CHAPTER XVII
THE OPERATING ROOM
Walter's study seemed to Yetta an ideal room. There was no appearance of luxury about it – nothing to remind one by contrast of the hungry people outside. There were no "decorations," except two portraits of his grandparents and a small reproduction of one of the great cow-faced gods of the Haktites which stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The rest of the room was made up of comfortable chairs, a well-padded window-seat, and books. The cases were full and so was the table and so were some of the chairs and there were books on the floor. Knowledge was a goal which her father had set before Yetta as almost synonymous with "goodness" and "happiness." It was a thing she had forgotten about in the sweat-shop, but for which her recent experience had given her an all-consuming hunger. No one who has been "sent to college," who has had an education thrust upon him, can realize how much she venerated books. When Longman brought her to his room, it seemed to her as if she had entered the home of her dreams.
The greatest thing that had come to Yetta in the new life was the gift of friends. In the days since her father's death, with the exception of the few weeks when Rachel had given her confidences, she had had only loveless relatives and shopmates. And now she could hardly count her friends. From the very first she had given Longman the niche of honor in this gallery. The reason was something more subtle than his dramatic entrance into her life. She seldom thought of him as her rescuer. But she felt that his regard for her was more personal and direct than that of the others. She could not have explained it coherently to herself, but she felt it no less keenly. Mrs. Van Cleave was fond of her because she had eyes like those of the long-dead daughter. Mrs. Karner was attracted to her because she typified her own lost youth. Isadore Braun and Mabel valued her because of her flaming spirit of revolt.
Over on "the Island," the warden's little three-year-old son, in spite of her prison dress, in spite of the jealousy of his own nurse, had run into her arms at first sight. Instinctively she felt that Walter liked her in a similar fashion. If, during the strike, she had sold out, turned "scab," Braun and Mabel would no longer have been her friends. But Longman would have come to her in his gentle, lumbering way and asked her about it. He might have been disappointed, even angry, but still he would have been her friend.
Yetta wanted to begin at once with some questions about Socialism.
"You'd better save them till Isadore and Mabel come," Longman laughed. "He's got all the answers down by heart – the orthodox ones. And Mabel isn't a Socialist. I'm neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It will start a beautiful shindy if you spring those questions to-night."
He told her about his projected book on Philosophy, and how he would like to add her credo to his collection. The big scope of the idea caught her fancy, and she said she was willing.
It was slow work at first. The earlier questions on his list led her into unfamiliar fields. She had never troubled her mind over metaphysics. She was not sure what kind of a god she believed in – nor whether It really ought to be called "God." She had given no thought to the question whether this is the best or worst possible world. The prophecies, which her father had loved so much, inclined her strongly to the idea that it might be made a better one. But she had never even tried to determine whether the Universe is an elaborate and precise mechanical instrument, a personally conducted puppet show, or a roulette wheel. Her inability to answer these questions – and the way he put them made them seem very important – shamed her. He seemed to be sounding the depths of her ignorance. Did she believe in a future life? She threw up her hands.
"I don't know."
"Nobody knows. It's a question of belief. You loved your father very much, and when you were a little girl he died. Was that the end of him?"
She shook her head. He waited patiently for words.
"No. It wasn't the end of him. Anyhow the memory lasts."
"Do you ever talk to him now?"
"Sometimes. I pretend to."
"Is it as good as if he was really here?"
"Almost – sometimes."
"Well. After you die do you think you'll meet him?"
Yetta curled herself up a little tighter on the window-seat, her forehead puckered into deep wrinkles.
"Yes," she said after a while. "I think – once, anyhow – I'll have a chance to talk to him – tell him everything and ask him what was right and wrong – and he'll tell me."
"How will he look?"
"I don't know. But I'll know it's him."
The ordeal became easier as the questions began to deal with more mundane problems. But before long they got into deep water again.
"Do you believe that honesty is the best policy?"
That took a lot of thinking and brought back the wrinkles.
"Honesty – telling the truth," she said at last. "I guess it's the best something, but it ain't always the best policy. If I hadn't perjured myself, we wouldn't have won this strike."
"What?"
