Another crisis, unobserved except by a few, had arisen: the propertyless and rootless men of the cities, who dwelled in warrens, knew nothing of the land and, in consequence, having no tangible stake in the nation, no contact with its roots, became creatures without honor or metaphysical identity with the source of their lives. Dignity had departed from them with the earth-soil from their hands.
The great Panic became even more terrible in 1877; the hungry and maddened people almost lost their minds. More and more mills and factories emptied themselves; the malignant machines and the open hearths were silenced. As railroads had become so dominant in the life of the nation, they were the chief object of resentment on the part of the farmers, who had discovered that when the cities had no money to buy bread and beef, they, too, suffered. Moreover, the railroads had succeeded in antagonizing the farmers, because of their oppression. Most of them increased freight rates at whim, some so high that the farmer could not ship his produce. A powerful railroad lobby prevented the Federal or any state government from regulating them in behalf of the public, whether city or farm. Much of the best land in the West had been appropriated, at low prices, by the railroads; thousands of farmers, discouraged by this, declined to move to fresher acres and new markets. Hundreds of Middle Western farmers, it was learned by their Eastern brothers, were actually burning their fifteen-cent corn for fuel. In the East, corn was selling at one dollar, but the cost of shipping it to hungrier markets was made prohibitive by railroad rates.
The unique crisis in the world’s history gathered momentum. Frantically, the city people looked about them for scapegoats. It was inevitable that they should find them in the wretched immigrants from Europe, “who work for almost nothing and are taking the bread from our children’s mouths.” It was noted that the immigrants created slums; the correlation between starvation wages and slums was not noted, or was ignored. The immigrant, as a person in himself, was the “cause” of the city worker’s misery. Now racial hatreds, and especially religious hatreds, exploded through the abounding streets of the desperate cities. The starving and bearded little Jewish peddler, with his pushcart of shoddy goods, the strangely accented Irishman with his “Popish” religion, were archetypes of evil presented to a frantic population. When the indomitable and courageous Irish immigrants, who worked for almost nothing in the mines and factories of Pennsylvania, formed their “Molly Maguires” in an attempt to raise wages generally, those “old” American workers, who should have been their stoutest and most eager assistants and supporters, found in this “unpatriotic and alien” union of desperate men a new source of hatred.
America, with millions of acreage undeveloped, with millions of bushels of wheat and corn unsold to the starving cities because of the high railroad rates, with industrial warehouses loaded with goods which few could buy, with tens and hundreds of thousands of farmworkers leaving for the cities—there to collide with the battered and ragged streams of immigrants also looking for work which was not available—had reached the greatest crisis in her history, a crisis which was not to be resolved in the future except through deliberately planned wars to absorb the products of machines.
The railroads of America, having not been guiltless of this sooty conspiracy against the world, suddenly found themselves wallowing in it. The most appalling of the railroad strikes began in 1877.
The railroads had had a very fine and prosperous time since the War Between the States. They had taken fabulous profits for the operations of their lines; they had watered their stocks with a lavish hand. When the Panic became almost a way of life in America, the operators of the roads, to make up for a decline in income, resorted to such contemptible operating practices as building cheap bridges which collapsed with huge losses of life, neglecting maintenance, and reducing wages. They attempted to ban, through legislation, the Patrons of Husbandry; the farmers grimly began a long war against the carriers.
For a long time, through the deepening days of the Panic, the railroads went their happy way. The larger companies, as if demonstrating their scorn of the universal misery, continued to pay large dividends. The Central Pacific returned to its stockholders eight per cent on its stock, while reducing wages ten per cent. The New York Central did the same. Only a few railroads, such as the Chicago Railroad System and the Interstate Railroad Company passed dividends, and, at the instigation of Stephen deWitt, did not cut wages. And finally the Interstate was the only road which did not seek to destroy the railway Brotherhoods.
For all these things, Stephen was doomed. He could not compete with men of evil. Singlehandedly he could not defy the darkening storm of the industrial crisis which was rolling rapidly over a whole world. He could not point out to all mankind that by debasing and deserting the soil for an open hearth and a machine it was degrading and enslaving itself. He could not say: “There is dignity and security in the land; there is only rootlessness and constantly threatening starvation in the mills.”
