Part 2

“It wasn’t that,” answered the younger woman; “I’m not in the mood for playing anything. I doubt if I could get through with ‘Bounding Billows’ or the ‘Fifteenth Amusement’ to-day. Did you know, aunty, there is a strike down at the mills?”

“A strike! Mercy, who has struck?” responded the elder in shocked tones.

“Why, the operatives, of course. I don’t know why, or anything about it. I have never shown any interest in the mills,” she went on eagerly and half-apologetically, “but I should like to know what it is all about—why they did it—what they want, and all that. I should think Mr. Greenough would come up here.”

“He will come as soon as he deems it proper.” Mrs. Soule’s voice was calmness and precision itself. “It is not nice for young ladies to mix themselves up in such common things.”

“But, aunty,” laughed Salome, “strikes are not common things here. We never had one before. And I am not so very young a lady as to need the same careful guardianship I had when I was sixteen. I am twenty-seven years old.”

“There is no need of saying so upon all occasions, if you are,” replied her aunt with some asperity. “A strike, like all things connected with, or originated by the ignorant laboring class, is common in the sense of being vulgar. Any woman, young or old, brought up as delicately and carefully as you have been, demeans herself by connection with such things. You have an agent—a manly and capable one; leave the settlement of such things to him.”

“Oh, I’m not going to meddle with the strike. The very suggestion that I would wish to have anything to do with settling the difficulty makes me laugh.”

Salome rose and began to pace the room. “But sometimes, lately, aunty, it has occurred to me that a young woman of average talent, with a great business on her hands which employs two thousand people, may have something to do in life more than to seek her own selfish enjoyment—a pursuit which, after all, is not elevating and leaves but a restless, unsatisfied spirit in its wake. I came across some of grandfather’s manuscripts two or three weeks ago and have been reading them. He wasn’t like papa. The mills were a part of his very self. The operatives were almost like so many children to him. I’ve read in his, and in other books, about the mill-girls of his day. Girls whose working days began at daylight in winter and ended at half-past seven in the evening; who had only two dresses to their backs, and those of Merrimack print; whose profits for a week, after their board was paid, were only two dollars. But girls who could discuss Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton at their looms; who read Locke and Abercrombie and Pollock and Young (something I can’t do!); who sent petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery; who helped build churches from their pitiful savings; who wrote essays and poems and stories, even while running their looms; who spent their evenings in the study of German and French and botany; and who went out, at last, to become teachers and mothers and missionaries, and, above all, noble, self-sacrificing, helpful women. And I tell you that, with all my money and my polished education, I envy them.”

“Salome, really, you surprise me,” exclaimed the excellent lady who was listening to her. “Calm yourself, my dear.”

“Look at the girls in this mill—in my grandfather’s mill to-day—in my mill,” she went on. “Beings of bangs and bangles and cheap jewelry, of low aspirations, and correspondingly low morals! They are not to blame for their penny-dreadful lives, because they know no better. They dream of nothing higher than their looms and their face-powder, and their cheap satins and false hair—why should they? They see rich and educated women like us wrapped entirely in ourselves, each anxious to outshine the rest, and all seemingly lost in the mad race after fashionable attire. They do not know, poor things, that we ever think or talk of higher subjects. I tell you, I feel that I am, somehow, responsible for them. And yet, I don’t know how to help them. My grandfather could, but I can’t.”

“I know nothing of such things,” coldly replied her aunt. “It is not ladylike to fly into a passion over the fancied wrongs of a lower order of beings. I beg that you will recollect that you are the daughter of Cora Le Bourdillon and Floyd Shepard.”

“And more than that,” Salome whispered to herself as she sought the quiet of her own room, “I am afraid I am the grand-daughter of Newbern Shepard.”

IV.

It was nearly eight o’clock when carriage-wheels were heard coming up the graveled drive-way, and Otis Greenough and his associates were announced. Salome and her aunt were sitting in the music-room, and came forward at once; the former with an unmistakable air of eagerness.