"I don't mind telling you. I lied in court. I swore I didn't hit Pick-Axe; but I tried to kill him."
Longman whistled softly.
"Tell me about it."
When she had told him all, – what Pick-Axe had said and done, how suddenly blind rage had overcome her, how at length Braun had persuaded her to lie, – she asked him if he thought honesty would have been the best policy in this case.
"I'm asking questions this afternoon, not answering them," he said gravely. "This interests me a lot. So you think it's sometimes right to lie in a good cause."
"No," she said quickly. "I don't think it's never right to lie. But I guess sometimes you've just got to. If I'd told the truth, they'd have sent me to prison, instead of the workhouse. I wouldn't have cared. It ain't nice to lie, and like Mr. Thoreau says, there's worse things than being in the worst prison. But it would have been awful for the others. Just because I told the truth all the papers would have lied and said all the girls were murderers. We'd have lost the strike. I'd have felt better if I'd told the truth. But there's more than two thousand girls in our trade.
"It's like this, I think. If you make up your mind that something is good, you got to fight for it; you can't be afraid of getting beat up, or arrested, or killed, and you can't be afraid of hurting your conscience either. Mr. Thoreau has got an essay about John Brown and how he fought to free the black slaves. Well, suppose somebody'd come to him and told him how he could do it, if he'd commit a big sin himself. I guess he'd have done it. If he'd said, 'You can beat me or put me in prison or hang me for those black men, but I won't sin for them,' he'd have been a coward. I'd rather go to prison than tell a lie like I done. But I ain't afraid to do both."
She had sat up stiffly on the window-seat while she was trying to say all this. Again she curled up. She watched Walter, as he sat there in deep thought, absent-mindedly drumming on the table with his pencil. She could not have talked like this to any one else in the world. She had expressed herself poorly; in her intensity she had slipped back into her old ways of speech, but she knew he did not care about doubled negatives, nor "ain't's." She knew he had understood. And just when she had found this wonderful friend, she was losing him. He was going away in the morning for years and years. Central Asia sounded far away and dangerous. Something might happen to him and he never come back. She was afraid she would cry if she kept silence any longer.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I was wondering if you are afraid of anything."
"Oh, yes. Lots of things."
"For instance?"
"Well, I'm afraid of the Yetta Rayefsky who tried to kill Pick-Axe. And I'm afraid of myself for not blaming her for it. And I'm afraid of being useless. I'm afraid of waste. I'm afraid – more than anything else – of ignorance." She sat up again. "Yes. That's the worst thing the bosses do to us – they keep us ignorant. I don't think even you can understand that. You've had books all your life. You've been to school and college, you're a professor," – the awe grew in Yetta's voice, – "your room is full of books. I sit here and look at them and try to think what it must mean to know all that's in so many books and I want to get down on my knees, I'm so ignorant."
"Good God! Yetta," he said savagely, jumping up. "Don't talk like that. I'm not worth your stepping on."
He came over and took her hand and surprised her by kissing it humbly.
"I'm going away to-morrow – for a very long while – and I want to tell you, before I go, that you're a saint, a heroine. Did books mean so much to you? And you decided to work instead of going to college? Books?" He grabbed one from the table and hurled it violently across the room. "Books? They are only paper and ink and dead men's thoughts. Truth and wisdom don't come from books. They can't teach you those things in college. Yes. I've had books all my life. I live with them." He stamped up and down and shook his fists at the unoffending shelves. "If I know anything Real, if I've got the smallest grain of wisdom, I didn't get it from them. There's only one teacher – that's Life, and before you can learn you've got to suffer. I don't know much because things have been easy for me. How old are you? Nineteen? Well, I'm over thirty. You talk about getting down on your knees to me! Good God! I've ten years start and every advantage, but I don't know – Capital K-N-O-W – as much as you. And good? I ought to ask your pardon for kissing your hands. I'm no good! God! I want to break something!"
He looked around savagely for something which would make a great noise. But he suddenly changed his mind, and pulling up a chair to the window-seat, where Yetta was sitting bolt upright, he began again in a quieter tone.
