_ BOOK VII. AT THE SHIPYARD
CHAPTER VII
Davidge was the modern ideal of an executive. He appeared never to do any work. He kept an empty desk and when he was away no one missed him. He would not use a roll-top desk, but sat at a flat table with nothing on it but a memorandum-pad, a calendar, an "in" and an "out" basket, both empty most of the time.
He had his work so organized that it went on in his absence as if he were there. He insisted that the executives of the departments should follow the same rule. If they were struck down in battle their places were automatically supplied as in the regular army.
So when Davidge went to the hospital the office machine went on as if he had gone to lunch.
Mamise called on him oftener than he had called on her. She left the hospital in a few days after the explosion, but she did not step into his office and run the corporation for him as a well-regulated heroine of recent fiction would have done. She did not feel that she knew enough. And she did not know enough. She kept to her job with the riveting-gang and expected to be discharged any day for lack of pull with the new boss.
But while she lasted she was one of the gang, and proud of it. She was neither masculine nor feminine, but human. As Vance Thompson has said, the lioness is a lion all but a little of the time, and so Mamise put off sexlessness with her overalls and put it on with her petticoats. She put off the coarseness at the same time as she scrubbed away the grime.
The shipyard was still a realm of faery to her. It was an unending experience of miracles, commonplace to the men, but wonder-work to her. She had not known what "pneumatic" or "hydraulic" really meant. The acetylene flame-knife, the incomprehensible ability of levers to give out so much more power than was put in them, dazed her. Nothing in the Grimms' stories could parallel the benevolent ogres of air and water and their dumfounding transformations.
She learned that machinery can be as beautiful as any other human structure. Fools and art-snobs had said that machinery is ugly, and some of it is indeed nearly as ugly as some canvases, verses, and cathedrals. Other small-pates chattered of how the divine works of nature shamed the crudities of man. They spoke of the messages of the mountains, the sublimities of sunsets, and the lessons taught by the flowerets. These things are impressive, but it ought to be possible to give them praise without slandering man's creations, for a God that could make a man that could make a work of art would have to be a better God than one who could merely make a work of art himself.
But machinery has its messages, too. It enables the little cave-dweller to pulverize the mountain; to ship it to Mohammed in Medina; to pick it up and shoot it at his enemies.
Mamise, at any rate, was so enraptured by the fine art of machinery that when she saw a traveling-crane pick up a mass of steel and go down the track with it to its place, she thought that no poplar-tree was ever so graceful. And the rusty hulls of the new ships showing the sky through the steel lace of their rivetless sides were fairer than the sky.
Surgeons in steel operated on the battered epidermis of the
Mamise and sewed her up again. It was slow work and it had all the discouraging influence of work done twice for one result. But the toil went on, and when at last Davidge left the hospital he was startled by the change in the vessel. As a father who has left a little girl at home comes back to find her a grown woman, so he saw an almost finished ship where he had left a patchwork of iron plates.
It thrilled him to be back at work again. The silence of the hospital had irked his soul. Here the air was full of the pneumatic riveter. They called it the gun that would win the war. The shipyard atmosphere was shattered all day long as if with machine-gun fire and the riveters were indeed firing at Germany. Every red-hot rivet was a bullet's worth.
The cry grew louder for ships. The submarine was cutting down the world's whole fleet by a third. In February the Germans sank the
Tuscania, loaded with American soldiers, and 159 of them were lost. Uncle Sam tightened his lips and added the
Tuscania's dead soldiers to the
Lusitania's men and women and children on the invoice against Germany. He tightened his belt, too, and cut down his food for Europe's sake. He loosened his purse-strings and poured out gold and bonds and war-savings stamps, borrowing, lending, and spending with the desperation of a gambler determined to break the bank.
While Davidge was still in the hospital the German offensive broke. It succeeded beyond the scope of the blackest prophecy. It threw the fear of hell into the stoutest hearts. All over the country people were putting pins in maps, always putting them farther back. Everybody talked strategy, and geography became the most dreadful of topics.
On March 29th Pershing threw what American troops were abroad into the general stock, gave them to Haig and Foch to use as they would.
On the same day the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of
Gott sent this harbinger of good-will.
