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The Stillwater Tragedy

T >> Thomas Bailey Aldrich >> The Stillwater Tragedy




"The worst is over," exclaimed Richard, joining his two friends on
the veranda, "and everything went smoother than I expected."

"Everything went, sure enough," said Mr. Slocum, gloomily; "they
all went,--old Giles, and Lumley, and everybody."

"We somewhat expected that, you know."

"Yes, I expected it, and wasn't prepared for it."

"It was very bad," said Richard, shaking his head.

The desertion of Giles and his superannuated mates especially
touched Mr. Slocum.

"Bad is no word; it was damnable."

"Oh, papa!"

"Pardon me, dear; I couldn't help it. When a man's pensioners
throw him over, he must be pretty far gone!"

"The undertow was too strong for them, sir, and they were swept
away with the rest. And they all but promised to stay. They will be
the very first to come back."

"Of course we shall have to take the old fellows on again," said
Mr. Slocum, relenting characteristically.

"Never!" cried Richard.

"I wish I had some of your grit."

"I have none to spare. To tell the truth, when I stood up there to
speak, with every eye working on me, like a half-inch drill, I would
have sold myself at a low figure."

"But you were a perfect what's-his-name,--Demosthenes," said Mr.
Slocum, with a faint smile. "We could hear you."

"I don't believe Demosthenes ever moved an audience as I did
mine!" cried Richard gaily. "If his orations produced a like effect,
I am certain that the Grecian lecture-bureau never sent him twice to
the same place."

"I don't think, Richard, I would engage you over again."

"I am sure Richard spoke very well," interrupted Margaret. "His
speech was short"--

"Say shortened, Margaret, for I hadn't got through when they
left."

"No, I will not jest about it. It is too serious for jesting. What
is to become of the families of all these men suddenly thrown out of
employment?"

"They threw themselves out, Mag," said her father.

"That does not mend the matter, papa. There will be great
destitution and suffering in the village with every mill closed; and
they are all going to close, Bridget says. Thank Heaven that this did
not happen in the winter!"

"They always pick their weather," observed Mr. Slocum.

"It will not be for long," said Richard encouragingly. "Our own
hands and the spinners, who had no ground for complaint, will return
to work shortly, and the managers of the iron mills will have to
yield a point or two. In a week at the outside everything will be
running smoothly, and on a sounder foundation than before. I believe
the strike will be an actual benefit to everybody in the end."

By dint of such arguments and his own sanguine temperament,
Richard succeeded in reassuring Mr. Slocum for the time being, though
Richard did not hide from himself the gravity of the situation. There
was a general strike in the village. Eight hundred men were without
work. That meant, or would mean in a few days, two or three thousand
women and children without bread. It does not take the wolf long to
reach a poor man's door when it is left ajar.

The trades-union had a fund for emergencies of this sort, and some
outside aid might be looked for; but such supplies are in their
nature precarious and soon exhausted. It is a noticeable feature of
strikes that the moment the workman's pay stops his living expenses
increase. Even the more economical becomes improvident. If he has
money, the tobacco shop and the tavern are likely to get more of it
than the butcher's cart. The prolonged strain is too great to be
endured without stimulant.






XVII





During the first and second days of the strike, Stillwater
presented an animated and even a festive appearance. Throngs of
operatives in their Sunday clothes strolled through the streets, or
lounged at the corners chatting with other groups; some wandered into
the suburbs, and lay in the long grass under the elms. Others again,
though these were few, took to the turnpike or the railroad track,
and tramped across country.

It is needless to say that the bar-room of the tavern was crowded
from early morning down to the hour when the law compelled Mr.
Snelling to shut off his gas. After which, John Brown's "soul" could
be heard "marching on" in the darkness, through various crooked lanes
and alleys, until nearly daybreak.

Among the earliest to scent trouble in the air was Han-Lin, the
Chinaman before mentioned. He kept a small laundry in Mud Lane, where
his name was painted perpendicularly on a light of glass in the
basement window of a tenement house. Han-Lin intended to be buried
some day in a sky-blue coffin in his own land, and have a dozen packs
of firecrackers decorously exploded over his remains. In order to
reserve himself for this and other ceremonies involving the burning
of a great quantity of gilt paper, he quietly departed for Boston at
the first sign of popular discontent. As Dexter described it,
"Han-Lin coiled up his pig-tail, put forty grains of rice in a yallar
bag,--enough to last him a month!--and toddled off in his two-story
wooden shoes." He could scarcely have done a wiser thing, for poor
Han-Lin's laundry was turned wrong side out within thirty-six hours
afterwards.

