the fourteenth story of a building across the way. The other wearily shuffled southward. Above his head swayed an enormous amputated foot.

Rutgers himself walked briskly to the south. To avoid a collision with a hurrying stenographer-girl--if it had been a male he would have used a short jab--he unavoidably jostled the chiropodist's advertisement into the gutter. The sandwich-man looked meekly into Rutgers's pugnacious face and started to cross the street.

Hendrik felt he should apologize, but before his sense of duty could crystallize into action the man was too far away. So Hendrik turned back. The other sandwich-man was still looking at the window-cleaner on the fourteenth story across the street. Happening to look down, he saw coming a man who looked angry. Therefore the sandwich-man meekly stepped into the gutter, out of the way.

It was the second time within one minute! Hendrik stopped and spoke peevishly to the meek one in the gutter:

"Why did you move out of my way?"

The sandwich-man looked at him uneasily; then, without answering, walked away sullenly.

"Here I am," thought Rutgers, "a man without a job; and there he is, a man with a job and afraid of me!"

Something was wrong--or right. Something always is, to the born fighter.

Who could be afraid of a man without a job but sandwich-men who always walked along the curb so they could be pushed off into the gutter among the other beasts? Nobody ever deliberately became a sandwich-man. When circumstances, the police, hopeless inefficiency, or shattered credit prevented a hobo from begging, stealing, murdering, or getting drunk, he became a sandwich-man in order to live until he could rise again. Whatever a sandwich-man changed himself into, it was always advancement. Once a sandwich-man, never again a sandwich-man. It was not boards they carried, but the printed certificates of hopelessness.

Men who could not keep steady jobs became either corpses or sandwich-men. The sandwich illustrated the tyranny of the regular income just as the need of a regular income illustrated the need of Christianity.

The sandwich thus had become the spirit of the times.

The spring-filled system of Hendrik Rutgers began to react for a second time to a feeling of anger, and this for a second time turned his thoughts to fighting. To fight was to conquer. There were two ways of conquering--by fighting with gold and by fighting with brains. Who won by gold perished by gold. That was why a numismatical bourgeoisie never fought. Hendrik had no gold. So he would fight with brains. He therefore would win. Also, he would fight for his fellow-men, which would make his fight noble. That is called "hedging," for defeat in a noble cause is something to be proud of in the newspapers. The reason why all hedging is intelligent is that victory is always Victory when you talk about it.

The sandwich-men were the scum of the earth.

_Ah!_ It was a thrilling thought: To lead men who could no longer fight for themselves against the world that had marred their immortal souls; and then to compel that same world to place three square meals a day within their astonished bellies!

The man who could make the world do that could do anything. Since he could do anything, he could marry a girl who not only was very beautiful, but had a very rich and dislikable father. The early Christians accomplished so much because they not only loved God, but hated the devil.

Hendrik Rutgers found both the excuse and the motive power.

One minute after a man of brains perceives the need of a ladder in order to climb, the rain of ladders begins.

The chest-inflating egotism of the monopolistic tendency, rather than the few remaining vestiges of Christianity, keeps Protestants in America from becoming socialists. Hendrik filled his lungs full of self-oxygen and of the consciousness of power for good, and decided to draw up the constitution of his union. He would do it himself in order to produce a perfect document; perfect in everything. A square deal; no more, no less. That meant justice toward everybody, even toward the public.

This union, being absolutely fair, would be more than good, more than intelligent; it would pay.

Carried away by his desire to help the lowest of the low, he constituted himself into a natural law. He would grade his men, be the sole judge and arbiter of their qualifications, and even of their proper wages.

Hendrik walked back toward the last sandwich-man and soon overtook him. "Hey, there, you!" he said, tapping the rear board with his hand.

The sandwich-man did not turn about. Really, what human being could wish to speak to him?

Hendrik Rutgers walked for a few feet beside the modest artist who was proclaiming to a purblind world the merits of an optician's wares, and spoke again, politely:

"I want to see you, on business."

The man's lips quivered, then curved downward, immobilizing themselves into a fixed grimace of fear. "I--I 'ain't done no-nothin'," he whined, and edged away.

This was what society had done to an immortal soul!

"Hell!" said Hendrik Rutgers between clenched teeth. "I'm not a fly-cop. I've just got a plain business proposition to make to you."

"If you'll tell me where yer place is, I'll come aroun'--" began the man, so obviously lying that Rutgers's anger shifted from society and tyranny on to the thing between sandwich-boards--the thing that refused to be his brother.

"You damned fool!" he hissed, fraternally. "You come with me--now."

The inverted crescent of the man's lips trembled, and presently there issued from it, "Well, I 'ain't done--"

Charity, which is not always astute, made H. Rutgers say with a kindly cleverness to his poor brother, "I'll tell you how you are going to make more money than you ever earned before."