“Tell me about the strike, Mr. Greenough,” she asked, before he had fairly seated himself.

“Oh, then, you’d heard of it, eh?” he asked.

“I saw something of it this morning, driving through the town. I could not help knowing what it was. But why did they do it? What do they want?”

“They did it,” and Otis Greenough sat up with a judicial air, “because they are rascally dogs, and do not know when they are well off. And they want?—well,—the earth—more pay, shorter hours, and the Lord knows what besides.”

“Well, and why shouldn’t they have it?”

The question fell like a bomb upon her surprised audience.

“To be sure, I know very little of these things, practically, although I have taken the prescribed doses of social economy in my readings under Professor Townsend,” she went on; “but it has occurred to me, within a few days, that the laboring classes have very little control over their own lives, and are not much more than slaves to us who hold the reins of power.”

“Bless me!” thought Otis Greenough, staring at her. If his office-door had suddenly spoken, offering him officious counsel as to his method of conducting the mills, he could hardly have been more surprised. “Bless me! No Floyd Shepard about her.”

“If the operatives are poorly paid, and we are making more money than ever before (I think I understood you so the other day?),” the young woman was saying, “why shouldn’t their wages be raised? It seems but fair, to me.”

“Much you know about it, little girl,” Mr. Greenough found voice to say, addressing her as he used to in by-gone days, when she occasionally strayed into the mills and teased to be taken through them. “Much any young lady of the world can know of such matters. We would not have you turn from being your own charming self, and become a learned blue-stocking, or bloomered reformer; but there are many, many reasons which come between the questions of profit and loss, and the petty details of operatives’ wages, which cannot be explained to you here and now. They were contented enough until some rascal or other, having become imbued with the spirit of these labor unions starting up all over the country, must needs organize one here. By Jove! I’ll employ detectives and hunt out the disturbing elements and shut them up. I have offered every mother’s son a chance to go back to work to-morrow morning, on condition that he drops this union business; but I am told to-night that not one of them will accept. Ignorant creatures! I’ll show ’em what it means to fight a rich and strong concern like this, in the vain hope of bringing us to their terms.”

“Meanwhile,” it was Villard who spoke, “we are to go on resisting their combined ignorance and impatience, and perhaps worse elements, losing thousands of dollars in the warfare, are we?”

“Yes, rather than give in one inch to them,” answered Mr. Greenough. “This is the first organized strike and must be made a warning to future disturbers. It’s those confounded Englishmen trying to transplant their foreign ideas to American soil. If we give in to them now, we establish a bad precedent.”

“I must confess,” said Villard, “that I do not see it. I have seen several strikes, and know that generally both sides lose sight of reason, and determine to fight it out regardless of cost. I am afraid, with the course you propose to adopt, sir, that we shall go on until the losses on our side or the suffering and privation on theirs will become unbearable; and then one side or the other will be forced to yield. If it should be they, a smouldering resentment will be left, ready to break out anew at the first convenient season. If we, they will feel encouraged to try still more arbitrary measures in the future. Or if a compromise be effected, it will be one that might as well be made to-morrow.”

“You talk well for a young man,” admitted Mr. Greenough. “How did you come by your exceedingly humane and sympathetic views?”

“I began as an employe myself,” answered Villard, “and I know how they feel to some extent. I know what it is to work at the lowest drudgery of a mill, and can imagine how it must seem to have no hope of ever rising to a higher position. Hard, unremitting toil, long hours with endless years of hopeless work in prospect, the lowest possible wages, a large and rapidly increasing family, with perhaps an aged parent or invalid wife to support—I tell you lots of those fellows have all that to bear, knowing the utter impossibility of ever saving anything, or of raising their own condition. I say, sir, looking at life from their standpoint, it’s mighty hard.”

