Part 34 (2/2)
The other note ran: ”Father says to tell you to tone it down. I have delivered his message. I say here is your chance to get the truth where it is most needed, and even if for the most part it falls on stony ground--you still must sow it.--L. N. VD.”
Sunday evening saw a large congregation in the pews of the Rev. John Dexter's church. In the front and middle portion of the church were the dwellers on the Hill, those whose lines fell in pleasant places. They were the ”Haves” of the town,--conspicuous and highly respectable with rustle of silks and flutter of ribbons.
And back of these sat a score of men and women from South Harvey, the ”Have-nots,” the dwellers in the dreary valley. There was Denny Hogan, late of the mines, but now of the smelter--with his curly hair plastered over his forehead, and with his wife, she that was Violet Mauling holding a two-year-old baby with sweaty, curly red hair to her breast asleep; there was Ira Dooley, also late of the mines, but now proprietor of a little game of chance over the Hot Dog Saloon; there was Pat McCann, a pit boss and proud of it, with Mrs. McCann--looking her eyes out at Mrs. Nesbit's hat. There was John Jones, in his Sunday best, and Evan Hughes and Tom Williams, the wiry little Welsh miners who had faced death with Grant Adams five years before. They were with him that night at the church with all the pride in him that they could have if he were one of the real n.o.bility, instead of a labor agitator with a little more than local reputation. And there were d.i.c.k and his boy Mugs and the silent Mrs. Bowman and Bennie her youngest and Mary the next to the youngest. And Mrs. Bowman in the South Harvey colony was a person of consequence, for she nodded to the Nesbits and the Mortons and to Laura and to Mrs. Calvin and to all the old settlers of Harvey--rather conspicuously. She had the gratification of noting that South Harvey saw the n.o.bility nod back. With the South Harvey people came Amos Adams in his rough gray clothes and rough gray beard. Jasper Adams, in the highest possible collar, and in the gayest possible sh.e.l.l-pink necktie and under the extremest clothes that it might be possible for the superintendent of a Sunday School to wear, shared a hymnal, when the congregation rose to sing, with the youngest Miss Morton. There were those who thought the singing was merely a duet between young Mr. Adams and the youngest Miss Morton--so much feeling did they put into the music. Mr. Brotherton was so impressed, that he marked young Adams for a tryout at the next funeral where there was a ba.s.s voice needed, making the mental reservation that no one needed to look at the pimples of a boy who could sing like that.
When the congregation sat down after the first hymn John Dexter formally presented Grant Adams to the congregation. The young man rose, walked to the chancel rail and stood for a moment facing his audience without speaking. The congregation saw a tall, strong featured, uncouth man with large nose and a big mouth--clearly masculine and not finely chiselled.
In these features there was something almost coa.r.s.e and earthy; but in the man's eyes and forehead, there lurked the haunting, fleeting shadow of the eternal feminine in his soul. His eyes were deep and blue and tender, and in repose always seemed about to smile, while his forehead, high and broad, topped by a shock of red hair, gave him a kind of intellectual charity that made his whole countenance s.h.i.+ne with kindness. Yet his clothes belied the promise of his brow. They were ill-fitting, with an air of Sunday-bestness that gave him an incongruous scarecrow effect. It was easy to see why Market Street was beginning to call him that ”Mad Adams.” As he lifted his glance from the floor, his eyes met Laura Van Dorn's, then flitted away quickly, and the smile she should have had for her own, he gave to his audience. He began speaking with his arms behind him to hide the crippled arm which was tipped with a gloved iron claw. His voice was low and gentle, yet his hearers felt its strength in reserve.
”I suppose,” he began slowly, ”every man has his job in the world, and I presume my job seems rather an unnecessary one to some of my friends, and I can hardly blame them. For the a.s.sumption of superiority that it may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the wors.h.i.+p of things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden--that of leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion.
Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist.” He was speaking softly and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper tone.
