by Frank Norris
“It was the long stroking caress — vigorous, male, powerful — for which the Earth seemed panting; the heroic embrace of a multitude of iron hands gripping deep into the warm brown flesh of the hand that quivered responsive and passionate under this rude advance, so robust as to be almost an assault, so violent as to be veritably brutal. There under the sun and under the speckless sheen of the sky, the wooing of the Titan began, the two world-forces, the elemental Male and Female, locked in a colossal embrace, at grapples in the throes of an infinite desire, at once terrible and divine, knowing no law, untamed, savage, natural, sublime.”
In the meantime the ranchers hear that the land they have leased from the railroad is to be revalued and graded higher, after they have borrowed to the limit to harvest their crops, anticipating a bonanza year. They decide to fight fire with fire, and to use money to secure the nomination and election of two of the three members of the state railroad commission that fixes the valuation. One of the two members that they feel they can count on is Lyman Derrick the eldest son of Magnus, a corporation lawyer in San Francisco. Magnus who is a statesman, a politician of the old school, holds out against bribery till word conies to him and his friends that the railroad intends to raise the new valuation, at which the land can be bought in, to something like ten times the original one.
This happens at a dance given as a house-warming for Annixter’s new barn, and after a Homeric combat between Annixter and Delaney, a discharged cowboy, who rides into the middle of the dancing floor to shoot the place up.
Delaney is disabled by a shot in the wrist and put to rout. Trouble between him and Annixter has arisen over Hilma Tree, a girl employed by Annixter in his dairy. Annixter, a confirmed bachelor and woman-hater, finally decides to marry her after she and her family have run away from him.
“Abruptly there was presented to his mind’s eye a picture of the years to come. . . . He saw Hilma his own, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, all barriers down between them, he giving himself to her as freely, as nobly, as she had given herself to him. By a supreme effort, not of the will but of the emotion, he fought his way across the vast gulf that had for a time gaped between Hilma and the idea of his marriage ... in that moment into his harsh, unlovely world a new idea was born . . . Out of the dark furrows of his soul, up from the deep, rugged recesses of his being, something rose, expanding ... all the great vivifying eternal face of humanity, had burst into life within him.
“By now it was almost day. The east glowed opalescent . . . Overnight something had occurred ... as the light spread he looked again at the gigantic scroll of the ranch lands unrolled before him from edge to edge of the horizon. The change was not fanciful; the change was real. The earth was no longer bare, the land was no longer barren — no longer empty, no longer dull brown. All at once Annixter shouted aloud.
“There it was — the Wheat, the Wheat ... It was there before him everywhere — illimitable, immeasurable . . . Once more the force of the world was revived. Once more the Titan, benignant, calm, stirred and woke, and the morning abruptly blazed into glory upon the spectacle of a man whose heart leaped exuberant with the love of a woman, and an exulting earth gleaming transcendent with the radiant magnificence of an inviolable pledge.”
The same pledge is foreshadowed and finally fulfilled in the experience of Vanamee, whose first love died sixteen years before in giving birth to the child of another man, and in Padre Sarcia’s quotation from Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, where he says: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. ... It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
In sharp contrast to the mysticism of Vanamee, the man of the deserts, and his all-night vigils at the cemetery of the old Mission, close to the flower ranch where the girl that he loved had lived, we have the portrait of Lyman Derrick at his office in a San Francisco skyscraper, at the moment that the commission’s official railroad map of California for the current year arrives.
“The whole map was gridironed by a vast, complicated net-work of red lines ... a veritable system of blood circulation, complicated, dividing, and reuniting . . . laying hold of some forgotten village or town, involving it in one of a myriad branching coils, one of a hundred tentacles . . .
“The map was white, and it seemed as if all the color which should have gone to vivify the various counties, towns, and cities marked upon it had been absorbed by that huge, sprawling organism, with its ruddy arteries converging to a central point. It was as though the State had been sucked white and colorless; and against this pallid background the red arteries of the monster stood out swollen with life blood, reaching out to infinity, gorged to bursting, — an excrescence, a gigantic parasite fattening upon the life blood of an entire commonwealth.”
We get a specific instance in this in the story of Dyke. Dyke is an engineer. He quits the railroad, because they lower his salary at the time of a general cut in wages. He puts all his savings into hop growing. S. Behrman lends him money on mortgage. The freight rate on hops is low at the time, two cents a pound in car load lots. After his crop is contracted for, it goes up to five cents. Dyke sees himself ruined.
“And this was but one instance, an isolated case. Because he was near at hand, he happened to see it. How many others were there the length and breadth of the State? Constantly this sort of thing must occur — little industries choked out in their very beginnings, the air full of the death rattles of little enterprises, expiring unobserved in far off counties, up in canons and arroyos of the foot hills, forgotten by everyone but the monster who was daunted by the magnitude of no business, however great; who overlooked no opportunity of plunder however petty, who with one tentacle grabbed a hundred thousand acres of wheat, and with another pilfered a pocketful of growing hops.”
