Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this fierce ‘infighting’, as Ernest called it.
‘The history of the eighteenth century is written,’ Ernest prompted. ‘If the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb in the books.’
‘I am afraid the Church was dumb,’ the Bishop confessed.
‘And the Church is dumb today.’
‘There I disagree,’ said the Bishop.
Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the challenge.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let us see. In Chicago there are women who toil all the week for ninety cents. Has the Church protested?’
‘This is news to me,’ was the answer. ‘Ninety cents per week! It is horrible!’
‘Has the Church protested?’ Ernest insisted.
‘The Church does not know.’ The Bishop was struggling hard.
‘Yet the command to the Church was, “Feed My lambs,”‘ Ernest sneered. And then, the next moment, ‘Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you wonder that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your capitalistic congregations at the working of children in the Southern cotton mills?8
‘Children, six and seven years of age, working every night at twelve-hour shifts? They never see the blessed sunshine. They die like flies. The dividends are paid out of their blood. And out of the dividends magnificent churches are builded in New England, wherein your kind preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied recipients of those dividends.’
‘I did not know,’ the Bishop murmured faintly. His face was pale, and he seemed suffering from nausea.
‘Then you have not protested?’
The Bishop shook his head.
‘Then the Church is dumb today, as it was in the eighteenth century?’
The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore to press the point.
‘And do not forget, whenever a churchman does protest, that he is discharged.’
‘I hardly think that is fair,’ was the objection.
‘Will you protest?’ Ernest demanded.
‘Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own community, and I will protest.’
‘I’ll show you,’ Ernest said quietly. ‘I am at your disposal. I will take you on a journey through hell.’
‘And I shall protest.’ The Bishop straightened himself in his chair, and over his gentle face spread the harshness of the warrior. ‘The Church shall not be dumb!’
‘You will be discharged,’ was the warning.
‘I shall prove the contrary,’ was the retort. ‘I shall prove, if what you say is so, that the Church has erred through ignorance. And, furthermore, I hold that whatever is horrible in industrial society is due to the ignorance of the capitalist class. It will mend all that is wrong as soon as it receives the message. And this message it shall be the duty of the Church to deliver.’
Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was driven to the Bishop’s defence.
‘Remember,’ I said, ‘you see but one side of the shield. There is much good in us, though you give us credit for no good at all. Bishop Morehouse is right. The industrial wrong, terrible as you say it is, is due to ignorance. The divisions of society have become too widely separated.’
‘The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the capitalist class,’ he answered; and in that moment I hated him.
‘You do not know us,’ I answered. ‘We are not brutal and savage.’
‘Prove it,’ he challenged.
‘How can I prove it…to you?’ I was growing angry.
He shook his head. ‘I do not ask you to prove it to me. I ask you to prove it to yourself.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘You know nothing,’ was his rude reply.
‘There, there, children,’ father said soothingly.
‘I don’t care—’ I began indignantly, but Ernest interrupted.
‘I understand you have money, or your father has, which is the same thing—money invested in the Sierra Mills.’
‘What has that to do with it?’ I cried.
‘Nothing much,’ he began slowly, ‘except that the gown you wear is stained with blood. The food you eat is a bloody stew. The blood of little children and of strong men is dripping from your very roof-beams. I can close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop, drip, drop, all about me.’
And suiting the action to the words, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. I burst into tears of mortification and hurt vanity. I had never been so brutally treated in my life. Both the Bishop and my father were embarrassed and perturbed. They tried to lead the conversation away into easier channels; but Ernest opened his eyes, looked at me, and waved them aside. His mouth was stern, and his eyes too; and in the latter there was no glint of laughter. What he was about to say, what terrible castigation he was going to give me, I never knew; for at that moment a man, passing along the sidewalk, stopped and glanced in at us. He was a large man, poorly dressed, and on his back was a great load of rattan and bamboo stands, chairs, and screens. He looked at the house as if debating whether or not he should come in and try to sell some of his wares.
‘That man’s name is Jackson,’ Ernest said.
‘With that strong body of his he should be at work, and not peddling,’9 I answered curtly.
‘Notice the sleeve of his left arm,’ Ernest said gently.
I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.
‘It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your roof-beams,’ Ernest said with continued gentleness. ‘He lost his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on the highway to die. When I say “you”, I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a wife and three children.’
‘And what did the company do for him?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs very efficient lawyers, you know.’
‘You have not told the whole story,’ I said with conviction. ‘Or else you do not know the whole story. Maybe the man was insolent.’
‘Insolent! Ha! ha!’ His laughter was Mephistophelian. ‘Great God! Insolent! And with his arm chewed off! Nevertheless he was a meek and lowly servant and there is no record of his having been insolent.’
‘But the courts,’ I urged.’ The case would not have been decided against him had there been no more to the affair than you have mentioned.’
‘Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company. He is a shrewd lawyer.’ Ernest looked at me intently for a moment, then went on: ‘I’ll tell you what you do, Miss Cunningham. You investigate Jackson’s case.’
‘I had already determined to,’ I said coldly.
‘All right,’ he beamed good-naturedly, ‘and I’ll tell you where to find him. But I tremble for you when I think of all you are to prove by Jackson’s arm.’
And so it came about that both the Bishop and I accepted Ernest’s challenges. They went away together, leaving me smarting with a sense of injustice that had been done me and my class. The man was a beast. I hated him, then, and consoled myself with the thought that his behaviour was what was to be expected from a man of the working class.
1 The distinction between being native born and foreign born was sharp and invidious in those days.
2 This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three centuries of the Iron Heel. There are several copies of various editions in the National Library of Ardis.
3 In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the public.
4 These quarrels were very common in those irrational and anarchic times. Sometimes the labourers refused to work. Sometimes the capitalists refused to let the labourers work. In the violence and turbulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and many lives lost. All this is inconceivable to us—as inconceivable as another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the lower classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with their wives.