(from Afternoon of July 4, 1892, pp.829-31)
The Perfessor
leaned back, vastly satisfied with himself.
--The trouble with you, Perfessor,
Cash Carney said, is that you read too much.
--The trouble with you, Perfessor,
Mr. Shawnessy said, is that for you everything is growing old.
For my part, I don't think America will ever be either young
or old. America is an Idea, and ideas are neither young nor old,
they are simply--Ideas. It's entirely possible for the laborer
to improve his lot and for the State to own some of the agents
of production without an invasion of the individual's sacred
rights.
--Even a condition of that kind,
Cash Carney said, would be completely alien to the American form
of government and the spirit of the men who made America.
--Alien to the spirit of the America
we have known, Mr. Shawnessy said. But the Declaration of Independence,
like the Constitution, has to be rewritten by each generation,
to have any meaning. The Civil War was the second American Revolution.
And unless I'm much mistaken, in 1877, a third American Revolution
had its beginning in the coalyards and train stations of this
republic. The Strike of '77 was the Sumter of a new Civil War
for Liberty and Union, a confused War fought by an Army leaderless
and lost in darkness. Nevertheless--
--I don't know where you expect
to get with this talk of Revolution, Cash Carney broke in. Most
Americans know they're pretty well off, and like yourself, they
sit on their tails and watch from the sidelines, while cheering
a little for the so-called underdog. Meanwhile, by God, a few
of us get out there and get the work of the Nation done. By Jerusalem,
if some of us didn't keep the mills humming and the railroads
running, you'd soon find out about your Revolution. You'd find
yourself in the power of a bunch of ignorant dagoes that can't
even talk good English, and you'd begin to wish you had back
the good old America of Unlimited Opportunity for Everybody and
the Protection of Home Industries.
--What a Century! the Perfessor
said, suddenly leaning back into one of his gentle, nostalgic
moods. And when you stop to think of it, we were there. We've
been in on everything. When I look back on the Great Strike of
'77 now, it seems incredible. As you say, John, it was like a
beginning, an obscure and terrible dawn, which hasn't yet found
its day. My God, where have we been heading, anyway? What did
we think that we were doing? You remember, of course
July 21-22-- HOW --1877 THE GREAT STRIKE CAME UPON THE LAND IN THE FIRST YEAR
of America's second century as a nation. How
it spread through the Republic in the summer of 1877, following
the trunklines of the Nation's railroads. How it smouldered in
the smoky yards of the Republic's mightiest cities. And how John
Shawnessy saw the writhings of this belated Centennial monster,
which the Exhibitors of Progress had wisely reserved until the
other exhibits were dismantled and sent home.
No one anticipated the Great Strike
or the form that it would take, least of all the men who made
it. But the immediate cause was clear enough. The big railroad
combines agreed to reduce the wages of their workers, and the
workers, already living on bare subsistence wages, refused to
work the railroads or allow them to be worked. The Strike began
in Baltimore and spread like wildfire along the trunklines of
the Nation.
Those days, America had made God
in the image of a Locomotive. The people rebelled against God.
(from flashback to July 25, 1877, pp. 855-6)
In the ballroom
of Laura Golden's house on Fifth Avenue stood Professor Jerusalem
Webster Stiles presiding at the punchbowl. Everyone was chattering
about the Strike. John Shawnessy felt that he had stepped once
more into a cheating stageset briefly peopled with these women
in flamboyant gowns, these men in tails and ties. But the world
out of which this playlet had been engendered--the world Behind
the Scenes--was simply the nocturnal City--its strewn alleys,
gaslit parks, belching factories, masted harbor--where people
toiled namelessly through dingy nights and days so that from
time to time this waxen flower of gaiety might bloom briefly
Before the Footlights.
Cash Carney appeared striding among
the dancers with a rolled newspaper in his hand. Everyone gathered
around him to know the latest news of the Strike.
--Public opinion is beginning to
react in our favor, he said. My old friend Senator Garwood B.
Jones made a humdinger of a speech yesterday, and it's quoted
in all the evening papers.
Cash opened the paper and read
a little from Garwood's speech. The Statesman from Indiana, serving
his third year in the United States Senate, had begun by challenging
any man to show more genuine concern for the welfare of the Common
Laboring Man than he, Garwood B. Jones. But it was one thing
for the laboring man to ask for a better wage, and it was quite
another thing for a mob of hoodlums, incited by foreignborn bombslingers,
to rape, burn, and pillage the fairest cities of the Republic.
He, Garwood B. Jones, would be doing a disservice to the thousands
that had made him their spokesman . . .
--By God, he knew he'd better get
up and have his say, Cash said. We pumped a cold fifty thousand
into his campaign fund. The newspaper was passed around, and
people read the Senator's address.
--Yessirree, Cash Carney said,
and that isn't all. I have it on the highest authority that this
thing will be killed and killed dead in a matter of days. Mr.
Carney stayed another five minutes and then, looking at his watch,
spit a cigarbutt in an ornamental urn, and left.
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