CHAPTER 5
Lies need only age to make them respectable. Given that, they become traditions and are put upon a pedestal. Then the gentlest word for him who attacks them is traitor.--From the Note Book of a Dreamer.
THE REBEL FOLLOWS THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BIG BUSINESS AND FINDS THAT THEPILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE NOT IN POLITICS FOR THEIR HEALTH
Part 1
"Hmp! Want to be a reporter, do you?"
Warren, city editor on the Advocate, leaned back in his chair and lookedJeff over sharply.
"Yes."
"It's a hell of a life. Better keep out."
"I'd like to try it."
"Any experience?"
"Only correspondence. I've had two years at college."
The city editor snorted. He had the unreasoning contempt for college menso often found in the old-time newspaper hack.
"Then you don't want to be a reporter. You want to be a journalist," hejeered.
"They kicked me out," Jeff went on quietly.
"Sounds better. Why?"
Jeff hesitated. "I got drunk."
"Can't use you," Warren cut in hastily.
"I've quit--sworn off."
The city editor was back on the job, his eyes devouring copy. "Heardthat before. Nothing to it," he grunted.
"Give me a trial. I'll show you."
"Don't want a man that drinks. Office crowded with 'em already."
Jeff held his ground. For five minutes the attention of Warren wasfocused on his work.
Suddenly he snapped out, "Well?"
He met Farnum's ingratiating smile. "You haven't told me yet what tostart doing."
"I told you I didn't want you."
"But you do. I'm on the wagon."
"For how long?" jeered the city editor.
"For good."
Warren sized him up again. He saw a cleareyed young fellow withouta superfluous ounce of flesh on him, not rugged but with a look ofstrength in the slender figure and the thin face. This young man somehowinspired confidence.
"Sent in that Colby story to us, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Rotten story. Not half played up. Report to Jenkins at the City Hall."
"Now?"
"Now. Think I meant next year?"
The city editor was already lost in the reading of more copy.
Inside of half an hour Jeff was at work on his first assignment. Somederelict had committed suicide under the very shadow of the City Hall.Upon the body was a note scrawled on the bask of a dirty envelope.
Sick and out of work. Notify Henry Simmons, 237 River Street, SanFrancisco.
Jenkins, his hands in his pockets, looked at the body indifferently andturned the story over to the cub with a nod of his head.
"Go to it. Half a stick," he said.
From another reporter Jeff learned how much half a stick is. He wrotethe account. When he had read it Jenkins glanced sharply at him. Thoughonly the barest facts were told there was a sob in the story.
"That ain't just how we handle vag suicides, but we'll let 'er go thistime," he commented.
It did not take Jeff long to learn how to cover a story to thesatisfaction of the city editor. He had only to be conventional,sensational, and in general accurate as to his facts. He fraternizedwith his fellow reporters at the City Hall, shared stories with them,listened to the cheerful lies they told of their exploits, and lent themmoney they generally forgot to return. They were a happy-go-lucky lot,full of careless generosities and Bohemian tendencies. Often a week'ssalary went at a single poker sitting. Most of them drank a good deal.
After a few months' experience Jeff discovered that while the gatheringof news tends to sharpen the wits it makes also for the superficial.Alertness, cleverness, persistence, a nose for news, and a surfaceaccuracy were the chief qualities demanded of him by the office. Hehad only to look around him to see that the profession was full ofkeen-eyed, nimble-witted old-young men who had never attempted tosynthesize the life they were supposed to be recording and interpreting.While at work they were always in a hurry, for to-day's news isdead to-morrow. They wrote on the run, without time for thought orreflection. Knowing beyond their years, the fruit of their wisdom wascynicism. Their knowledge withered for lack of roots.
The tendency of the city desk and of copy readers is to reduce allreporters to a dead level, but in spite of this Jeff managed to gethimself into his work. He brought to many stories a freshness, a pointof view, an optimism that began to be noticed. From the police run Jeffdrifted to other departments. He covered hotels, the court house, thestate house and general assignments.
