Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California

CHAPTER XXV
THE MASTER HAND

The whole machinery of the colony responded instantly to the grip of the master's hand. It was the one thing needed to insure successful progress.

When the Brotherhood realized that the young poet-athlete was not merely a love-sick dreamer and theorist, but a man of quick decisions, of firm and inflexible will, and the power to execute his will, they fell in line, caught the step, and order emerged from chaos.

When a crisis called for decision he made it with lightning rapidity and stuck to it. The situation demanded a dictatorship for the moment, and he did not hesitate to assume it. He saw before him sure success. If fools and cranks interfered with his plans he would crush and push them aside. The consciousness of power and its daily exercise developed his faculties to their highest tension. His mind began to arrange every detail of the vast and complicated system of the new social scheme. Men became the mere tools with which he would work out the revolution in human society. Every scrap of knowledge he had ever gained flashed through his excited imagination and fell into its place in the creation of the new order.

He put the machine-shops to work constructing the big gold dredge on which he had experimented one summer.

He had a pet scheme of farming which had come into his mind from watching his father's gardener the year before raise the most delicious cantaloups he had ever tasted. He discovered the secret of their marvellous sweetness and leaped to an instantaneous conclusion. He had the opportunity to test this inspiration now on a scale as vast as his dreams.

He called the superintendents and overseers of the farm together, and asked their plans for the crop on the five hundred acres of fertile lands under cultivation. They gave him their schedule for a variety of crops.

"Won't this soil grow cantaloups?" he asked.

They all reported that it would.

"Then I suggest that the entire acreage be planted in these vines."

To a man they declared the plan absurd.

"But suppose," he persisted, "that we raise and send to the East the most delicious melon they have ever tasted, and suppose we get three dollars a crate, we will make three hundred dollars an acre and our first crop will be worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

They laughed at him.

"Do you know," smilingly inquired the superintendent, "how much it will cost to plant and harvest such a crop?"

"I should say twenty-five dollars an acre," he replied.

"Double it," he cried.

"Very well, fifty dollars an acre," Norman agreed. "In round numbers it will cost us twenty-five thousand dollars. That leaves a profit of more than a hundred thousand, doesn't it?"

Again the superintendent laughed.

"And would you risk this enormous sum on one experiment? Suppose your melons would not be sweet?"

"There is no such possibility," the young enthusiast declared. "Their sweetness depends solely on two things – the quality of the seed and the quantity of rain which falls on them while they are growing. We are wasting a supreme opportunity. No rain falls in Ventura during the summer. We get our water to the roots by irrigation, not by rainfall. Get the right seed and your melons must be perfect. This is a scientific fact I have seen demonstrated. Try it on a vast scale and success is sure."

They voted unanimously against the proposition. Norman insisted. The superintendent resigned and appealed to the executive council. Wolf and Catherine, Tom and Barbara advised against placing so much capital in a single enterprise.

"I've got to make you rich and successful in spite of yourselves," Norman finally declared. "For the present I control these funds and I'm going to plant this crop. So that settles it. I'm sorry we can't agree."

His instantaneous decision fairly took Wolf's breath.

Barbara laughed and congratulated him.

"At least you have the courage of your convictions. I can't help admiring it."

As further opposition was useless, the order was put into execution. The superintendent finally caught the young man's spirit, withdrew his resignation, and undertook the work with enthusiasm.

At the end of the summer the success of the colony was astounding. The wildest prediction of the young leader fell below the facts. The crop of cantaloups averaged one hundred and five crates to the acre, and brought three dollars and a half a crate. The net profit on the melons reached the enormous total of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The men who raised the crop and added this wealth to the treasury of the colony were not slow in demanding an immediate readjustment of the scale of wages.

Two hundred and fifty men had done all the work of planting, cultivating, harvesting this crop and added ten times as much to the year's income as the combined labour of all the other members of the colony.

