Steve Hunter living in Bidwell. That's what I say. I tell you it's the
town's duty to get out and plug for them and for that machine. If we don't,
I know what'll happen. Steve Hunter's a live one. I been thinking maybe he
was. He'll take that invention and that inventor of his to some other town
or to a city. That's what he'll do. Damn it, I tell you we got to get out
and back them fellows up. That's what I say."
On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement
did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a carpenter
come to his father's store and build in the show window facing Main
Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he filled
with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and pulleys
connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across the field.
In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed some dozens of
tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork was started and the
strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the machine crept slowly
forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the ground, the plant dropped
into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared and packed the earth about the
plant roots. At the top of the machine there was a tank filled with water,
and when the plant was set, a portion of water, nicely calculated as to
quantity, ran down a pipe and was deposited at the plant roots.
Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field,
setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it;
he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell
to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale
was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bidwell
was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his
factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted
the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him.
"We're going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for
jobs as superintendent and things like that," he said. "I make no promises.
I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole
in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the
world."
Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about
making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and
had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the store.
He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these
grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at
night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field
showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.
Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor
practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store
window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an acre of
cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called "the old way," by
hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would be formed in
Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into it. He printed
an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many offers had come
to him to take his project to the city or to other and larger towns.
"Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to stick to our own
people," he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew nothing of the
article and had never been taken into the lives of the people addressed.
A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock subscriptions, and
in private conversations Steve whispered of huge profits to be made. The
matter was talked over in every household and plans were made for raising
money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to lend a certain percentage on the
value of the town property and Steve secured a long-time option on all the
land facing Turner's Pike clear down to Pickleville. When the town heard
of this it was filled with wonder. "Gee," the loiterers before the store
exclaimed, "old Bidwell is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you?
There are going to be houses clear down to Pickleville." Hugh went to
Cleveland to see about having one of his new machines made in steel and
wood and in a size that would permit its actual use in the field. He
returned, a hero in the town's eyes. His silence made it possible for the
people, who could not entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve,
to let their minds take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.
In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window of the
jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along Turner's
Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh.
They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before
a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old
pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of
the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed as he was always
embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich
by the power of the man's mind. They thought of him as thinking always
great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and
blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn't
waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost
unbelievable wonders.
In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was
felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to
pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual
passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the
evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a
Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake
and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on
the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places.
Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell was to
have a brick factory covering acres of ground, that there would be paved
streets and electric lights.
Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was
the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most
from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. When
pressed by Ed Hall, Dr. Robinson, and other enthusiasts, he fell back upon
the word of that God whose name had been so much upon his lips. The decrier
of God became the defender of God. "The thing, you see, can't be done.
It ain't all right. Something awful'll happen. The rains won't come and
the plants'll dry up and die. It'll be like it was in Egypt in the Bible
times," he declared. The old farmer with the twisted leg stood before the
crowd in the drug-store and proclaimed the truth of God's word. "Don't it
say in the Bible men shall work and labor by the sweat of their brows?" he
asked sharply. "Can a machine like that sweat? You know it can't. And it
can't do the work either. No, siree. Men've got to do it. That's the way
things have been since Cain killed Abel in the Garden of Eden. God intended
it so and there can't no telegraph operator or no smart young squirt like
Steve Hunter--fellows in a town like this--set themselves up before me to
change the workings of God's laws. It can't be done, and if it could be
done it would be wicked and ungodly to try. I'll have nothing to do with
it. It ain't right. That's what I say and all your smart talk ain't a-going
to change me."
It was in the year 1892 that Steve Hunter organized the first industrial
enterprise that came to Bidwell. It was called the Bidwell Plant-Setting
Machine Company, and in the end it turned out to be a failure. A large
factory was built on the river bank facing the New York Central tracks. It
is now occupied by an enterprise called the Hunter Bicycle Company and is
what in industrial parlance is called a live, going concern.
For two years Hugh worked faithfully trying to perfect the first of his
inventions. After the working models of the plant-setter were brought from
Cleveland, two trained mechanics were employed to come to Bidwell and work
with him. In the old pickle factory an engine was installed and lathes and
other tool-making machines were set up. For a long time Steve, John Clark,
Tom Butterworth, and the other enthusiastic promoters of the enterprise had
no doubt as to the final outcome. Hugh wanted to perfect the machine, had
his heart set on doing the job he had set out to do, but he had then and,
for that matter, he continued during his whole life to have but little
conception of the import in the lives of the people about him of the things
he did. Day after day, with two city mechanics and Allie Mulberry to drive
the team of horses Steve had provided, he went into a rented field north of
the factory. Weak places developed in the complicated mechanism, and new
and stronger parts were made. For a time the machine worked perfectly. Then
other defects appeared and other parts had to be strengthened and changed.
The machine became too heavy to be handled by one team. It would not work
when the soil was either too wet or too dry. It worked perfectly in both
wet and dry sand but would do nothing in clay. During the second year
and when the factory was nearing completion and much machinery had been
installed, Hugh went to Steve and told him of what he thought were the
limitations of the machine. He was depressed by his failure, but in working
with the machine, he felt he had succeeded in educating himself as he never
could have done by studying books. Steve decided that the factory should be
started and some of the machines made and sold. "You keep the two men you
have and don't talk," he said. "The machine may yet turn out to be better
than you think. One can never tell. I have made it worth their while
to keep still." On the afternoon of the day on which he had his talk
with Hugh, Steve called the four men who were associated with him in the
promotion of the enterprise into the back room of the bank and told them of
the situation. "We're up against something here," he said. "If we let word
of the failure of this machine get out, where'll we be? It is a case of the
survival of the fittest."
Steve explained his plan to the men in the room. After all, he said, there
was no occasion for any of them to get excited. He had taken them into the
thing and he proposed to get them out. "I'm that kind of a man," he said
pompously. In a way, he declared, he was glad things had turned out as
they had. The four men had little actual money invested. They had all
tried honestly to do something for the town and he would see to it that
everything came out all right. "We'll be honest with every one," he said.
"The stock in the company has all been sold. We'll make some of the
machines and sell them. If they're failures, as this inventor thinks, it
will not be our fault. The plant, you see, will have to be sold cheap. When
that times comes we five will have to save ourselves and the future of the
town. The machinery we have bought, is, you see, iron and wood working
machinery, the very latest kind. It can be used to make some other thing.
If the plant-setting machine is a failure we'll simply buy up the plant at
a low price and make something else. Perhaps it'll be better for the town
to have the entire stock control in our hands. You see we few men have got
to run things here. It's going to be on our shoulders to see that labor is
employed. A lot of small stock-holders are a nuisance. As man to man I'm
going to ask each of you not to sell his stock, but if any one comes to you
and asks about its value, I expect you to be loyal to our enterprise. I'll
begin looking about for something to replace the plant-setting machine, and
when the shop closes we'll start right up again. It isn't every day men get
a chance to sell themselves a fine plant full of new machinery as we can do
in a year or so now."
Steve went out of the bank and left the four men staring at each other.
Then his father got up and went out. The other men, all connected with the
bank, arose and wandered out. "Well," said John Clark, somewhat heavily,
"he's a smart man. I suppose after all it is up to us to stick with him
and with the town. As he says, labor has got to be employed. I can't see
that it does a carpenter or a farmer any good to own a little stock in a
factory. It only takes their minds off their work. They have foolish dreams
of getting rich and don't attend to their own affairs. It would be an
actual benefit to the town if a few men owned the factory." The banker
lighted a cigar and going to a window stared out into the main street of
Bidwell. Already the town had changed. Three new brick buildings were being
erected on Main Street within sight of the bank window. Workmen employed in
the building of the factory had come to town to live, and many new houses
were being built. Everywhere things were astir. The stock of the company
had been oversubscribed, and almost every day men came into the bank and
spoke of wanting to buy more. Only the day before a farmer had come in with
two thousand dollars. The banker's mind began to secrete the poison of his
age. "After all, it's men like Steve Hunter, Tom Butterworth, Gordon Hart,
and myself that have to take care of things, and to be in shape to do it
we have to look out for ourselves," he soliloquized. Again he stared into
Main Street. Tom Butterworth went out at the front door. He wanted to be by
himself and think his own thoughts. Gordon Hart returned to the empty back
room and standing by a window looked out into an alleyway. His thoughts
ran in the same channel as those that played through the mind of the bank
president. He also thought of men who wanted to buy stock in the company
that was doomed to failure. He began to doubt the judgment of Hugh McVey
in the matter of failure. "Such fellows are always pessimists," he told
himself. From the window at the back of the bank, he could see over the
roofs of a row of small sheds and down a residence street to where two
new workingmen's houses were being built. His thoughts only differed from
the thoughts of John Clark because he was a younger man. "A few men of
the younger generation, like Steve and myself will have to take hold of
things," he muttered aloud. "We'll have to have money to work with. We'll
have to take the responsibility of the ownership of money."