"Yetta, I'm a lazy, self-indulgent imbecile. I've never done anything in all my life that I didn't want to do. I've never sacrificed anything for any cause, not my easy-chairs, nor my pipe, nor my good meals, nothing. Nothing but automobiles and yachts which I didn't want. God gave me a brain which I am too lazy to use. And besides my general uselessness and selfish waste, I'm a coward. Why am I going off to Persia? Is it because I think it will ever do anybody any good, ever make life sweeter or finer for any one, to have me decipher the picture puzzles of the people who worshipped that stupid-faced cow on the mantelpiece? No. I'm not that foolish. Is it because I don't know what I might do, if I was as wise as you are – wise enough to know that we must give our lives to win our souls? No! I know that just as well as you do, Yetta. But I'm a coward. I'm running away, because I'm afraid of life."
He jumped up again and began to pace the room.
"Oh, well!" he groaned. "Enough heroics for one afternoon. But don't let books hypnotize you, Yetta. Schopenhauer said once that the learning of the West crumples up against the wisdom of the East like a leaden bullet against a stone wall. There's nothing in books but 'learning.' And you've got some of the Eastern wisdom, Yetta. It's part of your Semitic heritage. Treasure it. Don't ever let books come between you and your intimacy with life. One pulse beat of a live heart is worth all the printed words in a thousand books. I – "
But he interrupted himself and sat down gloomily and looked out over Yetta – who had curled up once more – at the budding green tree tops of Washington Square.
His tirade had disturbed Yetta much more than he dreamed. It was not until long afterwards that she was to bring out his words from the treasure-house of her memory and come to understand what he meant by all his talk of Knowledge and Wisdom. She would never think as lightly of book learning as he did. She even less appreciated his ardently expressed admiration of her, and his self-condemnation. It was his pain which impressed her. He had fallen from his godlike majesty. He was no longer a calm-browed Olympian, who deigned to let her drink from the fountain of his wisdom. He was just a simple man, who suffered. And so Yetta began to love him.
In the wonder of it she forgot that he was going away.
"Yetta," he said abruptly. "Where are you planning to live? Are you going to stay on with Mabel and Miss Mead?"
"Why, no," she rushed dizzily down through the cold spaces which separate Dreamland from New York City. "I – I don't suppose so. I'll find a room somewhere. On the East Side, I guess."
"That's not a good plan," he said in a businesslike tone, for in spite of all he had been saying about heartbeats, he did not suspect the disturbing rate of Yetta's pulse. "The intellectual life on the East Side is too feverish. You'll get into their very bad habit of all-night discussions, which lead only to brain-fag. And besides you'd be living too near your work. You're going to study, and you'll need a place where you'll be undisturbed. I've got a suggestion. I think it would be good for you; it certainly would be a favor for me. Why not live here? I've got a long lease on the place. I wouldn't want to give it up, even if I could. I'd been planning to leave the key with Mrs. Rocco and have her come in once a month to air the rooms and chase the moths. Then I was going to pay one of the stenographers up at the University to attend to my mail. There are a few bills coming in every month, and the letters must be forwarded to me. Not half an hour's work a week, but somebody's got to do it. If you would care to, it would save me a little expense, and you'd save room rent. It's a good place to study – better than the East Side. And some of the books are worth reading. What's the matter?"
"Everybody's so kind to me," Yetta said, blinking her eyes to drive away the tears.
"This isn't kindness," he protested. "It will save me about ten dollars a month."
Taking her silence for consent, he went on to explain to her how she was to open the letters and mail a printed card explaining his absence to the writer and every week forward the bundle of mail to the French Legation in Teheran. And then he explained the money matters, how she was to pay the rent and his subscriptions to various learned and philanthropic societies and so forth.
All the while, Yetta, curled up on the window-seat, was trying to realize how very empty her life would be after he left. It would at least be some comfort to live here in his room with his ghost.
While he was still explaining the details about his mail and the bank account he would open in her name, a couple of waiters arrived laden with linen and dishes. They were from the Lafayette, where Walter was a regular patron. He knew the chef and the garçons by their first names and they had laid themselves out to make his farewell dinner memorable. The books and papers on the table were piled on the floor. And just as one waiter was giving a last pat to the cloth and the other was lighting the candles, Mabel and Isadore arrived.
