Part 12 (1/2)
”It's like this,” said he. ”We'll say a gang of men aren't satisfied with the pay or the hours they are getting. They asked for more money or for shorter hours; or for both. If the demand is refused, they stop working. They won't go back to their jobs till they get the cash and the hours they want. That is known as 'going on strike.' When a number of concerns are involved in it, it's sometimes called 'a general strike.'
This paper says a general strike is threatened. That means--”
”I apperceive it, howadji!” exclaimed Najib. ”I am onward to it, now. I might have known the printed page cannot lie. But, oh, my heart berends itself when I think of the sad fate of those poor folk who do the stroking! Of an a.s.suredly, Allah hath deprived them of wisdom!
”Not necessarily,” argued Kirby, wondering at his henchman's outburst of sympathy for union labourers so many thousand miles away. ”They may win, you know; or, at least, get a compromise. And their unions will support them while they are out of work. Of course, they may lose. And then--”
”But when they make refusal to do their work,” urged Najib, ”will not the soldiers of the pasha cut them to ribbons with the kourbash and drive them back to their toil? Or if the pasha of that pashalik is a brutesome man, will not he cast those poor fellaheen into the prison and beseize their goods? And I answer, howadji, he will. Wherefore my eyes are tearing, for the men who have so unlucklessly--”
”Hold on!” exhorted Kirby; albeit despairing of opening the mind of a man whose forebears for thousands of years had lived in a land where the _corvee_--forced labour--was a hallowed inst.i.tution; and where the money of employers could always enlist the aid of government soldiery to keep the fellaheen at their tasks. ”Hold on! That sort of thing is dead and done with. Even in the East. Chinese Gordon stamped out the last of it, in Egypt, years ago. If a man doesn't want to work, he can't be forced to. All his boss can do is to fire him and try to get some one in his place. When a whole factory of men strike--especially if there are any big contract orders to fill in a rush--the employers sometimes find it cheaper to give them what they want than to call in untrained strikebreakers. On the other hand, sometimes, the boss can bring the men to terms. It all depends.”
Yielding to the human joy of imparting instruction to so interested a listener, Kirby launched forth into an elaboration of his theme; trying to expound something of the capital-and-labour situation to his follower; and secretly wondering at the keen zest wherewith his words were listened to.
Seldom was Kirby so successful in making Najib follow so long an oration. And he was pleased with his own new-found powers of explaining Occidental customs to an Oriental mind.
Now, Logan Kirby knew the tangled Syrian character and its myriad queer slants, as well as it can be given to a white man to know it. Kirby's father had been a missionary, at Nablous. He himself had been born there, and had spent his boyhood at the mission. That was why--after he had completed his engineering course at Columbia's school of mines and had served an apprentices.h.i.+p in Colorado and Arizona--the Cabell Smelting Company of New York had sent him out to the Land of Moab, as manager of its new-acquired little antimony mine.
The mine--a mere prospect shaft--was worked by about thirty fellaheen--native labourers--supervised by a native guard of twelve Turkish soldiers. Small as was the plant, it was a rich property and it was piling up dividends for the Cabells. Antimony, in the East, is used in a score of ways--from its employment in the form of kohl, for the darkening of women's eyes, to the chemical by-products, always in demand by Syrian apothecaries.
This was the only antimony mine between Aden and Germany. Its s.h.i.+pments were in constant demand. Its revenues were a big item on the credit side of the Cabell ledger.
Kirby's personal factotum, as well as superintendent of the mine, was this squat little Syrian, Najib, who had once spent two blissfully useless years with an All Nations Show, at Coney Island; and who there had picked up a language which he proudly believed to be English; and which he spoke exclusively when talking with the manager.
Kirby's rare knowledge of the East had enabled the mine to escape ruin a score of times where a manager less conversant with Oriental ways must have blundered into some fatal error in the handling of his men or in dealing with the local authorities.
Remember, please, that in the East it is the seemingly insignificant things which bring disaster to the feringhee, or foreigner. For example, many an American or European has met unavenged death because he did not realize that he was heaping vile affront upon his Bedouin host by eating with his left hand. Many a foreign manager of labour has lost instant and complete control over his fellaheen by deigning to wash his own s.h.i.+rt in the near-by river or for brus.h.i.+ng the dirt from his own clothes. Thereby he has proved himself a labourer, instead of a master of men. Many a foreigner has been shot or stabbed for speaking to a native whom he thought afflicted with a fit and who was really engaged in prayer. Many more have lost life or authority by laughing at the wrong time or by glancing--with entire absence of interest, perhaps--at some pa.s.sing woman.