At the front of the bank John Clark puffed at his cigar. He felt like a
soldier weighing the chances of battle. Vaguely he thought of himself as
a general, a kind of U. S. Grant of industry. The lives and happiness of
many people, he told himself, depended on the clear working of his brain.
"Well," he thought, "when factories start coming to a town and it begins to
grow as this town is growing no man can stop it. The fellow who thinks of
individual men, little fellows with their savings invested, who may be hurt
by an industrial failure, is just a weakling. Men have to face the duties
life brings. The few men who see clearly have to think first of themselves.
They have to save themselves in order that they may save others."
* * * * *
Things kept on the stir in Bidwell and the gods of chance played into the
hands of Steve Hunter. Hugh invented an apparatus for lifting a loaded
coal-car off the railroad tracks, carrying it high up into the air and
dumping its contents into a chute. By its use an entire car of coal could
be emptied with a roaring rush into the hold of a ship or the engine room
of a factory. A model of the new invention was made and a patent secured.
Then Steve Hunter carried it off to New York. He received two hundred
thousand dollars in cash for it, half of which went to Hugh. Steve's faith
in the inventive genius of the Missourian was renewed and strengthened. He
looked forward with a feeling almost approaching pleasure to the time when
the town would be forced to face the fact that the plant-setting machine
was a failure, and the factory with its new machinery would have to be
thrown on the market. He knew that his associates in the promotion of the
enterprise were secretly selling their stock. One day he went to Cleveland
and had a long talk with a banker there. Hugh was at work on a corn-cutting
machine and already he had secured an option on it. "Perhaps when the
time comes to sell the factory there'll be more than one bidder," he told
Ernestine, the soap maker's daughter, who had married him within a month
after the sale of the car-unloading device. He grew indignant when he told
her of the disloyalty of the two men in the bank, and the rich farmer,
Tom Butterworth. "They're selling their shares and letting the small
stock-holders lose their money," he declared. "I told 'em not to do it. Now
if anything happens to spoil their plans they'll not have me to blame."
Nearly a year had been spent in stirring up the people of Bidwell to the
point of becoming investors. Then things began to stir. The ground was
broken for the erection of the factory. No one knew of the difficulties
that had been encountered in attempting to perfect the machine and word
was passed about that in actual tests in the fields it had proven itself
entirely practical. The skeptical farmers who came into town on Saturdays
were laughed at by the town enthusiasts. A field, that had been planted
during one of the brief periods when the machine finding ideal soil
conditions had worked perfectly, was left to grow. As when he operated
the tiny model in the store window, Steve took no chances. He engaged Ed
Hall to go at night and replace the plants that did not live. "It's fair
enough," he explained to Ed. "A hundred things can cause the plants to die,
but if they die it'll be blamed on the machine. What will become of the
town if we don't believe in the thing we're going to manufacture here?"
The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner's Pike
to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved
restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went along
the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls began to
mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed under
temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An advance
horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main Street in the
evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in towns all over
the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania,
into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States bordering on the
Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and
Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the
minds of the people. Villages like Lima and Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie
and Anderson in Indiana, became small cities within a few weeks. To some of
these places, so anxious were the people to get to them and to invest their
money, excursion trains were run. Town lots that a few weeks before the
discovery of oil or gas could have been bought for a few dollars sold for
thousands. Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in
Indiana and Ohio giant gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the
ground, and the fuel so essential to modern industrial development rushed
into the open. A wit, standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas
wells exclaimed, "Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach.
His face will be covered with pimples."
Having, before the factories came, no market for the gas, the wells were
lighted and at night great torches of flame lit the skies. Pipes were laid
on the surface of the ground and by a day's work a laborer earned enough to
heat his house at tropical heat through an entire winter. Farmers owning
oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor and owing money at the
bank, and awoke in the morning rich. They moved into the towns and invested
their money in the factories that sprang up everywhere. In one county in
southern Michigan, over five hundred patents for woven wire farm fencing
were taken out in one year, and almost every patent was a magnet about
which a company for the manufacture of fence formed itself. A vast energy
seemed to come out of the breast of earth and infect the people. Thousands
of the most energetic men of the middle States wore themselves out in
forming companies, and when the companies failed, immediately formed
others. In the fast-growing towns, men who were engaged in organizing
companies representing a capital of millions lived in houses thrown
hurriedly together by carpenters who, before the time of the great
awakening, were engaged in building barns. It was a time of hideous
architecture, a time when thought and learning paused. Without music,
without poetry, without beauty in their lives or impulses, a whole people,
full of the native energy and strength of lives lived in a new land, rushed
pell-mell into a new age. A man in Ohio, who had been a dealer in horses,
made a million dollars out of a patent churn he had bought for the price of
a farm horse, took his wife to visit Europe and in Paris bought a painting
for fifty thousand dollars. In another State of the Middle West, a man who
sold patent medicine from door to door through the country began dealing in
oil leases, became fabulously rich, bought himself three daily newspapers,
and before he had reached the age of thirty-five succeeded in having
himself elected Governor of his State. In the glorification of his energy
his unfitness as a statesman was forgotten.
In the days before the coming of industry, before the time of the mad
awakening, the towns of the Middle West were sleepy places devoted to the
practice of the old trades, to agriculture and to merchandising. In the
morning the men of the towns went forth to work in the fields or to the
practice of the trade of carpentry, horse-shoeing, wagon making, harness
repairing, and the making of shoes and clothing. They read books and
believed in a God born in the brains of men who came out of a civilization
much like their own. On the farms and in the houses in the towns the men
and women worked together toward the same ends in life. They lived in small
frame houses set on the plains like boxes, but very substantially built.
The carpenter who built a farmer's house differentiated it from the barn by
putting what he called scroll work up under the eaves and by building at
the front a porch with carved posts. After one of the poor little houses
had been lived in for a long time, after children had been born and men had
died, after men and women had suffered and had moments of joy together in
the tiny rooms under the low roofs, a subtle change took place. The houses
became almost beautiful in their old humanness. Each of the houses began
vaguely to shadow forth the personality of the people who lived within its
walls.
In the farmhouses and in the houses on the side streets in the villages,
life awoke at dawn. Back of each of the houses there was a barn for the
horses and cows, and sheds for pigs and chickens. At daylight a chorus of
neighs, squeals, and cries broke the silence. Boys and men came out of
the houses. They stood in the open spaces before the barns and stretched
their bodies like sleepy animals. The arms extended upward seemed to be
supplicating the gods for fair days, and the fair days came. The men and
boys went to a pump beside the house and washed their faces and hands
in the cold water. In the kitchens there was the smell and sound of the
cooking of food. The women also were astir. The men went into the barns to
feed the animals and then hurried to the houses to be themselves fed. A
continual grunting sound came from the sheds where pigs were eating corn,
and over the houses a contented silence brooded.
After the morning meal men and animals went together to the fields and to
the doing of their tasks, and in the houses the women mended clothes, put
fruit in cans against the coming of winter and talked of woman's affairs.
On the streets of the towns on fair days lawyers, doctors, the officials of
the county courts, and the merchants walked about in their shirt sleeves.
