Broken to the Plow | Page 5

rested both hands on the white cloth. They were shapely hands
in spite of their size, with healthy pink nails, except on a thumb and
forefinger, which had been badly mangled. "For five years you have
worked seven hours every day on this routine ... and in order to enlarge
your capacity and skill and knowledge you have worked many hours
overtime on this same routine, I suppose without any extra pay... It
seems to me that a man who only gets a chance to exercise with
dumb-bells might keep in condition, but he'd hardly grow more
skillful... Of course, that still leaves two theories intact--working for
your own advancement ... and the interest of your firm. I suppose the
advancement has come, I suppose you've been paid for your overtime ...
in increased salary."
Helen made a scornful movement. "If you call an increase of ten dollars
a month in two years an advancement," she ventured, bitterly.
Starratt flushed.
"That leaves only one excuse for overtime. And that excuse is usually a
lie. Why should you have the interest of your firm at heart when it does

nothing for you beyond what it is forced to do?"
Fred Starratt bared his teeth in sudden snapping anger. "Well, and what
do you do, Mr. Hilmer, for your clerks?"
"Nothing ... absolutely nothing ... unless they demand it. And even then
it's only the exceptional man who can force me into a corner. The
average clerk in any country is like a gelded horse. He's been robbed of
his power by education ... of a sort. He's a reasonable, rational,
considerate beast that can be broken to any harness."
"What do you want us to do? Go on a strike and heave bricks into your
plate-glass window?... What would you do in our place?"
"I wouldn't be there, to begin with. I've heaved bricks in my day." He
leaned forward, exhibiting his smashed thumb and forefinger. "I killed
the man who did that to me. I was born in a Norwegian fishing village
and after a while I followed the sea. That's a good school for action.
And what education you get is thrashed into you. The little that sticks
doesn't do much more than toughen you. And if you don't want any
more it does well enough. Later on, if you have a thirst for knowledge,
you drink the brand you pick yourself and it doesn't go to your head.
Now with you ... you didn't have any choice. You drank up what they
handed out and, at the age when you could have made a selection, your
taste was formed ... by others... I don't mind people kicking at the man
who works with his hands if they know what they're talking about. But
most of them don't. They get the thing second hand. They're chock full
of loyalty to superiors and systems and governments, just from habit...
I've worked with my hands, and I've fought for a half loaf of bread with
a dirk knife, and I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct
contact. So when I disagree with the demands of the men who build my
vessels I know why I'm disagreeing. And I usually do disagree ...
because if they've got guts enough in them they'll fight. And I like a
good fight. That's why potting clerks is such a tame business. It's
almost as sickening as a rabbit drive."
He finished with a gesture of contempt and reached for his goblet of
water.

Starratt decided not to dodge the issue; if Hilmer wished to throw any
further mud he was perfectly ready to stand up and be the target.
"Well, and what's the remedy for stiffening the backbone of my sort?"
he asked, with polite insolence.
"Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible.
They've been bowing and scraping until there's a permanent kink in
their backs!"
"The 'middle class'?" Helen echoed, incredulously.
Hilmer was smiling widely. There was a strange, embarrassed silence.
Starratt was the first to recover himself. "Why, of course!... Why not?
You didn't think we belonged to any other class, did you?"
It was Mrs. Hilmer who changed the subject. "What nice corn pudding
this is, Mrs. Starratt! Would you mind telling me how you made it?"
Hostilities ceased with the black coffee, and in the tiny living room
Hilmer grew almost genial. His life had been varied and he was rather
proud of it--that is, he was proud of the more sordid details, which he
recounted with an air of satisfaction. He liked to dwell on his poverty,
his lack of opportunity, his scant education. He had the pride of his
achievements, and he was always eager to throw them into sharper
relief by dwelling