At the end of a couple of years he was promoted to a desk position.This did not suit him, and he went back to the more active work of thestreet. In time he became known as a star man. From dramatics he wentto politics, special stories and feature work. The big assignments weregiven him.
It was his duty to meet famous people and interview them. The chance toget behind the scenes at the real inside story was given him. Becauseof this many reputations were pricked like bubbles so far as he wasconcerned. The mask of greatness was like the false faces childrenwear to conceal their own. In the one or two really big men he met Jeffdiscovered a humility and simplicity that came from self-forgetfulness.They were too busy with their vision of truth to pose for the publicadmiration.
Part 2
It was while Jeff was doing the City Hall run that there came to him onenight at his rooms a man he had known in the old days when he hadlived in the river bottom district. If he was surprised to see him thereporter did not show it.
"Hello, Burke! Come in. Glad to see you."
Farnum took the hat of his guest and relieved his awkwardness by guidinghim to a chair and helping him get his pipe alight.
"How's everything? Little Mike must be growing into a big boy thesedays. Let's see. It's three years since I've seen him."
A momentary flicker lit the gloomy eyes of the Irishman. "He's a greatboy, Mike is. He often speaks of you, Mr. Farnum.
"Glad to know it. And Mrs. Burke?"
"Fine."
"That leaves only Patrick Burke. I suppose he hasn't fallen off thewater wagon yet."
The occupation of Burke had been a threadbare joke between them in theold days. He drove a street sprinkler for the city.
"That's what he has. McGuire threw the hooks into me this morning.I've drove me last day."
"What's the matter?"
"I'm too damned honest.... or too big a coward. Take your choice."
"All right. I've taken it," smiled the reporter.
Pat brought his big fist down on the table so forcefully that the booksshook. "I'll not go to the penitentiary for an-ny man.... He wanted meto let him put two other teams on the rolls in my name. I wouldn't standfor it. That was six weeks ago. To-day he lets me out."
Jeff began to see dimly the trail of the serpent graft. He lit his pipebefore he spoke.
"Don't quite get the idea, Pat. Why wouldn't you?"
"Because I'm on the level. I'll have no wan tellin' little Mike hisfather is a dirty thief....It's this way. The rolls were to be padded,understand."
"I see. You were to draw pay for three teams when you've got only one."
"McGuire was to draw it, all but a few dollars a month." The Irishmanleaned forward, his eyes blazing. "And because I wouldn't stand for itI'm fired for neglecting my duty. I missed a street yesterday. If he'dbeen frientlly to me I might have missed forty.... But he can't throwme down like that. I've got the goods to show he's a dirty grafter.Right now he's drawing pay for seven teams that don't exist."
"And he doesn't know you know it?"
"You bet he don't. I've guessed it for a month. To-day I went round andmade sure."
Jeff asked questions, learned all that Burke had to tell him. In thedays that followed he ran down the whole story of the graft so secretlythat not even the city editor knew what he was about. Then he had a talkwith the "old man" and wrote his story.
It was a red-hot exposure of one of the most flagrant of the City Hallgang. There was no question of the proof. He had it in black and white.Moreover, there was always the chance that in the row which must followMcGuire might peach on Big Tim himself, the boss of all the littlebosses.
Within twenty-four hours Jeff was summoned to a conference at which werepresent the city editor and Warren, now managing editor.
"We've killed your story, Farnum," announced the latter as soon as thedoor was closed.
"Why? I can prove every word of it."
"That was what we were afraid of."
"It's a peach of a story. With the spring elections coming on we needsome dynamite to blow up Big Tim. I tell you McGuire would tell all heknows to save his own skin."
"My opinion, too," agreed Warren dryly. "My boy, it's too big a story.That's the whole trouble. If we were sure it would stop at McGuire we'drun it. But it won't. The corporations are backing Big Tim to win thisspring. It won't do to get him tied up in a graft scandal."
"But the _Advocate_ has been out after his scalp for years."
"Well, we're not after it any more. Of course, we're against him on thesurface still."