CHAPTER XVIII
WALTER'S FAREWELL
Mabel had come to the dinner with some reluctance. She feared that the farewell might take too personal a line for pleasure. Walter's heart was so full of bitterness that he was glad when things went to the other extreme and turned into a celebration of the strike victory.
When at last the waiters had removed the débris of the feast, and Walter was nursing the coffee urn, Mabel and Isadore began to discuss Yetta's plans. They had a great deal to say about her work in trying to ally the garment trades. But Walter, when he had distributed the coffee, broke into the conversation abruptly.
"You people seem to think," he challenged them, "that Yetta's principal job is to organize the garment workers."
"Well, isn't it?" Mabel asked.
"No! And I hope she won't let you two bluff her into thinking it is. Her main job for the next few years is study. The garment workers will be organized and reorganized fifty times before they get a definite formation. She's only one opportunity to form her intellect. It must last her all her life. It's more important than this work you talk about because it's to be the basis of the bigger jobs to come. All the time she's going to be torn by what looks like conflicting duties. Every day she'll wake up with the feeling that there's something she can do which would or might help in this immediate campaign. The temptation to give all her time to the union work is the worst one she'll have to face. If she yields to it, she'll regret it all her life. Three years hence the work she did in the mornings will look very small indeed and the study she neglected will look very, very big.
"When you talk about 'sweat-shops,' Mabel, you curse the bosses for robbing the girls of leisure and all chance of culture. Watch out that you don't 'sweat' Yetta, that you don't let her 'sweat' herself. It's criminal nonsense to talk work, work, work. Plenty of people will be saying that to her. I think she's got sense enough to keep her head, but you who are her friends ought to be telling her study, study, study."
"You're right, Walter," Mabel said with unusual humility.
"What we ought to do," he went on, "is to outline a course of study for her. What do you suggest, Isadore?"
"We've just published a new pamphlet which outlines a course of reading," he said. "It's called 'What to read on Socialism.'"
"That's a fine idea of a liberal education." Mabel snorted. "She isn't going to be a Socialist spellbinder. Her job's with the unions. The Webbs' Industrial Democracy would help her a lot more than your Socialist tracts."
"It's just as iniquitous to sweat her intellect as her body," Longman groaned. "Can't you two blithering idiots realize that before you read any of these books you read hundreds of others, studied for years? I hope she won't specialize – in her study – on Socialism or trade-unions, either, for several years. She needs to keep her mind open and absorb a background. She ought to read Westermarck's History of Human Marriage before she tackles Bebel's Woman. She ought to read Lecky and Gibbon and John Fiske and Michelet and a lot of astronomy and geology and physics and biology – a person's an ignoramus to-day who hasn't a broad knowledge of biology – and she ought to know something about psychology before she tackles the Webbs. She ought to put in some time on pure literature. You people are thinking about Yetta Rayefsky, the labor organizer of the next few years. Well, I hope she's going to live still three score years and more than ten. It's going to do her more good to read Marcus Aurelius than Marx and Engels. She wants to know something of the traditions of the race, the great men of the past, Homer and Shakespeare and Rabelais and Swift. And above all she needs to know the ideas of our own times, Ibsen and Tolstoi, Shaw and Anatole France. She'll pick up the Socialist and trade-union dope as she goes along. It's the background we, her friends, can give her."
And so for an hour or more they squabbled over a large sheet of paper and at last evolved a course of reading for her. There were to be two mornings a week to natural science, two to history, two to social science and psychology, and one to literature. Yetta sat back and listened to it all, very much impressed by the way these three intellectual giants hurled at each other's heads the titles of books of which she had never heard. There was indeed very much for her to learn. Mabel generally concurred in Walter's suggestions, but Isadore doggedly insisted that more Socialist matter should be included. He was especially rabid on the question of history.
