In the Heart of a Fool

The policemen formed a line into the door of the shaft house. The strike-breakers hesitated. Grant approached the line of policemen, put up his arm and his maimed hand, lifted his rough, broken face skyward and cried, “O–O–O, God, pour Thy peace into their hearts that they may have mercy on their comrades.”

A silence fell, the strike-breakers began to pass through the police lines to join the strikers. At first only one at a time, then two. And then, the line broke and streamed around the policemen. A great cheer went up from the street, and Grant Adams’s face twitched and his eyes filled with tears. Then he hurried away.

It was eight o’clock and the picketing for the day was done, when Grant reached his office.

“Well,” said Fenn, who had Violet’s notes before him, “it’s considerably better than a dog fall. They haven’t a smelter at work. Two shafts are working with about a third of a force, and we feel they are bluffing. The glass works furnaces are cold. The cement mills are dead. They beat up the Italians pretty badly over in the Park.”

The Times issued a noon extra to tell of the incident in front of the smelter, and expatiated upon the Messianic myth. A tirade against Grant Adams in black-faced type three columns wide occupied the center of the first page of the extra, and in Harvey people began to believe that he was the “Mad Mullah” that the Times said he was.

When Dr. Nesbit drove his electric home that noon, he found his daughter waiting for him. She stood on the front porch, with a small valise beside her. She was dressed in white and her youthful skin, fresh lips, glowing eyes and heightened color made her seem younger than the woman of forty that she was. Her father saw in her face the burning purpose to serve which had come to indicate her moments of decision. The Doctor had grown used to that look of decision and he knew that it was in some way related to South Harvey and the strike. For during her years of work in the Valley, its interests had grown to dominate her life. But the Valley and its interests had unfolded her soul to its widest reach, to its profoundest depths. And in her features were blazoned, at times, all the love and joy and strength that her life had gathered. These were the times when she wore what her father called “the Valley look.” She had “the Valley look” in her face that day when she stood waiting for her father with the valise beside her–a beautiful woman.

“Father–now don’t stop me, dear. I’m going to Grant. Mother will be home in a few days. I’ve told Lila to stay with Martha Morton when you are not here. It’s always secure and tranquil up here, you know. But I’m going down in the Valley. I’m going to the strike.”

“Going to the strike?” repeated her father.

“Yes,” she answered, turning her earnest eyes upon him as she spoke. “It’s the first duty I have on earth–to be with my people in this crisis. All these years they have borne me up; have renewed my faith; they have given me courage. Now is my turn, father. Where they go, I go also.” She smiled gently and added, “I’m going to Grant.”

She took her father’s hands. “Father–Oh, my good friend–you understand me–Grant and me?–don’t you? Every man in the crisis of his life needs a woman. I’ve been reading about Grant in the papers. I can see what really has happened. But he doesn’t understand how what they say happens, for the next few days or weeks or months, while this strike is on, is of vastly more importance than what really happens. He lacks perspective on himself. A woman, if she is a worthy friend–gives that to a man. I’m going to Grant–to my good friend, father, and stand with him–very close, and very true, I hope!”

Trouble moved over the Doctor’s face in a cloud. “I don’t know about Grant, Laura,” he said. “All this Messiah and Prince of Peace tomfoolery–and–”

“Why, you know it never happened, don’t you, father? You know Grant is not a fool–nor mad?”

“Oh, I suppose so, Laura–but he approximates both at times,” piped the father raspingly.

“Father–listen here–listen to me, dear. I know Grant–I’ve known him always. This is what is the matter with Grant. I don’t think one act in all his life was based on a selfish or an ulterior motive. He has spent his life lavishly for others. He has given himself without let or hindrance for his ideals–he gave up power and personal glory–all for this cause of labor. He has been maimed and broken for it–has failed for it; and now you see what clouds are gathering above him–and I must go to him. I must be with him.”

“But for what good, Laura?” asked her father impatiently.

“For my own soul’s good and glory, dear,” she answered solemnly. “To live my faith; to stand by the people with whom I have cast my lot; to share the great joy that I know is in Grant’s heart–the joy of serving; to triumph in his failure if it comes to that!–to be happy–with him, as I know him no matter what chance and circumstance surround him. Oh–father–”

She looked up with brimming eyes and clasped his hand tightly while she cried: “I must go–Oh, bless me as I go–” And the father kissed her forehead.

