Youth Challenges | Page 5

Bonbright was very young.
He turned, to be carried on by the current. Presently it was choked. A stagnant pool of humanity formed around some center, pressing toward it curiously. This center was a tiny park, about which the street divided, and the center was a man standing on a barrel by the side of a sign painted on cloth. The man was speaking in a loud, clear voice, which was able to make itself perfectly audible even to Bonbright on the extreme edge of the mass.
"You are helpless as individuals," the man was saying. "If one of you has a grievance, what can he do?... Nothing. You are a flock of sheep. ... If ALL of you have a grievance, what can you do? You are still a pack of sheep. ... Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, owns you, body and soul. ... Suppose this Foote who does you the favor to let you earn millions for him--suppose he wants to buy his wife a diamond necklace. ... What's to prevent him lowering your wages next week to pay for it?... YOU couldn't stop him!... Why can an army beat a mob of double its numbers? Because the army is ORGANIZED! Because the army fights as one man for one object! ... You are a mob. Capital is organized against you. ... How can you hope to defend yourselves? How can you force a betterment of your conditions, of your wage? ... By becoming an army--a labor army!... By organizing. ... That's why I'm here, sent by the National Federation--to organize you. To show you how to resist! ... To teach you how to make yourselves irresistible!..." There were shouts and cheers which blotted out the speaker's words. Then Bonbright heard him again:
"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, is entitled to fair interest on the money it has invested in its plant. It is entitled to a fair profit on the raw materials it uses in manufacture. ... But how much of the final cost of its axles does raw material represent? A fraction! What gives the axles the rest of their value?... LABOR! You men are paid two, three, some of you even four dollars a day--for your labor. Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, adds a little pig iron to your labor, and gives you a place to work in, and takes his millions of dollars a year. ... Do you get your fair share?... You do NOT, and you will never get a respectable fraction of your fair share till you organize--and seize it."
There was more. Bonbright had never heard the like of it before and it fascinated him. Here was a point of view that was new to him. What did it mean? Vaguely he had heard of Socialism, of labor unions, of the existence of a spirit of suspicion and discord between capital and labor. Now he saw it, face uncovered starkly.
A moment before he had realized his power over these men; now he perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than he. ... Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it topple in ruin.
His mind was a caldron into which cross currents of thought poured and tossed. He had no experience to draw on. Here was a thing he was being plunged into all unprepared. It had taken him unprepared, and shaken him as he had never been shaken before. He turned away.
Half a dozen feet away he saw the Girl with the Grin--not grinning now, but tense, pale, listening with her soul in her eyes, and with the light of enthusiasm glowing beside it.
He walked to her side, touched her shoulder. ... It was unpremeditated, something besides his own will had urged him to speak to her.
"I don't understand it," he said, unsteadily.
"Your class never does," she replied, not sharply, not as a retort, but merely as one states a fact to give enlightenment.
"My father," she said, "was killed leading the strikers at Homestead. ... The unions educated me."
"What is this man--this speaker--trying to do? Stir up a riot?"
She smiled. "No. He is an organizer sent by the National Federation. ... They're going to try to unionize our plant."
"Unionize?"
"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated," she said, "is a non-union shop."
"I didn't know," said he, after a brief pause. "I'm afraid I don't understand these things. ... I suppose one should know about them if he is to own a plant like ours." Again he paused while he fumbled for an idea that was taking shape. "I suppose one should understand about his employees just as much as he does about his machinery."
She looked at him with a touch of awakened interest. "Do you class men with machinery?" she asked, well knowing that was not his meaning.