Jeff did some rapid thinking. "Then the program will be for us tonominate a weak ticket and elect Big Tim's by default. Is that it?"
"That's about it. The big fellows have to make sure of a Mayor who willbe all right about the Gas and Electric franchise. So we're going tohave four more years of Big Tim."
"Will Brownell stand for it?"
Brownell was the principal owner of the _Advocate._
"Will he?" Warren let his eyelash rest for a second upon the cheeknearest Jeff. "He's been seen. My orders come direct from the old man."
The story was suppressed. No more was heard about the McGuire graftscandal exposure. It had run counter to the projects of big business.
Burke had to be satisfied without his revenge.
He got a job with a brewery and charged the McGuire matter to profit andloss.
As for Jeff the incident only served to make clearer what he alreadyknew. More and more he began to understand the forces that dominate ourcities, the alliance between large vested interests and the powers thatprey. These great corporations were seekers of special privileges.To secure this they financed the machines and permitted vice andcorruption. He saw that ultimately most of the shame for the badgovernment of American cities rests upon the Fromes and the Merrills.
As for the newspapers, he was learning that between the people andan independent press stand the big advertisers. These make forconservatism, for an unfair point of view, for a slant in both newsrecording and news interpretation. Yet he saw that the press is in spiteof this a power for good. The evil that it does is local and temporary,the good general and permanent.
Part 3
The spirit of commercialism that dominated America during the ninetiesand the first years of the new century never got hold of Jeff. The airand the light of his land were often the creation of a poet's dream. Thedelight of life stabbed him, so, too, did its tragedy. Not anchored toconventions, his mind was forever asking questions, seeking answers.
He would come out from a theater into a night that was a flood ofillumination. Electric signs poured a glare of light over the streets.Motor cars and electrics whirled up to take away beautifully gownedwomen and correctly dressed men. The windows of the department storeswere filled with imported luxuries. And he would sometimes wonder howmuch of misery and trouble was being driven back by that gay blare ofwealth, how many men and women and children were giving their livesto maintain a civilization that existed by trampling over their brokenhearts and bodies.
Preventable poverty stared at him from all sides. He saw that oursocial fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion, withoutscientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such a way thatnon-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do without. Yet outof this system that sows hate and discontent, that is a practical denialof brotherhood, of God, springs here and there love like a flower in adunghill.
He felt that art and learning, as well as beauty and truth, ought towalk hand in hand with our daily lives. But this is impossible so longas disorder and cruelty and disease are in the world unnecessarily. Heheard good people, busy with effects instead of causes, talk aboutthe way out, as if there could be any way out which did not offer anequality of opportunity refused by the whole cruel system of to-day.
But Jeff could be in revolt without losing his temper. The men whoprofited by present conditions were not monsters. They were as kindof heart as he was, effects of the system just as much as the littlebootblack on the corner. No possible good could come of a blind hatredof individuals.
His Bohemian instinct sent Jeff ranging far in those days. He madefriends out of the most unlikely material. Some of the most radical ofthese were in the habit of gathering informally in his rooms about oncea week. Sometimes the talk was good and pungent. Much of it was merelywild.
His college friend, Sam Miller, now assistant city librarian, was oneof this little circle. Another was Oscar Marchant, a fragile littleSocialist poet upon whom consumption had laid its grip. He was not muchof a poet, but there burnt in him a passion for humanity that diseaseand poverty could not extinguish.
One night James Farnum dropped in to borrow some money from his cousinand for ten minutes listened to such talk as he had never heard before.His mind moved among a group of orthodox and accepted ideas. A new onehe always viewed as if it were a dynamite bomb timed to go off shortly.He was not only suspicious of it; he was afraid of it.
James was, it happened, in evening dress. He took gingerly the chair hiscousin offered him between the hectic Marchant and a little Polish Jew.
The air was blue with the smoke from cheap tobacco. More than one ofthose present carried the marks of poverty. But the note of the assemblywas a cheerful at-homeness. James wondered what the devil his cousinmeant by giving this heterogeneous gathering the freedom of his rooms.