"What's the use of learning a lot of rot you've got to unlearn? Why read Michelet and Carlyle on the French Revolution? These old idealists did the best they knew how. Carlyle really thought Mirabeau made the Revolution and Michelet thought it was Danton. But nobody, not even the antisocialists, believes in the 'great man theory' any more. All our history has got to be rewritten from the modern point of view. It hasn't been done yet, and the only way to get things straight is to saturate yourself in the social idea, get it into your head that this is a world of economic classes, not individuals, then you can read anything without danger – you know how to discount it.
"You talk about 'background' – well, that's what I'm insisting on. Let's get it right. It's the lack of a deeply social background that makes so many of our well-intentioned modern reformers sterile. People still believe that great changes can be made by strong individuals. A lot of peace advocates believe that Mr. Carnegie is going to abolish war. But most seem to think that things can be reformed piecemeal. This crusade against infant mortality is a good example. Its ideal is fine. But it tries to isolate it from all the rest of the social problem and cure it alone. It can't be done. It's tied up with rotten tenements and landlordism, with bad milk and commercialism, with poor wages and industrialism. Just like war, it is a natural, inevitable part of capitalism.
"It's the same thing with the trade-unions. They try to separate their economic struggle with their bosses from the political aspect of the social problem, and it can't be done. The unionists make a pitiful showing just because they are still slaves to the old culture; they lack broad insight. The actual things they try to do are good, but they're barren because their background is wrong."
"Thanks," Mabel said sarcastically. "I'm so glad to know what's wrong with us."
"Now, Yetta," Longman said, with the gesture of a circus man introducing his curiosities, "the show is about to commence. On your right you see the 'pure,' the hidebound, the uncompromising Socialist, Isadore Braun. To your left you see the 'suspect,' the 'bourgeoise,' step-by-step reformer, Miss Mabel Train. They are about to engage in a bloody combat."
"But," interposed Yetta, "what are you?"
"Yes," Braun echoed. "What are you?"
"That's an uninteresting detail. I'm only the referee of this bout."
"He can poke fun at a serious position," Braun said. "But he's afraid to or can't define his own."
"I'll tell you what he is, Yetta," Mabel volunteered. "He's a – "
"No, I'll tell her myself," Walter interrupted. "If you want it in one word, I'm a syndicaliste. We haven't any English word for it."
"He believes in a general strike," Mabel explained, "although not one trade strike in ten really succeeds."
"Exactly and because," Walter assented emphatically.
"He believes," Braun supplemented, "that although the working people haven't enough class consciousness to vote together we can ask them to fight together."
"Exactly and once more exactly! I hate to talk, Yetta, because – as I confessed to you before these two noble examples of self-sacrifice came in – I haven't the nerve to practise my beliefs. I hate to talk, and I've never done anything else. But I've got just as definite a creed as Isadore.
"A general strike has more hope of success than a dozen little strikes, because it's a strike for liberty – and that's the only thing that interests all the working class. The trade strikes are for a few extra pennies. And when one of them does succeed, it's because of some bigger enthusiasm than was written in their demands. You went right to the heart of the matter last night when you said you had been striking so as not to be slaves. I'll bet you've seen it when you talked to the other unions. Which of your demands interested them most? Dollars to doughnuts it was 'recognition of the union.' They all have demands of their own about wages and hours. But when you say 'union' to them, you're saying liberty. You're appealing to something bigger than considerations of pay – to their very love of life.
"The basis of a General Strike must be an ideal which is shared by every working-man. The simon-pure unionists, the A. F. of L., the Woman's Trade Union League, are fighting for little shop improvements, different in every trade. Sometimes – often – one set of demands is in conflict with another. The one thing that holds the movement of the workers closer together is this brilliant idea of union. And the leaders are busily preaching disunion.
"Read any history of labor and you'll see. First it was every man for himself. Then shop unions and each shop for itself. Then all the workmen of one town. Now, its national trade-unions. To-morrow it will be industrial unions. The change has already begun. We already have the Allied Building Trades. Mabel's keen on allying the various branches of garment workers. The miners have gone further. They have a real industrial union. That's the next step. We'll have the typesetters, pressmen, folders, newsboys, all in one big newspaper union. Engineers, switchmen, firemen, conductors, roundhouse and repair-shop men all in a big brotherhood of railroad men. Twenty gigantic industrial unions in place of the hundreds of impotent little trade organizations. No one can look the facts in the face and deny either the need of the change or the actual progress towards it.
