Jack London

“ Far deeper than it, and vastly more powerful, was the morality of the dollar. My father, my family, my husband, were willing to condone what they believed was my adultery. And for what? For a few scraps of paper that to them represented only the privilege to plunder, the privilege to steal from the people.
(To Chalmers.) Here are you, Tom, not only willing and eager to give me into the arms of the man you believe my lover, but you throw in your boy--your child and mine--to make it good measure and acceptable. And for what? Love of some woman?--any woman? No. Love of humanity? ”

“ We must forego each other. We cannot be thieves, even for love's sake. Yet I am glad that this has happened—that I have lain in your arms and had your lips on mine. The memory of it will be sweet always.
(She draws her cloak around her, and rises.)
(Knox rises.) You are right. The future belongs to the children. There lies duty—yours, and mine in my small way. I am going now. We must not see each other ever again. We must work—and forget. But remember, my heart goes with you into the fight. My prayers will accompany every stroke. ”

“ Margaret looks at documents lying on open cover of dispatch box and glancing quickly about room, takes a sudden resolution. She seizes documents, makes as if to run wildly from the room, stops abruptly to reconsider, and changes her mind. She looks about room for a hiding place, and her eyes rest on portrait of Lincoln. Moving swiftly, picking up a light chair on the way, she goes to corner of bookcase nearest to portrait, steps on chair, and from chair to ledge of bookcase where, clinging, she reaches out and up and drops documents behind portrait. ”

“ You tempt me so.
(He rises suddenly, takes her two hands in his, leads her gently to her chair, seats her, and reseats himself in desk-chair.) Listen. It is not your husband. But I have no right to you. Nor have you a right to me.
Margaret
(Interrupting, jealously.) And who but I has any right to you?
Knox
(Smiling sadly.) No; it is not that. There is no other woman. You are the one woman for me. But there are many others who have greater rights in me than you. I have been chosen by two hundred thousand citizens to represent them in the Congress of the United States. ”

“ As I told you this morning, there are two million Tommys, child-laborers all, who cannot be sacrificed for Tommy's sake or anybody's sake.
(Chalmers shrugs his shoulders and smiles in ridicule.)
Knox
Surely, Margaret, there is a way out for us. Give up the letters. What are they?—only scraps of paper. Why match them against happiness—our happiness?
Margaret
But as you told me yourself, those scraps of paper represent the happiness of millions of lives. It is not our happiness that is matched against some scraps of paper. It is our happiness against millions of lives—like ours. ”

“ Margaret
(To Knox.) You will go now and you will give the speech.
Knox
(Placing documents in inside coat pocket.) I will give the speech.
Margaret
And all the forces making for the good time coming will be quickened by your words. Let the voices of the millions be in it.
(Chalmers, legs still stretched out, laughs cynically.)
You know where my heart lies. Some day, in all pride and honor, stealing from no one, hurting no one, we shall come together—to be together always. ”

“ For the privilege of perpetuating your stealing from the people--money, bread and butter, hats, shoes, and stockings--for stealing all these things from the people.
(To Knox.) Now, and at last, do I realize how stern and awful is the fight that must be waged--the fight in which you and I, Howard, must play our parts and play them bravely and uncomplainingly--you as well as I, but I even more than you. This is the den of thieves. I am a child of thieves. All my family is composed of thieves. I have been fed and reared on the fruits of thievery. ”

“ Knox
Is that any more than the duty any man owes to his fellowman?
Starkweather
Oh, you unpractical dreamer. (Returns to his note-book.)
Rutland
(Throwing himself into the breach.) Where do I steal, Mr. Knox?—I who get a mere salary for preaching the Lord's Word.
Knox
Your salary comes out of that water I mentioned. Do you want to know who pays your salary? Not your parishioners. But the little children toiling in the mills, and all the rest—all the slaves on the wheel of labor pay you your salary. ”