Dickinson, the single-taxer, was talking bitterly. He was a big man witha voice like a foghorn. His idea of emphasis appeared to be pounding thetable with his blacksmith fist.
"I tell you society doesn't want to hear about such things," he wasdeclaiming. "It wants to go along comfortably without being disturbed.Ignore everything that's not pleasant, that's liable to harrow thefeelings. The sins of our neighbors make spicy reading. Fill the paperswith 'em. But their distresses and their poverty! That's different.Let's hear as little about them as possible. Let's keep it awell-regulated world."
Nearly everybody began to talk at once. James caught phrases here andthere out of the melee.
"... Democratic institutions must either decay or becomerevitalized....To hell with such courts. They're no better thananarchy....In Verden there are only two classes: those who don't get asmuch as they earn and those who get more.... Tell you we've got to getback to the land, got to make it free as air. You can't be saved fromeconomic slavery till you have socialism. ..."
Suddenly the hubbub subsided and Marchant had the floor. "All of life'sa compromise, a horrible unholy giving up as unpractical all the bestthings. It's a denial of love, of Christ, of God."
A young preacher who was conducting a mission for sailors on the waterfront cut in. "Exactly. The church is radically wrong because--"
"Because it hasn't been converted to Christianity yet. Mr. Moneybagsin the front pew has got a strangle hold on the parson. Begging yourpardon, Mifflin. We know you're not that kind."
Marchant won the floor again. "Here's the nub of it. A man's a slave solong as his means of livelihood is dependent on some other man. I don'tcare whether it's lands or railroads or mines. Abolish private propertyand you abolish poverty."
They were all at it again, like dogs at a bone. Across the Babel Jamescaught Jeff's gay grin at him.
By sheer weight Dickinson's voice boomed out of the medley.
"... just as Henry George says: 'Private ownership of land i
s the nethermill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them,with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.'We're just beginning to see the effect of private property in land.Within a few years...."
"What we need is to get back to Democracy. Individualism has runwild...."
"Trouble is we can't get anywhere under the Constitution. Every timewe make a move--check. It was adopted by aristocrats to hold back thepeople and that's what it's done. Law--"
Apparently nobody got a chance to finish his argument. The Polish Jewbroke in sharply. "Law! There iss no law."
"Plenty of it, Sobieski, Go out on the streets and preach yourphilosophic anarchy if you don't believe it. See what it will do to you.Law's a device to bolster up the strong and to hammer down the weak."
James had given a polite cynical indulgence to views so lost to reasonand propriety. But he couldn't quite stand any more. He made a sign toJeff and they adjourned to the next room.
"Your friends always so--so enthusiastic?" he asked with the slightestlift of his upper lip.
"Not always. They're a little excited to-night because Harshawimprisoned those fourteen striking miners for contempt of court."
"Don't manufacture bombs here, do you?"
Jeff laughed. "We're warranted harmless."
James offered him good advice. "That sort of talk doesn't lead toanything--except trouble. Men who get on don't question the fundamentalsof our social system. It doesn't do, you know. Take the constitution.Now I've studied it. A wonderful document. Gladstone said."
"Yes, I know what Gladstone said. I don't agree with him. Theconstitution was devised by men with property as a protection againstthose who had none."
"Why shouldn't it have been?"
"It should, if vested interests are the first thing to consider. Inthere"--with a smiling wave of his hand--"they think people are moreimportant than things. A most unsettling notion!"
"Mean to say you believe all that rant they talk?"
"Not quite," Jeff laughed.
"Well, I'd cut that bunch of anarchists if I were you," his cousinsuggested. "Say, Jeff, can you let me have fifty dollars?"
Jeff considered. He had been thinking of a new spring overcoat, but hiswinter one would do well enough. From the office he could get an advanceof the balance he needed to make up the fifty.
"Sure. I'll bring it to your rooms to-morrow night."
"Much obliged. Hate to trouble you," James said lightly. "Well, I won'tkeep you longer from your anarchist friends. Good-night."
The Vision Splendid Page 5