“Well, well,” put in Mr. Greenough, testily, “a great many of them want nothing better. They would not know what to do with a better chance for life, as you call it, if they had it.”

“Simply put yourself in their place, sir,” said Villard. “What if you were forty years younger than you are, and condemned to a life of toil at the looms, for instance, would you not claim the right to combine with others of like occupation and interests and ask for a better chance? These men of ours have taken an unreasonable way of asserting themselves, but I think they are entitled to our respect, and should be dealt with as men. An open, fair discussion of the wage question or the ten-hour law can result in nothing but good for both sides.”

“You are young,” Mr. Greenough replied, “and believe everything in this world can be made to run exactly as you want it. When you are older, you’ll realize better the indifference and general mulishness of the world, and of operatives in particular. I do not believe in meeting and deferring to them as equals. They are not worth our efforts, and so long as they are under the influence of hot-headed devils who pose as labor reformers, just so long we are going to see trouble.”

“If we were to make a fair compromise with them,” Mr. Burnham was speaking for the first time, “and let them see that we, as humane employers, have a greater desire for their interest than any foreigner can have, wouldn’t it work a reaction in our favor? From a strictly business point of view, perhaps it would be money in our pockets.”

“Yes,” urged Villard, “if we were to show ourselves willing to consider an intimate knowledge of their needs and thus prove ourselves their best friends, it would be only a case of practical philanthropy, and one which would raise our profits every year, I believe. It is only the first step that costs, you know.”

“I don’t believe it,” stoutly maintained the agent. “In my day there has been very little talk of managers and owners deferring to their help. I hire my own operatives and reserve the right to raise, or lower, their wages as I please.”

“But, Mr. Greenough,” broke in Salome eagerly, “don’t you consider their circumstances at all? Don’t you, for instance, in a driving time, pay them any higher wages than in dull times? I think there would be nothing but fairness in that.”

“My dear young lady,” was the answer in patronizing tones, “don’t bother your brains with such things. You cannot understand them. Why try?”

“Imagine our Salome posing as a philanthropist or a social economist,” interrupted Mrs. Soule’s mellifluous tones. “We had a great laugh over the idea this afternoon.”

Salome bit her lip and said nothing.

“I think,” continued her aunt in the same smooth accents, “that we have talked business long enough. I am sure, Mr. Greenough, that Salome is, and will be perfectly satisfied with any course you may see fit to adopt with regard to the strikers. Women, you know, ladies at least, have no heads for business, and we, certainly,” with an indescribable turn of voice on the “we”—“we, certainly, have had no training to fit us for reformers. And now shall we not have some music? Salome, dear, will you play that delightful little suite of Moscowzki’s that I like so well?”

The young woman rose and, going to the piano, did as she was bid, although somewhat mechanically. Then Mr. Greenough proposed a song from Mr. Burnham, who possessed a fine baritone voice, and the evening wore away with music and light conversation.

When the three men went home, the elder was in fine spirits, in spite of having been shocked and discomfited to an unusual degree, by the unexpected disclosure of views which he termed “strong-minded” on the part of the fair owner of the Shawsheen Mills.

“If there should come to be hard times and perhaps destitution among the operatives before this difficulty is settled,” Salome said to John Villard as he was preparing to go, “such destitution as we read of in foreign countries in times of labor disturbances, I hope you will let me do something to relieve it. Strange as it may seem, I have a much better idea of such a state of affairs there than here—among my own mills.”

“There will be no such state of affairs, I trust,” was his reply, “as is pictured in English novels.”

“You have guessed accurately as to the sources of my information,” she laughed.

He smiled too, and continued,

“Meanwhile, if we pursue the policy proposed,” and he glanced at Mr. Greenough, who was making gallant speeches to Mrs. Soule, “you might keep a watchful eye on the help. You could tell, you know, by the women, if they came to absolute distress. Of course, there is no knowing how long this thing may last.”