“ Do you know, Margaret, I thank God it has happened as it has. What if my usefulness is destroyed? There will be other men—other leaders. I but make way for another. The cause of the people can never be lost. And though I am driven from the fight, I am driven to you. We are driven together. It is fate. Again I thank God for it.
(He approaches her and tries to clasp her in his arms, but she steps back.) ”

“ Starkweather
Call it so. Call it what you will. Without us the country falls into the hands of scoundrels like that man Knox and smashes to ruin.
Margaret
(Reprovingly.) Not a scoundrel, father.
Starkweather
He is a sentimental dreamer, a hair-brained enthusiast. It is the foolish utterances of men like him that place the bomb and the knife in the hand of the assassin.
Margaret
He is at least a good man, even if he does disagree with you on political and industrial problems. And heaven knows that good men are rare enough these days. ”

“ Chalmers
So she hasn't turned them over to you yet?
Margaret
No; I still have them.
Knox
Give them to him.
Chalmers
Selling out for a petticoat. A pretty reformer.
Knox
(Proudly.)
A better lover.
Margaret
(To Chalmers.)
He is weak to-day. What of it? He was strong last night. He will win back his strength again. It is human to be weak. And in his very weakness now, I have my pride, for it is the weakness of love. God knows I have been weak, and I am not ashamed of it. It was the weakness of love. It is hard to stifle one's womanhood always with morality. ”

“ We cannot steal from my child--
{Knox}
But if he gives you Tommy? Margaret
(Shaking her head.) Nor can we steal from any other woman's child--from all the children of all the women. And other things I heard you say, and you were right. We cannot live by ourselves alone. We are social animals. Our good and our ill--all is tied up with all humanity. ”

“ I'll give you a proper divorce. And you can have Tommy.
Knox
(Suddenly raising his head, joyfully, pleadingly.) Margaret!
(Margaret is swayed, but does not speak.)
Chalmers
You and I never hit it off together any too extraordinarily well, Madge; but I'm not altogether a bad sort. I am easy-going. I always have been easy-going. I'll make everything easy for you now. But you see the fix I am in. You love another man, and I simply must regain those letters. It is more important than you realize. ”

“ Knox
It is antiquated. It is ready for the scrap-heap. Instead of being our servant, it has mastered us. We are its slaves. All the political brood of grafters and hypocrites have run away with it, and with us as well. In short, from the municipalities up, we are dominated by the grafters. It is a reign of theft.
Hubbard
But any government is representative of its people. No people is worthy of a better government than it possesses. Were it worthier, it would possess a better government.
(Starkweather nods his head approvingly.) ”

“ A theft has been committed, Mr. Rutland. My daughter has stolen something very valuable from me--a package of private papers, so important--well, if she succeeds in making them public I shall be injured to such an extent financially that there won't be any more generously splendid donations for you or anybody else. I have done my best to persuade her to return what she has stolen. Now you try. Bring her to a realization of the madness of what she is doing. ”

“ Chalmers
(Mimicking Margaret.) No dramatics, please.
Margaret
(Plaintively, looking from one man to the other.) Men are so strangely and wonderfully made. What am I to do with the pair of you? Why won't you reason together like rational human beings?
Chalmers
(Bitterly gay, rising to his feet.) Yes; let us come and reason together. Be rational. Sit down and talk it over like civilized humans. This is not the stone age. Be reassured, Mr. Knox. I won't brain you. Margaret—
(Indicating chair,) Sit down. Mr. Knox—
(Indicating chair.) Sit down. ”

“ Starkweather
Go ahead.
Knox
You exercise a controlling interest in nine billion dollars' worth of railways; in two billion dollars' worth of industrial concerns; in one billion dollars' worth of life insurance groups; in one billion dollars' worth of banking groups; in two billion dollars' worth of trust companies. Mind you, I do not say you own all this, but that you exercise a controlling interest. That is all that is necessary. In short, you exercise a controlling interest in such a proportion of the total investments of the United States, as to set the pace for all the rest. ”