The house painter went along with his ladder on his shoulder. In the
stillness there could be heard the hammers of the carpenters building a
new house for the son of a merchant who had married the daughter of a
blacksmith. A sense of quiet growth awoke in sleeping minds. It was the
time for art and beauty to awake in the land.
Instead, the giant, Industry, awoke. Boys, who in the schools had read of
Lincoln, walking for miles through the forest to borrow his first book, and
of Garfield, the towpath lad who became president, began to read in the
newspapers and magazines of men who by developing their faculty for getting
and keeping money had become suddenly and overwhelmingly rich. Hired
writers called these men great, and there was no maturity of mind in the
people with which to combat the force of the statement, often repeated.
Like children the people believed what they were told.
While the new factory was being built with the carefully saved dollars
of the people, young men from Bidwell went out to work in other places.
After oil and gas were discovered in neighboring states, they went to the
fast-growing towns and came home telling wonder tales. In the boom towns
men earned four, five and even six dollars a day. In secret and when none
of the older people were about, they told of adventures on which they had
gone in the new places; of how, attracted by the flood of money, women came
from the cities; and the times they had been with these women. Young Harley
Parsons, whose father was a shoemaker and who had learned the blacksmith
trade, went to work in one of the new oil fields. He came home wearing a
fancy silk vest and astonished his fellows by buying and smoking ten-cent
cigars. His pockets were bulging with money. "I'm not going to stay long
in this town, you can bet on that," he declared one evening as he stood,
surrounded by a group of admirers before Fanny Twist's Millinery Shop on
lower Main Street. "I have been with a Chinese woman, and an Italian, and
with one from South America." He took a puff of his cigar and spat on the
sidewalk. "I'm out to get what I can out of life," he declared. "I'm going
back and I'm going to make a record. Before I get through I'm going to be
with a woman of every nationality on earth, that's what I'm going to do."
Joseph Wainsworth the harness maker, who had been the first man in Bidwell
to feel the touch of the heavy finger of industrialism, could not get over
the effect of the conversation had with Butterworth, the farmer who had
asked him to repair harnesses made by machines in a factory. He became a
silent disgruntled man and muttered as he went about his work in the shop.
When Will Sellinger his apprentice threw up his place and went to Cleveland
he did not get another boy but for a time worked alone in the shop. He got
the name of being disagreeable, and on winter afternoons the farmers no
longer came into his place to loaf. Being a sensitive man, Joe felt like a
pigmy, a tiny thing walking always in the presence of a giant that might
at any moment and by a whim destroy him. All his life he had been somewhat
off-hand with his customers. "If they don't like my work, let 'em go to the
devil," he said to his apprentices. "I know my trade and I don't have to
bow down to any one here."
When Steve Hunter organized the Bidwell Plant-Setting Machine Company, the
harness maker put his savings, twelve hundred dollars, into the stock of
the company. One day, during the time when the factory was building, he
heard that Steve had paid twelve hundred dollars for a new lathe that had
just arrived by freight and had been set on the floor of the uncompleted
building. The promoter had told a farmer that the lathe would do the work
of a hundred men, and the farmer had come into Joe's shop and repeated the
statement. It stuck in Joe's mind and he came to believe that the twelve
hundred dollars he had invested in stock had been used for the purchase of
the lathe. It was money he had earned in a long lifetime of effort and it
had now bought a machine that would do the work of a hundred men. Already
his money had increased by a hundred fold and he wondered why he could
not be happy about the matter. On some days he was happy, and then his
happiness was followed by an odd fit of depression. Suppose, after all,
the plant-setting machine wouldn't work? What then could be done with the
lathe, with the machine bought with his money?
One evening after dark and without saying anything to his wife, he went
down along Turner's Pike to the old factory at Pickleville where Hugh with
the half-wit Allie Mulberry, and the two mechanics from the city, were
striving to correct the faults in the plant-setting machine. Joe wanted
to look at the tall gaunt man from the West, and had some notion of
trying to get into conversation with him and of asking his opinion of the
possibilities of the success of the new machine. The man of the age of
flesh and blood wanted to walk in the presence of the man who belonged to
the new age of iron and steel. When he got to the factory it was dark and
on an express truck in front of the Wheeling Station the two city workmen
sat smoking their evening pipes. Joe walked past them to the station door
and then returned along the platform and got again into Turner's Pike. He
stumbled along the path beside the road and presently saw Hugh McVey coming
toward him. It was one of the evenings when Hugh, overcome with loneliness,
and puzzled that his new position in the town's life did not bring him any
closer to people, had gone to town to walk through Main Street, half hoping
some one would break through his embarrassment and enter into conversation
with him.
When the harness maker saw Hugh walking in the path, he crept into a fence
corner, and crouching down, watched the man as Hugh had watched the French
boys at work in the cabbage fields. Strange thoughts came into his head. He
thought the extraordinarily tall figure before him in some way terrible. He
became childishly angry and for a moment thought that if he had a stone in
his hand he would throw it at the man, the workings of whose brain had so
upset his own life. Then as the figure of Hugh went away along the path
another mood came. "I have worked all my life for twelve hundred dollars,
for money that will buy one machine that this man thinks nothing about," he
muttered aloud. "Perhaps I'll get more money than I invested: Steve Hunter
says maybe I will. If machines kill the harness-making trade what's the
difference? I'll be all right. The thing to do is to get in with the new
times, to wake up, that's the ticket. With me it's like with every one
else: nothing venture nothing gain."
Joe crawled out of the fence corner and went stealthily along the road
behind Hugh. A fervor seized him and he thought he would like to creep
close and touch with his finger the hem of Hugh's coat. Afraid to try
anything so bold his mind took a new turn. He ran in the darkness along the
road toward town and, when he had crossed the bridge and come to the New
York Central tracks, turned west and went along the tracks until he came to
the new factory. In the darkness the half completed walls stuck up into the
sky, and all about were piles of building materials. The night had been
dark and cloudy, but now the moon began to push its way through the clouds.
Joe crawled over a pile of bricks and through a window into the building.
He felt his way along the walls until he came to a mass of iron covered by
a rubber blanket. He was sure it must be the lathe his money had bought,
the machine that was to do the work of a hundred men and that was to make
him comfortably rich in his old age. No one had spoken of any other machine
having been brought in on the factory floor. Joe knelt on the floor and put
his hands about the heavy iron legs of the machine. "What a strong thing
it is! It will not break easily," he thought. He had an impulse to do
something he knew would be foolish, to kiss the iron legs of the machine
or to say a prayer as he knelt before it. Instead he got to his feet and
crawling out again through the window, went home. He felt renewed and full
of new courage because of the experiences of the night, but when he got to
his own house and stood at the door outside, he heard his neighbor, David
Chapman, a wheelwright who worked in Charlie Collins' wagon shop, praying
in his bedroom before an open window. Joe listened for a moment and, for
some reason he couldn't understand, his new-found faith was destroyed by
what he heard. David Chapman, a devout Methodist, was praying for Hugh
McVey and for the success of his invention. Joe knew his neighbor had also
invested his savings in the stock of the new company. He had thought that
he alone was doubtful of success, but it was apparent that doubt had come
also into the mind of the wheelwright. The pleading voice of the praying
man, as it broke the stillness of the night, cut across and for the moment
utterly destroyed his confidence. "O God, help the man Hugh McVey to remove
every obstacle that stands in his way," David Chapman prayed. "Make the
plant-setting machine a success. Bring light into the dark places. O Lord,
help Hugh McVey, thy servant, to build successfully the plant-setting
machine."
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER VIII
When Clara Butterworth, the daughter of Tom Butterworth, was eighteen years
old she graduated from the town high school. Until the summer of her
seventeenth year, she was a tall, strong, hard-muscled girl, shy in the
presence of strangers and bold with people she knew well. Her eyes were
extraordinarily gentle.
The Butterworth house on Medina Road stood back of an apple orchard and
there was a second orchard beside the house. The Medina Road ran south from
Bidwell and climbed gradually upward toward a country of low hills, and
from the side porch of the Butterworth house the view was magnificent.