Thus quickened the era of men without pride. And as they were men without pride they became the calculated prey of future malefactors in government. With an inner and prophetic eye, Stephen could dimly discern these things, and he sickened with his knowledge.
“Somewhere, he got the money to pay the dogs,” Rufus said to Guy Gunther in New York. “It isn’t a good deal, though he didn’t cut wages.” Rufus laughed. “The ironical thing is that the Brotherhood and the ‘Molly Maguires’ hate him as a ‘rich exploiter.’ Well, such always happens to fools. But now we can move against him.”
“Wait,” said Guy Gunther. “A crisis is approaching. You’ve waited over ten years; you can wait a little while longer.”
Throughout the Panic, the unemployment, and the cutting of wages, the railway Brotherhoods had been singularly patient, possibly because they had wise leaders who did not believe that strikes would immediately bring the millennium. But the action of the Baltimore and Ohio, in announcing as of July 16th a cut of ten per cent in wages of more than one dollar a day, was the gunshot that echoed through all the railway Brotherhoods. They decided to take desperate action. The B&O firemen at Martinsburg, West Virginia, struck, declaring that they would not return to work until the cut was restored. The mayor of the city immediately called out the police who arrested the firemen. But the enraged citizens, who had witnessed the arrests and the resulting mayhem against the railroad workers, assaulted the police and released the prisoners. Infuriated at this attack on their fellow workers, the freight brakemen immediately struck, and no freight was permitted to run through Martinsburg. Over seventy-five freight trains, loaded and waiting, blocked all the lines in Martinsburg less than forty-eight hours later.
The carriers demanded that Governor Matthews of West Virginia call out the state militia. He responded at once, sending out two companies, with commands to shoot, if necessary, any intractable railway worker. But he did not know one important thing: the militia did not exist as a thing apart. It was bound to the strikers by blood relationships and local friendliness. The militia leaned on their guns and refused to act, and merely grinned at the strikers and their sympathizers. The governor, a man who loathed all “insurrectionists,” called out the Wheeling militia, and took his place sternly at the head of it, marching upon Martinsburg. By the time he reached Grafton, however, he discerned that the whole area was in a state of dangerous fury, and with an eye to his political future he discreetly deserted his militia, and the pleased men wandered back to their homes.
Now the strike spread like wild flames. The B&O employees in Grafton, Keyser, and Wheeling struck. The alarmed governor demanded that President Hayes send Federal troops to “control this revolutionary disorder.” The President debated. “They’ve brought this all on themselves,” he commented with bitterness. He delayed heeding the governor’s demand for a day or two, urging, meanwhile, that the carriers meet with their striking men. But the carriers contemptuously refused. The people violently sided with the strikers, and the temper of the whole state became dangerou
sly heated. So the President, on July 19th, was forced to send part of a regiment of Federal troops. The situation became even more menacing when half-starved “scabs” took to running the roads in order that they might feed their families. They made up two trains, one to the west, the other to the east. They were protected by the Federal troops who attacked the strikers with guns and bayonets. The troops also rode the trains, protecting themselves as well as possible from the stones and other objects hurled at them by a maddened populace.
Two days later the B&O was able to move fourteen trains out of Martinsburg. But the strike spread along the entire line into Maryland, where Governor Carroll called out the Fifth Regiment of the National Guard, but at Camden Junction the people drove the “scab” engine crew from the train which awaited the Guard, and the Guard complacently resigned itself to go nowhere at all.
The angered governor then sent three companies of the Sixth Regiment to Camden Junction, where they met a mob of nearly three thousand persons armed with clubs and missiles. In order to protect themselves, the militia fired into the masses of men, killing twelve and wounding scores of others. But from the Junction they were unable to proceed; thousands of men and women stood on the tracks and defied the trains to move. Federal troops rushed to the Junction, bristling with arms, and thirteen more men were shot and the wounded crowded the hospitals.