Brick-masons were receiving two dollars a day and farm-hands one dollar. The miners who were digging for gold in the mountain ranges and on the beaches were receiving five dollars a day and had added as yet not a single dollar to the wealth of the community. They had discovered gold in three new districts and thousands of dollars had been wasted in vain efforts to make it pay. The farmers protested bitterly against such waste, and demanded the equalization of wages.

Their spokesman astonished Norman by the vehemence and audacity of their demands:

"If Socialism means justice," he shouted, "now is the time to prove it! Labour creates all value. We have created one hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of wealth for the colony and we have received a mere pittance. If we created this wealth – "

"Wait a minute, comrades," Norman interrupted, with irritation. "Why should you continue to repeat that foolish assertion? You didn't create this wealth."

"Then I'd like to know who did?" shouted the orator. "We turned the soil, placed the fertilizers, planted every seed, cultivated every vine, pulled every melon, packed and placed them on the steamer. If we didn't make the wealth, who did?"

"I did," the young leader declared. "I conceived the possibility of this crop. I tried to persuade your superintendent and overseers. They had no faith. I forced them to plant these particular seeds against their own wishes. Your labour is a fixed thing year in and year out. All men must work or die. All life is a struggle thus with tooth and nail for a living. The creator of wealth is the superior intelligence that conceives something better than this clodhopper's daily task. You did what you were told to do. Your hands would have worked just as many hours at labour just as tiresome over a crop of beans that wouldn't have paid a profit at all this year. Wealth belongs to its creator. I made the crop, your hands were the mere automata which my brain directed. Your demands are absurd. I refuse to consider them or to permit their discussion."

The farmers refused point-blank to submit to this decision, and voted unanimously to quit work until they were given justice. Every plough stopped and the entire machinery of food production came to a dead standstill.

Norman threatened to refuse them admission to the dining-hall unless they returned to work, and they boldly replied that they would smash the door down and take what was their own.

Had the farmers been alone in their demands for an equalization of wages, the situation would have been easier to handle. But discontent over the question of wages had been growing steadily since the day of the decision that wages should be unequal.

The distinctions of wealth and poverty were rapidly making their appearance as in the old world. The cook had married a scrubwoman and the scrubwoman's daughter had married the drainman who had charge of the sewers. The combine income of the two highest-salaried workers in the colony had at once formed the nucleus of a new aristocracy of wealth.

The strike of the entire farming division of the colony was the match thrown in the powder magazine. Discontent flamed in every department of labour.

The demand for absolute equality of wages became resistless. It was the only thing which could once more bring order out of chaos.

Norman called a meeting of the general assembly and submitted the question for their discussion and decision. The debate was long, fierce, and bitter. In vain did the young leader plead with those who were receiving the highest rates that the profits of the colony would be greater and that each would share alike in the total wealth of the community. They denounced the proposed act as the climax of infamy.

The chef was furious.

"You give me the wages of a clodhopper and ask me to prepare a table fit for a king. Well, try it, and see what you get."

He sat down repeating his threat in a series of endless announcements to the people around him.

"I think he'll poison us all if you pass this law," Barbara whispered.

"The farmers will run us through with their pitchforks if we don't," he laughed.

"Poisoning is the easier way," she sighed.

The leader of the brass band raised the biggest row of all. From the first these men had refused to lift their hand to do a thing except to play at stated hours each day and furnish the music for the three evenings of social amusement.

"You place me on an equality with the lout who holds a calf or the clodhopper who holds a plough – I, who feed the soul with ravishing melody – I, who lift man from earth to heaven on the wings of angels!" The band leader swelled with righteous wrath and sat down beside the cook who was still muttering incoherently:

"Let 'em try it – and see what they get!"

Yet, in spite of the fierce threats of the cook, the scrubwoman, the drainman, the musician, and all the high-salaried favourites of labour, the inevitable occurred. When put to a vote equal wages were established by an overwhelming majority.

