Harbor (9781101565681) (36 page)

“Not exactly,” he replied. Eleanore's eyes were attentive now:

“Do you know her well, Joe?”

“I've met her——”

“I'd like to meet her, too,” she said. “And find out how she likes her life.”

“I think I know what you'd find,” said Sue, in her old cocksure, superior manner. “I guess she likes it well enough——”

“Still, dear,” Eleanore murmured, “instead of taking things for granted it would be interesting, I think, in all this talk to have one look at a little real life.”

“Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?” Sue demanded, in a quick challenging tone.

“Am I?” asked Eleanore placidly.

 

Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me.

“Why not think it over, Billy?” she urged. “You're not happy now, I never saw you so worried and blue.”

“I'm not in the least!” I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me. She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way:

“Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may even learn to go slower himself—now that he has had typhoid——”

“Do you think so?” Eleanore put in.

“Why not?” cried Sue impatiently. “If he keeps on at this pace it will kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of power! Why not use it here? Suppose it
is
harder! Oh, I get so out of patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives! Why can't we
give
ourselves a little?” And she went back over all Joe had said. “It's all so real. So tremendously real,” she ended.

 

“I wonder what's going to happen,” said Eleanore when we were alone.

“God knows,” I answered gloomily. That hammering from Joe and Sue had stirred me up all over again. I had doggedly resisted, I had told Sue almost angrily that I meant to keep right on as before. But now she was gone, I was not so sure. “I still feel certain Joe's all wrong,” I said aloud. “But he and his kind are so dead in earnest—so ready for any sacrifice to push their utterly wild ideas—that they may get a lot of power. God help the country if they do.”

“I wasn't speaking of the country, my love,” my wife informed me cheerfully. “I was speaking of Sue and Joe Kramer.”

“Joe,” I replied, “will slam right ahead. You can be sure of that, I've got him down cold.”

“Have you?” she asked. “And how about Sue?”

“Oh Sue,” I replied indifferently, “has been enthused so many times.”

“Billy.”

I turned and saw my wife regarding her husband thoughtfully.

“I wonder,” she said, “how long it will be before you can write a love story.”

“What?”

“Sue and Joe Kramer, you idiot.”

I stared at her dumfounded.

“Did you think all that talk was aimed at you?” my pitiless spouse continued. “Did you think all that change in Joe's point of view was on your account?”

I watched her vigilantly for a while.

“If there's anything in what you say,” I remarked carefully at last, “I'll bet at least that Joe doesn't know it. He doesn't even suspect it.”

“There are so many things,” said Eleanore, “that men don't even suspect in themselves. I'm sorry,” she added regretfully. “But that summer vacation we'd planned is off.”

“What?”

“Oh, yes, we'll stay right here in town. I see anything but a pleasant summer.”

“Suppose,” I said excitedly, “you tell me exactly what you
do
see!”

“I see something,” Eleanore answered, “which unless we can stop it may be a very tragic affair. Tragic for Sue because I feel sure that she'd never stand Joe's impossible life. And even worse for your father. He's not only old and excitable, and very weak and feeble, too, but he's so conservative besides that if Sue married Joe Kramer he'd consider her utterly damned.”

“But I tell you you're wrong, all wrong!” I broke in. “Joe isn't that kind of an idiot!”

“Joe,” said my wife decidedly, “is like every man I've ever met. I found that out when he was sick. He has the old natural longing for a wife and a home of his own. His glimpse of it here may have started it rising. I'm no more sure than you are that he admits it to himself. But it's there all the same in the back of his mind, and in that same mysterious region he's trying to reconcile marrying Sue to the work which he believes in—even with this strike coming on. It's perfectly pathetic.

“Isn't it funny,” she added, “how sometimes everything comes all at once? Do you know what this may mean to us? I don't, I haven't the least idea. I only know that you yourself are horribly unsettled—and that now through this affair of Sue's we'll have to see a good deal of Joe—and not only Joe but his friends on the docks—and not even the quiet ones. No, we're to see all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this strike—into what Joe calls revolution.”

“You may be right,” I said doggedly. “But I don't believe it.”

A few days later Joe called me up and asked me to come down to his office. His reason for wanting to see me, he said, he'd rather not give me over the 'phone.

“You're right,” I told Eleanore dismally. “He's going to talk to me about Sue.”

I dreaded this talk, and I went to see Joe in no easy frame of mind. But it was not about Sue. I saw that in my first glimpse of his face. He sat half around in his office chair listening intensely to a man by his side.

“I want you to meet Jim Marsh,” he said.

I felt a little electric shock. So here was the great mob agitator, the notorious leader of strikes. Eleanore's words came into my mind: “We're to meet all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this strike—into what Joe calls revolution.” Well, here was the arch-revolutionist, the prime mover of them all. Of middle size, about forty years old, angular and wiry, there was a lithe easy force in his limbs, but he barely moved as he spoke to me now. He just turned his narrow bony face and gave me a glance with his keen gray eyes.

“I've known your work for quite a while,” he said in a low drawling voice. “Joe says you're thinking of writing me up.”

So this was why Joe had sent for me. I had quite forgotten this idea, but I took to it eagerly now. My work was going badly. Here was something I could do, the life story of a man whose picture would soon be on the front page of every paper in New York. It would interest my magazine, it would give me a chance to get myself clear on this whole ugly business of labor, poverty and strikes. I had evaded it long enough, I would turn and face it squarely now.

“Why yes, I'd like to try,” I said.

“He wants to do your picture with the America you know,” said Joe. “He says he's ready to be shown.”