”I have come to you--to those of you who lead sheltered lives of comfort, amid work and scenes you love, to tell you of your neighbors; to call to you in their name, and in the name of our common G.o.d for help. I have come from the poor--to tell you of their sorrows, to beg of you to come over into Macedonia and help us; for without you we are helpless. True--G.o.d knows how true--the poor outnumber you by ten to one. True, they have the power within them to rise, but their strength is as water in their hands. They need you. They need your neighborly love.”
As he spoke something within him, some power of his voice or of his presence played across the congregation like a wind. The wind which at first touched a few who bent forward to hear him, was moving every one.
Faces gradually set in attention. He went on:
”How wonderful is this spirit of life that has come rolling in through the eons, rolling in from some vast illimitable sea of life that we call G.o.d. For ages and ages on this planet life could only give to new life the power to feed and propagate, could only pa.s.s on to new life the heritage of instinct; then another impulse of the outer sea washed in and there came a day when life could imitate, could learn a little, could pa.s.s on to new life some slight power of growth. And then came welling in from the unknown bourne another wave, and lo! life could reason, and G.o.d heard men whisper, Father, and deep called unto deep.
Since then through the long centuries, through the gray ages, life slowly has been rising, slowly coming in from the hidden sea that laves the world. Millions and millions of men are doomed to know nothing of this life that gives us joy; millions are held bound in a social inheritance that keeps them struggling for food, over outworn paths, mere creatures of primal instinct, whose G.o.dhood is taken from them at birth; by you--by you who get what you do not earn from those who earn what they do not get.”
He turned to the group near the rear of the room, looked at them and continued:
”The poor need your neighborly sacrifice, and in that neighborly love and sacrifice you will grow in stature more than they. What you give you will keep; what you lose you will gain. The brotherhood you build up will bless and comfort you.
”The poor,” he exclaimed pa.s.sionately, ”need you, but how, before G.o.d you need them! For only a loving understanding of your neighbors' lives will soften your calloused hearts. Long benumbing hours of grimy work, sordid homes amid daily and hourly scenes of filth and shame!” He leaned forward and cried: ”Listen to me, Ahab Wright,” and he thrust forward his iron claw toward the merchant while the congregation gasped, ”what if you had to strip naked and bathe in a one-roomed hut before your family every night when you came home, dirty and coal-stained from your day's work! the beggar and the harlot and the thief nearby.” He moved his accusing claw and the startled eyes of the crowd followed it as it pointed to Daniel Sands and Grant exclaimed: ”Listen, Uncle Dan Sands, how would you like to have your daughter see the things the children see who live in your tenements next to the Burned District, which is your property also! Poisoned food, cheap, poisoned air, cheap, poisoned thoughts--all food and air and ideas, the cast-off refuse of your daily lives who live in these sheltered homes. You have a splendid sewer system up here; but it flows into South Harvey and the Valley towns, a great open ravine, because you people sitting here who own the property down there won't tax yourselves to enclose those sewers that poison us!”
A faint--rather dazed smile ran over the congregation like a wraith of smoke. He felt that the smoke proved that he had struck fire. He went on: ”Love, great aspiring love of fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, love stifled by fell circ.u.mstance, by cruel events, and love that winces in agony at seeing children and father and brother go down in the muck all around them--that is the heritage of poverty.
”Hear me, Kyle Perry and John Kollander. I know you think poverty is the social punishment of the unfit. But I tell you poverty is not the punishment of the weak. Poverty is a social condition to which millions are doomed and from which only hundreds escape when the doom of birth is sealed. What has Ahab Wright given to Harvey more than James McPherson, who discovered coal here? What has Daniel Sands done for Harvey more than Tom Williams, who has spent his life at hard work mining coal? Is not his coal as valuable as Uncle Daniel's interest? Friends--think of these things!”
The wraith of smoke that had appeared when Grant first began speaking personally to the men of Harvey, in a minute had grown to a surer evidence of fire. The smiling ceased. Angry looks began flas.h.i.+ng over the faces before Grant, like darts of flame. And after these looks came a great black cloud of wrath that was as perceptible as a gust of smoke.
