To Make My Bread (47 page)

Yet he wanted to find out the furthest thing that John Stevens had to say, so that he could lie down and stay, knowing that there was nothing for them to look forward to but a life of going to the mill, coming home to rest for strength to work in the mill again. Over and over, forever and ever, Amen.

John Stevens fingered the Bible that was on the table before him. He was looking for a passage that he had promised to show John, a passage about the rich and the poor.

“I sometimes wonder,” John said, watching the narrow, kindly face across the table, “why the preachers are always reminding us that death is the lot of all, rich and poor. They say, many times, death is not aristocratic. Hit's true, but I don't know why it is they talk so much that way. Hit seems they keep their eyes on death, and not on life.”

“Do you know any preachers and their families?” John Stevens asked, and he let the pages of the Bible run through his hands: but he kept his kind eyes on John.

“Not well.”

“I've been acquainted with some. They speak of death, but if you see and know them, you see they want to live. They have just as good food and clothing for themselves and their children as they can get, and every one of them tries his best to get the best education he can afford for his young ones. There are some who wish well to the poor, but there are mighty few that would fight to make their wishes come true. I mean fight for the coming of the message.”

“Is it the gospel message you mean when you say that?”

“No, it's not the gospel message I mean.”

He turned the pages of the book. “Here it is,” he said and opened to a page toward the back. “If it's the gospel message they want, here's what they should preach.” He read from the Bible. “Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted: and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure: ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one: he doth not resist you.”

“Are those words, right there, in the Bible?” John spoke in astonishment. John Stevens pushed the book across to him.

“Read for yourself,” he said.

“I want t' show this to some others,” John told him, and wrote down the chapter and name.

“Is that it, the message?” he asked hesitating, yet wanting to know clearly.

“No,” John Stevens said. For a long time he was silent. When he spoke it was in his usual voice, but as he went on it became stronger and more full of meaning, as the machines when they first start up make little noise but soon their sound fills the whole room.

And John listened with all his attention, so that later he was able to repeat what he had heard. Not every word was the same, but the meaning and most of the words were just as John Stevens had spoken them.

“In that book,” John Stevens said, “it tells you, ‘The cries of them that reap have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth.' Now, so far as I know, the sound of the sorrow of those that work has never been heard up yonder or wherever it might be they're expected to be heard.

“You speak of preachers who talk of death. I want to tell you now about people who speak of life: and who are killed for speaking so. No wonder the preachers speak of death to us poor, for if they spoke of life as these others have done, they would be punished by the rich.

“There were two men who were punished for speaking so. Both worked in a mill, though one of them later became a peddler of fish. They were people like you and me, though they were born in a country across the water, and could not speak our language very well. But they spoke in their own language, and part in our language to the poor. They spoke of life, and because they did the rich put them to death. The rich called them thieves and murderers. It was their excuse for murdering two innocent men. I would like to read you what these two ‘thieves and murderers' said. I'll come back in a minute. A friend in the North sent me some of their sayings and letters. I'll come right back.”

He returned with some papers and sat down again. The rustling of the papers sounded very loud in the still room.

“You remember,” John Stevens said, “there in the Bible it says, ‘Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one: he doth not resist you.' These men didn't believe in resisting, but in just being good. And they were good. From these papers I'm going t' read you what these two ‘thieves and murderers' said just before they were taken to the electric chair.”

“They were killed in the electric chair?”

“Yes, and they walked in proud and strong, and one of them said, ‘Good evening, Gentlemen,' for it was gentlemen that had done this thing to them. Not long before they went in for the gentlemen to watch them die, one of them wrote: ‘This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words—our lives—our pains—nothing. The taking of our lives, lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler—all. That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.'

“And they wanted to live, John. They wanted to enjoy life. And they thought of a world where all people would enjoy living. The day on which he was to die, one of them wrote a letter to his son. Here is part of the letter: ‘So, Son, instead of crying' (he meant when they had killed him) ‘be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother, and when you want to distract your mother from the discouraging soulness, I will tell you what I used to do. To take her a long walking in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees, between the harmony of the vivid stream and the gentle tranquillity of the mother nature, and I am sure that she will enjoy this very much, as you surely would be happy for it. But remember, always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don't use all for yourself only, but down yourself just one step, at your side, and help the weak ones that cry for help, help the persecuted and the victim, because they are your better friends: they are the comrades that fight and fall as your father and Bartol fought and fell yesterday for the conquest of the joy of freedom for all the poor workers.' ”

There was the sound of a heavy sigh in the quiet room.

“I told you once,” John Stevens said, “about workers being killed in the West. This happened in the North. I could tell you many more stories of people being killed by the rich because they wanted something better. I want you to feel that you are not the only one, that there are many others wanting what you and Bonnie and all those others in the village want, ‘the joy of freedom for all the poor workers.'

“And the rich will never give it to us. We must take it for ourselves. You understand that? Take it for ourselves. They couldn't give it to us if they wanted to, even if they had that kindness your preacher once spoke about: for they have made something that is bigger than they are, bigger and stronger. But they like what they have. Don't you forget that, and they're going to keep it. And so we won't do anything about our misery, they keep us in the darkness of ignorance and talk about death, to keep our eyes on death and heaven, so we won't think too much about life. We are taught that to struggle is a sin.