The prospect of making more money than he ever earned before brought no name of joy into the blear and furtive eyes. Instead, he sidled, crabwise, into the middle of the street.

"No, you don't!" said Rutgers so menacingly that the sandwich-man shivered. It was clear that, to feed this starving man, force would be necessary. This never discourages the true philanthropist. Rutgers, however, feeling that Christian forbearance should be used before resorting to the ultimate diplomacy, said, with an earnest amiability: "Say, Bo, d'you want to fill your belly so that if you ate any more you'd bust?"

At the hint of a promise of a sufficiency of food the man opened his mouth, stared at Rutgers, and did not speak. He couldn't because he did not close his mouth.

"All the grub you can possibly eat, three times a day. Grub, Bo! All you want, any time you want it. Hey? What?"

The sandwich-man's open mouth opened wider. In his eyes there was no fear, no hunger, no incredulity, nothing only an abyss deep as the human soul, that returned no answer whatever.

"Do you want," pursued the now optimistic Hendrik Rutgers, "to drink all you can hold? The kind that don't hurt you if you drink a gallon! Booze, and grub, and a bed, and money in your pocket, and nobody to go through your duds while you sleep. Hey?"

The sandwich-man spasmodically opened and closed his mouth in the unhuman fashion of a ventriloquist's puppet. Rutgers heard the click, but never a word. It filled him with pity. The desire to help such brothers as this grew intense. Next to feeding them there was nothing like talking to them about food and drink in a kindly way.

"What do you say, Bo?" he queried, gently, almost tenderly.

The man's teeth chattered a minute before he said, huskily, "Wh-what m-must I do?"

"Let's go to the Battery," said Rutgers, "and I'll tell you all about it."

The mission of history is to prove that Fate sends the right man for the right place at the right time. While Hendrik Rutgers talked, the sandwich-man listened with his stomach; and when Hendrik Rutgers promised, the sandwich-man believed with his soul. Rutgers told Fleming that all sandwich-men must join the union; that as soon as he and the other present sandwichers were enrolled on its books no more members would be admitted, except as a superabundance of jobs justified additional admissions; and at that it would require a nine-tenths vote to elect, thus preventing a surplus of labor and likewise a slump in wages. The union would compel advertisers in the future to pay twenty cents an hour and would guarantee both steady work and these wages to its members; there would be neither an initiation fee nor strike-fund assessments; the dues of one cent a day were collectible only when the member worked and received union wages for his day's work. Any member could lay off any time he felt like it, unmulcted and unfired. There was only one thing that all sandwich-men had to do to be in good standing; obey the secretary and treasurer of the union--Mr. H. Rutgers--in all union matters.

The sandwich business, once unionized, would become a lucrative profession and therefore highly moral, and therefore its members would automatically cease to be pariahs, notwithstanding congenital fitness for same. Anybody who cannot only defy Nature, but make her subservient to the wishes of an infinitely higher intelligence, is fit to be a labor-leader. And he generally is.

Fleming agreed to round up those of his colleagues whose peregrinations extended south of Chambers Street. He would ask them to come to the Battery on the next day at noon.

So thrilled was Hendrik by his rescue-work among the wreckages that it never occurred to him to doubt his own success. This made him know exactly what to say to Fleming.

"Don't just ask them to come. Tell them that there will be free beers and free grub. Tell them anything you damn please, but bring them! _Do you hear me?_" He gripped the sandwich-man's arm so tightly that Fleming's lips began to quiver. "And if you don't bring a bunch, God help you!"

"Ye-yes, sir; I will. Sure!" whimpered Fleming, staring fascinatedly at those eyes which both promised and menaced.

And in Fleming's own eyes Hendrik saw the four "B's" which form the great equation of all democracies: _Bread + Bludgeon = Born Boss!_

Such men always know how to _say_ everything. This is more important than _thinking_ anything.

"Remember the beer!" Brother Hendrik spoke pleasantly, and Fleming nodded eagerly. "And get on the job," hissed Secretary Rutgers; and Fleming shivered and hurried away before the licking came.

Hendrik himself walked briskly up-town. When a man is pleased with himself he can always continue in that condition by the simple expedient of continuing to see whatever he wishes to see. Hendrik opened his eyes very wide and continued to see the ladder of success that great men use to climb to their changing heaven. Hendrik's heaven just then happened to be one in which a man of brains could make the money-makers pay him for allowing them to make money for him. After finding the ladder, all that was necessary was for Hendrik to think of George G. Goodchild's money. That made him see red; and whenever he saw red he could see no obstacles whatever; and because of his self-inflicted blindness he was intelligently ready to tackle anything, even the job of helping his fellow-men. To be an efficient philanthropist a man must have not only love, but murder, in his heart. That is one of the two hundred and eighty-six reasons why scientific charities make absolutely no inroads on the world's store of poverty.

