The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  From the very first, Franz had begun to look about among his fellow workers for one or two who could advance his purpose. He had been discouraged. Some of the men had come originally from the small farming communities around Nazareth. Many had been imported from the enormous mills in other towns in Pennsylvania, enticed by a promise of higher wages. But the majority had been brought by the shipload from Middle Europe and the Slav countries. There were Prussians and Bavarians, Serbs, Poles, Hungarians, Magyars, Austrians and Bulgars. Franz, looking at them quickly, knew them for what they were. Only Jan Kozak attracted him. When he had been assigned to Jan’s moulding “gang,” he knew that this man could be his teacher. Jan was arrogant in his new power, and he had an abiding hatred for Germans, and a passionate aversion. But very shortly, he was pleased by Franz’s deference, docility, and eagerness to learn and work. He began to teach the young man all he knew, letting him accompany him about the mill during the noon period, explaining everything in his halting dialect, going to unusual lengths and heights in behalf of this appreciative novice. Jan, ignorant and illiterate, nevertheless had a vague but gigantic realization of the coming power of steel, and its majesty. He had found only loneliness and dissatisfaction in the brooding stolidity of his other men. With Franz’s advent had come contentment, justification.

  Jan had a brother, Boze, and a sister-in-law and a swarm of little nephews and nieces in Nazareth. Boze was part of his “gang,” a dull heavy peasant with the body and neck of a wrestler. He had none of his brother’s intelligence. Jan had brought him and his family to America, but had only contempt for him. He did not hear the Thor-like symphony which Jan heard in the mills.

  Jan had a lonely secret, and it was not long before he mysteriously hinted of it to Franz. But he no more than hinted. Moreover, he was not certain of it, and he waited with all the patient, ox-like waiting of a peasant.

  One night he led Franz back into the mill, with many mysterious noddings, long after the men had gone. He pointed to the heap of ruined moulds in a corner of the mill.

  “See ’em?” he muttered. “Gone. Lost. Lots of money lost. The moulds done that. It gets worse. I’ve got a new way. Any old fool would make good moulds, no mistakes, with the way I got. Make twice—three times—many more moulds, in one hour than does now. See? And cheap, too, twice cheap.”

  Franz had nodded thoughtfully. He displayed interest, but not too much, for Jan had begun to watch him with his tiny cunning eyes. Later, without speaking of the moulds again, he injected raw flattery into his sincere appreciation of Jan Kozak. He waited upon him, served him, added a flare of conscious hypocrisy to his respect. And the simple peasant became more and more delighted with him. It was partly on his recommendation that Franz was made a foreman.

  Even after that, on the scent of the secret, Franz maintained the highest intimacy with Kozak. The three men, Tom Harrow, Franz and Kozak, ate their noon meal together. After hours of work, Franz intensely enjoyed Harrow. Moreover, the intimacy of the meal increased the friendliness between himself and Jan Kozak. Franz’s instinct for life, the realist’s instinct, impelled him to retain these two, the one to refresh him, the other to benefit him more solidly. He was one of those men, whose number is larger than is generally suspected, who build their lives on the lives of others, and who, at the last, gain the fame of having accomplished their success single-handed. Always, he was able to use others. Never, at any time, was he original. He well knew his lack of originality, and was completely aware that only by utilizing others, making use of their brains and their work, could he attain a personal power.

  He told himself, coldly, that he hated waste. Without men like himself in the world, the marvelous inventions of many men would never come to light. It took more than originality and genius to gain the world’s ear and the world’s adulation. It needed men like himself, to exploit the originality and genius.

  Had he been less of a realist than he was, he might have deluded himself that his capacities were as great as any other man’s. In the end, he would have been defeated by his limitations, and would have spent the rest of his life in bitter envy, and would have concluded that some mysterious combination of men and fate had crushed him, and not his own lack. In such futility, he thought, are nourished the seeds of great revolutions. Only in revolutions can mediocre men temporarily attain the heights which their own nature had denied them.

