Helen M. Winslow

“ Pardon me, Miss Shepard, I am only supposing a case.”
“And quite a supposable one,” said Salome, her eyes glowing. “Why can’t it be done?”
“Doubtful if any of them would burden themselves with a debt like that,” demurred Burnham.
“I think they would,” Villard responded. “The desire for a home of one’s own is an instinct which is implanted in every human breast. If the steadier, more sensible men of the mills could be induced to try it, it would soon become the ambition of all the younger ones to own their homes. ”

“ There are yet others, fewer, indeed, than the rest, but who hold the secret of God’s holy purpose written more or less plainly in their souls; who see not only the glare of red and yellow light, whose brilliant tints and deep 70tones make an unrivaled picture, but who read something of the deeper meanings of the Great Artist; who receive into their own hearts some part of the glowing light which strengthens purpose, and crystallizes hopes and ideals hitherto dreamy and undefined.
Salome Shepard had stood at a western window at sunset. ”

“ We are going to become real friends. On your part, you are going to deserve my good opinion and my honest friendship; on my part, I’m going to deserve your confidence and trust and love; and between us we are going to show the people of Massachusetts that a cotton-factory can become something more than a great machine to grind out yards and yards of unbleached sheeting; and that its operatives can become something better and greater than so many smaller wheels in the machinery. We will show that a factory community may be, and is, a prosperous, happy, contented and intelligent people. ”

“ Salome felt impulsively in her pocket, and drawing out her porte-monnaie, emptied its contents into the dirty, emaciated palm of Granny Lancaster. Then she turned and walked rapidly back home.
The next day Otis Greenough called on her.
“My dear,” he said, after an hour or two passed in desultory conversation, “may I beg that you will keep away from the operatives? Impulsive and injudicious charity does them more harm than anything else. No doubt the part of Lady Bountiful seems a pleasant and desirable one, but, just now, you are not fitted for it.” ”

“ It’s vulgar to stare, and the lady professors at Mme. Blanc’s fashionable boarding-school do not stare. Why, it would be as much as their position is worth!” retorted Marion. “Yes, they’re your mills, I suppose, and a handsome piece of property they are too, in the eyes of poor me, who own only the clothes on my back. But, pardon me, dear, it does seem a little odd to hear Salome Shepard, the most exclusive and the most fashionable girl at school, talk about giving orders in a cotton-mill. You’re not getting strong-minded, are you, dear?” ”

“ We owe it to them as men, as husbands, brothers, and sons, to lighten their burdens. As free American citizens we owe it to ourselves, to settle the conditions of our own lives, so far as may be. This can only be done by combinations of the laboring classes strong enough to compel manufacturers to concede us our rights.”
“You are right to a degree,” answered Villard, before Mr. Greenough could swallow his surprise at hearing such sentiments from one of his operatives; “I believe there are some rights which you can only secure by a combination of your forces as working-men. ”

“ Life to Marion Shaw was a serious thing. Although she was but twenty-seven years old, she had come to realize that life may not be for any what the fancy of youth pictures it; and even to realize that the highest good which life can hold is not to be happy. ”

“ They earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—and not always good bread either,—while we, as capitalists, are hoarding up money. At the most, they get very little of what their work really yields. I desire, above all things, sir, that you grant their desires and no longer require them to give up their Labor Union. ”

“ But the fire which had been creeping under the life of the Shawsheen Mills had but just burst into flames, which mounted higher and higher as the day wore on.
All through the factory precincts the unwonted excitement was manifest. Groups of employes were everywhere—on the street-corners, in front of tenements and boardinghouses, in the middle of the street;—and all were engaged in absorbing discussion of one exciting theme—the strike.
Men without coats or hats; women with shawls thrown loosely over their heads; girls, bonnetless and neglectful of dress ”

“ But I have been thinking, and my conclusions are these: that a strike is a much more serious matter for the working-people than it is for us. We act as if they go out on a strike either to annoy us or to have a good time. I have been down among them—sought the by-ways and hedges, as it were—and I tell you they are having anything but a good time. This strike is the outcome of want and privation, and it has brought the people to still greater want and privation. I believe they are not a set of noisy malcontents on the lookout for an opportunity to create a disturbance. ”