"Braun shudders at the thought because the men who are now urging this change – the Industrial Workers of the World – are displeasing to him. They are not good party socialists. Mabel don't like them because they tell unpleasant truths about the crooks in her organization. I don't like them personally, either, because they are just as narrow-minded as Isadore, and I guess some of them are as crooked as any of the trade-union leaders. But the idea is bigger than personalities. You mark my words, Yetta, industrial unionism is going to be a bigger issue every year with the working-men. It's going to win. And the outcome of industrial unionism is the General Strike and Insurrection.
"Isadore pooh-poohs the idea of bloodshed. The social revolution is going to be a kid-glove affair. He will admit the possibility of sporadic riots. But the great victory is to be won at the voting booths. Justice is to be enthroned by ward caucuses and party conventions. Victor Berger instead of Dick Croker. The central committee instead of Tammany Hall. He really believes this, but it is based on two suppositions, both of which seem to me very uncertain. First, reason is to conquer the earth and the great majority is to vote reasonably – that is, the Socialist ticket. Second, the grafters and all the contented, well-fed, complaisant people are going to resign without a struggle.
"I don't think they will. They may not have the courage to defend their privileges themselves. But bravery, the fighting kind, is one of the cheapest things on the human market. Our government buys perfectly good soldiers for $13.50 a month. The privileged class always has hired mercenaries to defend their graft and I think they will in the future. They've already begun to do it with their State Constabulary in Pennsylvania. Read about how the French capitalists massacred our comrades after the Paris Commune. That was only thirty years ago. I don't see any reason to hope for a very startling change in their natures.
"And then is reason going to rule the world – the cold intellectual convictions that Isadore means? I doubt it. The great movements in the world's history have come from passionate enthusiasms. Take the Reformation, or the English Commonwealth, or the French Revolution. Not one man in ten of all the actors in those crises were what Isadore would call reasonable. Reason is powerless unless it is backed by a great enthusiasm. And if we have that, we can turn the trick quicker with a general strike and insurrection than we could by voting.
"This question of violence or peace is a thorny one. We've got to separate what we would like to see from what seems probable. Bloodshed is abhorrent. But it is pretty closely associated with the history of human progress. Before the great Revolution the mass of the French people were in the very blackest ignorance. They've had a century of revolution and bloodshed, and to-day they are the most cultured nation in the world. The same thing is happening to-day in Russia. We read in the papers of assassinations and executions and insurrections. It means that the intellect of a great people is coming to life. And the mind of our nation has got to be shaken into wakefulness, too. We've got to learn new and deeper meanings to the old words justice and liberty. I'd like to believe we could learn them in school, by reading socialist pamphlets. But all the race has ever learned about them so far has been in battle-fields and behind barricades. I hate and fear bloodshed. I believe it's wrong. Just as you said you thought it was wrong to lie. But I love liberty more.
"And there's one other point: Until we learn these lessons, we've got to see our strong men and women cut down by tuberculosis, we've got to stand by and watch a slaughter of innocent babies that makes Herod's little massacre look like a schoolboy's naughtiness. The socialists don't like the word 'violence.' The reality is in the air we breathe. The landlord wracks rent out of the poor by violence – no amount of legal drivel can hide the fact that every injustice of our present society is put through by the aid – on the treat – of police. The whole force of the state is back of the grafters. It's violence that drives people into the sweat-shops, that drives the boys to crime and the girls to prostitution. And all this deadly injustice will go on until we've learned the lessons of justice and liberty. Let us learn them as peacefully and legally as possible, but we must learn them. Blood isn't a nice thing to look at, but it isn't as unspeakably horrible as the sputum of tuberculosis."
"What you are saying is rank anarchy," Braun protested.
"I've told you a hundred times you can't scare me by calling names. 'Anarchy' is just as much a word of progress as 'Socialism.' I think you've got the best of it when it comes to a description and analysis of society and industrial development. But the Anarchists have got you backed off the map in the understanding of human motives and social impulses.