The Harbor
BOOK IV
CHAPTER IV
The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out.
But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to
trial.
I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his
case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good
source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at
once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time
of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these
men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free
for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the
full penalty for their crimes!
In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee,
the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising
money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades
and big mass meetings of labor.
Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It
all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I
took it to my editor.
"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad."
"It's the truth," I remarked.
"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If
this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer,
we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want
to see you stand for this—in our magazine or anywhere else—it means
too much to you as a writer. Look out, my[Pg 372] boy," he added, with a
return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the
years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For
God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter
spoiled."
I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was
rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd,
an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs.
"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it.
"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the
other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak
points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that
the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired."
"I don't believe it will," I said.
"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want
our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just
ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized
world, is coming in the next ten years."
"I don't believe that."
"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your
efficiency father-in-law."
"So you don't feel you can sign this?"
"No."
That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from
the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of
view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish
it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The
modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey
which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally
kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest
honoraria.[Pg 373]
In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and
given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from
pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for
his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be
born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I
could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went
back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office.
"I'm ready now to be sane," I said.
"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where
you can grind till you get yourself right."
"Till I get back where I was, you mean?"
"Yes, if you can," he answered.
I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd
made.
"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which
is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive,
and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an
interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it
about each kind of harbor. But I need the money—my wife is going to
have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of
the truth away."
"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look
like a ghost."
"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job."
"Tell me about it."
I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself
comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes.
"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until
I did.
"It won't do," she said, when I had finished.
"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing[Pg 374] in sight. It
will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a
year."
"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She
thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do
this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up
what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into."
"It's settled now. Please leave it alone."
"Oh very well," she said placidly. "Let's talk of what I've been doing."
"What you've been doing?"
"Precisely. I've taken a little apartment downtown, over by the river.
The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month. It's on the top floor and has
plenty of air, and there's a nice roof for hot summer evenings. You're
to carry two wicker chairs up there each night after supper."
"I'll do nothing of the kind," I rejoined indignantly. "You're going to
pack up at once and go to the mountains! And when you come back you're
coming right here!"
"Oh no I'm not," she answered.
"Don't be an idiot, Eleanore! Think of moving out of here now! In your
condition!"
"It's better than moving out of your work. Dad has kept right on with
his, even when they stopped his pay. Well, now they've stopped your pay,
that's all, and we've got to do the best we can. We've simply got to
live for a while on modest honorariums. Now don't talk, wait till I get
through. You've got to work harder than ever before but for much less
money. But with less money than before we're going to be happier than
we've ever been in all our lives. And you can't do a thing to stop it.
If you do take that office work and bring a lot of money home, do you
know what I'll do? I'll move to that little flat just the same, and all
the extra money you bring will go to Mrs. Bealey."
"Who in God's name is Mrs. Bealey?"
"One of my oldest charity cases. She was here this[Pg 375] afternoon. The
trouble with you is, my dear," my wife continued smoothly, "that you've
been so wrapped up in your own little changes you haven't given a
thought to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue
or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the
same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest
of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it
all—and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in
the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the
tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and
I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth
while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means
that quite a number of people—you for instance—have got to tell the
truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and
let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for
moving.
"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her
needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago,
and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place
where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies,
I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer—and their mothers
aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I
don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my
baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat
with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and
washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough
honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three
times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move
this week."
We moved that week.[Pg 376]