Mr. Rutgers met the charter members of his union at the time and place indicated by Providence through the medium of Mr. Rutgers's lips.

There were fourteen sandwich-men.

Hendrik, not knowing what to say, gazed at the faces before him in impressive silence. So long as you keep a man guessing, he is at your mercy. Orators have already discovered this.

"Holy smoke! What in the name of Maginnis do you call this?" shrieked a messenger-boy. "Free freak show?"

A crowd gathered about them by magic. Opportunity held out its right hand and Hendrik Rutgers grasped it in both his own. If all New York could be made to talk about him, all New York could be made to pay him, as it always pays for the privilege of talking of the same thing at the same time. You cannot get anybody to talk about the Ten Commandments; therefore, there is nobody to listen; therefore nobody capitalizes them.

It _is_ the first rung that really matters. All other rungs in the ladder of success are easier to find and to fit. Hendrik could now gather together his various impulses and thoughts and motives and arrange them in their proper sequence, as great men do, to make easier the work of the historian. It was a crusade that he had undertaken, for the liberation of the most abject of all modern slaves; he had changed the scum of the earth into respectable humanity.

That was history.

The facts, however, happened to be as follows: He threw up his job because he wished to go fishing, which of course made him angry because his fellow-clerks were slaves, and he therefore got himself discharged by the president, which made him hate the president so that the hatred showed in Hendrik's face and made two sandwich-men so afraid that he couldn't help organizing the sandwich-men's union because he could boss it, and that would make people talk about him, which would put money in his pocket; and once he was both rich and famous he would be the equal of the greatest and as such could pick and choose; and he would pick Grace Goodchild and choose her for his wife, which would make him rich.

In Europe the ability promptly to recognize the kindness of chance is called opportunism. Here we boast of it as the American spirit. That is why American bankers so often find pleasure in proudly informing you that it pays to be honest!

"Listen, you!" said Hendrik to the sandwich-men. These were the tools wherewith he would hammer the first rung into place.

They looked at him, incredulous in advance. This attitude on the part of the majority has caused republics at all times to be ruled by the minority. The vice of making money also arose from the fact that suspicious people are so easy to fool that even philosophers succumb to the temptation.

"Just now you are nothing but a bunch of dirty hoboes. Scum of the earth!" It would not do to have followers who had illusions about themselves. This is fundamental.

"Say, I didn't come here to listen to--"

"You--!" said Hendrik Rutgers, and did not smile. "You came here just exactly for that. See?" And he walked up to within six inches of the speaker, not knowing that his anger gave him the fighting face. "You came to listen to me just as long as I am talking--unless you are pining to spend your last three hours in the hospital. Do you get me? Which for yours?"

"Listen!" replied the sandwich-man. He had been poor so long that from force of habit he economized even in words.

"By cripes! here I am spending valuable time so as to make you bums into prosperous men--"

"Where do you come in, Bill?" asked a voice from the rear.

"I don't have to come in. I am in. You fellows have got to join the union. Then you'll get good wages, easy hours, decent--"

"Yeh; but--"

Hendrik turned to the man who had interrupted--a short chap advertising a chain of hat-stores and asked, "But what?"

"Nutt'n!" The hatter had once helped about a prize-fighter's training-quarters, hence the quick duck.

"Also, you'll have easy--"

"Easy!" The hatter had spoken prematurely again.

"What?" scowled Hendrik.

"Hours," hastily explained the man.

"We ask only for fair play," pursued the leader.

"Yeh; sure!" murmured Fleming, with the cold enthusiasm of all paid lieutenants of causes.

"And we must make up our minds to play fair with employers, so that employers will play fair with us."

"Like hell they will!" This was from a tall, thin, toothless chap. Reason: Tapeworm and booze. Name: Mulligan. Recreation: Chiropodist's favorite.

"I'll prove it to you," said Hendrik, very earnestly.

"Perhaps _to_ but not _by_ me," muttered Mulligan.

"Union wages will be twenty cents an hour."

"Never get it!" mumbled an old fellow with what they call waiter's foot--flattened arch. "Never!"

"Never," came in chorus from all the others, their voices ringing with conviction.

"I'll have the jobs to give out. I guess I know how much you'll get." The flame of hope lit fourteen pairs of blear eyes. Maybe this boob had the cash and desired to separate himself from it. All primitive people think the fool is touched of God. Hunger makes men primitive.

"I'll fix the wages!" declared Hendrik again. He saw himself feeding these men; therefore he felt he owned them absolutely. It isn't, of course, necessary actually to feed people, or even to promise to feed them, to own them. Nevertheless, his look of possession imposed on these victims of a democracy. They mutely acknowledged a boss.

Instantly perceiving this, a sense of kindly responsibility came upon Hendrik. These were his children. He said, paternally, "We'll now have a beer--on me!"

Fleming, to show his divine right to the place of vice-regent, led the way to a joint on Washington Street.