The house itself was a large brick affair with a cupola on top and was
considered at that time the most pretentious place in the county.
Behind the house were several great barns for the horses and cattle. Most
of Tom Butterworth's farm land lay north of Bidwell, and some of his fields
were five miles from his home; but as he did not himself work the land it
did not matter. The farms were rented to men who worked them on shares.
Beside the business of farming Tom carried on other affairs. He owned two
hundred acres of hillside land near his house and, with the exception of
a few fields and a strip of forest land, it was devoted to the grazing
of sheep and cattle. Milk and cream were delivered each morning to the
householders of Bidwell by two wagons driven by his employees. A half mile
to the west of his residence there was a slaughter house on a side road and
at the edge of a field where cattle were killed for the Bidwell market. Tom
owned it and employed the men who did the killing. A creek that came down
out of the hills through one of the fields past his house had been dammed,
and south of the pond there was an ice house. He also supplied the town
with ice. In his orchards beneath the trees stood more than a hundred
beehives and every year he shipped honey to Cleveland. The farmer himself
was a man who appeared to do nothing, but his shrewd mind was always at
work. In the summer throughout the long sleepy afternoons, he drove about
over the county buying sheep and cattle, stopping to trade horses with some
farmer, dickering for new pieces of land, everlastingly busy. He had one
passion. He loved fast trotting horses, but would not humor himself by
owning one. "It's a game that only gets you into trouble and debt," he said
to his friend John Clark, the banker. "Let other men own the horses and go
broke racing them. I'll go to the races. Every fall I can go to Cleveland
to the grand circuit. If I go crazy about a horse I can bet ten dollars
he'll win. If he doesn't I'm out ten dollars. If I owned him I would maybe
be out hundreds for the expense of training and all that." The farmer was
a tall man with a white beard, broad shoulders, and rather small slender
white hands. He chewed tobacco, but in spite of the habit kept both himself
and his white beard scrupulously clean. His wife had died while he was yet
in the full vigor of life, but he had no eye for women. His mind, he once
told one of his friends, was too much occupied with his own affairs and
with thoughts of the fine horses he had seen to concern itself with any
such nonsense.
For many years the farmer did not appear to pay much attention to his
daughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she was
under the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one who
lived with him and managed his household being comfortably married. His own
wife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had inherited his
own physical strength.
When Clara was seventeen, she and her father had a quarrel that eventually
destroyed their relationship. The quarrel began late in July. It was a busy
summer on the farms and more than a dozen men were employed about the
barns, in the delivery of ice and milk to the town, and at the slaughtering
pens a half mile away. During that summer something happened to the girl.
For hours she sat in her own room in the house reading books, or lay in
a hammock in the orchard and looked up through the fluttering leaves of
the apple trees at the summer sky. A light, strangely soft and enticing,
sometimes came into her eyes. Her figure that had been boyish and strong
began to change. As she went about the house she sometimes smiled at
nothing. Her aunt hardly noticed what was happening to her, but her father,
who all her life had seemed hardly to take account of her existence, was
interested. In her presence he began to feel like a young man. As in the
days of his courtship of her mother and before the possessive passion in
him destroyed his ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life about
him was full of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he went
for one of his long drives through the country he asked his daughter to
accompany him, and although he had little to say a kind of gallantry crept
into his attitude toward the awakening girl. While she was in the buggy
with him, he did not chew tobacco, and after one or two attempts to indulge
in the habit without having the smoke blow in her face, he gave up smoking
his pipe during the drives.
Always before that summer Clara had spent the months when there was no
school in the company of the farm hands. She rode on wagons, visited the
barns, and when she grew weary of the company of older people, went into
town to spend an afternoon with one of her friends among the town girls.
In the summer of her seventeenth year she did none of these things. At the
table she ate in silence. The Butterworth household was at that time run
on the old-fashioned American plan, and the farm hands, the men who drove
the ice and milk wagons and even the men who killed and dressed cattle and
sheep, ate at the same table with Tom Butterworth, his sister, who was the
housekeeper, and his daughter. Three hired girls were employed in the house
and after all had been served they also came and took their places at
table. The older men among the farmer's employees, many of whom had known
her from childhood, had got into the habit of teasing the daughter of the
house. They made comments concerning town boys, young fellows who clerked
in stores or who were apprenticed to some tradesman and one of whom had
perhaps brought the girl home at night from a school party or from one of
the affairs called "socials" that were held at the town churches. After
they had eaten in the peculiar silent intent way common to hungry laborers,
the farm hands leaned back in their chairs and winked at each other. Two
of them began an elaborate conversation touching on some incident in the
girl's life. One of the older men, who had been on the farm for many years
and who had a reputation among the others of being something of a wit,
chuckled softly. He began to talk, addressing no one in particular. The
man's name was Jim Priest, and although the Civil War had come upon the
country when he was past forty, he had been a soldier. In Bidwell he was
looked upon as something of a rascal, but his employer was very fond of
him. The two men often talked together for hours concerning the merits
of well known trotting horses. In the war Jim had been what was called
a bounty man, and it was whispered about town that he had also been a
deserter and a bounty jumper. He did not go to town with the other men
on Saturday afternoons, and had never attempted to get into the Bidwell
chapter of the G. A. R. On Saturdays when the other farm hands washed,
shaved and dressed themselves in their Sunday clothes preparatory to the
weekly flight to town, he called one of them into the barn, slipped a
quarter into his hand, and said, "Bring me a half pint and don't you forget
it." On Sunday afternoons he crawled into the hayloft of one of the barns,
drank his weekly portion of whisky, got drunk, and sometimes did not appear
again until time to go to work on Monday morning. In the fall Jim took his
savings and went to spend a week at the grand circuit trotting meeting at
Cleveland, where he bought a costly present for his employer's daughter and
then bet the rest of his money on the races. When he was lucky he stayed on
in Cleveland, drinking and carousing until his winnings were gone.
It was Jim Priest who always led the attacks of teasing at the table, and
in the summer of her seventeenth year, when she was no longer in the mood
for such horse-play, it was Jim who brought the practice to an end. At the
table Jim leaned back in his chair, stroked his red bristly beard, now
rapidly graying, looked out of a window over Clara's head, and told a tale
concerning an attempt at suicide on the part of a young man in love with
Clara. He said the young man, a clerk in a Bidwell store, had taken a pair
of trousers from a shelf, tied one leg about his neck and the other to a
bracket in the wall. Then he jumped off a counter and had only been saved
from death because a town girl, passing the store, had seen him and had
rushed in and cut him down. "Now what do you think of that?" he cried. "He
was in love with our Clara, I tell you."
After the telling of the tale, Clara got up from the table and ran out of
the room. The farm hands joined by her father laughed heartily. Her aunt
shook her finger at Jim Priest, the hero of the occasion. "Why don't you
let her alone?" she asked.
"She'll never get married if she stays here where you make fun of every
young man who pays her any attention." At the door Clara stopped and,
turning, put out her tongue at Jim Priest. Another roar of laughter arose.
Chairs were scraped along the floor and the men filed out of the house to
go back to the work in the barns and about the farm.
In the summer when the change came over her Clara sat at the table and did
not hear the tales told by Jim Priest. She thought the farm hands who ate
so greedily were vulgar, a notion she had never had before, and wished she
did not have to eat with them. One afternoon as she lay in the hammock in
the orchard, she heard several of the men in a nearby barn discussing the
change that had come over her. Jim Priest was explaining what had happened.
"Our fun's over with Clara," he said. "Now we'll have to treat her in a new
way. She's no longer a kid. We'll have to let her alone or pretty soon she
won't speak to any of us. It's a thing that happens when a girl begins to
think about being a woman. The sap has begun to run up the tree."