The strike was popular. The spirit of it spread, as fire and fever
and all elemental forces spread. The two apprentices in Brackett's
bakery had a dozen minds about striking that first morning. The
younger lad, Joe Wiggin, plucked up courage to ask Brackett for a day
off, and was lucky enough to dodge a piece of dough weighing nearly
four pounds.

Brackett was making bread while the sun shone. He knew that before
the week was over there would be no cash customers, and he purposed
then to shut up shop.

On the third and fourth days there was no perceptible fall in the
barometer. Trade was brisk with Snelling, and a brass band was
playing national airs on a staging erected on the green in front of
the post-office. Nightly meetings took place at Grimsey's Hall, and
the audiences were good-humored and orderly. Torrini advanced some
Utopian theories touching a universal distribution of wealth, which
were listened to attentively, but failed to produce deep impression.

"That's a healthy idea of Torrini's about dervidin' up property,"
said Jemmy Willson. "I've heerd it afore; but it's sing'ler I never
knowd a feller with any property to have that idea."

"Ther' 's a great dale in it, I can tell ye," replied Michael
Hennessey, with a well-blackened Woodstock pipe between his teeth and
his hands tucked under his coat-tails. "Isn't ther', Misther
Stavens?"

When Michael had on his bottle-green swallow-tailed coat with the
brass buttons, he invariably assumed a certain lofty air of ceremony
in addressing his companions.

"It is sorter pleasant to look at," returned Stevens, "but it
don't seem to me an idea that would work. Suppose that, after all the
property was divided, a fresh shipload of your friends was to land at
New York or Boston; would there be a new deal?"

"No, sir! by no means!" exclaimed Michael excitedly. "The
furreners is counted out!"

"But you're a foreigner yourself, Mike."

"Am I, then? Bedad, I'm not! I'm a rale American Know Nothing."

"Well, Mike," said Stevens maliciously, "when it comes to a
reg'lar division of lands and greenbacks in the United States, I go
in for the Chinese having their share."

"The Chinese!" shouted Michael. "Oh, murther, Misther Stevens! Ye
wouldn't be fur dividin' with thim blatherskites!"

"Yes, with them,--as well as the rest," returned Stevens, dryly.

Meanwhile the directors and stockholders of the various mills took
counsel in a room at the rear of the National Bank. Mr. Slocum,
following Richard's advice, declined to attend the meeting in person,
or to allow his name to figure on the list of vice-presidents.

"Why should we hitch our good cause to their doubtful one?"
reflected Richard. "We have no concessions or proposals to make. When
our men are ready to come back to us, they will receive just wages
and fair treatment. They know that. We do not want to fight the
molders. Let the iron-mills do their own fighting;" and Richard
stolidly employed himself in taking an account of stock, and
forwarding by express to their destination the ten or twelve carved
mantel-pieces that happily completed the last contract.

Then his responsibilities shrunk to winding up the office clock
and keeping Mr. Slocum firmly on his legs. The latter was by far the
more onerous duty, for Mr. Slocum ran down two or three times in the
course of every twenty-four hours, while the clock once wound was
fixed for the day.

"If I could only have a good set of Waltham works put into your
father," said Richard to Margaret, after one of Mr. Slocum's
relapses, "he would go better."

"Poor papa! he is not a fighter, like you."

"Your father is what I call a belligerent non-combatant."

Richard was seeing a great deal of Margaret these days. Mr. Slocum
had invited him to sleep in the studio until the excitement was past.
Margaret was afraid to have him take that long walk between the yard
and his lodgings in Lime Street, and then her father was an old man
to be without any protection in the house in such untoward times.

So Richard slept in the studio, and had his plate at table, like
one of the family. This arrangement was favorable to many a stolen
five minutes with Margaret, in the hall or on the staircase. In these
fortuitous moments he breathed an atmosphere that sustained him in
his task of dispelling Mr. Slocum's recurrent fits of despondency.
Margaret had her duties, too, at this period, and the forenoons were
sacred to them.

One morning as she passed down the street with a small wicker
basket on her arm, Richard said to Mr. Slocum,--

"Margaret has joined the strikers."

The time had already come to Stillwater when many a sharp-faced
little urchin--as dear to the warm, deep bosom that had nursed it as
though it were a crown prince--would not have had a crust to gnaw if
Margaret Slocum had not joined the strikers. Sometimes her heart
drooped on the way home from these errands, upon seeing how little of
the misery she could ward off. On her rounds there was one cottage in
a squalid lane where the children asked for bread in Italian. She
never omitted to halt at that door.

