Part 39 (2/2)

Thursday--Friday--Sat.u.r.day. Apparently all was tranquil; apparently the people accepted the Wall Street theory that I was an ”exploded sensation.”

”The Seven” began to preen themselves; the strain upon them to maintain prices, if no less than for three months past, was not notably greater; the crisis would pa.s.s, I and my exposures would be forgotten, the routine of reaping the harvests and leaving only the gleanings for the sowers would soon be placidly resumed.

Sunday. Roebuck, taken ill as he was pa.s.sing the basket in the church of which he was the s.h.i.+ning light, died at midnight--a beautiful, peaceful death, they say, with his daughter reading the Bible aloud, and his lips moving in prayer. Some hold that, had he lived, the tranquillity would have continued; but this is the view of those who can not realize that the tide of affairs is no more controlled by the ”great men” than is the river led down to the sea by its surface flotsam, by which we measure the speed and direction of its current. Under that terrific tension, which to the shallow seemed a calm, something had to give way. If the dam had not yielded where Roebuck stood guard, it must have yielded somewhere else, or might have gone all in one grand crash.

Monday. You know the story of the artist and his Statue of Grief--how he molded the features a hundred times, always failing, always getting an anti-climax, until at last in despair he gave up the impossible and finished the statue with a veil over the face. I have tried again and again to a.s.semble words that would give some not too inadequate impression of that tremendous week in which, with a succession of explosions, each like the crack of doom, the financial structure that housed eighty millions of people burst, collapsed, was engulfed. I can not. I must leave it to your memory or your imagination.

For years the financial leaders, crazed by the excess of power which the people had in ignorance and over-confidence and slovenly good-nature permitted them to acquire, had been tearing out the honest foundations on which alone so vast a structure can hope to rest solid and secure. They had been subst.i.tuting rotten beams painted to look like stone and iron.

The crash had to come; the sooner, the better--when a thing is wrong, each day's delay compounds the cost of righting it. So, with all the horrors of ”Wild Week” in mind, all its physical and mental suffering, all its ruin and rioting and bloodshed, I still can insist that I am justly proud of my share in bringing it about. The blame and the shame are wholly upon those who made ”Wild Week” necessary and inevitable.

In catastrophes, the cry is ”Each for himself!” But in a cataclysm, the obvious wise selfishness is generosity, and the cry is, ”Stand together, for, singly, we perish.” This was a cataclysm. No one could save himself, except the few who, taking my often-urged advice and following my example, had entered the ark of ready money. Farmer and artisan and professional man and laborer owed merchant; merchant owed banker; banker owed depositor. No one could pay because no one could get what was due him or could realize upon his property. The endless chain of credit that binds together the whole of modern society had snapped in a thousand places. It must be repaired, instantly and securely. But how--and by whom?

I issued a clear statement of the situation; I showed in minute detail how the people standing together under the leaders.h.i.+p of the honest men of property could easily force the big bandits to consent to an honest, just, rock-founded, iron-built reconstruction. My statement appeared in all the morning papers throughout the land. Turn back to it; read it. You will say that I was right. Well--

Toward two o'clock Inspector Crawford came into my private office, escorted by Joe. I saw in Joe's seamed, green-gray face that some new danger had arisen. ”You've got to get out of this,” said he. ”The mob in front of our place fills the three streets. It's made up of crowds turned away from the suspended banks.”

I remembered the sullen faces and the hisses as I entered the office that morning earlier than usual. My windows were closed to keep out the street noises; but now that my mind was up from the work in which I had been absorbed, I could hear the sounds of many voices, even through the thick plate gla.s.s.

”We've got two hundred policemen here,” said the inspector. ”Five hundred more are on the way. But--really, Mr. Blacklock, unless we can get you away, there'll be serious trouble. Those d.a.m.n newspapers! Every one of them denounced you this morning, and the people are in a fury against you.”

I went toward the door.

”Hold on, Matt!” cried Joe, springing at me and seizing me, ”Where are you going?”

”To tell them what I think of them,” replied I, sweeping him aside. For my blood was up, and I was enraged against the poor cowardly fools.

”For G.o.d's sake don't show yourself!” he begged. ”If you don't care for your own life, think of the rest of us. We've fixed a route through buildings and under streets up to Broadway. Your electric is waiting for you there.”

”It won't do,” I said. ”I'll face 'em--it's the only way.”

I went to the window, and was about to throw up one of the sunblinds for a look at them; Crawford stopped me. ”They'll stone the building and then storm it,” said he. ”You must go at once, by the route we've arranged.”

”Even if you tell them I'm gone, they won't believe it,” replied I.

”We can look out for that,” said Joe, eager to save me, and caring nothing about consequences to himself. But I had unsettled the inspector.

”Send for my electric to come down here,” said I. ”I'll go out alone and get in it and drive away.”

”That'll never do!” cried Joe.

But the inspector said: ”You're right, Mr. Blacklock. It's a bare chance.

You may take 'em by surprise. Again, some fellow may yell and throw a stone and--” He did not need to finish.

Joe looked wildly at me. ”You mustn't do it, Matt!” he exclaimed. ”You'll precipitate a riot, Crawford, if you permit this.”

But the inspector was telephoning for my electric. Then he went into the adjoining room, where he commanded a view of the entrance. Silence between Joe and me until he returned.

”The electric is coming down the street,” said he.

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