Part 43 (1/2)
”Oh, Weedie's working Amabel and telling the mill hands they're great fellows and very much abused and ought to own the earth. Weedie wants their votes.”
”Then Weedie is up for office? Amabel told me so, but I didn't think Addington'd stand for it. Time was when, if a man like Weedie had put up his head, n.o.body'd have taken the trouble to bash it. We should have laughed.”
”We don't laugh now,” said Choate gravely. There was even warning in his voice. ”Not since Weedie and his like have told the working cla.s.s it owns the earth.”
”And doesn't it?”
”Yes. In numbers. It can vote itself right into destruction--which is what it's doing.”
”And Weedie wants to be mayor.”
”G.o.d knows what he wants. Mayor, and then governor and--I wouldn't undertake to say where Weedie'd be willing to stop. Not short of an amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p.”
”Choate,” said Jeffrey cheerfully, ”you're an alarmist.”
”Oh, no, I'm not. A man like Weedie can get anywhere, because he's no scruples and he can rake in mere numbers to back him. And it's all right. This is a democracy. If the majority of the people want a demagogue to rule over them, they've a perfect right to go to the devil their own way.”
”But where's he get his infernal influence? Weedie Moore!”
”He gets it by telling every man what the man wants to hear. He gets hold of the ignorant alien, and tells him he is a king in his own right.
He tells him Weedie'll get him shorter and shorter hours, and make him a present of the machinery he runs--or let him break it--and the poor devil believes him. Weedie has told him that's the kind of a country this is. And n.o.body else is taking the trouble to tell him anything else.”
”Well, for G.o.d's sake, why don't they?”
”Because we're riddled with compa.s.sion, I tell you. If we see a man poorer than we are, we get so apologetic we send him bouquets--our women do.”
”Is that what the women here are doing?”
”Oh, yes. If there's a strike over at Long Meadow they put on their furs and go over and call on a few operatives and find eight living in one room, in a happy thrift, and they come back and hold an indignation meeting and 'protest'.”
”You're not precisely a sentimentalist, are you?” said Jeff. He was seeing Choate in the new Addington as Choate presented it.
”No, by George! I want to see things clarified and the good old-fas.h.i.+oned virtues come back into their place--justice and common-sense. Compa.s.sion is something to die for. But you can't build states out of it alone. It makes me sick--sick, when I see men getting dry-rot.”
Jeff's face was a map of dark emotion. His mind went back over the past years. He had not been made soft by the nemesis that laid him by the heels. He had been terribly hardened in some ways, so calloused that it sometimes seemed to him he had not the actual nerve surface for feeling anything. The lambent glow of beauty might fall upon him unheeded; even its lightnings might not penetrate his sh.e.l.l. But that had been better than the dry-rot of an escape from righteous punishment.
”You know, Choate,” said he, ”I believe the first thing for a man to learn is that he can't dodge penalties.”
”I believe you. Though if he dodges, he doesn't get off. That's the other penalty, rot inside the rind. All the palliatives in the world--the lying securities and false peace--all of them together aren't worth the muscle of one man going out to bang another man for just cause. And getting banged!”
Jeff was looking at him quizzically.
”Where do you live,” said he, ”in the new Addington or the old one?”
Choate answered rather wearily, as if he had asked himself that question and found the answer disheartening.
”Don't know. Guess I'm a non-resident everywhere. I curse about Addington by the hour--the new Addington. But it's come, and come to stay.”
”You going to let Moore administer it?”