  Not hoping, therefore, for any revolution which might, in its roiling, swirl him upward for an evanescent moment, he set about methodically to gain what he wished by making use of greater wits than his own. At one time he had considered organizing a labor union in the mills. He had considered this long and coolly. Then he had discarded it. Perhaps, after long and dangerous and exhausting work, he might raise himself to power on this high step. But the time was not yet ripe for strong labor unions, and he disliked hardship, danger and strife as being too time-wasting. He knew that the day of labor unions, strong and powerful, was approaching. But he could not wait for that day.

  Knowing that his instincts were predatory only, he calmly set himself to utilizing them, discarding anything immediately that did not feed them.

  “I have the true German personality,” he said once, to his mother. “I have the ability of utilizing the inventions and the brains of others, without possessing those qualities. That, in itself, is genius.” When Emmi had angrily pointed out what she considered original genius in many Germans, he had merely laughed and ruthlessly torn away this gossamer of illusion. Wagner? A half-Jew, by all accounts. Beethoven, partly Belgian. And many others.

  The highest attainment of nature, he said, was the combining in one man the genius for utilization, and originality. As for himself, if he had the choice of one of these, he would choose the genius for utilization. In that, as in other things, he demonstrated his powerful life-instinct.

  When the noon whistle blew, he would wipe his hands on pieces of waste, pick up his dinner pail, and make his way through the shouting and hurrying men to a certain far corner of the mill, where there was comparative quiet. Here, on a pile of discarded and broken moulds, Tom Harrow and Jan Kozak would be waiting for him. He would climb up beside them, grinning, his sweat- and dirt-begrimed face cheerful under his light yellow hair, his blue eyes incongruous in the stained dark flesh. Tom always greeted him with a slap on the back, and an obscene remark. But Jan’s heavy peasant face lighted with simple affection.

  This noon was the same as usual. Franz made his way through the throngs of released men, under the immense cavernous roof of the mill. Sheets of red lightning glimmered into the semi-darkness from the open hearths. Voices and hammer-blows echoed in the noon-day lull. Cranesmen sat in their cages, sang, yelled, and ate. The dusk floated with soot and particles of ore. It was a pit under the earth where demons worked, and now, momentarily rested. The floor gritted under Franz’s boots. As he walked, groups of men sullenly stepped away from his path, for he was generally hated by all except his two friends. He saw Slav faces, German faces, Hungarian, Polish, Negro and American faces. But he saw no friendliness. Race was swallowed up in animosity. However, this did not concern him.

  He reached the pile of moulds, where Tom and Jan were already devouring their meal. Tom shouted, upon sighting him: “Well, here’s the Dutch bastard at last! Found a girl in the washroom, Franz?” But Jan smiled with shy broadness, and made a place for his friend.

  They usually exchanged portions of their lunch. Jan had some excellent sausage today, Franz had some Bismarck herring, and Tom’s wife had given him three apple tarts mixed with raisins. They ate voraciously for several minutes, without speaking. Their half-naked bodies were glistening with sweat, mixed with grime. From their high perch they could look down at the teeming floor of the mill. There was no light in the mill except that sullen scarlet flare from the hearths.

  Tom Harrow, like many Englishmen, was short, stocky and broad. He was in his early thirties. He was also very dark, almost Gaelic in complexion, with a long horse-
like face ending in a sharp projecting chin, which gave him a Punch-and-Judy look, further enhanced by a long curving hook of a nose which, when he smiled, appeared to touch his short upper lip. Sometimes Franz called him, “that English Jew,” but Tom was pure Cockney, born within sound of the Bow Bells. His eyes, very close together on each side of his high-bridged Hebraic nose, were tiny, sharp, black, and eternally restless, always glinting with sardonic humor and shrewdness. These, combined with the chin, the thick mass of black curling hair surging upwards from a narrow brow, the nose, and a wide crooked mouth always grinning or twisting, increased his Punch-and-Judy look to a remarkable degree. Unlike most Englishmen, he was not stolid. He crackled with energy, strength and vitality. Though hardly literate, he was nevertheless extremely intelligent and clever, and though his conversation was liberally profane and dirty, it was also pungent and original. He had three children, all little girls, of whom he was extremely fond, a fact which he could not conceal for all his frank remarks about them. “I picked the wrong sow,” he would say, an observation which seemed to be disrespectful to a little Englishwoman who was all cleanliness and bustle, but was really his way of expressing his pride in her.