He felt that soon the fire would burst forth. But he hurried on with his message: ”Poverty is not the social punishment of the weak, I repeat it.
Poverty is a social inheritance of the many, a condition which holds men hard and fast--a condition that you may change, you who have so much.
All this coal and oil and mineral have profited you greatly, oh, men of Harvey. You are rich, Daniel Sands. You are prosperous, Ahab Wright. You have every comfort around you and yours, John Kollander, and you, Joseph Calvin, are rearing your children in luxury compared with d.i.c.k Bowman's children. Hasn't he worked as hard as you? Here are Ira Dooley and Denny Hogan. They started as equals with you up here and have worked as hard and have lived average lives. Yet if their share is a fair share of the earnings of this community, you have an unfair share. How did you get it?” He leaned out over the chancel rail, pointed a bony, accusing finger at the congregation and glared at the eyes before him angrily.
Quickly he recovered his poise but brought his steel claw down on the pulpit beside him with a sharp clash as he cried again, ”How did you get it?”
Then it was that the flame of indignation burst forth. It came first in a hiss and another and a third--then a crackling fire of hisses greeted his last sentence. When the hissing calmed, his voice rose slightly. He went on:
”We of the middle cla.s.ses--we have risen above the great ma.s.s below us: we are permitted to learn--a little--to imitate and expand somewhat. But above us, thank G.o.d, is another group in the social organization. Here at the top stand the blessed, privileged few who are the world's prophets and dreamers and seers--they know G.o.d; they drink deep of the rising tide of everlasting life that is booming in, flooding the world with mercy and love and brotherhood; and what they see in one century--and die for disclosing--we all see in the next century and fight to hold it fast!” He stood looking at the floor, then opened wide his glaring eyes, a fanatic's mania blazing in them, lifted his arms and cried with a great voice like a trumpet: ”You--you--you who have known G.o.d's mercy and his goodness and his love--why, in the dead Christ's name do you sit here and let the flood of life be dammed away from your brothers, stealing the waters of life like thieves from your brethren by your cruel laws and customs and the chains of social circ.u.mstance!”
They tried to hiss again but he hurried on as one possessed of a demon: ”A little love, a little sacrifice, a little practical brotherly care from each of you each day would help. We don't want your alms, we want justice. Thousands of babies--loved just as yours are loved--are slaughtered every month through poisoned food that comes from commercial greed. Thousands of fathers and brothers over this land are killed every year because it is cheaper to kill them than to protect them by machinery guarded and watched. Their blood is upon you--for by your laws, by your middle cla.s.s courts you could stop its flowing. Thousands of mothers die every week from poor housing--you could stop that if you would. They are stopping it by laws in other lands. Millions of girls the world over are led like sheep to shameful lives because of industrial conditions that your vote and voice could change; and yet,”
his voice lost its accusing tone and he spoke gently, even tenderly, ”as babies they cuddled in their mothers' arms and roused all the hope and inspired all the love that a soft little body may bring. Millions and millions of mothers who clasp their children to them in hope, must see those children go into life to be broken and crushed by the weight from above.”
As Grant was speaking he noticed that Morty Sands was nodding his head off in gorgeous approval. Then without thinking how his words might cut, he cried, ”And look at our good friend Morty Sands who enjoys every luxury and is arrayed as the lilies of the field! What does Morty give to society that he can promise the girl who marries him, comfort and ease and all the happiness that physical affluence may bring? And then there sits Mugs Bowman. What can Mugs offer his girl except a life of hard, grinding work, a houseful of children and a death perhaps of slow disease? Yet Mugs must have his houseful of children for they must all work to support Morty. Where is the justice in a society organized like this?
”For Christ's living sake,” cried the man as his face glowed in his emotion, ”let life wash in from its holy source to these our brothers.
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