Marsh glanced out at the harbor.

“If he'll trail around with us for a while we may show him some of it here,” he drawled. And then quietly ignoring my presence he continued his talk with Joe, as though taking it for granted that I was an interested friend. I listened there all afternoon.

The thing that struck me most at first was the cool effrontery of the man in undertaking such a struggle. The old type of labor leader had at least stuck to one industry, and had known by close experience what he had to face. But here was a mere outsider, a visitor strolling into a place and saying, “I guess I'll stop all this.” Vaguely I knew what he had to contend with. Sitting here in this cheap bare room, the thought of other rooms rose in my mind, spacious, handsomely furnished rooms where at one time or another I had interviewed heads of foreign ship companies, railroad presidents, bankers and lawyers, newspaper editors, men representing enormous wealth. All these rooms had been parts of my harbor—a massed array of money and brains. He would have all this against him. And to such a struggle I could see no end for him but jail.

For against all this, on his side, was a chaotic army of ignorant men, stokers, dockers, teamsters, scattered all over this immense region, practically unorganized. What possible chance to bring them together? How could he feel that he had a chance? How much did he already know?

I asked him what he had seen of the harbor. For days, I learned, he had told no one but Joe of his coming, he had wandered about the port by himself. And as a veteran tramp will in some mysterious fashion get the feel of a new town within a few short hours there, so Marsh had got the feel of this place—of a harbor different from mine, for he felt it from the point of view of its hundred thousand laborers. He felt it with its human fringe, he saw its various tenement borders like so many camps and bivouacs on the eve of a battle.

He told a little incident of how the harbor learned he was here. About nine o'clock one morning, as he was waiting his chance to get into one of the North River docks, a teamster recognized him there from a picture of him he had once seen. The news traveled swiftly along the docks, out onto piers and into ships. And at noon, way over in Hoboken, Marsh had overheard a German docker say to the man eating lunch beside him,

“I hear dot tamn fool anarchist Marsh is raising hell ofer dere in New York.”

“But I wasn't raising hell,” he drawled. “I was over here studying literature.” And he drew out from his pocket a tattered copy of a report, the result of a careful investigation of work on the docks, made recently by a most conservative philanthropic organization.

“ ‘In all the fierce rush of American industry,' ” he read, with a quiet smile of derision, “ ‘no work is so long, so irregular or more full of danger. Seven a. m. until midnight is a common work day here, and in the rush season of winter when ships are often delayed by storms and so must make up time in port, the same men often work all day and night and even on into the following day, with only hour and half-hour stops for coffee, food or liquor. This strain makes for accidents. From police reports and other sources we find that six thousand killed and injured every year on the docks is a conservative estimate.' ”

Marsh glanced dryly up at me:

“Here's the America I know.”

I said nothing. I was appalled. Six thousand killed and injured! I could feel his sharp gray eyes boring down into my soul:

“You wrote up this harbor once.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you write this?”

“No. I would have said it was a lie.”

“Do you say so now? These people are a careful crowd.” I took the pamphlet from his hands.

“Queer,” I muttered vaguely. “I never saw this report before.”

“Not so queer,” he answered. “I'm told that it wasn't
meant
to be seen—by you and the general public. That's the way this society works. They spend half a dead old lady's cash investigating poverty and the other half in keeping the public from learning what they've discovered. But we're going to furnish publicity to this secluded work of art.

“On Saturday afternoon,” he continued, “I went along the North River docks. I found long lines of dockers there—they were waiting for their pay. At every pay window one of 'em stood with an empty cigar box in his hands—and into that box every man as he passed dropped a part of his pay—for the man who had been hurt that week—for him or for his widow.

“And over across the way,” he went on, “I saw something on the waterfront that fitted right into the scenery. It was a poster on a high fence, and it had a black border around it. On one side of it was a picture of a tall gent in a swell frock suit. He was looking squarely at the docks and pointing to the sign beside him, which said, ‘
Certainly
I'm talking to you! Money saved is money earned. Read what I will furnish you for seventy-five dollars—cash. Black cloth or any color you like—plush or imitation oak—casket with a good white or cream lining—pillow—burial suit or brown habit—draping and embalming room—chairs—hearse—three coaches—complete care and attendance—also handsome candelabra and candles if requested.' ”

As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then, for it had not fitted into my harbor. But Marsh had caught its meaning at once and had promptly jotted it down for use. For it fitted his harbor exactly.

Vaguely, in this and a dozen ways, I could feel him taking my harbor to pieces, transforming each piece into something grim and so building a harbor all his own. Disturbedly and angrily I struggled to find the flaws in his building, eagerly I caught at distortions here and there, twisted facts and wrong conclusions. But in all the terrible stuff which he had so hastily gathered here, there was so much that I could not deny. And he gave no chance for argument. Quickly jumping from point to point he pictured a harbor of slaves overburdened; driven into fierce revolt. It was hard to keep my footing.

For his talk was not only of this harbor. It ranged out over an ocean world which was all in a state of ferment and change. Men of every race and creed, from English, Germans, Russians to Coolies, Japs and Lascars, had crowded into the stokeholes, mixing bowls for all the world. And the mixing process had begun. At Copenhagen, two years before, in a great marine convention that followed the socialist congress there, Marsh had seen the delegates from seventeen different countries representing millions of seamen. And this crude world parliament, this international brotherhood, had placed itself on record as against wars of every kind, except the one deepening bitter war of labor against capital. To further this they had proposed to paralyze by strikes the whole international transport world. The first had followed promptly, breaking out in England. The second was to take place here.