“Me! You look to me for such a thing,” and it was hard to tell whether her tone was amused or sarcastic only. “Why, Mr. Villard, I do not know one of the operatives in the mills—not even by sight. If I were to meet them on the main thoroughfare to-morrow I should not know them from other women of their class.”

John Villard raised his eyebrows and turned to put on his coat without another word. The situation was incomprehensible to him.

Salome saw this, and winced under it. She made no further attempt at conversation, but said good-night graciously to Mr. Greenough and the older superintendent, recognizing Villard’s parting nod at the door.

“There,” said her aunt, as they went back into the firelight, “I hope they won’t feel it necessary to come here and consult with us again so long as the strike is on. As though you knew or cared anything for it, my dear! But, of course, they had to come as a matter of form. Any way, I’m glad it is over. Play something.”

Salome complied, playing the first thing which came to her mind—the opening bars of the _Sonata Pathetique_.

“I wish,” she said to herself as she disrobed for the night, “that I were a capable woman of affairs—and that John Villard were my agent.”

V.

Not for a week could enough new help be hired to even make a show of opening the Shawsheen Mills. Labor Unions were a comparatively new thing in this country, and were not so thoroughly organized as now; and a few of the old operatives, rather than starve, were glad to go back into the mills on any condition. But the great majority refused with indignation to give up their claims, and proceeded to “make things hot,” as they expressed it, for the “scabs” and “mudsills.”

Work was attempted in the mills, although many looms stood silent and the spinning-mules were entirely deserted. Thread for warp was procured from a neighboring city at no small expense and the mills were run at a loss, to prove the agent’s assertion that “he would show them who was manager of the Shawsheen Mills.”

This sort of thing was kept up four days. On the fifth morning, the operatives went as usual to the mill, but the machinery, after a few insufficient groans, gave up in despair and settled into utter quiet.

What was the matter?

There was a great hurrying to and fro, and a close examination of belts and machinery. Word was soon brought up from the basement. The engines had been tampered with; on each of them the belts had been cut. The jocularly inclined said the “engines had joined the Union;”—while everybody wondered what effect this stroke would have on the agent.

The premises were examined and the night-watchman questioned. Evidently the deed had been done by some one familiar with the place, but there was not the slightest clue. He had done well his work, and the mills were stopped for repairs.

Otis Greenough blustered about and cursed the whole business; but he was farther than ever from a compromise, declaring that he would yet beat them with their own weapons.

The night-watch was doubled and the mills were opened again the next day. But the employers were fighting a desperate party and little calculated their strength. The man who had succeeded so well in his first attempt to stop the mills risked himself again; and on the second morning the machinery again refused to start. This time a small wheel had been removed from each engine and carried away. The water-wheel had long been in partial disuse and could not be trusted without the engines. Hence, there was nothing to be done but to stop again for repairs. This time it was a week before the engines were in running order. And yet, not a word passed between the agent and the strikers.

The night-watch were discharged and new ones engaged. A special police was secured to patrol the mill-yard, and when the mills were again opened, it was with the avowed determination to keep them going in spite of every earthly power.

The next morning, notwithstanding the positive assertions of police and night-watch that no one had been near the mills, every band connecting the looms to the machinery above was cut in half a dozen places. Then the superstitious operatives whispered among themselves that unseen agencies were linked with the Union, and that the strikers must succeed in the end; and many of the fainthearted went over to the new labor party.

“It is of no use trying to run the mills in this way,” said Mr. Burnham. “We have already lost several thousand dollars. We must compromise.”

“Never,” said Mr. Greenough. “The terms of Floyd Shepard’s will grant me absolute power here, and so long as I live, it shall never be said that an educated, trained and levelheaded business man was overcome by a lot of ignorant bullies and agitators. These Labor Unions all over the State need an example. There is money enough in the mill treasury to fight them until they starve themselves out. No other mill or corporation about here will hire them, and it is only a matter of weeks or months when absolute poverty forces them to yield. Not one inch will I give in to them. They shall come back as beggars, glad to accept work at even lower wages than they have ever had. I’ll teach them a lesson.”

