Clarence Budington Kelland

“ In spite of cults and theories and makeshifts and sophistries, she knew where her duty lay, where the safety of her soul lay—it was in fidelity to her husband. She resolved that fidelity should be his, and as she resolved it she knew that he deserved it of her. She resolved that she would eject Dulac from her life, and that, with all the strength of her will, she would try to bring herself to give that love to Bonbright which she had promised him by implication, but never by word. She did not know that love cannot be created by an effort of the will.... ”

“ But Malcolm Lightener—he dominated the room as the Laocoon group would dominate a ten by twelve "parlor." His size was only a minor element in that impression. True, he was as great in bulk as Bonbright and his father rolled in one, towering inches above them, and they were tall men. It was the jagged, dynamic, granite personality of him that jutted out to meet one almost with physical impact. You were conscious of meeting a force before you became conscious of meeting a man. And yet, when you came to study his face you found it wonderfully human—even with a trace of granite humor in it. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXI Bonbright worked feverishly. These were the best days he had known since he left college, but they were not happy days. He could not forget Ruth—the best he could do was to prevent himself from remembering too much, and so he worked. He demanded of himself more than it is in a single man to give, but he accomplished an astonishingly large part of it. Day and night he drove himself without relaxation and without pause. If he stopped, the old feeling of emptiness, of the futility of his existence, and the bitterness of his fortune returned. ”

“ Bonbright's feeling as his father left him was one of utter helplessness, of futility. He had received his father's unveiled threat and later it would have its effect. For the moment it passed without consideration. First in his mind was the fact that he did not know what to do—did not even know what he WANTED to do. All he could see was the groove he was in, the family groove. He did not like it, but he was not sure he wanted to be out of it. His father had talked of individuality; Bonbright did not know if he wanted to assert his individuality. He was at sea. ”

“ To be respectful and to show no resentment mean their bread and butter."
"Resentment?" said Bonbright. "You see I am new to the business and to this. What is it they resent?"
"They resent being exploited for the profit of men like yourself....
They resent your having the power of life and death over them...."
The girl stood looking from one man to the other; from Dulac, tall, picturesquely handsome, flamboyant, conscious of the effect of each word and gesture, to Bonbright, equally tall, something broader, boyish, natural in his unease, his curiosity. ”

“ The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright could feel it. It made him tingle; it gave him a sensation of vibrating emptiness resembling that of a man descending in a swift elevator. ”

“ He said no more, but stood, haggard and menacing.
Bonbright eyed him, saw his drawn face, saw the hatred in his eyes. Neither spoke, but eye held eye. Bonbright's hand moved toward a button on his desk, but did not touch it. Somehow he was not surprised, not startled, not afraid—yet he knew there was danger. A word, a movement, might unleash the passions that seethed within Dulac....
Dulac stepped one step toward Bonbright, and paused. The movement was catlike, graceful. It had not been willed by Dulac. He had been drawn that step as iron is drawn to magnet. His eyes did not leave Bonbright's. ”

“ Sudden fire flashed in Bonbright's brain. He stopped, and with the knuckles of a hand that was torn and blistered and trembling, he knocked on Lightener's broad chest as he would have knocked on a door that refused to open. "Damn your axles," he said, thickly. "I can get them there—another—and another—and another—and another.... They're too slow below.... Make 'em come faster. I can keep up...." And all the time he was rapping on Lightener's chest.
He was conscious of what he did and said, but he did not do and say it of his own volition. He was like a man who dimly sees and hears another man. ”

“ Dulac had been interrupted in what Ruth knew would have been a proposal of marriage; the scene would be resumed, and when it was what answer should she give?
It is no easy task for a girl of twenty to lay her heart under the microscope and to see if the emotion which agitates it is love, or admiration, or the excitation of glamour. She has heard of love, has read of love, has dreamed of love, possibly, but has never experienced love. How, then, is she to recognize it? With Ruth there had been no long acquaintanceship with this man who came asking her future of her. ”