"Is it quite prudent for Margaret to be going about so?" queried
Mr. Slocum.

"She is perfectly safe," said Richard,--"as safe as a Sister of
Charity, which she is."

Indeed, Margaret might then have gone loaded with diamonds through
the streets at midnight. There was not a rough man in Stillwater who
would not have reached forth an arm to shield her.

"It is costing me nearly as much as it would to carry on the
yard," said Mr. Slocum, "but I never put out any stamps more
willingly."

"You never took a better contract, sir, than when you agreed to
keep Margaret's basket filled. It is an investment in real
estate--hereafter."

"I hope so," answered Mr. Slocum, "and I know it's a good thing
now."

Of the morals of Stillwater at this time, or at any time, the less
said the better. But out of the slime and ooze below sprang the white
flower of charity.

The fifth day fell on a Sabbath, and the churches were crowded.
The Rev. Arthur Langly selected his text from St. Matthew, chap.
xxii, v. 21: "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are
Cæsar's." But as he did not make it quite plain which was Cæsar,--the
trades-union or the Miantowona Iron Works,--the sermon went for
nothing, unless it could be regarded as a hint to those persons who
had stolen a large piece of belting from the Dana Mills. On the other
hand, Father O'Meara that morning bravely told his children to
conduct themselves in an orderly manner while they were out of work,
or they would catch it in this world and in the next.

On the sixth day a keen observer might have detected a change in
the atmosphere. The streets were thronged as usual, and the idlers
still wore their Sunday clothes, but the holiday buoyancy of the
earlier part of the week had evaporated. A turn-out on the part of
one of the trades, though it was accompanied by music and a banner
with a lively inscription, failed to arouse general enthusiasm. A
serious and even a sullen face was not rare among the crowds that
wandered aimlessly up and down the village.

On the seventh day it required no penetration to see the change.
There was decidedly less good-natured chaffing and more drunkenness,
though Snelling had invoked popular contumely and decimated his
bar-room by refusing to trust for drinks. Bracket had let his ovens
cool, and his shutters were up. The treasury of the trades-union was
nearly drained, and there were growlings that too much had been
fooled away on banners and a brass band for the iron men's parade the
previous forenoon. It was when Brackett's eye sighted the banner with
"Bread or Blood" on it, that he had put up his shutters.

Torrini was now making violent harangues at Grimsey's Hall to
largely augmented listeners, whom his words irritated without
convincing. Shut off from the tavern, the men flocked to hear him and
the other speakers, for born orators were just then as thick as
unripe whortleberries. There was nowhere else to go. At home were
reproaches that maddened, and darkness, for the kerosene had given
out.

Though all the trades had been swept into the movement, it is not
to be understood that every workman was losing his head. There were
men who owned their cottages and had small sums laid by in the
savings-bank; who had always sent their children to the district
school, and listened themselves to at least one of Mr. Langly's
sermons or one of Father O'Meara's discourses every Sunday. These
were anchored to good order; they neither frequented the bar-room nor
attended the conclaves at Grimsey's Hall, but deplored as deeply as
any one the spirit that was manifesting itself. They would have
returned to work now--if they had dared. To this class belonged
Stevens.

"Why don't you come up to the hall, nights?" asked Durgin,
accosting him on the street, one afternoon. "You'd run a chance of
hearing me hold forth some of these evenings."

"You've answered your own question, William. I shouldn't like to
see you making an idiot of yourself."

"This is a square fight between labor and capital," returned
Durgin with dignity, "and every man ought to take a hand in it."

"William," said Stevens meditatively, "do you know about the
Siamese twins?"

"What about 'em,--they're dead, ain't they?" replied Durgin, with
surprise.

"I believe so; but when they was alive, if you was to pinch one of
those fellows, the other fellow would sing out. If you was to black
the eye of the left-hand chap, the right-hand chap wouldn't have been
able to see for a week. When either of 'em fetched the other a clip,
he knocked himself down. Labor and capital is jined just as those two
was. When you've got this fact well into your skull, William, I shall
be pleased to listen to your ideas at Grimsey's Hall or anywhere
else."