An hour later, while Grant Adams, in his office, was giving directions for the afternoon parade a white-clad figure brightened the doorway.

“Well, Grant, I have come to serve,” she smiled, “under you.”

He turned and rose and took her hands in his one flinty hand and said quietly: “We need you–we need you badly right this minute.”

She answered, “Very well, then–I’m ready!”

“Well, go out and work–talk peace, don’t let them fight, hold the line calm and we’ll win,” he said.

She started away and he cried after her, “Come to Belgian Hall to-night–we may need you there. The strike committee and the leader of each seven will be there. It will be a war council.”

Out to the works went Laura Van Dorn. Mounted policemen or mounted deputies or mounted militiamen stood at every gate. As the strike-breakers came out they were surrounded by the officers of the law, who marched away with the strangers. The strikers followed, calling upon their fellow workers, stretching out pleading arms to them and at corners where the strikers were gathered in any considerable numbers, the guards rode into the crowd waving their whips. At a corner near the Park a woman stepped from the crowd and cried to the officers:

“That’s my boy in there–I’ve got a right to talk to him.”

She started to crowd between the horses, and the policemen thrust her back.

“Karl–Karl,” she cried, “you come out of there; what would papa say–and you a scab.”

She lifted her arms beseechingly and started toward the youth. A policeman cursed her and felled her with a club.

She lay bleeding on the street, and the strikers stood by and ground their teeth. Laura Van Dorn stooped over the woman, picked her up and helped her to walk home. But as she turned away she saw five men walk out of the ranks of the strike-breakers and join the men on the corner. A cheer went up, and two more came.

Belgian Hall was filled with workers that night–men and women. In front of the stage at a long table sat the strike committee. Before them sat the delegates from the various “locals” and the leaders of the sevens. A thousand men and women filled the hall–men and women from every quarter of the globe. That night they had decided to admit the Jews from the Magnus paint works–the Jews whom the Russians scorned, and the Lettish people distrusted. Behind all of the delegates in a solid row around the wall stood the police, watching Grant Adams. He did not sit with the strike committee but worked his way through the crowd, talking to a group here and encouraging a man or woman there–but always restless, always fearing trouble. It was nine o’clock when the meeting opened by singing “The International.” It was sung in twenty tongues, but the chorus swelled up and men and women wept as they sang.

“Oh, the Brotherhood of men  Shall be the human race.”

Then the delegates reported. A Greek woman told how she had been chased by men on horseback through the woods, in the Park. A Polack man showed a torn hand that had come under an ax-handle. A Frenchman told how he had been pursued by a horseman while going for medicine for his sick child. A Portuguese told how he had brought from the ranks of the strike-breakers a big fellow worker whom he knew in New Jersey. The Germans reported that every one of their men in the Valley was out and working in his garden. Over and over young girls told of insults they had received. A mania of brutality seemed to have spread through the officers of the law. A Scotch miner’s daughter showed a tear in her dress made by a soldier’s bayonet–

“‘In fun,’ he said, but I could see na joke.”

In all the speeches there was a spirit of camaraderie–of fellowship, of love. “We are one blood now,” a Danish miner cried, in broken English, “we are all Americans, and America will be a brotherhood–a brotherhood in the Democracy of Labor, under the Prince of Peace.” A great shout arose and the crowd called:

“Grant–Grant–Brother Grant.”

But he stood by the table and shook his head. After a girl picket and a woman–one a Welsh girl, the other a Manx miner’s mother–had told how they were set upon in the Park by the soldiers, up rose a pale, trembling woman from among the Hungarians, her brown, blotched face and her big body made the men look down or away. She spoke in broken, uncertain English.

“We haf send to picket our men and yet our boys, and they beat them down. We haf our girls send, and they come home crying. But I say to God this evening–Oh, is there nothing for me–for me carrying child, and He whisper yais–these soldiers, he haf wife, he haf mother.” She paused and shook with fear and shame. “Then I say to you–call home your man–your girl so young, and we go–we women with child–we with big bellies, filled with unborn–we go–O, my God, He say we go, and this soldier–he haf wife, he haf mother–he will see;–we–we–they will not strike us down. Send us, oh, Grant, Prince of Peace, to the picket line next morning.”