“ Daily strength departed from it and entered into Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. The men had embarked upon it with enthusiasm, many of them with fanatic determination; but with the advent in their home of privation, of hunger, their zeal was transmuted into heavy determination, lifeless stubbornness. Idleness hung heavily on their hands, and small coins that should have passed over the baker's counter clinked upon mahogany bars.
Dulac labored, exhorted, prayed with them. It was his personality, his individual powers over the minds and hearts of men, that kept the strike alive. ”

“ Dulac seemed suddenly possessed by a gust of passion. He strode threateningly to Bonbright, lips snarling, eyes blazing.
"What do you mean by coming here? What do you want?" he demanded, hoarsely. "You come here with your hands red with blood. Two men are dead.... Four others smashed under the hoofs of your police!... You're trying to starve into submission thousands of men. You're striking at them through their wives and babies.... What do you care for them or their suffering? You and your father are piling up millions—and every penny a loaf stolen from the table of a workingman!... ”

“ Bonbright did not waver. He was strong enough now, strong in his anger and in his love. "I am going to marry Ruth Frazer," he repeated.
"Nonsense!" said his mother.
"It is not nonsense, mother. I am a man. I have found the girl I love and will always love. I intend to marry her. Where is there nonsense in that?"
"Do you fancy I shall permit such a thing? Do you imagine for an instant that I shall permit you to give me a daughter-in-law out of a cheap boarding house? Do you think I shall submit to an affront like that?... Why, I should be the laughingstock of the city." ”

“ She was not taking care of herself. It is only those who cling to life, who are interested in life and in themselves, who take care of their bodies as they should be taken care of. She had been slight; now she was thin. No one now would have dreamed of calling her the Girl with the Grin. She looked older, lifeless, almost haggard at times. Her condition was not wholly the result of unhappiness. It was due to lack of fresh air and exercise, for she went seldom abroad. It was fear of meeting acquaintances that shut her in her room—fear of meeting Bonbright, fear of encountering Dulac. ”

“ Bonbright looked up to meet Lightener's eyes.
"It—it isn't fair," he said, chokingly.
"Fairness," said Lightener, almost with gentleness, "is expected only when we are young."
"But I didn't.... I tried to stop them."
"Don't try to tell anybody so—you won't be believed."
"I'm going to tell somebody," said Bonbright, his mind flashing to Ruth
Frazer, "and I'm going to be believed. I've got to be believed."
After a while he said: "I wasn't taking sides. I just went there to see. If I've got to hire men all my life I want to understand them."
"You've got to take sides, son. ”

“ Bonbright's part in that was enough to keep one man occupied, for, however much he might leave to Mershon, there were countless details that he must decide; innumerable points to be referred to him and discussed. But his chief interest was not in producing a plant to manufacture engines, but in producing a crew of men to operate the plant; not merely hiring capable workingmen, but producing a condition where himself and those working-men would be in accord; where the men would be satisfied, happy in their work; a condition millennial in that the known as labor unrest should be eliminated. ”

“ That action cut Bonbright more deeply than any of the few affronts that had been put upon him in his life had cut. He wanted to call the man back and demand that he listen to the truth. He wanted to explain, to set himself right. He wanted that man and all men to know he was not the Bonbright Foote who had brought on the strike and fought it with such vindictive ruthlessness. ”

“ Ruth had gone with Dulac.... She was hidden away. Not even Hilda Lightener knew where she was, but Hilda knew why she had gone.... There is an instinct in most animals and some humans which compels them to hide away when they suffer wounds. Hilda knew Ruth had crept away because she had suffered the hardest to bear of all wounds—and crushing of hope....
She had gone the morning after Bonbright's father died, leaving no word but that she was going, and she had not gone far. It is simple to lose oneself in a city. One may merely move to the next ward and be lost to one's friends. ”

“ It was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk to sidewalk. It jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each unit of it eager to board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where acute discomfort would be suffered until distant destinations were reached. Somehow the sight of that surging, tossing stream of humanity impressed Bonbright with the magnitude of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, even more than the circuit of the immense plant had done.
Five thousand men, in a newspaper paragraph, do not affect the imagination. ”

