Читать книгу The Walking Delegate - Scott Leroy - Страница 3

Tom glared at Foley till the walking delegate had covered half the distance to the ladder, then he turned back to his supervision, trying to hide the fires of his wrath. But his soul flamed within him. All that Foley had just threatened, openly and by insinuation, was within his power of accomplishment. Tom knew that. And every other man in the union was as much at his mercy, – and every man's family. And many had suffered greatly, and all, except Foley's friends, had suffered some. Tom's mind ran over the injustice Foley had wrought, and over Foley's history and the union's history during the last few years … and there was no sinking of the inward fire.

And yet there was a long period in the walking delegate's history on which Tom would not have passed harsh judgment. Very early in his career, in conformity with prevailing custom, Buck Foley had had a father and a mother. His mother he did not remember at all. After she had intimated a preference for another man by eloping with him, Buck's father had become afflicted with almost constant unsteadiness in his legs, an affliction that had before victimized him only at intervals. His father he remembered chiefly from having carried a tin pail to a store around the corner where a red-faced man filled it and handed it back to him over a high counter; and also from a white scar which even now his hair did not altogether conceal. One day his father disappeared. Not long after that Buck went to live in a big house with a great lot of boys, the little ones in checked pinafores, the big ones in gray suits. After six years of life here, at the age of twelve, he considered that he was fit for graduation, and so he went out into the world, – this on a very dark night when all in the big house were fast asleep.

For three years Buck was a newsboy; sleeping in a bed when he could afford one, sleeping in hallways, over warm gratings, along the docks, when he could not; winning all the newsboy's keen knowledge of human nature. At fifteen the sea fascinated him, and he lived in ships till he was twenty. Then a sailor's duties began to irk him. He came back to New York, took the first job that offered, driving a truck, and joined a political club of young men in a west side ward. Here he found himself. He rose rapidly to power in the club. Dan McGuire, the boss of the ward, had to take notice of him. He left his truck for a city job with a comfortable salary and nothing to do. At twenty-five he was one of McGuire's closest aids. Then his impatient ambition escaped his control. He plotted a revolution, which should overthrow McGuire and enthrone himself. But the Boss had thirty years of political cunning, and behind him a strong machine. For these Buck was no match. He took again to the sea.

Buck shipped as second mate on a steamer carrying steel for a great bridge in South Africa. Five years of authority had unfitted him for the subordinate position of second mate, and there were many tilts with the thick-headed captain. The result was that after the steamer had discharged her cargo Foley quitted his berth and followed the steel into the interior. The contractors were in sore need of men, and, even though Foley was not a bridgeman, they gladly gave him a job. His service as a sailor had fitted him to follow, without a twinge of fear, the most expert of the bridgemen in their daring clambering about cables and over narrow steel beams; and being naturally skillful he rapidly became an efficient workman.

Of the men sent out to this distant job perhaps one-half were union members. These formed a local branch of their society, and this Foley was induced to join. He rapidly won to influence and power in the affairs of the union, finding here the same keen enjoyment in managing men that he had first tasted in Dan McGuire's ward. After the completion of this job he worked in Scotland and Brazil, always active in the affairs of his union. At thirty-two he found himself back in New York, – a forceful leader ripe for an opportunity.

He had not been in New York a week when he discovered his chance. The union there was wofully weak – an organization only in name. The employers hardly gave it a consideration; the members themselves hardly held it in higher esteem. The men were working ten hours a day for two dollars; lacking the support of a strong union they were afraid to seek better terms. As Foley grimly expressed it, "The bosses have got youse down an' are settin' on your heads." Here in this utter disorganization Foley perceived his opportunity. He foresaw the extent to which the erection of steel-frame buildings, then in its beginning, was certain to develop. His trade was bound to become the "fundamental trade"; until his union had put up the steel frames the contractors could do nothing – the other workmen could do nothing. A strongly organized union holding this power – there was no limit to the concessions it might demand and secure.

It was a great opportunity. Foley went quietly to work on a job at twelve dollars a week, and bided his time. At the end of six months he was elected president and walking delegate of the union. He had no trouble in securing the offices. No one else wanted them. This was early in the spring. The first labor he set himself was the thorough organization of the union and the taking into its ranks of every ironworker in the city.

The following spring there was a strike. Foley now came for the first time before the contractors' attention. They regarded him lightly, having remembrance of his predecessors. But they soon found they were facing a man who, though uneducated and of ungrammatical speech, was as keen and powerful as the best of them. The strike was won, and great was the name of Foley. In the next three years there were two more strikes for increases in wages, which were won. And the name of Foley waxed greater.

