Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

“Half the hours at half your previous rate?” Jane asked.

“That’s right,” Flora affirmed. “In 1893, I could make $2.25 a day which was very good wages for a girl. This year, before the strike I was lucky to make eighty cents a day.”

“Oh, but that’s not the worst of it.” Olivia’s tone had become confidential now. “We don’t dare talk about this out in public but our forewoman is a tyrant.”

“An absolute tartar,” Tess agreed solemnly.

“She has her favorites.” Flora nodded.

“And she gives all the best jobs to them so they can earn the most!” Olivia’s lip was quivering again. “And the rest of us, she grinds us down to nothing. She could be so mean that some girls quit who would still be at the company today if she hadn’t hounded them. If she could make you do a piece of work for twenty five cents less than the going price, she would do it every time.”

Evangeline’s attention traveled from one girl to the next. She noted how heated the conversation had become.

“I’ve seen her cut down prices herself, even below what the supervisors wanted.” Flora had jumped up and was pacing now.

“That’s right.” Tess backed her. “She did it because she thought it would make her stand in better with the company. She was earning her regular $2.25 a day so what did she care if we had enough to live on or not? Just so long as she could save the company a few dollars.”

“At your expense,” Jane offered quietly.

Olivia had started to cry. “That’s right. It all came back on us.” She fumbled in her skirt pocket for a handkerchief. “And some of us that complained got let go so we learned not to complain because nobody in the company would listen.”

Flora walked over to put her arm around Olivia’s shoulder. She gazed earnestly at the visitors. “You understand now why we struck, don’t you? Nobody believed us and there was nothing left for us to do.”

The two ladies exchanged glances of wordless agreement.

“I can’t speak for the multitude,” Jane said, “but you’ve impressed upon us the misery of your situation. In our small way, we’ll try to do what we can.”

Evangeline took a sip of tea before adding thoughtfully, “I do believe George Pullman will live to regret his inability to hear any voice but his own.”

Chapter 7—A Striking Coincidence

Freddie continued to nurse his suspicions regarding Desmond Bayne but he found little time to prove that his hunch was more than mere fancy. The crisis at
Pullman
had now entered its sixth week, consuming all of Evangeline’s attention and much of his own as he had been assigned to report on the strike’s progress. He despaired of ever advancing his own investigation when fate intervened. A new labor problem had erupted on the north side of the city and Freddie was sent to cover it. The location was the Hyperion Electroplate Company.

As Freddie stepped off the
North Avenue
streetcar in front of the factory, he had the distinct impression of reliving the past. For the second time in as many months he was confronted by a line of men in blue and brass. Instead of forming a protective circle around a dead girl, they had formed a solid line protecting the front entrance to the factory. Before them stood a second line of men—factory workers in threadbare woolen pants and shoes lined, no doubt, with wads of paper to cover the cracks in their soles. These men carried hand-lettered signs. One proclaimed, “Hyperion steals the bread from our children’s mouths!” Another read, “The workman is worthy of his hire!”

The workers marched back and forth in front of the entrance, careful not to step off the sidewalk, careful not to make eye contact with the police. Freddie scanned the faces of the men in blue. No one looked familiar, but every face held the same grim expression. He looked at the faces of the picketers—more angry than grim. He recognized a few. In particular, he noticed the dark-skinned boy with the acid-burned hands. The boy wasn’t wearing an apron today to protect his already patched clothing. Freddie walked up to him and offered a casual “Good morning.”

The boy eyed Freddie’s silk cravat contemptuously before replying. “Maybe to you it’s a good morning.” He spat in the gutter for emphasis.

“I heard there was a strike here.” Freddie held himself ready to flip open his notebook if anything interesting emerged.

“What’s it to you if there is? You got fine clothes an’ no reason to worry where your next meal’s gonna come from.”

Undeterred, Freddie held out his hand in greeting. “I’m Freddie Simpson with the Gazette. I came to cover the story. I’d like to hear your side.”

The boy refused to return the greeting. “I seen how the papers tol’ the story at
Pullman
. You wanna hear my side so’s the papers can say we’re a bunch of anarchists trying to destroy free enterprise, instead of a bunch of poor gutter rats trying to keep ourselves an’ our families from starving to death.”

Freddie was insistent. “As I said, I’d like to hear your side.”

The boy relented slightly. In a mildly suspicious voice, he said, “My name’s
Orlando
.”