The Germans began to talk of the end of Great Britain, the erasure of France, and the reduction of America to her proper place.
Spring came to the dismal world again with a sardonic smile. In Washington the flower-duel was renewed between the Embassy terrace and the Louise Home. The irises made a drive and the forsythia sent up its barrage. The wistaria and the magnolia counterattacked. The Senator took off his wig again to give official sanction to summer and to rub his bewildered head the better.
The roving breezes fluttered tragic newspapers everywhere--in the parks, on the streets, on the scaffolds of the buildings, along the tented lanes, and in the barrack-rooms.
This wind was a love-zephyr as of old. But the world was frosted with a tremendous fear. What if old England fell? Empires did fall. Nineveh, Babylon, and before them Ur and Nippur, and, after, Persia and Alexander's Greece and Rome. Germany was making the great try to renew Rome's sway; her Emperor called himself the Caesar. What if he should succeed?
Distraught by so many successes, the Germans grew frantic. They were diverted from one prize to another.
The British set their backs to the wall. The French repeated their Verdun watchword, "No thoroughfare," and the Americans began to come up. The Allies were driven finally to what they had always realized to be necessary, but had never consented to--a unified command. They put all their destinies into the hands of Foch.
Instantly and melodramatically the omens changed. Foch could live up to his own motto now, "Attack, attack, attack." He had been like a man gambling his last francs. Now he had word that unlimited funds were on the way from his Uncle Sam. He did not have to count his money over and over. He could squander it regardless.
In every direction he attacked, attacked, attacked. The stupefied world saw the German hordes checked, driven rearward, here, there, the other place.
Towns were redeemed, rivers regained, prisoners scooped up by the ten thousand. The pins began a great forward march along the maps. People fought for the privilege of placing them. Geography became the most fascinating sport ever known.
Davidge had come from the hospital minus one arm just as the bulletins changed from grave to gay. He was afraid now that the war would be over before his ships could share the glorious part that ships played in all this victory. The British had turned all their hulls to the American shores and the American troops were pouring into them in unbelievable floods.
Secrecy lost its military value. The best strategy that could be devised was to publish just how many Americans were landing in France.
General March would carry the news to Secretary Baker and he would scatter it broadcast through George Creel's Committee on Public Information, using telegraph, wireless, telephone, cable, post-office, placard, courier.
Davidge had always said that the war would be over as soon as the Germans got the first real jolt. With them war was a business and they would withdraw from it the moment they foresaw a certain bankruptcy ahead.
But there was the war after the war to be considered--the war for commerce, the postponed war with disgruntled labor and the impatient varieties of socialists and with the rabid Bolshevists frankly proclaiming their intention to destroy civilization as it stood.
Like a prudent skipper, Davidge began to trim his ship for the new storm that must follow the old. He took thought of the rivalries that would spring up inevitably between the late Allies, like brothers now, but doomed to turn upon one another with all the greater bitterness after war. For peace hath her wickedness no less renowned than war.
What would labor do when the spell of consecration to the war was gone and the pride of war wages must go before a fall? The time would come abruptly when the spectacle of employers begging men to work at any price would be changed to the spectacle of employers having no work for men--at any price.
The laborers would not surrender without a battle. They had tasted power and big money and they would not be lulled by economic explanations.
Mamise came upon Davidge one day in earnest converse with a faithful old toiler who had foreseen the same situation and wanted to know what his boss thought about it.
Iddings had worked as a mechanic all his life. He had worked hard, had lived sober, had turned his wages over to his wife, and spent them on his home and his children.
He was as good a man as could be found. Latterly he had been tormented by two things, the bitterness of increasing infirmities and dwindling power and the visions held out to him by Jake Nuddle and the disciples Jake had formed before he was taken away.
As Mamise came up in her overalls Iddings was saying:
"It ain't right, boss, and you know it. When a man like me works as hard as I done and cuts out all the fun and the booze and then sees old age comin' on and nothin' saved to speak of and no chance to save more'n a few hundred dollars, whilst other men has millions--why, I'm readin' the other day of a woman spendin' eighty thousand dollars on a fur coat, and my old woman slavin' like a horse all her life and goin' round in a plush rag--I tell you it ain't right and you can't prove it is."