Yes, Kirby had been invaluable to his employers by virtue of his inborn knowledge of Syrian ways. Yet, now, he was not enough of an Oriental to understand why his lecture on the strike system should thrill his listener.
He did not pause to realize that the idea of strikes was one which carries a true appeal to the Eastern imagination. It has all the elements of revenge, of coercion, and of trapping, of wily give-and-take, and of simple and logical gambling uncertainty, which characterize the most popular of the Arabian Nights yarns and which have made those tales remain as Syrian cla.s.sics for more than ten centuries.
”It is of an a.s.suredly a pleasing and n.o.ble plan,” applauded Najib when Kirby finished the divers ramifications of his discourse. ”And I do not mis...o...b.. but what that cruel general betrembled himself inside of his boots when they threatened to strike. If the stroking ones may not be lawfully attackled by the pashalik troops, indeed must the general--”
”I told you there wasn't any general!” interrupted Kirby, jarred that his luminous explanations had still left Najib more or less where it found him, so far as any lucid idea was concerned. ”And I've wasted enough time trying to ding the notion of the thing into your thick head.
If you've got those s.h.i.+pment items catalogued, go back to the shaft and check off the inventory. The first load ought to be on the way to the coast before sunrise to-morrow. Chase!”
As he picked up the duplicate sets of the list and ran over their items once more, Kirby tried to forget his own silly annoyance at his failure to make the dull little Syrian comprehend a custom that had never reached the Land of Moab.
Presently, in his absorption in his work, the American forgot the whole incident. It was the beginning of a rush period at the mine--the busiest month in its history was just setting in. The Alexandretta-bound s.h.i.+pment of the morrow was but the first of twelve big s.h.i.+pments scheduled for the next twenty-nine days.
The restoration of peace and the shutting out of several Central European rivals had thrown an unprecedented sheaf of rush orders on the Cabell mine. It was such a chance as Kirby had longed for; a chance to show his rivals' customers the quality of the Cabell product and the speed and efficiency wherewith orders could and would be filled by him.
If he could but fill these new customers' orders in quicker and more satisfactory fas.h.i.+on than the firms were accustomed to receiving, it might well mean that the new buyers would stick to the Cabells, after the other mines should again be in operation.
It was a big chance, as Kirby had explained at some length to Najib, during the past few weeks. At his behest, the little superintendent had used every known method to get extra work and extra speed out of the fellaheen; and, by judicious baksheesh, had even impressed to the toil several members of the haughty, Turkish guard and certain folk from the nearest hill village.
As a result, the first s.h.i.+pment was ready for the muleteers to carry coastward a full week ahead of schedule time. And the contract chanced to be one for which the eager wholesalers at Alexandretta had agreed to pay a bonus for early arrival. The men were even now busy getting a second s.h.i.+pment in shape for transportation by mule train to Tiberias and thence by railway to Damascus.
The work was progressing finely. Kirby thrilled at the thought. And he was just a little ashamed of his own recent impatience at Najib, when he remembered how the superintendent was pus.h.i.+ng the relays of consignments along. After all, he mused, it was no reflection on Najib's intelligence that the poor little chap could not grasp the whole involved Occidental strike system in one hasty lecture; and that his simple mind clung to the delusion that there was some fierce general involved in it. In the Arabian Nights was there not always a scheming sultan or a baffled wazir, in every clash with the folk of the land? Was it unnatural that Najib should have subst.i.tuted for these the mythical general of whom he thought he had seen mention in the news headline?
But, soon after dusk, Kirby had reason to know that his words had not all fallen on barren soil. At close of the working day, Najib had brought the manager the usual diurnal report from the mine. Now, after supper, Kirby, glancing over the report again, found a gap of terse yet complete reports. And occasionally Kirby was obliged to summon his henchman to correct or amend the day's tally sheet.
Wherefore, the list in his hand, the American strolled down from his own knoll-top tent toward Najib's quarters. As Najib was superintendent, and thus technically an official, Kirby could make such domiciliary visits without loss of prestige, instead of summoning the Syrian to his presence by handclap of by messenger, as would have been necessary in dealing with any of the other employees.
Najib's hut lay a hundred yards beyond the hollow where the fellaheen and soldiers were encamped. For Najib, too, had a dignity to uphold. He might no more lodge or break bread with his underlings than might Kirby with him. Yet, at times, preparatory to pattering up the knoll for his wonted evening chat with the American at the latter's campfire, Najib would so far unbend as to pause at the fellaheen's camp for a native discussion of many gestures and much loud talking.