Such conservatism as Stevens's, however, was necessarily swept out
of sight for the moment. The wealthier citizens were in a state
bordering on panic,--all but Mr. Lemuel Shackford. In his flapping
linen duster, for the weather was very sultry now, Mr. Shackford was
seen darting excitedly from street to street and hovering about the
feverish crowds, like the stormy petrel wheeling on the edges of a
gale. Usually as chary of his sympathies as of his gold, he
astonished every one by evincing an abnormal interest in the
strikers. The old man declined to put down anything on the
subscription paper then circulating; but he put down his sympathies
to any amount. He held no stock in the concerns involved; he hated
Slocum, and he hated the directors of the Miantowona Iron Works. The
least he hoped was that Rowland Slocum would be laid out.

So far the strikers had committed no overt act of note, unless it
was the demolition of Han-Lin's laundry. Stubbs, the provision
dealer, had been taught the rashness of exposing samples of potatoes
in his door-way, and the "Tonsorial Emporium" of Professor Brown, a
colored citizen, had been invaded by two humorists, who, after having
their hair curled, refused to pay for it, and the professor had been
too agitated to insist. The story transpiring, ten or twelve of the
boys had dropped in during the morning, and got shaved on the same
terms. "By golly, gen'l'men!" expostulated the professor, "ef dis yah
thing goes on, dis darkey will be cleaned cl'ar out fo de week's
done." No act of real violence had been perpetrated as yet; but with
bands of lawless men roaming over the village at all hours of the day
and night, the situation was critical.

The wheel of what small social life there was in Stillwater had
ceased to revolve. With the single exception of Lemuel Shackford, the
more respectable inhabitants kept in-doors as much as practicable.
From the first neither Mr. Craggie nor Lawyer Perkins had gone to the
hotel to consult the papers in the reading-room, and Mr. Pinkham did
not dare to play on his flute of an evening. The Rev. Arthur Langly
found it politic to do but little visiting in the parish. His was not
the pinion to buffet with a wind like this, and indeed he was not
explicitly called upon to do so. He sat sorrowfully in his study day
by day, preparing the weekly sermon,--a gentle, pensive person,
inclined in the best of weather to melancholia. If Mr. Langly had
gone into arboriculture instead of into the ministry, he would have
planted nothing but weeping-willows.

In the mean time the mill directors continued their deliberations
in the bank building, and had made several abortive attempts to
effect an arrangement with the leaders of the union. This seemed
every hour less possible and more necessary.

On the afternoon of the seventh day of the strike a crowd gathered
in front of the residence of Mr. Alexander, the superintendent of the
Miantowona Iron Works, and began groaning and hooting. Mr. Alexander
sought out Mr. Craggie, and urged him, as a man of local weight and
one accustomed to addressing the populace, to speak a few words to
the mob. That was setting Mr. Craggie on the horns of a cruel
dilemma. He was afraid to disoblige the representative of so powerful
a corporation as the Miantowona Iron Works, but he equally dreaded to
risk his popularity with seven or eight hundred voters; so, like the
crafty chancellor in Tennyson's poem, he dallied with his golden
chain, and, smiling, but the question by.

"Drat the man!" muttered Mr. Craggie, "does he want to blast my
whole political career! _I_ can't pitch into our adopted
countrymen."

There was a blot on the escutcheon of Mr. Craggie which he was
very anxious not to have uncovered by any chance in these latter
days,--his ancient affiliation with the deceased native American
party.

The mob dispersed without doing damage, but the fact that it had
collected and had shown an ugly temper sent a thrill of apprehension
through the village. Mr. Slocum came in a great flurry to Richard.

"This thing ought to be stopped," said Mr. Slocum.

"I agree to that," replied Richard, bracing himself not to agree
to anything else.

"If we were to drop that stipulation as to the increase of
apprentices, no doubt many of the men would give over insisting on an
advance."

"Our only salvation is to stick to our right to train as many
workmen as we choose. The question of wages is of no account compared
with that; the rate of wages will adjust itself."

"If we could manage it somehow with the marble workers," suggested
Mr. Slocum, "that would demoralize the other trades, and they'd be
obliged to fall in."

"I don't see that they lack demoralization."

"If something isn't done, they'll end up by knocking in our front
doors or burning us all up."

"Let them."

"It's very well to say let them," exclaimed Mr. Slocum,
petulantly, "when you haven't any front door to be knocked in!"

"But I have you and Margaret to consider, if there were actual
danger. When anything like violence threatens, there's an honest
shoulder for every one of the hundred and fifty muskets in the
armory."

"Those muskets might get on the wrong shoulders."