Her voice broke and she sat down covering her head with her skirt and weeping in excitement.

“Let me go,” cried a clear voice, as a brown-eyed Welsh woman rose. “I know ten others that will go.”

“I also,” cried a German woman. “Let us organize to-night. We can have two hundred child-bearing women!”

“Yes, men,” spoke up a trim-looking young wife from among the glassworkers, “we of old have been sacred–let us see if capital holds us sacred now–before property.”

Grant leaned over to Laura and asked, “Would it do? Wouldn’t they shame us for it?”

The eyes of Laura Van Dorn were filled with tears. They were streaming down her face.

“Oh, yes,” she cried, “no deeper symbol of peace is in the earth than the child-bearing woman. Let her go.”

Grant Adams rose and addressed the chair: “Mr. Chairman–I move that all men and all women except those chosen by these who have just spoken, be asked to keep out of the Park to-morrow morning, that all the world may know how sacred we hold this cause and with what weapons of peace we would win it.”

So it was ordered, and the crowd sang the International Hymn again, and then the Marseillaise, and went home dreaming high dreams.

As Grant and Laura walked from the hall, the last to leave the meeting, after the women had finished making out their list of pickets, the streets were empty and they met–or rather failed to meet, Mrs. Dick Bowman, with Mugs in tow, who crossed the street obviously to avoid Grant and his companion.

Grant and Laura, walking briskly along and planning the next day’s work, passed the smelters where the soldiers were on sentry duty. They passed the shaft houses where Harvey militiamen were bunked and guarded by sentinels. They passed the habiliments of war in a score of peaceful places.

“Grant,” cried Laura, “I really think now we’ll win–that the strike of peace will prove all that you have lived for.”

“But if we fail,” he replied, “it proves nothing–except perhaps that it was worth trying, and will be worth trying and trying and trying–until it wins!”

It was half past twelve. Grant Adams, standing before the Vanderbilt House, talking with Henry Fenn, was saying, “Well, Henry, one week of this–one week of peace–and the triumph of peace will be–”

A terrific explosion shut his mouth. Across the night he saw a red glare a few hundred feet away. An instant later it was dark again. He ran toward the place where the glare had winked out. As he turned a corner, he saw stars where there should have been shaft house No. 7 of the Wahoo Fuel Company’s mines, and he knew that it had been destroyed. In it were a dozen sleeping soldiers of the Harvey Militia Company, and it flashed through his mind that Lida Bowman at last had spoken.

CHAPTER XLVII

IN WHICH GRANT ADAMS AND LAURA VAN DORN TAKE A WALK DOWN MARKET STREET AND MRS. NESBIT ACQUIRES A LONG LOST GRANDSON-IN-LAW

Grant Adams and Henry Fenn were among the first to arrive at the scene of the explosion. Henry Fenn had tried to stop Grant from going so quickly, thinking his presence at the scene would raise a question of his guilt, but he cried:

“They may need me, Henry–come on–what’s a quibble of guilt when a life’s to save?”

When they came to the pile of débris, they saw Dick Bowman coming up–barefooted, coatless and breathless. Grant and Fenn had run less than fifteen hundred feet–Dick lived a mile from the shaft house. Grant Adams’s mind flashed suspicion toward the Bowmans. He went to Dick across the wreckage and said:

“Oh, Dick–I’m sorry you didn’t get here sooner.”

“So am I–so am I,” cried Dick, craning his long neck nervously.

“Where is Mugs?” asked Grant, as the two worked with a beam over a body–the body of handsome Fred Kollander–lying near the edge of the litter.

“He’s home in bed and asleep–and so’s his mother, too, Grant, sound asleep.”