Each member of the colony, man, woman, and child, was voted free food, clothes, and shelter, and a credit of five hundred dollars a year at the Brotherhood store.

The executive council was abolished and in its place a board of governors established, composed of the heads of each department of labour and presided over by two regents, a man and a woman, elected by the general assembly. Norman and Barbara were elected regents without opposition, and the old heads of each department of labour placed on the board of governors to serve until the approaching annual election.

The assembly proposed:

"Article I. of the constitution of the new State of Ventura as follows:

"Every citizen of the State must labour according to his ability. Those who can work and will not shall be made to work."

No man who voted this simple and obviously just law could dream of the tremendous results. It was merely the enactment into statutory law of the first principle of an effective Socialism:

"From every man according to his ability, unto every man according to his needs."

The first obvious requirement of such a law was an immediate increase of the police and detective force at the command of the regents and the board of governors.

Norman thanked the assembly for the promptness and thoroughness which had characterized their work, and closed his congratulations with a sentence of peculiarly sinister meaning to the man who had ears to hear.

"Hereafter, comrades, we can move forward without another pause. There can never be another strike on the island of Ventura. The State is now supreme."

The Wolfs, who had modestly declined all office, were omnipresent during the long sessions of the assembly, which had lasted two days. Everywhere they had counselled compromise, forbearance, good fellowship, moving quietly from group to group in the big hall, and always winning new friends.

Wolf's gnarled hand gripped Norman's at the close of the meeting as he bent his massive head and whispered:

"A great day's work, Comrade Chief – one that will make history."

The young leader's face clouded as he slowly replied:

"I wish I were sure that it will be history of the right kind."

"You doubt it?" the old leader asked incredulously.

"It all depends on our leadership."

"With your hand on the helm" – Wolf paused and smiled curiously – "the ship of State is safe."

CHAPTER XXVI
AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

Again the colony entered on a period of active and efficient industry. Every man was at his post and did the work assigned him.

Eight hours was fixed as a working day in all departments. The first acts of insubordination were promptly suppressed. The discipline of an army was strictly enforced – the guard-house and whipping-post were found sufficient.

No report except the most favourable had ever reached the outside world, and thousands of applicants in San Francisco were clamouring for admission. The new colony house with accommodation for two thousand had been completed, and another of like size was under way.

Wolf had urged Norman to admit a new colony at once and prepare for the third. But the difficulties of government and the fights within the Brotherhood had alarmed the young leader. He hesitated, and the big new building as yet remained empty.

As the day for the annual meeting of the assembly drew near, doubts of the future grew darker in the young regent's mind. He had the power, under the deed of gift, to prolong the experiment another year, holding the title to the property for further experiment, or divide the profits between the members and reconvey the gift back to its donors, or by deed convey at once the whole property to the Brotherhood and end his trusteeship.

Which should it be?

His faith in his fellow man had been shaken by the events of the past year, and yet the colony had succeeded. Its wealth was great and its prospects greater. With the perfect discipline recently inaugurated and wisely administered, no limit could be fixed to the productive power of such an organization.

That he should hesitate a moment after the achievements of the year was a stunning shock to Wolf. The moment he realized the import of the crisis, he at once appealed to Barbara.

"You alone can save us, child," he urged. "You must act at once. You promised to lead him captive in your train. You have failed for one reason only – "

"Yes, I know," Barbara interrupted. "I haven't tried. I confess it."

"There is not a moment to lose," Wolf urged. "We are entering on the most wonderful development in the history of the human race. The only thing lacking for its triumphant achievement is faith and leadership. Secure from our young dreamer the title to this island and you will achieve an immortal deed – you will not hesitate or fail?"

"No," was the firm answer. "I will not fail. I'm going with him to-day on a mountain climb. Just for fun, if for nothing else, I'll test my power."

"You'll report to me the moment you return?" Wolf urged.

"Yes," she answered, dreamily.