  “Hell,” he would say, “I’m an Englishman, and all that. But I’m a chap as always thinks other chaps’ve got a right to live, too.” He would turn to Franz and poke him painfully in the ribs. “That’s where me and you is different, bo.”

  “A man must earn the right to live,” Franz would amiably answer, in his slow, careful, correct English.

  “How’re they goin’ to do that, with such chaps as you on their backs?” Tom would ask, without rancor. He liked Franz very much, and disagreed with him always. But during disagreements, he could always laugh. But Franz could not laugh at those times. A curious blank look would come over his face, and an implacable stare would enter his eyes.

  When they had finished their meal today, Tom said to Franz: “Well, ’Andsome ’Arry, anythin’ new?”

  “No. Except that I had orders to lay off three more men. What about you, Tom?”

  A quiet sullenness darkened Tom’s already dark features, but this strangely did not detract from his Puckish look.

  “Three, too. Hell, it’s enough to make a chap puke.” He leaned his elbows on his knees, rested his chin in his hands, and somberly regarded the mill. “Wot’re we goin’ to do? Whole blasted place will be closin’ down next, what with the rotten moulds, and the orders bein’ cancelled.”

  Jan, licking from his fingers the last residue of the tarts, smiled secretly. “Maybe things not so bad. Maybe I got an idea to make better moulds.” His smile became shy and sly, yet apologetic.

  Franz said nothing, but Tom turned quickly. “Eh? Wot’s that? Better moulds?” His tiny bright eyes narrowed as he studied the Hungarian’s broad peasant countenance. “Blimey, I bet you have! So that’s wot you’ve been doin’ after hours!” He paused, bit his lip, and his expression became shrewder than ever. He glanced quickly at Franz, who was apparently unconcerned and indifferent. “Well, now, Jan, you just keep it to yourself. Make money on it, yourself. Thieves around, y’know.”

  “I watch thieves,” replied Jan placidly. “I no tell anyone, yet.”

  “I’ve told him to hold his tongue, myself,” remarked Franz.

  Tom’s narrow long face twisted together shrewdly. “Aye, I bet you have!” Despite his affection, he had no illusions about Franz Stoessel, and his quick wits were already at work. He put his hand on Jan’s broad brown shoulders.

  “Don’t trust a bloody soul, Jan. Not me, not ’Andsome ’Arry here. Nobody. Hold your blasted tongue. Then maybe me and Franz and the rest of us chaps’ll be workin’ for you some day, instead of that stinkin’ Dutchman, Schmidt.” He scratched his nose reflectively, his eye on Franz. “Rather’d work for you, Jan, even if you’re a Hunky. You’re a man, not a swine, and that’s somethin’.”

  Franz smiled, and said nothing.

  “I trust nobody,” insisted Jan, shyly, beaming upon the Englishman.

  Tom waved his hand largely. “When you got it all settled in your mind, Jan, get a lawyer chap.”

  He immediately returned to his morose contemplation of the mill. “They’ve sacked a third of the men already,” he said. “There ought to be some way—There is.” He regarded Franz directly. “Provided we can get all the men and the foremen together. Still objectin’, Franz?”

  Franz shrugged. “I’ve told you, Tom: I don’t approve of unions, and strikes. What do you expect to get when Schmidt isn’t making any profits? You can’t get blood out of a turnip, to quote your own expression.”

  Tom surveyed him with slow, irate humor. “There you are, again! I’ve told you a hundred times. If we got a union, we get dues, and we keep the men when they ain’t workin’, or when they get hurt. That’s one side of it. That’s what I was talkin’ about, now. Look what Schmidt does: when things get better, he hires men again. But does he hire the old chaps? No, not if he can get cheaper labor. It don’t matter if a man’s worked for him for ten years. He gets rushed with orders, and down go wages, so he can pile up more swag. We got no protection. That’s why I say, why don’t you join us?”