Desperate and hounded, the strikers formed a committee to call on Governor Carroll, offering once again to arbitrate with the carriers. But the B&O, sure of victory now, declined. More and more Federal troops poured into Camden Junction, and at length broke the strike. On August 1st, the strike was defeated. The B&O contentedly observed what they had accomplished and called it good. Guy Gunther and his friends in New York wired the company a telegram of congratulation.
Guy Gunther privately sent a telegram to Rufus deWitt. It contained only one word: “Now.”
Stephen had been watching the progress of the strike and the suffering of the railroad employees with an almost physical agony. Anonymously, he sent a large sum of money to the Camden Junction hospitals to pay for the treatment of the wounded men. Engrossed as he was with his private despairs, and his despair over present events, he did not notice that there was an ominous silence emanating from his board of directors. When he, on August 15, 1877, was advised by his board of directors that they desired him to preside over an “emergency” meeting, he believed they were concerned only with an increasing decline in the company’s income.
Usually warned by premonitions, he felt none now. Exhausted and drained almost of his last strength, he met his directors in the board room, prepared for endless complaints and suggestions. He met his brother in the hallway to the room. Rufus smiled at him sympathetically, and Stephen vaguely noticed that the younger man looked particularly warm and radiant. “Tiresome business,” Stephen murmured. Rufus took his arm and replied merrily, “There is nothing more boring than men who insist on getting a return on their investments. Never mind; we’ve managed them before. We’ll manage them today.”
Rufus’s obvious affection and winning sympathy today affected Stephen to the heart. He walked with his brother into the board room, where his directors somberly awaited him, and he smiled at them timidly but with a sense of support Rufus’s soothing presence would sustain him in the face of a thousand scowls.
The late summer day was hot and sunless, as gray as ash from which a fire had only just receded. The mountains, clouds painted in grisaille, stood over the shadowless city against a livid sky. A heated and pearly reflection filled the board room, in which every face appeared colorless and harsh. The directors had never regarded Stephen with friendliness at any time, even before Aaron had died. Since Aaron’s death they had hated him, and he knew it. He looked at them now, these bankers, steel manufacturers, mine operators from Scranton, lumber merchants, representatives of various industries supplying the railroads. There were ten of them, and they stared at Stephen, not indifferently or coldly, as usual, but with motionless savagery. Among them was Jim Purcell, who shifted his eyes from Stephen and turned his doughlike face toward the window.
Rufus gave his brother a consoling pat on the arm and seated himself near Tim Brownell, president of the Portersville National Bank, who was his particular friend. He lit a cigar, winked with friendliness at everyone but Purcell, who ignored him. No one greeted Stephen, and this disturbed him. He stood hesitatingly at the head of the long table, examining each man, and each returned his regard stolidly. Finally his eyes fixed themselves on the massive profile of Purcell and lingered there, and his tired face tightened. He did not sit down. He said quietly, “You have asked me to appear. What is the business of the board today?”
It was Purcell who answered him in his loud, hoarse voice: “They want to reduce wages ten per cent, like all the other roads.”
Stephen believed that the focus of this savagery he felt was in Purcell, that Purcell was the spokesman today. This man had taken from him the fortune of his little daughter, had forced him, under vague threats, to part with what had been the fortress for his child.
“We can’t reduce wages,” said Stephen, and his voice thickened with panic.
The men stirred, glanced ominously at each other, returned their eyes to Stephen. Tim Brownell was a lean and gentlemanly man with a carved and patrician face. He said, with a banker’s weighted intonation, “Sorry, Steve. We can, and must. We will be brief about all this, and come to the point. We’ve kept wages up, at your insistence, and have lost our dividends. The railroads are in a hell of a condition these days. Every other line but ours, and the Chicago Railroad System, has reduced wages. We’re being hated—by our friends, the other carriers. I’m not going into the matter of your paying the unemployed railroad men their usual wages.” He smiled with aristocratic disdain. “That is your own doing—and your own borrowing from God knows where.” He did not glance at Purcell, whom he feared and respected.