During the first minutes after the explosion, men near by like Grant and Fenn came running to the scene of the wrecked shaft by the scores, and as Grant and Dick Bowman spoke the streets grew black with men, workmen, policemen, soldiers, citizens, men by the hundreds came hurrying up. The great siren whistles of the water and light plants began to bellow; fire bells and church bells up in Harvey began to ring, and Grant knew that the telephone was alarming the town. Ten minutes after the explosion, while Grant was ordering his men in the crowd to organize for the rescue, a militia colonel appeared, threw a cordon of men about the ruins and the police and soldiers took charge, forcing Grant and his men away. The first few moments after he had been thrust out of the relief work, Grant spent sending his men in the crowd to summon the members of the Council; then he turned and hurried to his office in the Vanderbilt House. For an hour he wrote. Henry Fenn came, and later Laura Van Dorn appeared, but he waved them both to silence, and without telling them what he had written he went with them to the hall where the Valley Council was waiting in a turmoil of excitement. It was after two o’clock. South Harvey was a military camp. Thousands of citizens from Harvey were hurrying about. As he passed along the street, the electric lights showed him little groups about some grief-stricken parent or brother or sister of a missing militiaman. Automobiles were roaring through the streets carrying officers, policemen, prominent citizens of Harvey. Ahab Wright and Joe Calvin and Kyle Perry were in a car with John Kollander who had come down to South Harvey to claim the body of his son, Fred. Grant saw the Sands’s car with Morty in it supporting a stricken soldier. The car was halted at the corner by the press of traffic, and as Grant and Laura and Henry passed, Morty said under the din: “Grant–Grant, be careful–they are turning Heaven and earth to find your hand in this; it will be only a matter of days–maybe only hours, until they will have their witnesses hired!”

Grant nodded. The car moved on and Grant and his friends pressed through the throng to the hall where the Valley Council was waiting. There Grant stood and read what he had written. It ran thus:

“For the death by dynamite of the militiamen who perished at midnight in shaft No. 7 of the Wahoo Fuel Company’s mines, I take full responsibility. I have assumed a leadership in a strike which caused these deaths. I shirk no whit of my share in this outrage. Yet I preached only peace. I pleaded for orderly conduct. I appealed to the workers to take their own not by force of arms but by the tremendous force of moral right. That ten thousand workers respected this appeal, I am exceedingly proud. That one out of all the ten thousand was not convinced of the justice of our cause and the ultimate triumph by the force of righteousness I am sorry beyond words. I call upon my comrades to witness what a blow to our cause this murder has been and to stand firm in the faith that the strike must win by ways of peace.

“Yet, whoever did this deed was not entirely to blame–however it may cripple his fellow-workers. A child mangled in the mines denied his legal damages; men clubbed for telling of their wrongs to their fellow-laborers who were asked to fill their places; women on the picket line, herded like deer through the park by Cossacks whipping the fleeing creatures mercilessly; these things inflamed the mind of the man who set off the bomb; these things had their share in the murder.

“But I knew what strikes were. I know indeed what strikes still are and what this strike may be. I sorrow with those families whose boys perished by the bomb in shaft house No. 7. I grieve with the families of those who have been beaten and broken in this strike. But by all this innocent blood–blood shed by the working people–blood shed by those who ignorantly misunderstand us, I now beg you, my comrades, to stand firm in this strike. Let not this blood be shed in vain. It may be indeed that the men of the master class here have not descended as deeply as we may expect them to descend. They may feel that more blood must be spilled before they let us come into our own. But if blood is shed again, we must bleed, but let it not be upon our hands.

“Again, even in this breakdown of our high hopes for a strike without violence, I lift my voice in faith, I hail the coming victory, I proclaim that the day of the Democracy of Labor is at hand, and it shall come in peace and good will to all.”

When he had finished reading his statement, he sat down and the Valley Council began to discuss it. Many objected to it; others wished to have it modified; still others agreed that it should be published as he had read it. In the end, he had his way. But in the hubbub of the discussion, Laura Van Dorn, sitting near him, asked:

“Grant, why do you take all this on your shoulders? It is not fair, and it is not true–for that matter.”

He answered finally: “Well, that’s what I propose to do.”

He was haggard and careworn and he stared at the woman beside him with determination in his eyes. But she would not give up. Again she insisted: “The people are inflamed–terribly inflamed and in the morning they will be in no mood for this. It may put you in jail–put you where you are powerless.”