Norman found Barbara in a mood resistlessly charming. She seemed to have utterly forgotten that she was grown up or had ever been the herald of a revolutionary cause. She was a laughing girl of eighteen again, with the joy of youth sparkling in her eyes and laughter ringing in every accent of her voice.

Instantly the mood of the man reflected hers. He threw to the winds the cares and worries of the great adventure that had brought them together, and the island of Ventura became the enchanted isle of song and story.

"We shall be just two children to-day – shall we not?" she asked.

"Yes," he responded gaily, "two children who have run away from school, tired of books, with hearts hungry for the breath of the fields."

For half an hour hill and dale rang with laughter as they ascended the path of the brook. They came to a wide expanse of still water. And Norman said with a bantering laugh:

"We leave the stream here and climb the hill to the left. I must wade and carry you across this place if you're not afraid?"

"Who's afraid?" she asked with scorn.

"All right."

He removed his shoes, and rolled his trousers high.

"Now your arm around my neck, and no jumping or screaming until we're safe on the other shore."

She hesitated just an instant, blushed, and slipped her soft round arm about his neck as he lifted her slight figure and began to pick his way across the treacherous surface of the slippery bottom. His foot slipped on a muddy stone. She gave a scream, and both arms gripped his neck in sudden fear. Her burning cheek pressed his forehead.

"I beg your pardon," she cried, blushing red. "I didn't mean to smother you."

"And I distinctly said no jumping or screaming, didn't I?"

"I won't do it again – oh, dear!"

Again both arms clasped his neck in a strangling, smothering hug, which he purposely prolonged with an extra slip which might have been avoided.

Her face was scarlet now and the blushes refused to go. They lingered in great red bunches after he had carefully placed her on the smooth grass on the opposite bank.

"Honestly, I'm afraid I disgraced myself, didn't I?" she asked, timidly.

"No. It was all my fault," he replied. "I did it on purpose."

"Perhaps I choked you on purpose, too!" she answered, blushing again.

Norman looked at her thoughtfully.

"You know I never saw you blush before. I like it."

"Is it becoming?" she asked, demurely.

"Very."

"You know I was never in a man's arms before."

"And you didn't like it?" he asked, with a smile playing around his mouth.

"To tell you the truth, I found it very awkward."

"Awkward?" he laughed.

"And exciting," she confessed.

"Shall we repeat it until you are used to it?"

"Thank you, I'm sufficiently amused for to-day," she answered, soberly. "And now we will put on our shoes and be good children."

For the rest of the journey Norman found her strangely silent. Now and then he caught her looking at him furtively out of her big brown eyes, as if she had just met him and was half afraid to go further.

He found himself particularly sensitive to her moods. The moment she became silent and thoughtful her impulses ruled his, and not a word was spoken for a mile. Scarcely two sentences passed between them until they reached the summit of the range and sat down on the cliff overhanging the sea.

This cliff was one of the numerous headlands which thrust their peaks in almost perpendicular lines sheer into the ocean.

They sat for an hour and drank in the peace and solemn grandeur of the infinite blue expanse.

"What a little world, the one in which we live down there and fret and fume," he whispered. "The one we think so big when in the thick of the fight! We forget the dim expanse of ocean kissing ocean – encircling the earth – of the skies that kiss the sea and lead on and on into those great silent deeps where a universe of worlds roll in grandeur!"

"Yet isn't man greater than all these worlds?" she asked, with sudden elation.

"If he is a man, yes; a real man with the conscious divine power in his soul which says, I will! Isn't that the only power worth having? The herd of cattle we call men, whose souls have never spoken that divine word of character and of action – are they men? Have they souls at all? Is it worth the while of those who have to fret and fuss and fume trying to make something out of nothing?"

Barbara turned suddenly, looked into Norman's eyes, and asked in anxious tones:

"What do you mean?"

"That I'm thinking of giving up this experiment."

"Now that you are just making it a marvellous success?"