“But it ain't a sin, John. People must learn that. We must work in a strike, but there is something else. We must go beyond the strike to the message . . . that we must join with all others like us and take what is ours. For it is our hands that have built, and our hands that run the machines and ours that dig the coal and keep the furnaces going; and our hands that bring in the wheat for flour. And because we have worked and suffered, we will understand that all should work and all should enjoy the good things of life. It is for us who know to make a world in which there will not be masters, and no slaves except the machines: but all will work together and all will enjoy the good things of life together.”

“Can hit be done?”

“It has been done,” John Stevens said, “though it isn't yet finished.”

He spoke more words. They talked long into the night, so that John, reaching his work late the next morning, was told that he would lose a day's pay for his lateness. He did not hear everything the overseer said to him, and it was just as well, for the things said were not pleasant enough for a person to enjoy. He knew this dimly, yet there was something else in him greater than the overseer's words. He stood before his machines with a joyous feeling swelling in him.

T
HAT
week something unusual happened in the mill. People at work at their looms or frames suddenly found themselves being watched by strange men. If one of them went for a drink of water, or something more important than a drink of water, the man stood looking at his watch, and put down something in a book when they came back. It was very distressing, for the watching kept up over several days. But it had to be endured, for everyone knew that more people were to be laid off very soon, and each was hoping against hope that he would not be one of these.

In the third week hank clocks were installed on the machines, and people were paid by the time the hank clock registered. Sam Carver who worked on the night shift in the card room, and knew something about electricity, tinkered with his clock, and made his wages very high. The others did not approve of his behavior. They spoke to Sam in no uncertain way, but he went right on. “For,” he said, “they aim t' get as much out of me as they can, so I aim t' get the same from them.”

For all except Sam the wages went down further. And there were other changes. The mill took off all helpers, which meant that boys and girls were left without work, and slubber hands had to drag in the creels, and there were no more doffers, but people must doff their own spools and mark them, which took up time from the frames and so cut down their pay. Card hands were forced to run forty cards instead of twenty-one and were given less for the double work.

Automatic spoolers were put in, and when this was done thirty-five people were used where one hundred and sixty had been used before. Weavers who had tended eight to twenty looms now had nearly one hundred each: but when it was found that people fainted too often the number was reduced a little. Most of the women had to give up weaving. Ora stayed on, for old as she was, she was still as strong as a horse, as she herself said. It was very different with Frank, because he had one lung gone from tuberculosis.

Ora said a thing that many others repeated after her. “I don't run the machines any more,” she said. “They run me.”

Everyone tried to take it all in the right way. They had been told how to take it. In each room Mr. Randolph, the manager, spoke to them. He said: “There is nothing that can disrupt the sincere spirit of brotherly love which for so long has been a bond between the management and the workers in our mills. Now when the management finds it necessary because of hard times to tighten up on time and wages, we hope that same spirit will continue so that we work together in harmony and peace.”

For several weeks everyone tried to accept his words. For one thing they were naturally easy going, and for another they felt that behind Mr. Randolph's spoken words were others which said, “If you don't like this, there are plenty of others who will.”

Then, like a cloud that comes without any warning over the top of a mountain, a feeling of misery came over the mill. Before there had been a feeling of deadness, which nothing perhaps could arouse, a feeling of stolid endurance. Now the feeling was different. It was one of acute, active misery. People fainted, others became sick because of the hard work, and lack of food, for in most of the homes, where there had been at least plenty of hominy and bacon, there was not even enough of these.

And always there was the thought of those who were waiting for a place if one of them should give up. There were so many who came to the village every day looking for work. They were lined up or in groups every morning outside the office.

Word went around in the mill that there were spies who listened for any word of complaint, so people became afraid to speak to their neighbors in the rooms, and so complaints were whispered from friend to friend, and even then there was suspicion.

Bonnie found Mary Allen crying at her work one day. Her tears were splashing on her hands that held the broom handle. Some of them she wiped away with her apron, but Bonnie could see them plainly. She went over and spoke to Mary, leaving the hated clocks to register that she was taking time off.

Mary was sweeping, and her eyes were looking at the floor. Bonnie, to get her attention, touched her on the shoulder.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“I've got my time,” Mary said. She looked up at Bonnie and then down again, and pushed the broom, as if she was afraid to stop working even for a moment. But she had really stopped.

“To-day is my last day,” she said. “They're making two sweepers do the work of four. And I ain't one of them.”

She looked up then and smiled at Bonnie, trying to make the best of it. “Many is called,” she said, “but few is chosen.”

“I've got fifty cents,” Bonnie said to her. “You wait here till I go to the washroom.”

“No,” Mary insisted. “You better keep that. I got my pay to-day, my las' pay and right now it's enough. You keep your fifty cents, honey. But I thank you just the same.”

“You're going t' take hit,” Bonnie insisted stubbornly. And at last she did persuade her friend to accept what she had.