“ Everybody, whether he knows it or not, wants to be his own boss, and by as much as he is bossed he is galled ... It can never be otherwise..."
"You knew from the beginning I would fail," said Bonbright.
"You haven't failed, my boy. You've done a fine thing; but you haven't solved a problem that has no solution... You are upset by it now, but after a while you'll see it and the disappointment will go. But you haven't failed... I don't believe you will ever understand all you have accomplished." ”

“ Now there are strong unions and weak unions—both arrayed against a capital better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history. Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a state, of a country, but the unions of the world...hundreds of millions of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for generations. ”

“ I am Bonbright Foote. I am myself, an individual. The old way of doing things is gone.... Perhaps you have heard of the family law—the first Bonbright's will. ... I have just torn it up."
She compressed her lips and regarded him with hostility. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose I must make the best of it. I realize I am powerless." She realized it fully in that moment; realized that her son was a man, a man with force and a will, and that it would be hopeless to try to bring him to submit to her influence. "There is nothing for us to discuss. ”

“ Young man, you are the seventh Bonbright Foote—member of a FAMILY. What happens to you happens to it. You cannot separate yourself from it. You, as an individual, are not important, but as Bonbright Foote VII you become important. Do you imagine you can act and think as an entity distinct from Bonbright Foote, Incorporated?... Nonsense. You are but one part of a whole; what you do affects the whole, and you are responsible for it to the shops."
"A man must be responsible to himself," said Bonbright, fumbling to express what was troubling his soul. "There are bigger things than family..." ”

“ That she could do so is wonderful, perhaps, but then, so many human capabilities are wonderful! Men about to be hanged eat a hearty meal with relish.... How much more might Ruth find pleasure since she had been granted a reprieve!
When the curtain descended they moved toward the exits, waiting for the crowd to clear the way. Bonbright's attention was all for Ruth, but her eyes glanced curiously about, observing the well-fed, well-kept, brilliantly dressed men and women—men and women of the world to which she belonged now. As one approached them and saw them, they were singularly human. ”

“ Soon they were beyond the rim of industry which banded the city, and, leaving behind them towering chimneys, smokeless for the night, clouds of released working-men waiting their turns to crowd into overloaded street cars, the grimy, busy belt line which extended in a great arc through the body of the manufacturing strip, they passed through sprouting, mushroomlike suburban villages—villages which had not been there the year before, which would be indistinguishable from the city itself the year after. ”

“ After the first tumult and flurry labor had settled back into its old ways. The man who worked for Bonbright Foote was envied, and that man and his family prospered and knew a better, bigger life. The old antagonism of his employees had vanished and he had become a figure to call out their enthusiasm. He believed every man of them was his friend, and, more than that, he believed he had found the solution to the great problem. He believed he had found a way of bringing together capital and labor so that they would lie down together like the millennial lion and lamb... ”

“ Bonbright said. "Well, Mr. Mershon, if labor wants to cut its own throat by striking—let it strike. I'm giving it work. I'm giving it wages that equal or are higher than union scale. They've no excuse for a strike. I'm willing to do anything within reason, but I'm going to run my own concern. Before I'll let this plant be unionized I'll shut it down. If I can't finish the new shops without recognizing the unions, then they'll stand as they are." ”

“ In your whole business life you've never really come into contact with your men. Now be honest, have you?"
"I've always delegated that sort of thing to subordinates," said Mr.
Foote, stiffly.
"Which," retorted Mr. Lightener, "is one of the reasons for the unrest.... That's it. We don't understand what they're up against, nor what we do to aggravate them."
"It's the inevitable warfare between capital and labor," said Mr. Foote. "Jealousy is at the root of it; unsound theories, like this of socialism, and too much freedom of speech make it all but unbearable." ”

“ Discontent manifested itself.... It grew, and had to be repressed. In spite of the plan—in spite of everything, a strike threatened, became imminent.
Ruth was thunderstruck, Bonbright bewildered. His panacea was not a panacea, then. He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor improvements, but in its elements it was just, fair. Bonbright could not understand, but Malcolm Lightener understood and the professor of sociology understood.
"I can't understand it," Bonbright said to them.
"Huh!" grunted Lightener. "It's just this: You're capital, and they're labor. That's it in a nutshell." ”