Dyke demands of S. Behrman why his rate was increased, what the rule is if there is any. He is told that the railroad charges consistently all the traffic will stand. He goes away and begins to drink. Later he holds up a train in which Annixter and his wife are making their bridal journey home from the city; and his subsequent pursuit and capture serve to bring the story along thrillingly one step nearer to the final catastrophe.
The ranchers form a league of six hundred members to resist the railroad’s attempts to drive them from the land that they have leased and improved. Magnus Derrick goes to San Francisco. He talks with one of the largest manufacturers there who has himself no cause to love the railroad. Cederquist suggests that the ranchers’ trouble is not unique.
“Every State has its own grievance. If it is not a railroad trust, it is a sugar trust, or an oil trust, or an industrial trust, that exploits the People because the People allow it. The indifference of the People is the opportunity of the despot. . . . The People have but to say ‘No,’ and not the strongest tyranny, political, religious, or financial that was ever organized could survive one week.”
This takes place at one of the leading clubs in San Francisco on Ladies’ day. A picture by a popular society artist is to be raffled off, and a Million Dollar Fair is to be subscribed for.
“It was the Fake, the eternal irrepressible Sham, glib, nimble, ubiquitous, tricked out in all the paraphernalia of imposture . . . marshaled by ‘lady presidents,’ exploited by clubs of women, by literary societies, reading circles and culture organizations. The attention the Fake received, the time devoted to it, the money which it absorbed was incredible. It was all one that impostor after impostor was exposed, it was all one that the clubs, or circles, the societies were proved beyond doubt to have been swindled . . . the women rallied to the defense of their protege of the hour. That their favorite was prosecuted was to them a veritable rapture. Promptly they invested the apostle of culture with the glamour of a martyr.”
There is talk of a famine in India, and of raising funds to send a relief ship to the sufferers. Cederquist has his own plans for exporting California wheat to the Far East. He believes that the time for an American commercial
invasion of the Orient is at hand. None the less, he has his doubts of its success; doubts which events during the last ten years have abundantly justified. He sums up the situation in seven words as he leaves the club: “Not a city, Presley, not a city, but a Midway Plaisance.” Therein San Francisco may be to some extent exceptional among other American towns. At the same time, it is to some extent typical.
In the meantime Vanamec finds Angele, the daughter of the Angele that had died. He sees the Wheat, too, as Annixter had seen it on the morning of its birth. He recognizes definitely, as Annixter failed to do, the spiritual truth of the life that is sown in corruption and is raised in incorruption, that is sown in weakness and is raised in power. Angele was not the symbol but the proof of immortality.
Presley goes back to the ranch and Annixter formulates his new creed for his friend.
“Pres,” he exclaimed, “she’s made a man of me; I was a machine before, and if another man or woman or child got in my way, I rode ’em down, and I never dreamed of anybody else but myself. But as soon as I woke up to the fact that I really loved her, why it was glory hallelujah all in a minute, and, in a way, I kind of loved everybody then, and wanted to be everybody’s friend. And I began to see that a fellow can’t live himself, any more than he can live by himself. He’s got to think of others. If he’s got brains, he’s got to think of the poor devils that haven’t them ... if he’s got money, he’s got to help those that are busted, and if he’s got a house, he’s got to think of those that ain’t got anywhere to go.
“I’ve got a whole lot of ideas since I began to love Hilma, and just as soon as I can I’m going to get in and help people, and I’m going to keep to that idea the rest of my natural life. That ain’t much of a religion, but it’s the best that I’ve got, and Henry Ward Beecher couldn’t do any more than that. ...”
“Beside this blundering struggle to do right, to help his fellows, Presley’s own vague schemes of glittering systems of reconstruction, collapsed to ruin, and he himself, with all his refinement, with all his poetry, culture and education, stood a bungler at the world’s work-bench.”
Annixter has already given a home to Dyke’s mother and his little daughter. Dyke is given a life sentence in the penitentiary, and in the meantime the wheat grows ripe for the harvest.
The people gather for a jack-rabbit drive. The description of this and of the barbecue that follows, like that of the dance and fight in Annixter’s bam, is an epic in brief.
Word comes to Magnus Derrick and his friends, while they are still at the barbecue, that the railroad has stolen a march on them, that S. Behrman, the United States Marshal from San Francisco, Delaney and the rest, have already taken possession of Annixter’s house and are now on their way to Los Muertos.
Magnus and his party can only muster eleven men. They line an irrigation ditch on the road to the ranch house and take up the bridge over the road. They are met by as many men on the railroad’s side. Magnus goes forward unarmed to parley, part of his side leave cover to support him, the first shot is fired by accident, after that the guns seem to go off by themselves. When the smoke clears, Harran Derrick, Annixter and three other ranchers are dead and another dying, besides Delaney and one more of the railroad men. Active hostilities cease then and there. The dead are carried back to Annixter’s, and the country roused. The United States marshal goes back to San Francisco and an indignation meeting of the whole Ranchers’ League gathers in the opera house of the nearest town.
Here Presley, who has become an Anarchist for the time being, speaks in the midst of a profound stillness.