"I'm not going to try to," said Davidge. "I didn't build the world and I can't change it much. I see nothing but injustice everywhere I look. It's not only among men, but among animals and insects and plants. The weeds choke out the flowers; the wolves eat up the sheep unless the dogs fight the wolves; the gentle and the kind go under unless they're mighty clever. They call it the survival of the fittest, but it's really the survival of the fightingest."
"That's what I'm comin' to believe," said Iddings. "The workman will never get his rights unless he fights for 'em."
"Never."
"And if he wants to get rich he's got to fight the rich."
"No. He wants to make sure he's fighting his real enemies and fighting with weapons that won't be boomerangs."
"I don't get that last."
"Look here, Iddings, there are a lot of damned fools filling workmen's heads with insanity, telling them that their one hope of happiness is to drag down the rich, to blow up the factories or take control of 'em, to bankrupt the bankers and turn the government upside down. If they can't get a majority at the polls they won't pay any attention to the polls or the laws. They'll butcher the police and assassinate the big men. But that game can't win. It's been tried again and again by discontented idiots who go out and kill instead of going out to work.
"You can't get rich by robbing the rich and dividing up their money. If you took all that Rockefeller is said to have and divided it up among the citizens of the country you'd get four or five dollars apiece at most, and you'd soon lose that.
"Rockefeller started as a laboring-man at wages you wouldn't look at to-day. The laboring-men alongside could have made just as much as he did if they'd a mind to. Somebody said he could have written Shakespeare's plays if he had a mind to, and Lamb said, 'Yes, if you'd a mind to.' The thing seems to be to be born with a mind to and to cultivate a mind to.
"You take Rockefeller's money away and he'll make more while you're fumbling with what you've got. Take Shakespeare's plays away and he'll write others while you're scratching your head.
"Don't let 'em fool you, Iddings, into believing that rich men get rich by stealing. We all cheat more or less, but no man ever built up a big fortune by plain theft. Men make money by making it.
"Karl Marx, who wrote your 'Workmen's Bible,' called capital a vampire. Well, there aren't any vampires except in the movies.
"Speaking of vamping wealth, did you ever hear how I got where I am?--not that it's so very far and not that I like to talk about myself--but just to show you how true your man Marx is.
"I was a working-man and worked hard. I put by a little out of what I made. Of nights I studied. I learned all ends of the ship-building business in a way. But I needed money to get free. It never occurred to me to claim somebody else's money as mine. I thought the rich would help me to get rich if I helped them to get richer. My idea of getting capital was to go get it. I was a long time finding where there was any.
"By and by I heard of an old wreck on the coast--a steamer had run aground and the hull was abandoned after they took out what machinery they could salvage. The hull stood up in the storms and the sand began to bury it. It would have been 'dead capital' then for sure.
"The timbers were sound, though, and I found I could buy it cheap. I put in all I had saved in all my life, eight thousand dollars, for the hull. I got a man to risk something with me.
"We took the hull off the ground, refitted it, stepped in six masts, and made a big schooner of her.
"She cost us sixty thousand dollars all told. Before she was ready to sail we sold her for a hundred and twenty thousand. The buyers made big money out of her. The schooner is carrying food now and giving employment to sailors.
"Who got robbed on that transaction? Where did 'dead labor suck the life out of living labor,' as Karl Marx says? You could do the same. You could if you would. There's plenty of old hulls lying around on the sands of the world."
Iddings had nothing in him to respond to the poetry of this.
"That's all very fine," he growled, "but where would I get my start? I got no eight thousand or anybody to lend me ten dollars."
"The banks will lend to men who will make money make money. It's not the guarantee they want so much as inspiration. Pierpont Morgan said he lent on character, not on collateral."
"Morgan, humph!"
"The trouble isn't with Morgan, but with you. What do you do with your nights? Study? study? beat your brains for ideas? No, you go home, tired, play with the children, talk with the wife, smoke, go to bed. It's a beautiful life, but it's not a money-making life. You can't make money by working eight hours a day for another man's money. You've got to get out and find it or dig it up.
