"You poor old—No, Billy! Thank you a thousand times for showing me Hendrik Rutgers at sixty. Thanks!" And he walked out of the bank overflowing with gratitude toward Fate that had hung him into the middle of the street. From there he could look at the free sun all day; and of nights, at the unfettered stars. It was better than looking at the greedy hieroglyphics wherewith a stupid few enslaved the stupider many.
He was free!
He stood for a moment on the steps of the main entrance. For two years he had looked from the world into the bank. But now he looked from the bank out—on the world. And that was why that self-same world suddenly changed its aspect. The very street looked different; the sidewalk wore an air of strangeness; the crowd was not at all the same.
He drew in a deep breath. The April air vitalized his blood.
This new world was a world to conquer. He must fight!
The nearest enemy was the latest. This is always true. Therefore Hendrik Rutgers, in thinking of fighting, thought of the bank and the people who made of banks temples to worship in.
All he needed now was an excuse. There was no doubt that he would get it. Some people call this process the autohypnosis of the great.
Two sandwich-men slouched by in opposite directions. One of them stopped and from the edge of the sidewalk stared at a man cleaning windows on the fourteenth story of a building across the way. The other wearily shuffled southward. Above his head swayed an enormous amputated foot.
Rutgers himself walked briskly to the south. To avoid a collision with a hurrying stenographer-girl—if it had been a male he would have used a short jab—he unavoidably jostled the chiropodist's advertisement into the gutter. The sandwich-man looked meekly into Rutgers's pugnacious face and started to cross the street.
Hendrik felt he should apologize, but before his sense of duty could crystallize into action the man was too far away. So Hendrik turned back. The other sandwich-man was still looking at the window-cleaner on the fourteenth story across the street. Happening to look down, he saw coming a man who looked angry. Therefore the sandwich-man meekly stepped into the gutter, out of the way.
It was the second time within one minute! Hendrik stopped and spoke peevishly to the meek one in the gutter:
"Why did you move out of my way?"
The sandwich-man looked at him uneasily; then, without answering, walked away sullenly.
"Here I am," thought Rutgers, "a man without a job; and there he is, a man with a job and afraid of me!"
Something was wrong—or right. Something always is, to the born fighter.
Who could be afraid of a man without a job but sandwich-men who always walked along the curb so they could be pushed off into the gutter among the other beasts? Nobody ever deliberately became a sandwich-man. When circumstances, the police, hopeless inefficiency, or shattered credit prevented a hobo from begging, stealing, murdering, or getting drunk, he became a sandwich-man in order to live until he could rise again. Whatever a sandwich-man changed himself into, it was always advancement. Once a sandwich-man, never again a sandwich-man. It was not boards they carried, but the printed certificates of hopelessness.
Men who could not keep steady jobs became either corpses or sandwich-men. The sandwich illustrated the tyranny of the regular income just as the need of a regular income illustrated the need of Christianity.
The sandwich thus had become the spirit of the times.
The spring-filled system of Hendrik Rutgers began to react for a second time to a feeling of anger, and this for a second time turned his thoughts to fighting. To fight was to conquer. There were two ways of conquering—by fighting with gold and by fighting with brains. Who won by gold perished by gold. That was why a numismatical bourgeoisie never fought. Hendrik had no gold. So he would fight with brains. He therefore would win. Also, he would fight for his fellow-men, which would make his fight noble. That is called "hedging," for defeat in a noble cause is something to be proud of in the newspapers. The reason why all hedging is intelligent is that victory is always Victory when you talk about it.
The sandwich-men were the scum of the earth.
Ah! It was a thrilling thought: To lead men who could no longer fight for themselves against the world that had marred their immortal souls; and then to compel that same world to place three square meals a day within their astonished bellies!
The man who could make the world do that could do anything. Since he could do anything, he could marry a girl who not only was very beautiful, but had a very rich and dislikable father. The early Christians accomplished so much because they not only loved God, but hated the devil.
Hendrik Rutgers found both the excuse and the motive power.
One minute after a man of brains perceives the need of a ladder in order to climb, the rain of ladders begins.
The chest-inflating egotism of the monopolistic tendency, rather than the few remaining vestiges of Christianity, keeps Protestants in America from becoming socialists. Hendrik filled his lungs full of self-oxygen and of the consciousness of power for good, and decided to draw up the constitution of his union. He would do it himself in order to produce a perfect document; perfect in everything. A square deal; no more, no less. That meant justice toward everybody, even toward the public.
This union, being absolutely fair, would be more than good, more than intelligent; it would pay.
Carried away by his desire to help the lowest of the low, he constituted himself into a natural law. He would grade his men, be the sole judge and arbiter of their qualifications, and even of their proper wages.
Hendrik walked back toward the last sandwich-man and soon overtook him. "Hey, there, you!" he said, tapping the rear board with his hand.
The sandwich-man did not turn about. Really, what human being could wish to speak to him?
Hendrik Rutgers walked for a few feet beside the modest artist who was proclaiming to a purblind world the merits of an optician's wares, and spoke again, politely:
"I want to see you, on business."
The man's lips quivered, then curved downward, immobilizing themselves into a fixed grimace of fear. "I—I 'ain't done no-nothin'," he whined, and edged away.
This was what society had done to an immortal soul!
"Hell!" said Hendrik Rutgers between clenched teeth. "I'm not a fly-cop. I've just got a plain business proposition to make to you."
"If you'll tell me where yer place is, I'll come aroun'—" began the man, so obviously lying that Rutgers's anger shifted from society and tyranny on to the thing between sandwich-boards—the thing that refused to be his brother.
"You damned fool!" he hissed, fraternally. "You come with me—now."
The inverted crescent of the man's lips trembled, and presently there issued from it, "Well, I 'ain't done—"
Charity, which is not always astute, made H. Rutgers say with a kindly cleverness to his poor brother, "I'll tell you how you are going to make more money than you ever earned before."
The prospect of making more money than he ever earned before brought no name of joy into the blear and furtive eyes. Instead, he sidled, crabwise, into the middle of the street.
"No, you don't!" said Rutgers so menacingly that the sandwich-man shivered. It was clear that, to feed this starving man, force would be necessary. This never discourages the true philanthropist. Rutgers, however, feeling that Christian forbearance should be used before resorting to the ultimate diplomacy, said, with an earnest amiability: "Say, Bo, d'you want to fill your belly so that if you ate any more you'd bust?"
At the hint of a promise of a sufficiency of food the man opened his mouth, stared at Rutgers, and did not speak. He couldn't because he did not close his mouth.
"All