Geoffrey Burnham turned away full of anger that a flourishing business should be destroyed by one man’s obstinacy. John Villard went back to the silent looms, full of righteous indignation, not only at the total disregard of practical business interests, but at the want of humanity and philanthropy and Christian charity, which by his subordinate position he must seem to countenance.

Weeks lengthened themselves into months, and still the Shawsheen Mills were closed.

Salome Shepard, after spending the holiday season with friends in New York, came home, satiated with social success, and a little tired of the endless pursuit of pleasure. Still the mills lay idle and Otis Greenough refused to talk any more with her on the subject of the strike. And the terms of her father’s will held her powerless, even had she chosen to exercise her authority.

But she chafed under the knowledge that two thousand people, who were in a sense dependent upon her for their daily bread, were out of work in the midst of a hard winter.

One day she went to walk down among the people who were suffering, now, for a principle.

She was amazed at the gaunt, hungry look of the old men; and self-accused at the pinched and wan faces of the few children who played in the narrow streets. Unthinking, she had put on a seal-skin cloak. It was a cold day, and furs, to her, were only a natural accompaniment to the frosts of winter.

But going down the uncared-for side-walk, she rebuked herself, noting the single shawl and calico dress of an old woman who was wearily making her way a few paces in front of her. Presently the woman stopped, seized with a paroxysm of coughing.

Salome came up with her, and looked into the white face, which told of hard times.

“Madam,” she said, respectfully, “can I be of any assistance to you? Shall I not help you home?”

Her tone and manner were exactly the same she would have used to any of her aunt’s friends. It did not occur to her to be patronizing or condescending.

The old woman stared at her. She was not used to being addressed as “Madam.”

“Yes’m,” she said, presently. “I live up to the other end of the street. If the cough wasn’t so bad, an’ my side didn’t ketch me so! But if I can git back to my own chair ag’in——”

Another fit of coughing seized her, and interrupted the “garrulousness of uncultured old age.” Salome waited until she got breath again and then took her by the arm, accommodating her steps to the feebler ones.

Here and there a surprised face peered curiously at her through a dirty window, knowing who she was, and wondering that she condescended to walk with old Granny Lancaster. Everywhere a general air of poverty, perhaps of actual hunger, impressed this woman, who had inherited the tumble-down tenement houses on each side.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but do you eat nourishing food enough? Good beef-steak and roast-beef would help your cough more than medicine.”

The old woman laughed, a grating, cackling laugh.

“Beef-steak and roast-beef ain’t for the likes o’ me,” she said. “Meat of any kind ain’t for us in times o’ strikes. May the Lord above send us oatmeal enough to keep us through till the mills open ag’in is all I ask. Here’s my house. Much ’bleeged, lady.”

Salome wanted to go inside the rickety old door and follow the woman up the dirty stairway, but she did not say so, and the old woman hobbled up the steps without asking her in.

Salome felt impulsively in her pocket, and drawing out her porte-monnaie, emptied its contents into the dirty, emaciated palm of Granny Lancaster. Then she turned and walked rapidly back home.

The next day Otis Greenough called on her.

“My dear,” he said, after an hour or two passed in desultory conversation, “may I beg that you will keep away from the operatives? Impulsive and injudicious charity does them more harm than anything else. No doubt the part of Lady Bountiful seems a pleasant and desirable one, but, just now, you are not fitted for it.”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked she in a puzzled tone.

“For instance,” he went on, “the money you gave a certain old woman on the corporation yesterday was taken by her son-in-law last night, and furnished him an opportunity for a glorious old drunk. I beg your pardon for using their phraseology. He was arrested before morning for drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”

“I do not comprehend,” she stammered. “The woman said they had no meat. She was actually suffering for nourishing food. I gave the money, impulsively it is true, but that they need not go hungry.”