During these first four years no man could have served the union better. But here ended the stretch of Foley's history on which Tom would not have passed harsh judgment; and here began the period whose acts of corruption and oppression were now moving in burning procession through Tom's mind. It is a matter of no moment whether Foley or the employers took the initiative in starting him on the new phase of his career as a labor leader. It is axiomatic that money is the ammunition of war; among the employers there were many who were indifferent whether this ammunition was spent in fighting or in buying. On the other hand, Foley's training on the street and in Dan McGuire's ward was not such as to produce an incorruptible integrity. It is only fair to Foley to say that the first sums he received were in return for services which did not work any injury or loss to the union. It was easy to excuse to himself these first lapses. He knew his own worth; he saw that men of much less capacity in the employ of the bosses were paid big salaries. The union paid him thirty dollars a week. "Who's hurt if I increase my salary to something like it ought to be at the expense of the bosses?" he reasoned; and took the money with an easy conscience.

This first "easy money" made Foley hungry for more. He saw the many opportunities that existed for acquiring it; he saw where he could readily create other opportunities. In earlier days he had envied McGuire the chances that were his. He had no reason to envy McGuire now.

During the first three or four years of his administration there was no opposition to him within the union. His work was too strenuous to be envied him by any man. But after the union had become an established power, and the position of walking delegate one of prominence, a few ambitious spirits began to aspire to his job. Also there began to be mutterings about his grafting. A party was formed which secretly busied itself with a plan to do to him what he had tried to do to Dan McGuire. He triumphed, as McGuire had triumphed. But the revolution, though unsuccessful, had a deep lesson for him. It taught him that, unless he fortified it, his position was insecure. At present he was dependent for its retention upon the favor of the members; and favor, as he knew, was not a dependable quantity.

He was determined to remain the walking delegate of the union. He had made the union, and the position. They were both his by right. He rapidly took measures to insure himself against the possibility of overthrow. He became relentless to all opposition. Those who dared talk were quick to hear from him. Some fared easily – the clever ones who were not bribe-proof. After being given jobs as foremen, and presented with neat little sums, they readily saw the justice of Foley's cause. Some, who were not worth bribing, he intimidated into silence. Those whom he had threatened and who still talked found themselves out of work and unable to get new jobs; they were forced into other trades or out of the city. A few such examples lessened the necessity for such severe action. Men with families to support perceived the value of a discreet tongue.

These methods were successful in quelling open opposition; but they, together with the knowledge that Foley was taking money wherever it was offered, had the effect of rapidly alienating the better element in the union. This forced him into a close alliance with the rougher members, who were greatly in the minority. But this minority, never more than five hundred out of three thousand men, Foley made immensely effective. He instructed them to make the meetings as disorderly as possible. His scheme worked to perfection. The better members came less and less frequently, and soon the meetings were entirely in the hands of the roughs. As time passed Foley grew more and more jealous of his power, and more and more harsh in the methods used to guard it. He attached to himself intimately several of the worst of his followers whom grim facetiousness soon nominated "The Entertainment Committee." If any one attacked him now, the bold one did so knowing that he would probably experience the hospitality of these gentlemen the first dark night he ventured forth alone.

Such were the conditions behind the acts of tyranny that Tom furiously overhauled, as he mechanically directed the work. He had considered these conditions and acts before, but never with such fierceness as now. Hitherto he had been, as it were, merely one citizen, though a more or less prominent one, of an oppressed nation; now he, as an individual, had felt the tyrant's malevolence. He had before talked of the union's getting rid of Foley as a necessary action, and only the previous night he had gone to the length of denouncing Foley in open meeting, an adventurous act that had not been matched in the union for two years. Perhaps, in the course of time, his patriotism alone would have pushed him to take up arms against Foley. But now to his patriotic indignation there was added the selfish wrath of the outraged individual, – and the sum was an impulse there was no restraining.

Tom was not one who, in a hot moment, for the assuagement of his wrath, would bang down his fist and consign himself to a purpose. Here, however, was a case where wrath made the same demand that already had been made by cool, moral judgment – the dethronement of Foley. And Tom felt in himself the power for its accomplishment. He was well furnished with self-confidence, – lacking which any man is an engine without fire. During the last five years – that is, since he was twenty-five, when he began to look upon life seriously – the knowledge had grown upon him that he was abler, and of stronger purpose, than his fellows. He had accepted this knowledge quietly, as a fact. It had not made him presumptuous; rather it had imposed upon him a serious sense of duty.

He considered the risks of a fight against Foley. Personal danger, – plenty of that, yes, – but his hot mind did not care for that. Financial loss, – he drew back from thinking what his wife would say; anyhow, there were his savings, which would keep them for awhile, if worst came to worst.

As the men were leaving the building at the end of the day's work, Tom drew Barry and Pete to one side. "I know you fellows don't like Foley a lot," he began abruptly, "but I don't know how far you're willing to go. For my part, I can't stand for him any longer. Can't we get together to-night and have a talk?"

To this Barry and Pete agreed.

"Where'bouts?" asked Barry.

Tom hesitated; and he was thinking of his wife when he said, "How about your house?"

"Glad to have you," was Barry's answer.