The puzzled girl lay in the hammock and looked up at the sky. She thought
about Jim Priest's words and tried to understand what he meant. Sadness
crept over her and tears came into her eyes. Although she did not know what
the old man meant by the words about the sap and the tree, she did, in a
detached subconscious way, understand something of the import of the words,
and she was grateful for the thoughtfulness that had led to his telling the
others to stop trying to tease her at the table. The half worn-out old farm
hand, with the bristly beard and the strong old body, became a figure full
of significance to her mind. She remembered with gratitude that, in spite
of all of his teasing, Jim Priest had never said anything that had in any
way hurt her. In the new mood that had come upon her that meant much. A
greater hunger for understanding, love, and friendliness took possession of
her. She did not think of turning to her father or to her aunt, with whom
she had never talked of anything intimate or close to herself, but turned
instead to the crude old man. A hundred minor points in the character of
Jim Priest she had never thought of before came sharply into her mind.
In the barns he had never mistreated the animals as the other farm hands
sometimes did. When on Sunday afternoons he was drunk and went staggering
through the barns, he did not strike the horses or swear at them. She
wondered if it would be possible for her to talk to Jim Priest, to ask him
questions about life and people and what he meant by his words regarding
the sap and the tree. The farm hand was old and unmarried. She wondered if
in his youth he had ever loved a woman. She decided he had. His words about
the sap were, she was sure, in some way connected with the idea of love.
How strong his hands were. They were gnarled and rough, but there was
town's duty to get out and plug for them and for that machine. If we don't,
I know what'll happen. Steve Hunter's a live one. I been thinking maybe he
was. He'll take that invention and that inventor of his to some other town
or to a city. That's what he'll do. Damn it, I tell you we got to get out
and back them fellows up. That's what I say."
On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement
did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a carpenter
come to his father's store and build in the show window facing Main
Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he filled
with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and pulleys
connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across the field.
In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed some dozens of
tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork was started and the
strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the machine crept slowly
forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the ground, the plant dropped
into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared and packed the earth about the
plant roots. At the top of the machine there was a tank filled with water,
and when the plant was set, a portion of water, nicely calculated as to
quantity, ran down a pipe and was deposited at the plant roots.
Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field,
setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with it;
he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in Bidwell
to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening a new tale
was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said that Bidwell
was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced Steve to take his
factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate a farmer who doubted
the practicability of the machine, Steve took him aside and talked to him.
"We're going to need live young men who know how to handle other men for
jobs as superintendent and things like that," he said. "I make no promises.
I only want to tell you that I like live young fellows who can see the hole
in a bushel basket. I like that kind. I like to see them get up in the
world."
Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about
making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity, and
had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the store.
He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He let these
grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came secretly at
night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the miniature field
showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.
Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human labor
practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in the store
window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an acre of
cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called "the old way," by
hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would be formed in
Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into it. He printed
an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many offers had come
to him to take his project to the city or to other and larger towns.
"Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to stick to our own
people," he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew nothing of the
article and had never been taken into the lives of the people addressed.
A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock subscriptions, and
in private conversations Steve whispered of huge profits to be made. The
matter was talked over in every household and plans were made for raising
money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to lend a certain percentage on the
value of the town property and Steve secured a long-time option on all the
land facing Turner's Pike clear down to Pickleville. When the town heard
of this it was filled with wonder. "Gee," the loiterers before the store
exclaimed, "old Bidwell is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you?
There are going to be houses clear down to Pickleville." Hugh went to
Cleveland to see about having one of his new machines made in steel and
wood and in a size that would permit its actual use in the field. He
returned, a hero in the town's eyes. His silence made it possible for the
people, who could not entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve,
to let their minds take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.
In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window of the
jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along Turner's
Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to replace Hugh.
They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like devotees before
a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their eyes at the old
pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them, unconscious of
the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed as he was always
embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of becoming suddenly rich
by the power of the man's mind. They thought of him as thinking always
great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be more than half bluff and
blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and blow about Hugh. He didn't
waste his time in words. He thought, and out of his thought sprang almost
unbelievable wonders.
In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress was
felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had begun to
pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of the gradual
passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street in the
evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had become a
Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town to awake
and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men held forth on
the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most unexpected places.
Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within a year Bidwell was to
have a brick factory covering acres of ground, that there would be paved
streets and electric lights.
Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was
the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most
from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. When
pressed by Ed Hall, Dr. Robinson, and other enthusiasts, he fell back upon
the word of that God whose name had been so much upon his lips. The decrier
of God became the defender of God. "The thing, you see, can't be done.
It ain't all right. Something awful'll happen. The rains won't come and
the plants'll dry up and die. It'll be like it was in Egypt in the Bible
times," he declared. The old farmer with the twisted leg stood before the
crowd in the drug-store and proclaimed the truth of God's word. "Don't it
say in the Bible men shall work and labor by the sweat of their brows?" he
asked sharply. "Can a machine like that sweat? You know it can't. And it
can't do the work either. No, siree. Men've got to do it. That's the way
things have been since Cain killed Abel in the Garden of Eden. God intended
it so and there can't no telegraph operator or no smart young squirt like
Steve Hunter--fellows in a town like this--set themselves up before me to
change the workings of God's laws. It can't be done, and if it could be
done it would be wicked and ungodly to try. I'll have nothing to do with
it. It ain't right. That's what I say and all your smart talk ain't a-going
to change me."
It was in the year 1892 that Steve Hunter organized the first industrial
enterprise that came to Bidwell. It was called the Bidwell Plant-Setting
Machine Company, and in the end it turned out to be a failure. A large
factory was built on the river bank facing the New York Central tracks. It
is now occupied by an enterprise called the Hunter Bicycle Company and is
what in industrial parlance is called a live, going concern.
For two years Hugh worked faithfully trying to perfect the first of his
inventions. After the working models of the plant-setter were brought from
Cleveland, two trained mechanics were employed to come to Bidwell and work
with him. In the old pickle factory an engine was installed and lathes and
other tool-making machines were set up. For a long time Steve, John Clark,
Tom Butterworth, and the other enthusiastic promoters of the enterprise had
no doubt as to the final outcome. Hugh wanted to perfect the machine, had
his heart set on doing the job he had set out to do, but he had then and,
for that matter, he continued during his whole life to have but little
conception of the import in the lives of the people about him of the things
he did. Day after day, with two city mechanics and Allie Mulberry to drive
the team of horses Steve had provided, he went into a rented field north of
the factory. Weak places developed in the complicated mechanism, and new
and stronger parts were made. For a time the machine worked perfectly. Then
other defects appeared and other parts had to be strengthened and changed.
The machine became too heavy to be handled by one team. It would not work
when the soil was either too wet or too dry. It worked perfectly in both
wet and dry sand but would do nothing in clay. During the second year
and when the factory was nearing completion and much machinery had been
installed, Hugh went to Steve and told him of what he thought were the
limitations of the machine. He was depressed by his failure, but in working
with the machine, he felt he had succeeded in educating himself as he never
could have done by studying books. Steve decided that the factory should be
started and some of the machines made and sold. "You keep the two men you
have and don't talk," he said. "The machine may yet turn out to be better
than you think. One can never tell. I have made it worth their while
to keep still." On the afternoon of the day on which he had his talk
with Hugh, Steve called the four men who were associated with him in the
promotion of the enterprise into the back room of the bank and told them of
the situation. "We're up against something here," he said. "If we let word
of the failure of this machine get out, where'll we be? It is a case of the
survival of the fittest."
Steve explained his plan to the men in the room. After all, he said, there
was no occasion for any of them to get excited. He had taken them into the
thing and he proposed to get them out. "I'm that kind of a man," he said
pompously. In a way, he declared, he was glad things had turned out as
they had. The four men had little actual money invested. They had all
tried honestly to do something for the town and he would see to it that
everything came out all right. "We'll be honest with every one," he said.
"The stock in the company has all been sold. We'll make some of the
machines and sell them. If they're failures, as this inventor thinks, it
will not be our fault. The plant, you see, will have to be sold cheap. When
that times comes we five will have to save ourselves and the future of the
town. The machinery we have bought, is, you see, iron and wood working
machinery, the very latest kind. It can be used to make some other thing.
