Part 1 (2/2)
”But didn't the munitions traffic boom the machine-tool industry?” I asked.
”Sure it did. You ought to have seen what people will do to get a lathe.
You know about all that you need to make sh.e.l.ls is a machine lathe. You can't get a lathe in America for love or money--for anything”--he made a swift, complete gesture--”all making sh.e.l.ls. There isn't a junk factory in America that hasn't been pawed over by guys looking for lathes--and my G.o.d! what prices! Knew a bird named Taylor who used to make water pipes in Utica, New York--had a stinking little lathe he paid two hundred dollars for, and sold it last year for two thousand. My firm had so many orders for months ahead that it didn't pay them to have salesmen--so they offered us jobs inside; but, G.o.d, I can't stand indoor work, so I thought I'd come over here and get into the war. I used to be in the State Cavalry. You ought to have seen how sore all those Iowa Germans were on me for going,” he laughed. ”Had a h.e.l.l of row with a guy named Schultz.”
Limping slightly, an enormous, grizzled man approached us and sat down by the side of the ex-machinist. Possibly a yellow-gray suit, cut in the bathrobe American style, made him look larger than he was, and though heavily built and stout, there was something about him which suggested ill health. One might have thought him a prosperous American business man on his way to Baden-Baden. He had a big nose, big mouth, a hard eye, and big, freckled hands which he nervously opened and closed.
”See that feller over there?” He pointed to a spectacled individual who seemed lost in melancholy speculation at the rail--”Says he's a Belgian lieutenant. Been over here trying to get cloth. Says he can't get it, the firms over here haven't got the colors. Just think of it, there isn't a pound of Bernheim's blue in the whole country!”
”I thought we were beginning to make dyes of our own,” said the Iowan.
”Oh, yes, but we haven't got the hang of it yet. The product is pretty poor. Most of the people who need dyes are afraid to use the American colors, but they've got to take what they can get. Friend of mine, Lon Seeger, of Seeger, Seeger & Hall, the carpet people in Hackensack, had twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of mats spoiled on him last week by using home dyes.”
The Belgian lieutenant, still standing by the rail, was talking with another pa.s.senger, and some fragments of the conversation drifted to our ears. I caught the words--”My sister--quite unexpected--barely escaped--no doubt of it--I myself saw near Malines--perfectly dreadful--tout-a-fait terrible.”
”Twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of mats all spoiled, colors ran, didn't set, no good. This war is raising the devil with the United States textiles. Maybe the Germans won't get a glad hand when they come back. We hear that they're going to flood the market with good, low-priced dyes so as to bust up the new American plants. Haven't you heard them hollerin' for tariff protection? I'm going over to look up a new green dye the French are getting out. We hear it's pretty good stuff. What are you boys doing, looking for contracts?”
The Iowan replied that he hoped to get into an English cavalry regiment, and I mentioned the corps I had joined.
”Well, don't get killed,” exclaimed the dye-stuffs agent paternally, and settled down in his chair for a nap.
It was the third day out; the ocean was still the salty green color of the American waters, and big, oily, unrippled waves were rising and falling under the August sun. From the rail I saw coming toward us over the edge of the earth, a small tramp steamer marked with two white blotches which, as the vessel neared, resolved themselves into painted reproductions of the Swedish flag. Thus pa.s.sed the Thorvald, carrying a mark of the war across the lonely seas.
”That's a Swedish boat,” said a voice at my elbow.
”Yes,” I replied.
A boy about eighteen or nineteen, with a fine, clear complexion, a downy face, yellow hair, and blue eyes, was standing beside me. There was something psychologically wrong with his face; it had that look in it which makes you want to see if you still have your purse.
”We see that flag pretty often out in Minnesota,” he continued.
”What's your name?” I asked.
”Oscar Petersen,” he answered.
”Going over to enlist?” I hazarded.
”You bet,” he replied--and an instant later--”Are you?”
I told him of my intention. Possibly because we were in for the same kind of experience he later became communicative. He had run away from home at the age of fourteen, spent his sixteenth year in a reform school, and the rest of his time as a kind of gangster in Chicago. I can't imagine a more useless existence than the one he revealed. At length he ”got sick of the crowd and got the bug to go to war,” as he expressed it, and wrote to his people to tell them he was starting, but received no answer. ”My father was a Bible cuss,” he remarked cheerfully,--”never got over my swiping the minister's watch.”
A Chicago paper had printed his picture and a ”story” about his going to enlist in the Foreign Legion--”popular young man very well known in the--th ward,” said the article. He showed me, too, an extraordinary letter he had received via the newspaper, a letter written in pencil on the cheapest, shabbiest sheet of ruled note-paper, and enclosing five dollars. ”I hope you will try to avenge the Lusitania,” it said among other things. The letter was signed by a woman.
”Do you speak French?” I asked.
”Not a word,” he replied. ”I want to be put with the Americans or the Swedes. I speak good Swedish.”
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