  “Look here, Tom, I’ve told you a dozen times. I don’t want any trouble. I have my own plans. Do I get laid off very often? No. Nor do you, nor Jan. We’re competent. The others aren’t competent. They’re cattle. They must suffer the troubles of cattle. Unions are only exploitations of employers, because they take no account of competence or ability. Unions abrogate the right of employers to hire the best, or the cheapest, and run their organizations they way they wish to run them. That is a fundamental liberty of everyone. You ought to be the last to argue against it, you, with your shoutings for personal liberty all the time!”

  “Ain’t the men got any liberty, or rights?” demanded Tom.

  Franz raised his eyebrows. “I told you before, a man must earn them, not have them given to him,” he answered, with exaggerated weariness.

  But Tom was angry. “Who gave any one man the right to say what other men’ve got the right to live?” he shouted. “Did God Almighty say to some chaps: ‘Here, you, you be the judge. You tell Me wot chaps can live, and wot chaps must starve to death. You’re brighter than I am.”

  “Well, if you’re goin’ to bring theology into this—” smiled Franz.

  “Wot?” Tom was puzzled. “Wot’s theology?”

  “What you are saying. Never mind. It isn’t important. But a countryman of yours, Darwin, speaks very highly of the struggle for existence, and the law of the survival of the fittest.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Tom promptly. “Bet he’s got a bloody mill like this. But it comes down to this: every man’s the same as any other. He’s got a heart and a brain, and he feels the same things—”

  Franz lifted a hand, and over the subdued muttering of the idling mills, he chanted; paraphrasing a little:

  “Hath not a man eyes? Hath not a man hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as others are? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

  “Wot’s that bloody poetry?” demanded Tom with suspicion, while Jan stared, uncomprehendingly.

  Franz laughed. “Just Shakespeare. Did you ever hear of him? He’s also a countryman of yours, Tom.”

  “Oh, him,” said Tom, with an air of erudition. “Wot’s a Dutchman like you got to do with that chap? He’s ours, not yours. Besides, where’d you learn poetry, anyway?”

  “I told you, Tom: I went to school for four years, in England, before we come to America. And my father was a schoolmaster. And I’d like to tell you this: a ten-year-old German boy knows more about Shakespeare than your graduates of your damned public schools. Germans, even the poorest, have a high regard f
or scholarship. You English haven’t.”

  “Wot’s all that got to do with unions?” said Tom, annoyed.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  There was a little silence. Franz was unconcerned, but Tom glowered at his profile, feeling in some mysterious way that he was at a loss.

  “You’re a rum one,” he said, in a surly voice. “Foreman in Schmidt’s piddlin’ mill, and quotin’ poetry. I’ll never understand you foreigners.”

  “But you’ve just said that all men are alike,” laughed Franz.

  “You grant the equality of men, but you shout about your being an Englishman! You’re inconsistent, Tom. Now, I don’t grant the equality of men, but I’m not concerned with race at all. There’s no such thing. You say you are an Englishman, but you’re a mixture of Swede, Norwegian, ancient Briton, French and even Dutch, not to mention your largest racial origin, which is Angle and Saxon, Teutonic races—”

  “Don’t call me a damn Dutchman!” said Tom irate.

  Franz laughed again. But his eyes did not laugh. He stood up. The whistle was blowing again. He looked down at the glowering Tom with an air of good humor.

  “But seriously, Tom, I want to warn you. It won’t be long until the big men hear about your union activities, and your going about among the men trying to get them to join your miserable little union.”

  “They won’t hear about it, yet, if someone doesn’t tell them,” said Tom, with a hard upward look at his friend. His eyes were sharp black balls in their glistening whites. He was not amused, now. His expression was grim and murderous.

  “Just hold your tongue, and don’t talk so much,” said Franz, amiably. He hesitated. Jan had only caught a portion of this extraordinary conversation, but Franz did not trust what he had caught. He dared not leave him with the aroused Englishman. “Come on, Jan, your men are already at the furnaces.”