If the plant-setting machine is a failure we'll simply buy up the plant at
a low price and make something else. Perhaps it'll be better for the town
to have the entire stock control in our hands. You see we few men have got
to run things here. It's going to be on our shoulders to see that labor is
employed. A lot of small stock-holders are a nuisance. As man to man I'm
going to ask each of you not to sell his stock, but if any one comes to you
and asks about its value, I expect you to be loyal to our enterprise. I'll
begin looking about for something to replace the plant-setting machine, and
when the shop closes we'll start right up again. It isn't every day men get
a chance to sell themselves a fine plant full of new machinery as we can do
in a year or so now."
Steve went out of the bank and left the four men staring at each other.
Then his father got up and went out. The other men, all connected with the
bank, arose and wandered out. "Well," said John Clark, somewhat heavily,
"he's a smart man. I suppose after all it is up to us to stick with him
and with the town. As he says, labor has got to be employed. I can't see
that it does a carpenter or a farmer any good to own a little stock in a
factory. It only takes their minds off their work. They have foolish dreams
of getting rich and don't attend to their own affairs. It would be an
actual benefit to the town if a few men owned the factory." The banker
lighted a cigar and going to a window stared out into the main street of
Bidwell. Already the town had changed. Three new brick buildings were being
erected on Main Street within sight of the bank window. Workmen employed in
the building of the factory had come to town to live, and many new houses
were being built. Everywhere things were astir. The stock of the company
had been oversubscribed, and almost every day men came into the bank and
spoke of wanting to buy more. Only the day before a farmer had come in with
two thousand dollars. The banker's mind began to secrete the poison of his
age. "After all, it's men like Steve Hunter, Tom Butterworth, Gordon Hart,
and myself that have to take care of things, and to be in shape to do it
we have to look out for ourselves," he soliloquized. Again he stared into
Main Street. Tom Butterworth went out at the front door. He wanted to be by
himself and think his own thoughts. Gordon Hart returned to the empty back
room and standing by a window looked out into an alleyway. His thoughts
ran in the same channel as those that played through the mind of the bank
president. He also thought of men who wanted to buy stock in the company
that was doomed to failure. He began to doubt the judgment of Hugh McVey
in the matter of failure. "Such fellows are always pessimists," he told
himself. From the window at the back of the bank, he could see over the
roofs of a row of small sheds and down a residence street to where two
new workingmen's houses were being built. His thoughts only differed from
the thoughts of John Clark because he was a younger man. "A few men of
the younger generation, like Steve and myself will have to take hold of
things," he muttered aloud. "We'll have to have money to work with. We'll
have to take the responsibility of the ownership of money."
At the front of the bank John Clark puffed at his cigar. He felt like a
soldier weighing the chances of battle. Vaguely he thought of himself as
a general, a kind of U. S. Grant of industry. The lives and happiness of
many people, he told himself, depended on the clear working of his brain.
"Well," he thought, "when factories start coming to a town and it begins to
grow as this town is growing no man can stop it. The fellow who thinks of
individual men, little fellows with their savings invested, who may be hurt
by an industrial failure, is just a weakling. Men have to face the duties
life brings. The few men who see clearly have to think first of themselves.
They have to save themselves in order that they may save others."
* * * * *
Things kept on the stir in Bidwell and the gods of chance played into the
hands of Steve Hunter. Hugh invented an apparatus for lifting a loaded
coal-car off the railroad tracks, carrying it high up into the air and
dumping its contents into a chute. By its use an entire car of coal could
be emptied with a roaring rush into the hold of a ship or the engine room
of a factory. A model of the new invention was made and a patent secured.
Then Steve Hunter carried it off to New York. He received two hundred
thousand dollars in cash for it, half of which went to Hugh. Steve's faith
in the inventive genius of the Missourian was renewed and strengthened. He
looked forward with a feeling almost approaching pleasure to the time when
the town would be forced to face the fact that the plant-setting machine
was a failure, and the factory with its new machinery would have to be
thrown on the market. He knew that his associates in the promotion of the
enterprise were secretly selling their stock. One day he went to Cleveland
and had a long talk with a banker there. Hugh was at work on a corn-cutting
machine and already he had secured an option on it. "Perhaps when the
time comes to sell the factory there'll be more than one bidder," he told
Ernestine, the soap maker's daughter, who had married him within a month
after the sale of the car-unloading device. He grew indignant when he told
her of the disloyalty of the two men in the bank, and the rich farmer,
Tom Butterworth. "They're selling their shares and letting the small
stock-holders lose their money," he declared. "I told 'em not to do it. Now
if anything happens to spoil their plans they'll not have me to blame."
Nearly a year had been spent in stirring up the people of Bidwell to the
point of becoming investors. Then things began to stir. The ground was
broken for the erection of the factory. No one knew of the difficulties
that had been encountered in attempting to perfect the machine and word
was passed about that in actual tests in the fields it had proven itself
entirely practical. The skeptical farmers who came into town on Saturdays
were laughed at by the town enthusiasts. A field, that had been planted
during one of the brief periods when the machine finding ideal soil
conditions had worked perfectly, was left to grow. As when he operated
the tiny model in the store window, Steve took no chances. He engaged Ed
Hall to go at night and replace the plants that did not live. "It's fair
enough," he explained to Ed. "A hundred things can cause the plants to die,
but if they die it'll be blamed on the machine. What will become of the
town if we don't believe in the thing we're going to manufacture here?"
The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner's Pike
to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved
restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went along
the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls began to
mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed under
temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An advance
horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main Street in the
evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened in towns all over
the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania,
into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States bordering on the
Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were discovered in Ohio and
Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A madness took hold of the
minds of the people. Villages like Lima and Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie
and Anderson in Indiana, became small cities within a few weeks. To some of
these places, so anxious were the people to get to them and to invest their
money, excursion trains were run. Town lots that a few weeks before the
discovery of oil or gas could have been bought for a few dollars sold for
thousands. Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in
Indiana and Ohio giant gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the
ground, and the fuel so essential to modern industrial development rushed
into the open. A wit, standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas
wells exclaimed, "Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach.
His face will be covered with pimples."
Having, before the factories came, no market for the gas, the wells were
lighted and at night great torches of flame lit the skies. Pipes were laid
on the surface of the ground and by a day's work a laborer earned enough to
heat his house at tropical heat through an entire winter. Farmers owning
oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor and owing money at the
bank, and awoke in the morning rich. They moved into the towns and invested
their money in the factories that sprang up everywhere. In one county in
southern Michigan, over five hundred patents for woven wire farm fencing
were taken out in one year, and almost every patent was a magnet about
which a company for the manufacture of fence formed itself. A vast energy
seemed to come out of the breast of earth and infect the people. Thousands
of the most energetic men of the middle States wore themselves out in
forming companies, and when the companies failed, immediately formed
others. In the fast-growing towns, men who were engaged in organizing
companies representing a capital of millions lived in houses thrown
hurriedly together by carpenters who, before the time of the great
awakening, were engaged in building barns. It was a time of hideous
architecture, a time when thought and learning paused. Without music,
without poetry, without beauty in their lives or impulses, a whole people,
full of the native energy and strength of lives lived in a new land, rushed
pell-mell into a new age. A man in Ohio, who had been a dealer in horses,
made a million dollars out of a patent churn he had bought for the price of
a farm horse, took his wife to visit Europe and in Paris bought a painting
for fifty thousand dollars. In another State of the Middle West, a man who
sold patent medicine from door to door through the country began dealing in
oil leases, became fabulously rich, bought himself three daily newspapers,
and before he had reached the age of thirty-five succeeded in having
himself elected Governor of his State. In the glorification of his energy
his unfitness as a statesman was forgotten.
In the days before the coming of industry, before the time of the mad
awakening, the towns of the Middle West were sleepy places devoted to the
practice of the old trades, to agriculture and to merchandising. In the
morning the men of the towns went forth to work in the fields or to the
practice of the trade of carpentry, horse-shoeing, wagon making, harness
repairing, and the making of shoes and clothing. They read books and
believed in a God born in the brains of men who came out of a civilization
much like their own. On the farms and in the houses in the towns the men
and women worked together toward the same ends in life. They lived in small
frame houses set on the plains like boxes, but very substantially built.