“ Chalmers
I never dreamed for a moment that I was—er—indiscreet.
Starkweather
Never forget that every indiscretion of a man in your position is indiscreet. We have a duty, a great and solemn duty to perform. Upon our shoulders rest the destinies of ninety million people. If we fail in our duty, they go down to destruction. Ignorant demagogues are working on the beast-passions of the people. If they have their way, they are lost, the country is lost, civilization is lost. We want no more Dark Ages. ”

“ You do not answer. Then I am to understand that you have a motor-car which was made by somebody else's labor and for which you gave no labor of your own. This I call theft. You call it property. Yet it is theft.
Starkweather
(Interrupting Dolores Ortega who was just about to speak.)
But surely you have intelligence to see the question in larger ways than stolen motor-cars. I am a man of affairs. I don't steal motor-cars.
Knox
(Smiling.) Not concrete little motor-cars, no. You do things on a large scale. ”

“ Knox
(Sadly.) The worst of it is, Margaret, you are right. But it is hard that we cannot be happy save by stealing from the happiness of others. Yet it hurts, deep down and terribly, to forego you. (Margaret thanks him with her eyes.)
Chalmers
(Sarcastically.) Oh, believe me, I am not too anxious to give up my wife. Look at her. She's a pretty good woman for any man to possess.
Margaret
Tom, I'll accept a quiet divorce, marry Mr. Knox, and take Tommy with me—on one consideration. ”

“ It does not depend on one man. Kill off, at this instant, every leader of the people, and the process will go on just the same. The people will come into their own. Theft will be unseated. It is destiny. It is the process. Nothing can stop it.
Margaret
But it can be retarded.
Knox
You and I are no more than straws in relation to it. We cannot stop it any more than straws can stop an ocean tide. We mean nothing—except to each other, and to each other we mean all the world.
Margaret
(Sadly and tenderly.) All the world and immortality thrown in.
Chalmers
(Breaking in.) ”

“ You have him here in your own house—Tom's house—when he's such a bitter enemy of Tom's. (During the foregoing speech, Anthony Starkweather makes entrance from rear. His face is grave, and he is in a brown study, as if pondering weighty problems. At sight of the two women he pauses and surveys them. They are unaware of his presence.)
Margaret
You are wrong, Connie. He is nobody's enemy. He is the truest, cleanest, most right-seeking man I have ever seen. ”

“ In the last few years seventy billions of dollars have been artificially added to the capitalization of the nation's industries. By that I mean water--pure, unadulterated water. You, the merger, know what water means. I say seventy billions. It doesn't matter if we call it forty billions or eighty billions; the amount, whatever it is, is a huge one. And what does seventy billions of water mean? It means, at five per cent, that three billions and a half must be paid for things this year, and every year, more than things are really worth. The people who labor have to pay this. ”

“ A cold, controlled man whose one passion is for power. Distinctively a man of power. An eagle-like man, who, by keenness of brain and force of character, has carved out a fortune of hundreds of millions. In short, an industrial and financial magnate of the first water and of the finest type to be found in the United States. Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered a sea change and developed into the morality of the master-man of affairs, equally rigid, equally uncompromising, but essentially Jesuitical in that he believes in doing wrong that right may come of it. ”

“ Hubbard
Knox never did this.
Starkweather
Did Martinaw say whom Miss Standish was acting for?
Dobleman
Gherst.
(The alarm on the three men's faces is patent.)
Starkweather
Gherst!
(Pauses to think.)
Hubbard
Then it is not so grave after all. A yellow journal sensation is the best Gherst can make of it. And, documents or not, the very medium by which it is made public discredits it.
Starkweather
Trust Gherst for more ability than that. He will certainly exploit them in his newspapers, but not until after Knox has used them in his speech. Oh, the cunning dog! ”