Homer Greene

“ It is not fitting that the body of our dead comrade should be committed to the earth under the forms and auspices of a Church controlled by capitalism and made pompous by wealth. Do not misunderstand me. With true piety I have no quarrel. Worship God if you want to; but not the God set up by the plutocrat in his costly temple into which the proletariat may hardly dare to set their feet. I tell you that when this social house of cards that the money kings have built up shall topple—as it will—to its fall, their soulless, bloodless, godless Church will join it in the wreck. ”

“ April had melted into May, and May had blossomed into June before life in the city began to take on its normal aspect. The riot at the Malleson mills had been the climax of the labor troubles. It was the beginning of the end. The striking workmen and their sympathizers had neither the strength nor the courage to make any further demonstration of physical force. They were beaten, cowed, utterly disheartened. Strike-breakers and non-union workmen passed to and fro along the street unmolested, save that now and then the boastful bearing of some one of them invited an epithet or a blow. ”

“ But at the heart of every one of them, tangled in its sordid meshes, was the name of the rector of Christ Church. The motive for the murder of Mary Bradley was known of all men. If Lamar, dead by his own hand, had lived to shout it from the housetops, it could not have been better or more widely understood. Yet no one now charged the minister with conscious guilt. His life had been too open and too clean to make that believable. It was said of him now only that he had been the victim of his own deplorable theories and his mistaken zeal. ”

“ Ruth Tracy was as good as her word. She went to call on Mary Bradley. She found her in the little house on Factory Hill from the porch of which Stephen Lamar had addressed the crowd on the day of Bradley’s funeral. It was a bleak November afternoon; a Saturday half-holiday for the more favored class of workers; the busy end of a toilsome week for those whose occupations brought them no week-day respite. The rows of small, brown houses, some of them ill-kept and dilapidated, formed a cheerless foreground to an unattractive landscape. ”

“ There were strong and passionate arguments both for and against the prolongation of the strike. Men with haggard faces told of the suffering that they and their families had endured, and begged that they might be permitted, without infraction of the union rules, and without the ignominy of being hailed and treated as scabs, to seek their old jobs. Others arose and appealed to their fellow-workmen, declaring that while they too had suffered, they were nevertheless ready to die in the last ditch in order that the dignity of labor might be maintained, and their rights as human beings upheld. ”

“ Until we abandon the pleasing delusion that we have measured up to our full duty as members and supporters of the Church when we attend its services, recite its prayers, contribute to its charities, relieve its poor and visit its suffering; until we take a vastly broader view than that of our duty and privilege as Christian men and women, we are yet in our sins. Neither my work as minister nor your work as laymen will be satisfactory in the sight of God until these church portals and pew-doors stand equally wide open to the poor and the rich. ”

“ Among his few supporters in what was considered to be the exclusive social set, Ruth Tracy was by far the most ardent and uncompromising. Here, there, everywhere, she proclaimed the righteousness and justice of the rector’s cause. Her faith in him was unbounded, and her faith was fully evidenced by her works. Her mother was scandalized, her father was indifferent, her lover was in despair. To seek to restrain from unwise and unseemly activity a woman who is actuated by religious motives is a delicate and dangerous task, and Westgate was not equal to it. ”

“ As he lies there to-day, so any one of you may lie to-morrow, crushed and killed by the power of capitalism and the tyranny of the courts. But, you know, in the eyes of the capitalist, toil is nothing if it is you who toil, suffering is nothing if it is you who suffer, death is nothing if it is you who die. Why should the workingman have only toil and suffering and death, while his employers may treat themselves to all the soft comforts and luxuries that money can buy, and burden their women with silks and laces and jewels beyond price? ”

“ Could ingratitude reach greater depths? Had [347] a bitterer cup than this ever been held to the lips of any minister of that Christ who alone had felt the extreme bitterness of ingratitude?
And yet he scarcely knew the half of what these toilers thought of him to-day. He had no conception of the strong resentment—resentment without cause that burned in their hearts against him. He had preached fairly enough indeed; but what had he actually done for them? He had declaimed against the power of capital, but capital had not loosened its grip on them by so much as the breadth of a hair. ”

“ That was when, as a modern, scouting law, flouting religion, decrying the social order, she had deluded herself with the belief that she had a moral right to seek happiness where she could find it. Born in penury, reared to toil, trained to godlessness, steeped in a philosophy that taught her that love should never be restrained by man-made barriers, she had had neither the will nor the conscience to curb or master her imperious desire. ”

“ Tracy was already moving homeward in her luxuriously appointed car, and Ruth and her lover had started slowly up the walk. His eyes were alight and his cheeks aglow with pleasant anticipation. To walk a mile with Ruth Tracy through the invigorating air of a beautiful September noonday was a privilege that any man might covet, much more a man in whose heart she filled so large and so queenly a place as she did in Philip Westgate’s. ”

“ When he found that his effort was utterly useless, the rector stopped speaking and came down from the platform. At the foot of the steps he met Lamar, gazing, with frightened eyes, at the disappearing crowd.
“Lamar,” he cried, “stop them! They’re wild! They’re rushing to destruction!”
“I can’t,” replied Lamar. “No man can stop them. God in heaven couldn’t stop them now!”
From Lamar’s lips the ejaculation was impious, but the clergyman did not stop to consider it.
“Then come with me,” he said. “Let’s follow on and do what we may to prevent bloodshed and arson.” ”

“ An hour’s labor takes as much of his effort, strength, vitality, as an hour’s labor takes of yours. Why should he get one hundred dollars a month for what he gives to society, and you get four hundred dollars a month for what you give?”
“Why, I—I never thought of it just that way.”
“Think of it that way, Mr. Malleson. Look at it occasionally from the standpoint of the man who works for wages. If he works equally hard with you to produce the profits that your company earns, why shouldn’t he share equally with you in the matter of compensation for his work?” ”