"But is it a success? What is the good of achievement for any community if that achievement springs from the will of one man? If their souls are in subjection to his, has he not degraded them? Is life inside or outside? Are we Socialists not struggling merely with what is outside? Are we not in reality struggling back into the primitive savage herd out of which individual manhood has slowly emerged? I'm puzzled. I'm afraid to go on. I've asked you to come up here to-day to tell me what to do."

Barbara's breath came quick.

"You wish me to decide the momentous question of our colony? Perhaps the future of humanity?"

"Yes, just that. You are a woman. Women know things by intuition rather than by reason. I'm growing more and more to believe that we only know what we feel. I trust you as I would not trust my own judgment just now. I'm going to ask you, in the purity and beauty of your woman's soul, to read the future for me. I'm going to allow you to decide this question. Feel with me its difficulties and its prospects, trust utterly to your own intuitions, and you will decide right."

Barbara began to tremble and her voice was very low as she bent toward him.

"Why do you trust me with the greatest question of your life with such perfect faith?"

He took her hand, bowed, and kissed it.

"Because, Barbara, I love you," he whispered with passionate tenderness.

The girl looked away and smiled while her heart beat in an ecstasy of triumph.

"And this is one of the things that has puzzled me most," he went on, rapidly. "Every hope and dream my soul has cherished of you has been at war with this scheme of herding men and women together. I want you all my very own. I want to seize you now in my arms and carry you a thousand miles away from every vulgar crowd on earth. A hundred times I've been on the point of telling you that I love you, but I drew back and sealed my lips. It was treason to the Cause. For how can this cause of the herd be one with the heart-cry of the man for the one woman on earth his mate? I've tried to reconcile them, but I can't. Come, dearest, you are my nobler, better self, the part of me I've been searching for and have found. You must answer this cry for light and guidance. Your voice shall be to me the voice of God. Shall I go back to the faith of my fathers in the old world, and will you come with me – my wife, my mate, my life? Or shall we remain here, and hand in hand fight this battle to a finish? The one thing that is unthinkable is that I shall lose you. I lay my life at your feet. Do with it as you will."

Barbara tried to speak and a sob choked her into silence. She lifted her head at last and spoke timidly.

"I thought it would be easy. But I find it very, very difficult – this settling the destiny of a man. Of one thing I'm sure. You must not give up this work."

"I'll sign the deeds of transfer to-morrow," he interrupted.

The girl's eyes opened in wonder and a feeling of awe stole into her heart.

"You trust me so far?" she asked, brokenly.

"Yes."

"Then I must speak softly, must I not? I must weigh every word. You frighten me – "

"I'm not afraid. You are the woman I love."

"How long have you loved me?" she asked, studying him curiously.

"Always, I think. Consciously since the day I tore that flag down on our lawn."

"And yet you drew away from me at times."

"Yes. I felt the irrepressible conflict between this ideal and my desires. Your voice called me to the work. I determined to put the work to the test first – "

"And I was the inspiration behind your faith and daring leadership?"

"Always."

"You haven't asked me if I love you?" Barbara said, after a pause.

"I've been afraid."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think you are yet conscious of the meaning of love."

"And yet you place yourself absolutely in my power?"

"Absolutely. I love you and I have not made a mistake."

"Frankly, then, I don't know what love means. In my heart of hearts I've always been afraid of men – "

"You're not afraid of me?"

"After to-day – no, I don't think I will be."

"You have made me very happy," he cried joyously. "Come, we must hurry back now. I'm going to make out the deeds to-night and place them in your hands to-morrow morning."

Scarcely a word was spoken as they descended the mountain. She had gone up in the morning a laughing girl, conscious of her beauty and its cruel power, and determined to use it. She came down a sober little woman with a great, wondering question growing in her heart.

When Wolf met her with eager questions she answered as in a dream.

"He will deliver the deeds to-morrow?" he gasped in amazement.

"Yes, to-morrow," she answered mechanically.