"That business with the old hull put me on my feet, put dreams in my head. I looked about for other chances, took some of them and wished I hadn't. But I kept on trying. The war in Europe came. The world was crazy for ships. They couldn't build 'em fast enough to keep ahead of the submarines. On the Great Lakes there was a big steamer not doing much work. I heard of her. I went up and saw her. The job was to get her to the ocean. I managed it on borrowed money, bought her, and brought her up the Saint Lawrence to the sea--and down to New York. I made a fortune on that deal. Then did I retire and smoke my pipe of peace? No. I looked for another chance.
"When our country went into the war she needed ships of her own. She had to have shipyards first to build 'em in. My lifelong ambition was to make ships from the keel-plate up. I looked for the best place to put a shipyard, picked on this spot because other people hadn't found it. My partners and I got the land cheap because it was swamp. We worked out our plans, sitting up all night over blue-prints and studying how to save every possible penny and every possible waste motion.
"And now look at the swamp. It's one of the prettiest yards in the world. The Germans sank my
Clara. Did I stop or go to making speeches about German vampires? No. I went on building.
"The Germans tried to get my next boat. I fought for her as I'll fight the Germans, the I. W. W., the Bolshevists, or any other sneaking coyotes that try to destroy my property.
"I lost this right arm trying to save that ship. And now that I'm crippled, am I asking for a pension or an admission to an old folks' home? Am I passing the hat to you other workers? No. I'm as good as ever I was. I made my left arm learn my right arm's business. If I lose my left arm next I'll teach my feet to write. And if I lose those, by God! I'll write with my teeth, or wigwag my ears.
"The trouble with you, Iddings, and the like of you is you brood over your troubles, instead of brooding over ways to improve yourself. You spend time and money on quack doctors. But I tell you, don't fight your work or your boss. Fight nature, fight sleep, fight fatigue, fight the sky, fight despair, and if you want money hunt up a place where it's to be found."
If Iddings had had brains enough to understand all this he would not have been Iddings working by the day. His stubborn response was:
"Well, I'll say the laboring-man is being bled by the capitalists and he'll never get his rights till he grabs 'em."
"And I'll say be sure that you're grabbing your rights and not grabbing your own throat.
"I'm for all the liberty in the world, for the dignity of labor, the voice of labor, the labor-union, the profit-sharing basis, the republic of labor. I think the workers ought to have a voice in running the work--all the share they can handle, all the control that won't hurt the business. But the business has got to come first, for it's business that makes comfort. I'll let any man run this shop who can run it as well as I can or better.
"What I'm against is letting somebody run my business who can't run his own. Talk won't build ships, old man. And complaints and protests won't build ships, or make any important money.
"Poor men are just as good as rich men and ought to have just the same rights, votes, privileges. But the first right a poor man ought to preserve is the right to become a rich man. Riches are beautiful things, Iddings, and they're worth working for. And they've got to be worked for.
"A laboring-man is a man that labors, whether he labors for two dollars a day or a thousand; and a loafer is a loafer, whether he has millions or dimes. Well, I've talked longer than I ever did before or ever will again. Do you believe anything I say?"
"No."
Davidge had to laugh. "Well, Iddings, I've got to hand it to you for obstinacy; you've got an old mule skinned to death. But old mules can't compete with race-horses. Balking and kicking won't get you very far."
He walked away, and Mamise went along. Davidge was in a somber mood.
"Poor old fellow, he's got no self-starter, no genius, no ideas, and he's doomed to be a drudge. It's the rotten cruelty of the world that most people are born without enough get-up-and-get to bring them and their work together without a whistle and a time-clock and an overseer. What scheme could ever be invented to keep poor old Iddings up to the level of a Sutton or a Sutton down to his?"
Mamise had heard a vast amount of discontented talk among the men.
"There's an awful lot of trouble brewing."
"Trouble is no luxury to me," said Davidge. "Blessed is he that expects trouble, for he shall get it. Wait till this war is over and then you'll see a real war."
"Shall we all get killed or starved?"
"Probably. But in the mean while we had better sail on and on and on. The storm will find us wherever we are, and there's more danger close ashore than out at sea. Let's make a tour of the
Mamise and see how soon she'll be ready to go overboard." _