“ I believe that only when we adopt such a political economy as this shall we draw the largest possible dividends from the products of a community comparatively free from crime, intemperance, poverty and vice of every kind.”
“Yes,” urged Villard, “each one of us, laborer or capitalist, has duties to perform which cannot be shirked or shifted to the shoulders of Fate—another name for the theory of laissez-faire. ”

“ I propose bath-rooms, wash-rooms and elevators.”
“Good!” said both her superintendents.
“As for machinery, you will know what is needed there. We want the latest improved methods of doing our work. It will not do for us to be behind the times, or the world will laugh at our philanthropic efforts. The standard of the mills must be as high now as it was in my grandfather’s day. Nothing but the best of goods, made after the most approved modern methods, must go out from us. Otherwise the world will say we are visionary and lack good business sense.” ”

“ I know what it is to work at the lowest drudgery of a mill, and can imagine how it must seem to have no hope of ever rising to a higher position. Hard, unremitting toil, long hours with endless years of hopeless work in prospect, the lowest possible wages, a large and rapidly increasing family, with perhaps an aged parent or invalid wife to support—I tell you lots of those fellows have all that to bear, knowing the utter impossibility of ever saving anything, or of raising their own condition. ”

“ But they hushed their voices as she drew near, and stood in sullen silence as she passed.
“There is evidently something in the wind,” she thought, urging the pony to quicken his pace.
She did not know that the committee from the Labor Union had that morning made a third attempt to treat with her agent and failed.
“No compromise,” was still his watchword.
“I’ll send for Marion Shaw,” she said to herself, on her way home an hour later. “She is a practical, sensible, business-like woman. Perhaps she will know of some way to help me to help others. And she needs rest.” ”

“ As the summer advanced, other new cottages were built on the hill to accommodate the growing demand from the operatives. All those built the previous year were occupied, and many of them had been bought on the installment plan. Although the community around the Shawsheen factories, as it now existed, had come suddenly into its new relation, it already represented almost an ideal one. It was already a practical lesson in social economics, which many a reformer and many a capitalist would do well to study. To be a capitalist even in a small way is to learn to respect capital. ”

“ Otis Greenough was an arbitrary man, with that enormous strength of will which a man must have who is to control and manage two thousand people and an increasing business.
If, in the march of economic progress, he chose to make changes in the machinery of the mills, he consulted no one, and cared nothing for the black looks or surly mutterings of the operative who might fancy himself injured thereby. ”

“ Salome went on. “I know they are ignorant. How should they be anything else? All their lives they’ve been used as we use the machines in the factory,—to make good cloth, and plenty of money. Nobody has thought of their welfare, or cared what they did, or thought, or became, when working-hours were over. How do we know what sort of men they are, or what capabilities they possess? ”

“ The library furniture was of plain, substantial oak, like the heavy woodwork of the room. Throughout the rest of the house, bedrooms, dining-rooms, and class-rooms were furnished with strong, neat, ash furniture. There were a few good engravings on the walls of the principal rooms, and the bookcases were about half-filled with literature of a harmless and interesting, if light quality. They had all agreed it would not be best to fill the shelves at first, but to watch the popular taste and to “leave room for improvement,” as Marion said.
The operatives were simply astonished at what they saw. ”

“ Her beauty and refinement, together with the consciousness which never left his sensitive soul, that it was her wealth and her generosity which made the new conditions possible,—these things only served to raise her to a pedestal where she stood, forever apart from the rest of the universe,—a woman to be revered and worshiped; not a woman to be aspired to. ”

“ Burnham: “our factory, like many another, has been run too long on the system of laissez-faire. I have come to believe in a political economy which insists upon the liveliest activity on the part of capitalists, to put their employes upon the best possible footing as to the material surroundings of life; that they have all the advantage as to health, morals and happiness which comes from sanitary regulation and practical education. ”

“ She threw up her situation in Madame Blanc’s private school and went to Shepardtown, arriving there late in the evening, before Salome’s visit to the counting-room.
When the latter came home they settled cosily in Salome’s room for an “old-time talk,” such as they had enjoyed as girls.
“Why didn’t you let me know you were tired to death with that interminable teaching?” asked Salome. “I should have had you come to me long ago. You are as pale as a ghost.”
“Oh, I’m all right now,” answered Marion, who never cared to talk of herself. “Tell me about the strike here. ”