“
Orlando
what?” Freddie took out his notebook and began writing.

“Just
Orlando
. That’s enough for you to know.”

“Well then,
Orlando
, what’s this all about?”

“It’s about going from eight bucks to five on payday, that’s what.”

Freddie raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That would be somewhere around a forty percent wage cut.”

Orlando
laughed scornfully. “That’d be the difference between shivering in a alley somewhere an’ eating garbage or keeping a roof over your family’s head.”

Freddie looked around to see if Martin Allworthy was anywhere in sight. “What reason did the owner give for cutting wages?”

Orlando
glowered with suppressed anger. “They said orders was down. They wasn’t down that far! We was all still working from dawn to dusk an’ here comes this new cock o’ the walk strutting around telling us all to work harder yet!”

“Who do you mean?” Freddie already guessed the answer.

“Why, him that’s talking to that copper over there.”
Orlando
jerked his head to the side, indicating a well-dressed man whispering to a policeman at the end of the line.

Freddie gave a start when he realized that the man was Desmond Bayne. To the young man’s amazement, Bayne didn’t acknowledge his presence, even though he was staring in the reporter’s direction the whole time he was conversing with the policeman. Freddie concluded that Bayne must have been three sheets to the wind when they were introduced at the Allworthy’s dinner party and probably didn’t recall anyone he met that night.

“Mr. High an’ Mighty, that one thinks he is! Treating us all like we was his slaves. Even the girls in the packing room. Like it was his own pers’nal candy store!”
Orlando
was becoming angrier with every word.

Freddie refocused his attention on the striker standing in front of him. “What do you mean?”

Orlando
kicked angrily at a scrubby patch of grass attempting to cling to life at the edge of the sidewalk. “You know what I mean all right, mister! He kept after ‘em. Saying he’d be extra nice to them if they was extra nice to him. My sister works there an’ she told me. When he wouldn’t keep his hands off her an’ she slapped him, he said he’d have her job for it.”
Orlando
spat out the words. “If that bastard tries anything again with her, I’ll kill him!”

Freddie had stopped taking notes. This wasn’t something that his editor would allow him to print. “When did all the trouble start?” Again he guessed the answer.

“Right after that swaggering so-an’-so started at the beginning of May. ‘Mr. Bayne, sir’ we’re supposed to call him. Mr. Allworthy introduces him around an’ tells us we should treat him with all due respect—that he’s the new vice president. Christ Almighty! How many overseers are we gonna get in this shop? We already got a foreman an’ a general manager sweating the blood out of us. And now we got this Bayne blustering up an’ down the livelong day, telling us what a poor excuse we are for workmen. If that’s not bad enough, a month after he starts, we get rounded up an’ told there’s to be pay cuts because orders is down. That was the limit! After three weeks of it, we had enough. We’re through talking. The whole shop struck.”

“Have you given a formal list of grievances to Mr. Allworthy?”

Orlando
shrugged. “If you wanna know about all that, you should talk to Tibbs.” The worker motioned to a mild-looking man at the opposite end of the picket line. “We put him in charge of talking. Me, I don’t wanna talk no more. I just wanna go back to work an’ get paid what I used to get paid!”

Abruptly,
Orlando
turned his back on Freddie and rejoined the picket line.

Blinking once in surprise at the young worker’s unceremonious departure, Freddie sauntered over to start up a conversation with the vox populi. “Mr. Tibbs?” he began hesitantly.

Unlike
Orlando
, Tibbs didn’t exhibit any violent emotion. He turned calm eyes toward Freddie. “Yes?”

“Frederick Simpson with the Gazette. I’m here to cover the strike and one of your co-workers told me you are their leader.”

Tibbs laughed deprecatingly. “Eustace Tibbs, at your service, though I’d hardly call myself their leader, Mr. Simpson.” He lifted his hat to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. Freddie noted he was quite bald for a man of about thirty. “We’re not a union shop. Just a rabble in need of a voice. I appear to have been chosen.”

“You don’t sound like a factory worker.”

“That’s because I’m not.” Tibbs smiled. “I’m the company bookkeeper. I’m responsible for Mr. Allworthy’s financial records. But as far as pay cuts go, I’m affected to the same degree as the rest of these men.”

“You mean Allworthy cut your wages, too?” Freddie was appalled.

