Chapter: I

THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and
red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and
linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union
of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly
in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the
truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was
nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general
strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through
strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way
from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman,
trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty
trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by
strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats,
smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from
the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.

The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life
was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on
a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand.
Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and
merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely
resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but
ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little
belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering
groups on corners. "Move on there now! I can't have any of this
loitering!"

Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When
mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a
young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or
grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys
yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!" and striking truck-drivers inquired
tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp
in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be
careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!"

There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and
no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of
Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and
in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who
did not hate the enemy.

A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the
other--and the city was hysterical.

And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal.

He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he
agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when
his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of
going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a
broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls
had been hungry, he was troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said,
but in a doubtful croak.

For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a
sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the Saviour Would End Strikes."
Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to
the service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as
to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the
large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink.

Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily,
I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him
stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of
discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right
up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!"

"Yes--well--" said Babbitt.

The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his
poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:

"During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let
us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of
our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk
about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell
you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the
attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which
were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they
were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to
destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and
has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization
by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever,
and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired
opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile!

"And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition
of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what
high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic
paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions
against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in
which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing
the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor
is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and
government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.

"What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter
isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter
of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion!
Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss,
the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother
and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers,
and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!"

It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!"

"Huh?" said Chum Frink.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It
doesn't mean a darn thing."

"Maybe, but--"

Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at
him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous.


II

The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel
Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west
from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading
toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated
them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure. "Damn
loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained.
He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the
starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known
as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.

The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim
shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a
boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers'
monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!"
Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin
soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the
militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving,
Billy!"

Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who
were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel
Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum,
that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully
clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the
strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They
can't stop our peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the
posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled
off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of
soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be
any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.

Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane,
smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of
the history department in the State University, an old man and
white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family.

"Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in with the strikers?
And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch.
They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it
for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like
such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!"

The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street.

"They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the
streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!" Babbitt
grumbled. "Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!"

At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others
fretted, "I don't know what the world's coming to," or solaced their
spirits with "kidding."

Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki.

"How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil Gunch.

"Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated
'em and they got discouraged and went home."

"Fine work. No violence."

"Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my way, there'd be a
whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would
be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows
and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are
nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs,
and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat
up the whole lot of 'em!"

Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about
like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs."

Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take
charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the
strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!" Drum strode on, while all
the table stared at Babbitt.

"What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and
kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones.

"Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and
butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey.

Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a
mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence
was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must
have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only
too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering:

"No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me
it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's
got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is
jealous of him."

"Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George.
He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he
wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!"

Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being
watched.


III

As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch,
"--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a
corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that,
too. Near 's I can figure out--"

Babbitt was vaguely frightened.


IV

He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a
kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that
the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram,
of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant
hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:

"--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day,
doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought
to be able--"

Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In
vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while
Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.


V

"There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife,
"that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends.
Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive
element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge
us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go
calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down."

"Why, George," she said placidly, "I thought you always insisted that
all strikers ought to be put in jail."

"I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible
leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about
things like--"

"But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people
were the worst of--"

"Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word.
Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about
anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just
foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and
profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're
about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for
profits."

"George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I KNOW
you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a
word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you
talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!"

"What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I
want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when
I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think
people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were
decent?"

"Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean
a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for
to-night?"

On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, "She doesn't understand me. Hardly
understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to?

"Wish I could go out to Senny Doane's house and talk things over with
him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there!

"Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm
trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Myra's right?
Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded
and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--"

 In September, there are worker strikes and protests that turn Zenith "into two belligerent camps". All of the newspapers and the white-collar members of Zenith oppose the strike and try to reinstate order. Babbitt suddenly becomes publicly liberal, siding with the feared Seneca Doane and criticizing political services. In front of Chum Frink, he calls "rot" Dr. Drew's sermon about how love should prevent this chaos. At the strikers' parade, Babbitt becomes conflicted. Initially, he feels viscerally that the strikers are "scoundrels who obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity" , but when he sees Seneca Doane and a State University Professor among the marchers, he decides that the strikers have "just as much right to march as anybody else". At the Athletic Club, Babbitt opposes popular opinion about the strike, arousing the disdain and suspicion of Vergil Gunch. At home, George argues with Myra, who warns him that he will be misunderstood if he takes such a rebellious position. Babbitt is confused by this change as well, and he is frightened by the dismay of his friends