“They own us, these taskmasters of ours, they own our homes, they own our legislatures. We cannot escape from them; there is no redress. We are told that we can defeat them by the ballot-box. They own the ballot-box. We are told that we must look to the courts for redress. They own the courts. We know them for what they are — ruffians in politics, ruffians in finance, ruffians in law, ruffians in trade, bribers, swindlers and tricksters. No outrage too great to daunt them, no petty larceny too small to shame them; despoiling a government treasury of a million dollars, yet picking the pockets of a farmhand of the price of a loaf of bread.
“They swindle a nation of a hundred million and call it Financiering; they levy a blackmail and call it Commerce; they corrupt a legislature and call it Politics; they bribe a judge and call it Law; they hire blacklegs to carry out their plans and call it Organization; they prostitute the honor of a State and call it Competition.
“And this is America!”
He closes with an appeal to the Red Terror. A prolonged explosion of applause follows. Presley quits the opera house weak and nerveless.
Magnus Derrick rises to speak. Men in the gallery accuse him of bribery. He attempts to answer them.
Suddenly the house is literally snowed under by copies of the local paper whose editor has blackmailed Derrick and then sold him out, containing a full account of the work of the League’s corruption fund, which has been up to this time secretly administered so far as the vast majority of the League members is concerned. Derrick quits the stage in the confusion. Some of his remaining friends follow him and urge him to give the lie to his accusers. The house is shouting for him. In the soubrette’s dressing-room, in air heavy with the smell of sachet powder and stale grease paint, he is forced to confess that he cannot.
That night Presley throws a bomb into S. Behrman’s house. The house is wrecked, but the man is uninjured. Presley escapes undetected and goes back to San Francisco.
The widow of one of the dispossessed ranchers and her two daughters also come there. They have neither friends nor money. The mother dies in the street of hunger and exhaustion the night of a dinner party at which Presley is told that his poem, The Toilers, has started the movement to send the relief ship to the famine sufferers in India. Before this he has met and recognized the widow’s elder daughter, who has already become a prostitute.
Presley manages to interview Shelgrim, the president of the railroad, in the latter’s office.
“Believe this, young man,” exclaimed Shelgrim ...” try to believe this — to begin with — that Railroads build themselves. Where there is a demand, sooner or later there will be a supply. Mr. Derrick, does he grow his wheat? Wheat grows itself. What does he count for! Does he supply the force? What do I count for? Do I build the railroad? You are dealing with forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the Railroads, not with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to feed the people. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force, the Railroad another, and there is the law that governs them — supply and demand. Men have little to do in the whole business. Complications may arise, conditions that bear hard on the individual — crush him, may be — but the Wheat will be carried to feed the people as inevitably as it will grow. If you want to fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one person, you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men.”
Presley interposes an objection. Shelgrim cuts him short: “Control the road! Can I stop it? I can go into bankruptcy, if you like. But otherwise, if I run my road as a business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not control it. It is a force born out of certain conditions, and I — no man — can stop it or control it. Can your Mr. Derrick stop the Wheat growing? He can burn his crop or he can give it away, or sell it for a cent a bushel — just as I could go into bankruptcy — but otherwise his Wheat must grow. Can any one stop the Wheat? Well then, no more can I stop the Road.”
Presley is not a specialist in railroad economics. He goes away dazed and overpowered; unable to discriminate between the essential truth of this statement in the main and its fallacy in detail.
He takes passage on the ship Swanhilda, which Cederquist is sending to India loaded with wheat. He goes back to Los Muertos to say good-by to the Derricks, Hilma Annixter and Vanamee. He finds Magnus Derrick broken and half imbecile, packing up and about to leave. S. Behrman comes to take possession of the ranch house before he leave
s. In Presley’s presence he offers Derrick a job as a clerk at fifty dollars a month in the local freight manager’s office. He warns Magnus that he will have to turn “Railroad,” that he will have to take orders from him. Magnus accepts and Presley goes away.
S. Behrman gets the contract for filling the Swanhilda with wheat. He goes to the ship to see how the work is progressing. He stands over the hatch by the chute that connects with the elevator. He trips over a rope and falls inside. No one notices him or hears his cries. He is buried in the wheat. This episode, his dance of death, that covers four pages, is too long to be quoted complete. Partial quotation cannot do it justice. As one reads it, it seems as inevitable as the rest of the book, as Mrs. Hooven’s progress with her baby through poverty and the streets of San Francisco to death.
“Ah, that via dolorosa of the destitute, that chemin de croix of the homeless! Ah, that mile after mile of granite pavement that must be traversed. Walk they must. Move they must; onward, forward, whither they cannot tell, why they do not know. . . . Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of paths crossed and recrossed and crossed again. There is but one goal to the via dolorosa; there is no escape from the central chamber of that labyrinth. Fate guides the feet of them that are set therein. Double on their steps though they may, weave in and out of the myriad corners of the city’s streets, return, go forward, back, from side to side, here, there, anywhere, dodge, twist, wind, the central chamber where Death sits is reached inexorably at the end.”