The carpenter who built a farmer's house differentiated it from the barn by
putting what he called scroll work up under the eaves and by building at
the front a porch with carved posts. After one of the poor little houses
had been lived in for a long time, after children had been born and men had
died, after men and women had suffered and had moments of joy together in
the tiny rooms under the low roofs, a subtle change took place. The houses
became almost beautiful in their old humanness. Each of the houses began
vaguely to shadow forth the personality of the people who lived within its
walls.
In the farmhouses and in the houses on the side streets in the villages,
life awoke at dawn. Back of each of the houses there was a barn for the
horses and cows, and sheds for pigs and chickens. At daylight a chorus of
neighs, squeals, and cries broke the silence. Boys and men came out of
the houses. They stood in the open spaces before the barns and stretched
their bodies like sleepy animals. The arms extended upward seemed to be
supplicating the gods for fair days, and the fair days came. The men and
boys went to a pump beside the house and washed their faces and hands
in the cold water. In the kitchens there was the smell and sound of the
cooking of food. The women also were astir. The men went into the barns to
feed the animals and then hurried to the houses to be themselves fed. A
continual grunting sound came from the sheds where pigs were eating corn,
and over the houses a contented silence brooded.
After the morning meal men and animals went together to the fields and to
the doing of their tasks, and in the houses the women mended clothes, put
fruit in cans against the coming of winter and talked of woman's affairs.
On the streets of the towns on fair days lawyers, doctors, the officials of
the county courts, and the merchants walked about in their shirt sleeves.
The house painter went along with his ladder on his shoulder. In the
stillness there could be heard the hammers of the carpenters building a
new house for the son of a merchant who had married the daughter of a
blacksmith. A sense of quiet growth awoke in sleeping minds. It was the
time for art and beauty to awake in the land.
Instead, the giant, Industry, awoke. Boys, who in the schools had read of
Lincoln, walking for miles through the forest to borrow his first book, and
of Garfield, the towpath lad who became president, began to read in the
newspapers and magazines of men who by developing their faculty for getting
and keeping money had become suddenly and overwhelmingly rich. Hired
writers called these men great, and there was no maturity of mind in the
people with which to combat the force of the statement, often repeated.
Like children the people believed what they were told.
While the new factory was being built with the carefully saved dollars
of the people, young men from Bidwell went out to work in other places.
After oil and gas were discovered in neighboring states, they went to the
fast-growing towns and came home telling wonder tales. In the boom towns
men earned four, five and even six dollars a day. In secret and when none
of the older people were about, they told of adventures on which they had
gone in the new places; of how, attracted by the flood of money, women came
from the cities; and the times they had been with these women. Young Harley
Parsons, whose father was a shoemaker and who had learned the blacksmith
trade, went to work in one of the new oil fields. He came home wearing a
fancy silk vest and astonished his fellows by buying and smoking ten-cent
cigars. His pockets were bulging with money. "I'm not going to stay long
in this town, you can bet on that," he declared one evening as he stood,
surrounded by a group of admirers before Fanny Twist's Millinery Shop on
lower Main Street. "I have been with a Chinese woman, and an Italian, and
with one from South America." He took a puff of his cigar and spat on the
sidewalk. "I'm out to get what I can out of life," he declared. "I'm going
back and I'm going to make a record. Before I get through I'm going to be
with a woman of every nationality on earth, that's what I'm going to do."
Joseph Wainsworth the harness maker, who had been the first man in Bidwell
to feel the touch of the heavy finger of industrialism, could not get over
the effect of the conversation had with Butterworth, the farmer who had
asked him to repair harnesses made by machines in a factory. He became a
silent disgruntled man and muttered as he went about his work in the shop.
When Will Sellinger his apprentice threw up his place and went to Cleveland
he did not get another boy but for a time worked alone in the shop. He got
the name of being disagreeable, and on winter afternoons the farmers no
longer came into his place to loaf. Being a sensitive man, Joe felt like a
pigmy, a tiny thing walking always in the presence of a giant that might
at any moment and by a whim destroy him. All his life he had been somewhat
off-hand with his customers. "If they don't like my work, let 'em go to the
devil," he said to his apprentices. "I know my trade and I don't have to
bow down to any one here."
When Steve Hunter organized the Bidwell Plant-Setting Machine Company, the
harness maker put his savings, twelve hundred dollars, into the stock of
the company. One day, during the time when the factory was building, he
heard that Steve had paid twelve hundred dollars for a new lathe that had
just arrived by freight and had been set on the floor of the uncompleted
building. The promoter had told a farmer that the lathe would do the work
of a hundred men, and the farmer had come into Joe's shop and repeated the
statement. It stuck in Joe's mind and he came to believe that the twelve
hundred dollars he had invested in stock had been used for the purchase of
the lathe. It was money he had earned in a long lifetime of effort and it
had now bought a machine that would do the work of a hundred men. Already
his money had increased by a hundred fold and he wondered why he could
not be happy about the matter. On some days he was happy, and then his
happiness was followed by an odd fit of depression. Suppose, after all,
the plant-setting machine wouldn't work? What then could be done with the
lathe, with the machine bought with his money?
One evening after dark and without saying anything to his wife, he went
down along Turner's Pike to the old factory at Pickleville where Hugh with
the half-wit Allie Mulberry, and the two mechanics from the city, were
striving to correct the faults in the plant-setting machine. Joe wanted
to look at the tall gaunt man from the West, and had some notion of
trying to get into conversation with him and of asking his opinion of the
possibilities of the success of the new machine. The man of the age of
flesh and blood wanted to walk in the presence of the man who belonged to
the new age of iron and steel. When he got to the factory it was dark and
on an express truck in front of the Wheeling Station the two city workmen
sat smoking their evening pipes. Joe walked past them to the station door
and then returned along the platform and got again into Turner's Pike. He
stumbled along the path beside the road and presently saw Hugh McVey coming
toward him. It was one of the evenings when Hugh, overcome with loneliness,
and puzzled that his new position in the town's life did not bring him any
closer to people, had gone to town to walk through Main Street, half hoping
some one would break through his embarrassment and enter into conversation
with him.
When the harness maker saw Hugh walking in the path, he crept into a fence
corner, and crouching down, watched the man as Hugh had watched the French
boys at work in the cabbage fields. Strange thoughts came into his head. He
thought the extraordinarily tall figure before him in some way terrible. He
became childishly angry and for a moment thought that if he had a stone in
his hand he would throw it at the man, the workings of whose brain had so
upset his own life. Then as the figure of Hugh went away along the path
another mood came. "I have worked all my life for twelve hundred dollars,
for money that will buy one machine that this man thinks nothing about," he
muttered aloud. "Perhaps I'll get more money than I invested: Steve Hunter
says maybe I will. If machines kill the harness-making trade what's the
difference? I'll be all right. The thing to do is to get in with the new
times, to wake up, that's the ticket. With me it's like with every one
else: nothing venture nothing gain."
Joe crawled out of the fence corner and went stealthily along the road
behind Hugh. A fervor seized him and he thought he would like to creep
close and touch with his finger the hem of Hugh's coat. Afraid to try
anything so bold his mind took a new turn. He ran in the darkness along the
road toward town and, when he had crossed the bridge and come to the New
York Central tracks, turned west and went along the tracks until he came to
the new factory. In the darkness the half completed walls stuck up into the
sky, and all about were piles of building materials. The night had been
dark and cloudy, but now the moon began to push its way through the clouds.
Joe crawled over a pile of bricks and through a window into the building.
