Part 33 (2/2)

How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose of having it all out with Joe and learning what he was about. Persisting in my friendliness my questions slowly drew him out.

Since I had seen him five years ago he had continued his writing, but as he had grown steadily more set on writing only what he called ”the truth about things,” the newspapers had closed their doors. While I had gone up he had gone down, until finally throwing up in disgust ”this whole fool game of putting words on paper,” he had made up his mind to throw in his life with the lives of the men at the bottom. So for two years he had shoveled coal in the stokeholes of s.h.i.+ps by day and by night, he had mixed with stokers of every race, from English, French and Germans to Russians and Italians, Spaniards, Hindus, Coolies, Greeks. He had worked and eaten and slept in their holes, he had ranged the slums of all the seas. And of all this he spoke in short, commonplace phrases, still in that indifferent tone, as though personal stories were a bore.

”But look here, Joe,” I asked at the end, ”what's the good of living like this? What the devil can you do?”

I still remember the look he gave me, the weary remoteness of it. But all he said was,

”Organize strikes.”

”Here?”

”Everywhere.”

”Of stokers?”

”No, of all industries.”

”For higher pay, eh, and shorter hours.”

Another brief look.

”No, for revolution,” he said.

Briefly, in reply to my questions, he explained how he and his friends had already induced some twelve thousand stokers and dockers to leave their old trade unions and enroll themselves as members of this new international body, which was to embrace not only one trade but all the labor connected with s.h.i.+ps--s.h.i.+ps of all nations. He was here doing the advance work. As soon as the ground was made ready, he said, some of the bigger leaders would come. Then there would be ma.s.s meetings here and presently a general strike. And as the years went on there would be similar strikes in all trades and in all countries, until at some time not many years off there would be such labor rebellions as would paralyze the industrial world. And out of this catastrophe the workers would emerge into power to build up a strange new world of their own.

This was what Joe saw ahead. He seemed to be seeing it while he spoke, with a hard, clear intensity that struck me rather cold. Here was no mere parlor talk, here was a man who lived what he said.

”You comfortable people,” he said, ”are so d.a.m.n comfortable you're blind. You see nothing ahead but peace on earth and a nice smooth evolution--with a lot of steady little reforms. You've got so you honestly can't believe there's any violence left in the world. You're as blind as most folks were five years before the Civil War. But what's the use talking?” he ended. ”You can't understand all this.” Again my irritation rose.

”No, I can't say I do,” I replied. ”To stir up millions of men of that kind and then let 'em loose upon the world strikes me as absolutely mad!”

”I knew it would.”

”Look here, Joe, how are _you_ so sure about all this? Hasn't it ever struck you that you're getting d.a.m.nably narrow?” He smiled.

”I don't care much if I'm narrow,” he said.

”You think it's good for you, being like this?”

”I don't care if it's good for me.”

”Don't you want to see anything else?”

”Not in your successful world.”

”Well, J. K., I'm sorry,” I retorted hotly. ”Because I'd like to see your world, I honestly would! I'm not like you, I'm always ready to be shown!”

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