"How nice and cosey you are! I really did not know what to do with myself. Yes, we are all on a strike, I am sorry to say."
"Bad time," and Maverick shook his head. "What's the prospect? Have a cigar."
"The prospect is that the weakest goes to the wall, of course," answered Jack. "Maverick, I am dreadfully muddled on this point. I have thought of it all the week. It is hard on the men. I know the general advice is to economize more closely, but how can you do it just at the beginning of winter? One cannot move to a cheaper tenement, fire and lights cost more, and provision is a little dearer. Low living in winter does not conduce to a healthy state in the spring. Then, on the other hand, if they are going to make such sales as they did last month, they cannot pay the wages, and realize what they consider a fair profit. But why shouldn't the Lawrences and the Eastmans and many others give up something, as well?"
Jack turned an anxious face to his listener.
"All you manufacturers have been crazy the last few years," he said, delicately shaking the ashes from his cigar. "The country was such an extensive purchaser through the war, that your dreams became Utopian. Then everybody came home with some money and no clothes, and the people were large consumers. Now everybody has been clothed, and the stores are full, and here is a glutted market. Over-production, my dear fellow."
"Then I do believe it would be better to leave off for a while. Still that would not suit as well. Half a loaf is better than no bread, to a hungry man. But, after all," said Jack, knitting his brows, "I don't altogether believe in the cry of over-production. The boys of war times are men now. They are pushing in everywhere for work. They want food, shelter, raiment. There are a great many more people in this town than there were five years ago. Even if we only depended on the natural increase of population" —
"But, you see, people are forever crowding into cities," interposed Dr. Maverick.
"I have a fancy they do not come much faster than they are called," returned Jack dryly. "See what we have been doing around here. The small outlying farms have been bought up by speculators, cut up, destroyed for farming purposes. Their owners with families of children had to go somewhere. 'Come to the mills and factories,' was shouted in their ears, and they came. Now they are here, depending on their labor for bread, and Eastman will bring fifty or a hundred more from Coldbridge; and in the spring, if there is any difficulty, some more will come. The old ones cannot go back to their farms if they would. Their fertile gardens lie cut up into waste squares, their fruit-trees have been despoiled: they must starve here, or tramp to some other crowded town, and perhaps starve there. Will your farmer take in half a dozen hands at a moment's notice? Can they put themselves down in any country place, and go to work?"
Maverick studied Jack intently, and then gave a low whistle.
"Upon my word, Darcy, you have been going over the subject. Take the stump. And of course you go against capital?"
"No, I don't," returned Jack shortly. "Only it does seem to me that there ought to be some place where capital and labor could strike hands. It appears to me, both have been to blame. We cannot condemn men for crowding into cities, when there has been a steady call for them. We do blame them for not laying up a little money against a rainy day; but many of them have. Look at the cottages that have been sold to workingmen. Look at the bank savings. To-day, perhaps, as many poor men could pay their whole indebtedness, according to the ratio, as the rich. But we fly at the laboring classes, when it is only human nature cropping out. Your millionnaire puts his money into whatever he thinks will bring him the greatest return; your poor man puts his capital, his capacity, health, and strength, where it will earn him the most money."
"Well, I don't see but they are both right enough," said Maverick. "And unless you are running over into communistic ideas" —
"I am not," was the decisive reply. "Some one much wiser than I said, ages ago, 'He among you that will not work, let him not eat:' yet," with a humorous laugh, "if the rule were strictly enforced, there would more than one go hungry, I'm thinking. The great consolation would be that the right man would suffer, not the innocent and guiltless."
"I really do not see what you are driving at, Darcy," and the other studied him curiously.
"Well, I told you in the beginning I was muddled. I don't pretend to see my way clear, only I think we have just begun the fight. It is as much of an irrepressible conflict as that other, for which so many brave men gave their lives. And one point in it no one seems to take note of. We are proud of the increase of population in our country. Every city, town, and hamlet boasts of it, and the depopulated places run to slow decay. We welcome these people; and yet they must eat to live, and the majority of them must work, or they will have nothing to eat. I think the most of them labor cheerfully, and my experience is that idleness is the worst foe of man. But, on the other hand, every year invention so protects and fortifies capital, that one must do a larger business or employ fewer men. In five years the condition of labor has greatly changed at Hope Mills, and in five years more it will change again. This is the inexorable law of nature, or, I ought to say, growing intelligence."
"Then I should say we wanted wider markets and a better classification of labor."
A quick light came into Jack's eyes.
"I think you have hit it, Maverick," he answered. "But what is everybody's business is nobody's; and we are so apt to forget that the world does move, and the condition of things changes all the time," and Jack's eyes dropped thoughtfully.
"See here, Darcy, take Brock's Hall, and talk to the men to-morrow night," began the doctor eagerly. "They will listen to you because to a certain extent you are in sympathy with them, one of their number; and you do seem to have some clear ideas on the subject. No: we'll say Wednesday night, and I will get out some posters."
Jack laughed. "What shall I tell them? I can't see how to get about the remedy clearly myself. The trade-unions have not hit it either. When they say to a man, 'Because I will not work for a certain sum, you shall not,' they lean on a reed that will surely break, and pierce themselves. Hunger is stronger than theory. No: I shall have to give the point a more thorough study before I become a blatant apostle."
Philip Maverick blew out a curling whiff of smoke, and looked at his visitor through it. Darcy gave him a curious feeling, as if a good deal of excellent material were running to waste, that if shaped and trained, and brought up to higher purposes, might be of much good service to the world. Did he realize it himself? He was twenty-four, and had a good position as things went; and Dr. Maverick had heard the women of the house were prudent and thrifty, and had a nice home. Was Darcy bounded in by conservatism, or afraid of losing? or was he honest when he said he did not know just what to do? Yet he did not look like the kind of man to go plodding all his days.
"Darcy, you puzzle me!" he began abruptly. "With that great body of yours, those strong arms and hands that look as if they could wrest Nature's secrets from her mighty soul, with that brow, and the resolute mouth, it seems as if you ought to be in better business than making cloth: pardon me. You don't use up half your energy. You ought to be planning a ship-canal across Darien, or tunnelling mountains. You're the square man; and how upon earth did you ever get fitted so smoothly to a round hole?"
Jack laughed, and told his story very simply. To him there was neither romance nor heroism in it, just a plain every-day sort of compulsion. The tunnelling would have been much more to his mind.
"Go on with the problem," said Dr. Maverick abruptly. "In the next five years I think we will all have use for our wits. We are going to see another change in matters, that will require more wisdom than is needed in mere money-making. See here, I'm interested in the thing. Let us go out, and hear what the men say about it."
Maverick rose, and put on his great-coat, and lighted another cigar. Then the two started together.
Maverick had been in the town just six months. He had studied medicine in Philadelphia and Paris, taken a three-years ramble over Europe, when a college friend begged him to come to Yerbury, and step into a vacant place. And he had what he fancied an excellent reason for it.