“ Her eyes had in them that appealing look that had pierced to the depth of Barry Malleson’s heart. But she did not wait for Miss Tracy to answer her. She turned abruptly toward the door.
“I must go now,” she said. “It’s already dusk. And it’s a long way home.”
When she reached the hall she faced about. There was something she still wanted to say.
“Don’t take it to heart, Miss Tracy. Your own broken romance, I mean. He was never the man for you. You have ideals. He has none. There are a thousand women with whom he will be just as well satisfied as he would have been with you. ”

“ Bricky pondered for a moment.
“Ye didn’t fall far short o’ smashin’ him,” he said finally. “But how in heaven’s name will ye git a strike now?”
Lamar took an equal length of time before replying.
“Bricky,” he said at last, “you’ve got to be discharged.”
“Me? Discharged? What for?”
“Oh, anything. Neglect of duty. Impertinence. Sabotage. Can’t you see that you’re what the diplomats call non persona grata at capitalistic headquarters? You’ve put up a successful fight. You’re a union leader. You’re a warrior in the ranks of labor. Bricky, you’re an agitator, you’re a menace; you’ve got to go. ”

“ Doling out charity is not recognition; inviting the poor to come and sit in the rear pews of your church is not recognition. Oh, I tell you, Mr. Farrar, I don’t want charity from your Church people, nor sympathy, nor a chance to crowd in to your services; what I want is plain human justice, with a right to live comfortably and be decent and happy. And when they begin to give that to me, I’ll begin to have some regard for their Church.”
It was entirely plain to the rector that he could accomplish no religious purpose with this woman at this time, and he rose to go. ”

“ If ever there was a guide, a leader, a saviour for the toilers of the world, that leader and saviour is Jesus Christ. He founded a Church upon earth and that Church is still a vital force and a mighty factor in the lives of men, even though, in its course through the centuries, it has fallen now and then from the lofty height on which He placed it. Restored and lifted up, it stands to-day the authorized agent of Christ on earth. That Church is as much for you as it is for your wealthy neighbor. ”

“ I’ve already told you that he’s not a man who harbors resentments. It’s not in his nature. But the memory of what he passed through here still haunts him. It always will haunt him. His experience was too terrible and tragic to be soon forgotten. Yet he blames no one but himself. He says the bishop was almost like a heavenly father to him.”
“The bishop is a saint!”
Lest she should make a spectacle of herself on the street, Ruth gave a final dab at her eyes, and then resolutely put her handkerchief away.
“Oh,” said Westgate, “I almost forgot to tell you. I saw Barry Malleson out there, too.” ”

“ Unaccustomed to any of the social graces, she had bidden her guests to be seated, and sat among them with a modesty and self-confidence that would have done credit to a dweller on the borders of Fountain Park.
“Barry is so tender-hearted,” said Miss Chichester, “and so easily touched by the sight of distress. He’s really foolish about it.”
“Indeed!” said Mary Bradley. “I didn’t know.”
“Why,” stammered Barry, “it’s only what we do for all our widows; I mean for all widows who became widows because their husbands were in our employ.” ”

“ The gist of Lamar’s argument was that while trade-unionism was a good thing so far as it went—he himself was a trade-unionist—it did not go far enough. It was only through socialism, and through political action under the auspices of the socialist party that the workingman would be finally disenthralled. Socialism was the only instrument under heaven which labor could successfully use to enforce its demands upon society. ”

“ I feel that I am preaching Christ’s gospel, and that His message is to the poor as well as to the rich. To-day, so far as material things are concerned, the poor are poor because they are not receiving their just share of the wealth which they produce. Some day all this will be changed. There will be economic justice, and with economic justice will come social equality. There will be no rich, no poor, no aristocracy, no proletariat. I shall welcome that day. But, so far as things spiritual are concerned, that day dawned when Jesus Christ was born. ”

“ Westgate felt it the most deeply because for him there were no compensations. He had not the spiritual absorption in the contest that would lead to a certain satisfaction of the soul whether it were won or lost. His interest was simply that of a man convinced of the mighty economic [199] value of the Church to the community, and willing to fight for its integrity. To win his fight and thereby lose his sweetheart would be an empty and a bitter victory. To yield his honest convictions and play the hypocrite in order to retain her confidence and love would be cowardly and base. ”

“ The white face of the president of the company, distorted with anger, appeared for a moment at an office window.
“There’s Dick Malleson!” was the cry. “He starves women an’ kills babies! Get a rope an’ hang ’im!”
Each wild and murderous sentiment was received with roars of approval by the bloodthirsty mob. The rector of Christ Church, amazed and indignant at the spirit of brutal savagery displayed by the men whose cause he had hitherto championed, determined to speak to them. ”

“ He was not so witless as to believe that the jury would find in favor of his company, in view of the strong human appeal that had been made to them, and still would be made to them, on behalf of the plaintiff; yet his countenance expressed no anxiety, for his lawyer had assured him that, regardless of any adverse verdict, the case fell within a rule of law that would prevent a recovery. So, fair type of the prosperous business man, portly, well-dressed, shrewd-eyed, square-jawed, he sat contentedly and listened while Westgate whittled away his opponent’s case. ”

“ If any parishioner of Christ Church comforted himself with the thought that the Reverend Robert Farrar had wisely decided to forego his animadversions on the self-constituted privileges of wealth in the Church, or his appeals for social equality in the House of God, he was destined to experience a rude awakening. For, not only did the rector resume his protests and appeals from the pulpit, but he inaugurated and carried on a personal campaign among his people for the adoption of his revolutionary ideas. They were revolutionary indeed. He preached social justice, and Christian socialism. ”