"That isn't likely. You do not seem to know, sir, that there is a
strong guard at the armory day and night."

"I was not aware of that."

"It is a fact all the same," said Richard; and Mr. Slocum went
away easier in his mind, and remained so--two or three hours.

On the eighth, ninth, and tenth days the clouds lay very black
along the horizon. The marble workers, who began to see their
mistake, were reproaching the foundry men with enticing them into to
coalition, and the spinners were hot in their denunciations of the
molders. Ancient personal antagonisms that had been slumbering
started to their feet. Torrini fell out of favor, and in the midst of
one of his finest perorations uncomplimentary missiles, selected from
the animal kingdom, had been thrown at him. The grand torchlight
procession on the night of the ninth culminated in a disturbance, in
which many men got injured, several badly, and the windows of
Brackett's bakery were stove in. A point of light had pierced the
darkness,--the trades were quarreling among themselves!

The selectmen had sworn in special constables among the citizens,
and some of the more retired streets were now patrolled after dark,
for there had been threats of incendiarism.

Bishop's stables burst into flames one midnight,--whether fired
intentionally or accidentally was not known; but the giant bellows at
Dana's Mills was slit and two belts were cut at the Miantowona Iron
Works that same night.

At this juncture a report that out-of-town hands were coming to
replace the strikers acted on the public mind like petroleum on fire.
A large body of workmen assembled near the railway station,--to
welcome them. There was another rumor which caused the marble workers
to stare at each other aghast. It was to the effect that Mr. Slocum,
having long meditated retiring from business, had now decided to do
so, and was consulting with Wyndham, the keeper of the green-house,
about removing the division wall and turning the marble yard into a
peach garden. This was an unlooked-for solution of the difficulty.
Stillwater without any Slocum's Marble Yard was chaos come again.

"Good Lord, boys!" cried Piggott, "if Slocum should do that!"

Meanwhile, Snelling's bar had been suppressed by the authorities,
and a posse of policemen, borrowed from South Millville, occupied the
premises. Knots of beetle-browed men, no longer in holiday gear, but
chiefly in their shirt-sleeves, collected from time to time at the
head of the main street, and glowered threateningly at the single
policeman pacing the porch of the tavern. The Stillwater Grays were
under arms in the armory over Dundon's drugstore. The thoroughfare
had ceased to be safe for any one, and Margaret's merciful errands
were necessarily brought to an end. How the poor creatures who had
depended on her bounty now continued to exist was a sorrowful
problem.

Matters were at this point, when on the morning of the thirteenth
day Richard noticed the cadaverous face of a man peering into the
yard through the slats of the main gate. Richard sauntered down
there, with his hands in his pockets. The man was old Giles, and with
him stood Lumley and Peterson, gazing thoughtfully at the sign
outside,--

NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON BUSINESS.

The roughly lettered clapboard, which they had heedlessly passed a
thousand times, seemed to have taken a novel significance to them.

_Richard_. What's wanted there?

_Giles. [Very affably.]_ We was lookin' round for a job, Mr.
Shackford.

_Richard_. We are not taking on any hands at present.

_Giles_. Didn't know but you was. Somebody said you was.

_Richard_. Somebody is mistaken.

_Giles_. P'rhaps to-morrow, or nex' day?

_Richard_. Rather doubtful, Giles.

_Giles. [Uneasily.]_ Mr. Slocum ain't goin' to give up
business, is he?

_Richard_. Why shouldn't he, if it doesn't pay? The business
is carried on for his amusement and profit; when the profit stops it
won't be amusing any longer. Mr. Slocum is not going to run the yard
for the sake of the Marble Workers' Association. He would rather
drive a junk-cart. He might be allowed to steer that himself.

_Giles_. Oh!

_Richard_. Good-morning, Giles.

_Gikles_. 'Mornin', Mr. Shackford.

Richard rushed back to Mr. Slocum.

"The strike is broken, sir!"

"What do you mean?"

"The thing has collapsed! The tide is turning, _and has washed
in a lot of dead wood!"_

"Thank God!" cried Mr. Slocum.

An hour or so later a deputation of four, consisting of Stevens,
Denyven, Durgin, and Piggott, waited upon Mr. Slocum in his private
office, and offered, on behalf of all the departments, to resume work
at the old rates.

Mr. Slocum replied that he had not objected to the old rates, but
the new, and that he accepted their offer--conditionally.

"You have overlooked one point, Mr. Stevens."

"Which one, sir?"

"The apprentices."

"We thought you might not insist there, sir."

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