He turned upon her the stubborn, emotional face that she rarely had seen but had always dreaded. He answered her:

“If anything were to be gained for the comrades by waiting–I’d wait.” Then his jaws closed in decision as he said: “Laura, that deed was done in blind rage by one who once risked his life to save mine. Then he acted not blindly but in the light of a radiance from the Holy Ghost in his heart! If I can help him now–can even share his shame with him–I should do it. And in this case–I think it will help the cause to make a fair confession of our weakness.”

“But, Grant,” cried the woman, “Grant–can’t you see that the murder of these boys–these Harvey boys, the boys whose mothers and fathers and sweethearts and young wives and children are going about the streets as hourly witnesses against you and our fellow-workers here–will arouse a mob spirit that is dangerous?”

“Yes–I see that. But if anything can quell the mob spirit, frank, open-hearted confession will do it.” He brushed aside her further protests and in another instant was on his feet defending his statement to the Valley Council. Ten minutes later the reporters had it.

At six o’clock in the morning posters covered South Harvey and the whole district proclaiming martial law. They were signed by Joseph Calvin, Jr., provost marshal, and they denied the right of assembly, except upon written order of the provost marshal, declared that incendiary speech would be stopped, forbade parades except under the provost marshal’s inspection, and said that offenders would be tried by court-martial for all disobediences to the orders of the proclamation. The proclamation was underscored in its requirements that no meeting of any kind might be held in the district or on any lot or in any building except upon written consent of the owner of the lot or building and with the permission of the provost marshal. Belgian Hall was a rented hall, and the Wahoo Fuel Company controlled most of the available town lots, leaving only the farms of the workers, that were planted thick with gardens, for even the most inoffensive meeting.

And at ten o’clock Grant Adams had signed a counter proclamation declaring that the proclamation of martial law in a time of peace was an usurpation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, and that they must refuse to recognize any authority that abridged the right of free assemblage, a free press, free speech and a trial by jury. Amos Adams sent the workers an invitation to meet in the grove below his house. Grant called a meeting for half-past twelve at the Adams homestead. It was a direct challenge.

The noon extra edition of the Times, under the caption, “The Governor Is Right,” contained this illuminating editorial:

“Seven men dead–dynamited to death by Grant Adams; seven men dead–the flower of the youth of Harvey; seven men dead for no crime but serving their country, and Grant Adams loose, poisoning the minds of his dupes, prating about peace in public and plotting cowardly assassination in private. Of course, the Governor was right. Every good citizen of this country will commend him for prompt and vigorous action. In less than an hour after the bomb had sent the seven men of the Harvey Home Guards to eternity, the Governor had proclaimed martial law in this district, and from now on, no more incendiary language, no more damnable riots, miscalled parades will menace property, and no more criminal acts done under the cover of the jury system will disgrace this community under the leadership of this creature Adams.

“In his manifesto pulingly taking the blame for a crime last night so obviously his that mere denial would add blood to the crime itself, Adams says in extenuation that ‘women were herded before the Cossacks like deer in the park,’ while they were picketing. But he does not say that in the shameful cowardice so characteristic of his leadership in this labor war, he forced, by his own motion, women unfit to be seen in public, much less to fight his battles, under the hoofs of the horses in Sands Park this morning, and if the Greek woman, who claims she was dragooned should die, the fault, the crime of her death in revolting circumstances, will be upon Grant Adams’s hands.

“When such a leader followed by blind zealots like the riff-raff who are insanely trailing after this Mad Mullah who claims divine powers–save the mark–when such leaders and such human vermin as these rise in a community, the people who own property, who have built up the community, who have spent their lives making Harvey the proud industrial center that she is–the people who own property, we repeat, should organize to protect it. The Governor suspending while this warlike state exists the right of anarchists who turn it against law and order, the right of assembling, and speech and trial by jury, has set a good example. We hear from good authority that the Adams anarchists are to be aided by another association even more reckless than he and his, and that Greeley county will be flooded by bums and thugs and plug-uglies who will fill our jails and lay the burden of heavy taxes upon our people pretending to defend the rights of free speech.

“A law and order league should be organized among the business men of Harvey to rid the county of these rats breeding social disease, and if courageous hearts are needed, and extraordinary methods necessary–all honest people will uphold the patriots who rally to this cause.”