“ John Villard had been made first superintendent and a new man had taken his place. Salome continued to act as her own agent and had developed a keen love and tact for the business,—a condition of affairs which Mrs. Soule never ceased to bemoan.
The young people at the Hall were more than ever the dearest objects of her solicitude. In most cases, their elevation had been steady and substantial. Young men had become self-respecting and carried themselves with increased dignity. ”

“ I expected opposition, or at least indifference, on the part of the operatives. On the contrary, they are all as delighted with the state of affairs as I am.”
“Why shouldn’t they be?” was Burnham’s comment. “They’d be ungrateful wretches if they weren’t. They’ve far more to gain than you have to lose, remember.”
“But you’ve been trying to make me believe,” pursued Salome, “that they didn’t want their condition improved; that they were satisfied to be let alone; and that they’d resist every improvement I offered.” ”

“ Greenough found voice to say, addressing her as he used to in by-gone days, when she occasionally strayed into the mills and teased to be taken through them. “Much any young lady of the world can know of such matters. We would not have you turn from being your own charming self, and become a learned blue-stocking, or bloomered reformer; but there are many, many reasons which come between the questions of profit and loss, and the petty details of operatives’ wages, which cannot be explained to you here and now. ”

“ I will pay you a thousand dollars a year.”
Marion drew a breath of astonishment.
125“It isn’t worth that,” she said; “Madame Blanc only paid me seven hundred.”
“Madame Blanc is not fixing a scale of wages for me,” said Salome; “as to your ‘worth,’ my dear, I must judge of that. When we get fairly at work, I shall give you enough to do, and you will find yourself a very busy woman. Besides, if I had a young man to do what I want you to do for me, he would ask a thousand dollars, wouldn’t he? And why shouldn’t you have it? Because you are a woman?” ”

“ And Newbern Shepard’s mills must be put on the basis where he desired, above all things, to see them during his lifetime. He planned a noble scheme. It is my birthright and my duty to carry it into effect. It will cost me something to get the mills where they must be; but it will pay in the end. Of that I feel sure.”
“You are quite right,” said John Villard. “What may we not hope for when the condition of the working-people shall receive that concentrated attention which has hitherto been devoted to the more favored ranks? ”

“ If I choose instead to spend my fortune on the Shawsheen Mills, and elevate by its judicious expenditure two thousand operatives for whom I ought to feel morally and socially responsible, the world will probably wonder and call me quixotic. Christ Himself was called a fanatic. Most people to-day, if they voiced their real sentiments, would wonder that He could be so democratic as to die for the whole world, ignorant, uncultivated, detestable sinners, and all. ”

“ Burnham occasionally looked in at the Hall of an evening, but Villard had begun to suspect that this was principally for the purpose of seeing Marion Shaw.
“Well, to tell the truth,” Burnham finally admitted, “I’ve no taste for this sort of thing. Oh, yes; it’s a good scheme, and seems to be working first-rate; but I’m not the right fellow for the place. I don’t like philanthropic work, never did, never shall. I work hard enough during the day. I need rest and freedom at night.” ”

“ So many of our operatives live in a hand-to-mouth fashion, never saving anything. Let them see that what they pay for rent will be credited to them; that they are actually saving that 115money, and they will, for the most part, gladly fall in with the scheme. And when a man begins to save up money, and to feel that he is worth something, his self-respect increases and ambition makes a man of him. I tell you, I believe the thing could be done here, and the condition of our working-men be vastly improved by it.”
“We will, at least, make the experiment,” said Salome earnestly. ”

“ Women, you know, ladies at least, have no heads for business, and we, certainly,” with an indescribable turn of voice on the “we”—“we, certainly, have had no training to fit us for reformers. And now shall we not have some music? Salome, dear, will you play that delightful little suite of Moscowzki’s that I like so well?”
The young woman rose and, going to the piano, did as she was bid, although somewhat mechanically. Then Mr. Greenough proposed a song from Mr. Burnham, who possessed a fine baritone voice, and the evening wore away with music and light conversation. ”

“ I propose to begin nearer home. I propose to go to work, earnestly, and I hope practically, to raise the condition, morally, mentally and physically, of my own factory-people.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed Villard and the head book-keeper.
“And I have called you here,” pursued Salome, “to ask each and every one of you to be my assistant and coadjutor. I have not been thinking of nothing, during the last three 72months. I am a woman, comparatively young, and with absolutely no knowledge of the practical side of a working-man’s life. ”