Tibbs nodded. “Everyone was cut except, of course, Mr. Allworthy, Mr. Bayne and the managers.”

“Ah, yes, speaking of Mr. Bayne...” Freddie launched into his favorite topic with relish, casting a furtive glance to see if Desmond was anywhere nearby. The rogue was still deep in conversation with the police and hadn’t noticed Freddie. “Speaking of Mr. Bayne, I’ve been told that the trouble all started shortly after his arrival.”

“That would be correct.” Tibbs sighed. “Mr. Allworthy always ran a tight ship. The men were usually a little discontented, but Mr. Bayne’s arrival seems to have pushed them over the edge.” The bookkeeper shook his head in wonderment. “He seems almost to have appeared out of thin air, like some evil genie.”

Freddie’s ears perked up at the statement. “Just between you and me, I’ve been conducting a private investigation into Mr. Bayne’s background. I haven’t been able to turn up anything about him. It’s as you say. He seems to have appeared out of thin air.”

Tibbs took Freddie by the elbow and steered him away from the picket line. “Since we appear to be sharing confidences, Mr. Simpson, I’ll tell you a few things that are to remain strictly off the record.”

They walked about a half block west of the factory before Tibbs stopped and began speaking again. “The compensation Mr. Bayne is receiving is the direct reason for this strike.”

“What?” Freddie gasped.

“If I told the men that, I believe they’d form a lynch mob, so I haven’t said anything. I was hoping Mr. Allworthy would come to his senses. He’s usually a rational man, if a bit pompous.” Tibbs hesitated. “I don’t know what’s happened to him over the course of the past six weeks. He seems blind to reason.”

“What indeed,” Freddie murmured darkly.

Tibbs continued. “The day Mr. Bayne started, I was instructed to pay him an annual salary of one hundred thousand dollars.”

Freddie was thunderstruck. “How much?”

“That’s what I would have said if I’d been at liberty.” The bookkeeper smiled sympathetically. “As it was, I just marked that one with all the zeros following it in my ledger book. But it represented a problem for the company.”

“I’ll say!”

“No, I don’t mean about Mr. Bayne personally.” Tibbs shook his head. “That’s an entirely different story. I mean that our orders had been down for a few months.”

Freddie looked at him quizzically.

“In accounting terms, we weren’t bringing in enough income to offset our expenses. After adding in Mr. Bayne’s salary, our books would have shown a loss. I pointed that fact out to Mr. Allworthy, and he said he would ponder the matter. Well, he pondered the matter for a month. Two weeks ago he reached a decision. I was instructed to decrease wages by forty percent across the board. That is, except for management.”

“Didn’t you tell him that the men might strike?”

“Yes, I did point that out. Mr. Allworthy got rather upset and said he was the master in his own place of business and that he would make the rules. Personally, I think he was more afraid of what Mrs. Allworthy would say if profits were down.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve met Mrs. Allworthy.” Freddie thought back to Euphemia’s breadth and girth. “I understand she owns the company. Didn’t you tell her about this?”

Tibbs looked down at the ground self-consciously. “If I’d had the nerve, I would have. As it was, Mr. Allworthy always said we shouldn’t trouble his wife with the day-to-day operating details of the company. It was enough if we showed a clear profit each quarter.”

“Still, she’s bound to find out after this.” Freddie motioned to the strike scene behind them.

“I imagine Mr. Allworthy will say we are a pack of insubordinate ruffians and should be replaced by a more tractable work force.”

“A work force willing to slave for what he’s willing to pay.”

“Yes,” Tibbs assented quietly.

“Then why are you doing this?” Freddie was at a loss. “Of all of them, surely you can see you’re fighting a losing battle.”

The bookkeeper sighed. “It isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about justice. Simple justice, that’s all.” He smiled ruefully. “Workers aren’t cattle, Mr. Simpson. Someone has to show the owners that. Someone has to make them see. Enough workers, in enough shops. They’ll have no choice but to see.” Tibbs turned to gaze out over the line of pickets—the line of men in blue.

“What about Bayne?” Freddie broke into his thoughts. “I’ve heard it wasn’t just his salary everyone’s upset about.”

“Yes, he’s indulged in some odd behavior since he started. I’m not sure what his duties are meant to be, but he’s taken it upon himself to nose around in every corner of the business. He asked me to turn the books over to him one night so he could study them.”