He went on with a graceful wave of his hand: “But, as of the 10th, we are going to have to cut wages ten per cent, to save our own necks, and to stop putting our friends in an embarrassing situation. Unless,” he added gently, “you have the funds to make up for the cut, yourself.” A chuckle broke briefly from his fellows, and then they were still again.
Stephen sat down. He placed his palms on the humid table, and they began to sweat. He turned his sick face from one man to another, and everywhere he encountered stonelike derision and hatred. He began to speak through a constricted throat:
“Aside from the fact that reducing wages from their almost barbarous level now, means we’ll incur a strike, the B&O—”
“You forget,” said Mr. Brownell with tender urbanity, “that the B&O settled that strike, with Federal troops. I don’t think our own governor would hesitate at calling out the militia and demanding troops from the President.”
“The people,” said Stephen, “are dangerously aroused. They haven’t forgotten the hanging of the ‘Molly Maguires.’ They haven’t forgotten Martinsburg and Camden Junction. Something is moving through the whole country. You can’t oppress men forever. If employers continue to do so they’ll reap the whirlwind, if not today, then tomorrow. The oppressors will become the oppressed. Power has a way of shifting. I am afraid I am not making myself clear.”
“No, Steve, you aren’t,” said John Schwartz, the biggest lumber merchant in the vicinity. “But I can tell you this: your coddling of our employees isn’t getting you anything. They despise you, and they are losing respect for authority.”
Stephen thought of the desperate dead and wounded in Martinsburg and Camden Junction. He thought of the starved wild faces, the hunger which had driven normally peaceful men into raging action. He said faintly, “One of these days the carriers will pay for what has happened. Bloodstains are never washed out.”
He turned to Rufus, who was studying his clasped hands. Rufus was serious, his red hair flaming in the gray light. “Rufus,” said Stephen. “Have you anything to say???
?
Rufus sighed; he unclasped his hands, moved in his chair. He looked at his brother with a pathetic smile. “Steve, what can I do? I’m in the minority.”
Every mouth in the room compressed itself to keep from smiling; eyes wrinkled; lips twitched. Then Purcell said casually, in his rough voice, “Well, I make another minority report That makes two of us, then; Steve, and me.” He shrugged. “Not that that will amount to anythin’.”
Stephen was startled. He put his hands to his sunken cheeks, and pressed them. For the first time in almost a year he spoke to Purcell: “You, Jim? You’re with Rufus and me?” He was incredulous.
“That’s right, Steve. But correction, please. Just you and me. Rufe’s not with us.” He bent and spit into a cuspidor.
Rufus laughed richly. “Oh, come now, Jim. I know you don’t like me. But please remember that I’ve always stood with old Steve here. You choose to ignore facts. For your own purposes.”
Of course, thought Stephen. For his “own purposes.” He was too confused and shaken to examine his disturbed thought. He could only think: Everyone knows what Jim Purcell is; I know, myself, to my own misery.
“We are wasting time,” said Mr. Brownell, glancing at a thick gold watch. “Two clients are awaiting me down stairs at this very moment. We’re going to be frank with you, Steve. We know that you’ve borrowed two hundred thousand dollars from Jay Regan, in New York, pledging twenty-five per cent of your stocks and bonds in Interstate. Of course, you did not feel it necessary to mention this important fact to your directors.”
“Stop being so goddamn pious,” interrupted Purcell with hoarse rudeness. “You’re not superintendent of the Sunday school here, Brownell. Save the injured pieties for the little boys and girls who suck lozenges while you tell them all about God. Steve borrowed on his own stock—and that’s his own business—and we’ve got our benefits. Our investments haven’t depreciated, though the stocks and bonds of other companies have. Equipment’s in fine shape. Come to the point. You want to reduce wages ten per cent. You’re prepared to put down strikes with the state militia, and with Federal troops, if necessary. That’s it, isn’t it?” He glared at the blushing banker contemptuously. “Steve don’t want any of that, neither do I. I think we can ride out the Panic. You don’t think so, or, at least, you want dividends and you can only get them by reducin’ wages. Say it, and be a man, and not a parson.”