He felt his way along the walls until he came to a mass of iron covered by
a rubber blanket. He was sure it must be the lathe his money had bought,
the machine that was to do the work of a hundred men and that was to make
him comfortably rich in his old age. No one had spoken of any other machine
having been brought in on the factory floor. Joe knelt on the floor and put
his hands about the heavy iron legs of the machine. "What a strong thing
it is! It will not break easily," he thought. He had an impulse to do
something he knew would be foolish, to kiss the iron legs of the machine
or to say a prayer as he knelt before it. Instead he got to his feet and
crawling out again through the window, went home. He felt renewed and full
of new courage because of the experiences of the night, but when he got to
his own house and stood at the door outside, he heard his neighbor, David
Chapman, a wheelwright who worked in Charlie Collins' wagon shop, praying
in his bedroom before an open window. Joe listened for a moment and, for
some reason he couldn't understand, his new-found faith was destroyed by
what he heard. David Chapman, a devout Methodist, was praying for Hugh
McVey and for the success of his invention. Joe knew his neighbor had also
invested his savings in the stock of the new company. He had thought that
he alone was doubtful of success, but it was apparent that doubt had come
also into the mind of the wheelwright. The pleading voice of the praying
man, as it broke the stillness of the night, cut across and for the moment
utterly destroyed his confidence. "O God, help the man Hugh McVey to remove
every obstacle that stands in his way," David Chapman prayed. "Make the
plant-setting machine a success. Bring light into the dark places. O Lord,
help Hugh McVey, thy servant, to build successfully the plant-setting
machine."
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER VIII
When Clara Butterworth, the daughter of Tom Butterworth, was eighteen years
old she graduated from the town high school. Until the summer of her
seventeenth year, she was a tall, strong, hard-muscled girl, shy in the
presence of strangers and bold with people she knew well. Her eyes were
extraordinarily gentle.
The Butterworth house on Medina Road stood back of an apple orchard and
there was a second orchard beside the house. The Medina Road ran south from
Bidwell and climbed gradually upward toward a country of low hills, and
from the side porch of the Butterworth house the view was magnificent.
The house itself was a large brick affair with a cupola on top and was
considered at that time the most pretentious place in the county.
Behind the house were several great barns for the horses and cattle. Most
of Tom Butterworth's farm land lay north of Bidwell, and some of his fields
were five miles from his home; but as he did not himself work the land it
did not matter. The farms were rented to men who worked them on shares.
Beside the business of farming Tom carried on other affairs. He owned two
hundred acres of hillside land near his house and, with the exception of
a few fields and a strip of forest land, it was devoted to the grazing
of sheep and cattle. Milk and cream were delivered each morning to the
householders of Bidwell by two wagons driven by his employees. A half mile
to the west of his residence there was a slaughter house on a side road and
at the edge of a field where cattle were killed for the Bidwell market. Tom
owned it and employed the men who did the killing. A creek that came down
out of the hills through one of the fields past his house had been dammed,
and south of the pond there was an ice house. He also supplied the town
with ice. In his orchards beneath the trees stood more than a hundred
beehives and every year he shipped honey to Cleveland. The farmer himself
was a man who appeared to do nothing, but his shrewd mind was always at
work. In the summer throughout the long sleepy afternoons, he drove about
over the county buying sheep and cattle, stopping to trade horses with some
farmer, dickering for new pieces of land, everlastingly busy. He had one
passion. He loved fast trotting horses, but would not humor himself by
owning one. "It's a game that only gets you into trouble and debt," he said
to his friend John Clark, the banker. "Let other men own the horses and go
broke racing them. I'll go to the races. Every fall I can go to Cleveland
to the grand circuit. If I go crazy about a horse I can bet ten dollars
he'll win. If he doesn't I'm out ten dollars. If I owned him I would maybe
be out hundreds for the expense of training and all that." The farmer was
a tall man with a white beard, broad shoulders, and rather small slender
white hands. He chewed tobacco, but in spite of the habit kept both himself
and his white beard scrupulously clean. His wife had died while he was yet
in the full vigor of life, but he had no eye for women. His mind, he once
told one of his friends, was too much occupied with his own affairs and
with thoughts of the fine horses he had seen to concern itself with any
such nonsense.
For many years the farmer did not appear to pay much attention to his
daughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she was
under the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one who
lived with him and managed his household being comfortably married. His own
wife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had inherited his
own physical strength.
When Clara was seventeen, she and her father had a quarrel that eventually
destroyed their relationship. The quarrel began late in July. It was a busy
summer on the farms and more than a dozen men were employed about the
barns, in the delivery of ice and milk to the town, and at the slaughtering
pens a half mile away. During that summer something happened to the girl.
For hours she sat in her own room in the house reading books, or lay in
a hammock in the orchard and looked up through the fluttering leaves of
the apple trees at the summer sky. A light, strangely soft and enticing,
sometimes came into her eyes. Her figure that had been boyish and strong
began to change. As she went about the house she sometimes smiled at
nothing. Her aunt hardly noticed what was happening to her, but her father,
who all her life had seemed hardly to take account of her existence, was
interested. In her presence he began to feel like a young man. As in the
days of his courtship of her mother and before the possessive passion in
him destroyed his ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life about
him was full of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he went
for one of his long drives through the country he asked his daughter to
accompany him, and although he had little to say a kind of gallantry crept
into his attitude toward the awakening girl. While she was in the buggy
with him, he did not chew tobacco, and after one or two attempts to indulge
in the habit without having the smoke blow in her face, he gave up smoking
his pipe during the drives.
Always before that summer Clara had spent the months when there was no
school in the company of the farm hands. She rode on wagons, visited the
barns, and when she grew weary of the company of older people, went into
town to spend an afternoon with one of her friends among the town girls.
In the summer of her seventeenth year she did none of these things. At the
table she ate in silence. The Butterworth household was at that time run
on the old-fashioned American plan, and the farm hands, the men who drove
the ice and milk wagons and even the men who killed and dressed cattle and
sheep, ate at the same table with Tom Butterworth, his sister, who was the
housekeeper, and his daughter. Three hired girls were employed in the house
and after all had been served they also came and took their places at
table. The older men among the farmer's employees, many of whom had known
her from childhood, had got into the habit of teasing the daughter of the
house. They made comments concerning town boys, young fellows who clerked
in stores or who were apprenticed to some tradesman and one of whom had
perhaps brought the girl home at night from a school party or from one of
the affairs called "socials" that were held at the town churches. After
they had eaten in the peculiar silent intent way common to hungry laborers,
the farm hands leaned back in their chairs and winked at each other. Two
of them began an elaborate conversation touching on some incident in the
girl's life. One of the older men, who had been on the farm for many years
and who had a reputation among the others of being something of a wit,
chuckled softly. He began to talk, addressing no one in particular. The
man's name was Jim Priest, and although the Civil War had come upon the
country when he was past forty, he had been a soldier. In Bidwell he was
looked upon as something of a rascal, but his employer was very fond of
him. The two men often talked together for hours concerning the merits
of well known trotting horses. In the war Jim had been what was called
a bounty man, and it was whispered about town that he had also been a
deserter and a bounty jumper. He did not go to town with the other men
on Saturday afternoons, and had never attempted to get into the Bidwell
chapter of the G. A. R. On Saturdays when the other farm hands washed,
shaved and dressed themselves in their Sunday clothes preparatory to the
weekly flight to town, he called one of them into the barn, slipped a
quarter into his hand, and said, "Bring me a half pint and don't you forget
it." On Sunday afternoons he crawled into the hayloft of one of the barns,
drank his weekly portion of whisky, got drunk, and sometimes did not appear
again until time to go to work on Monday morning. In the fall Jim took his
savings and went to spend a week at the grand circuit trotting meeting at
Cleveland, where he bought a costly present for his employer's daughter and
then bet the rest of his money on the races. When he was lucky he stayed on
in Cleveland, drinking and carousing until his winnings were gone.
It was Jim Priest who always led the attacks of teasing at the table, and
in the summer of her seventeenth year, when she was no longer in the mood
for such horse-play, it was Jim who brought the practice to an end. At the
table Jim leaned back in his chair, stroked his red bristly beard, now
rapidly graying, looked out of a window over Clara's head, and told a tale
concerning an attempt at suicide on the part of a young man in love with
Clara. He said the young man, a clerk in a Bidwell store, had taken a pair
of trousers from a shelf, tied one leg about his neck and the other to a
bracket in the wall. Then he jumped off a counter and had only been saved
from death because a town girl, passing the store, had seen him and had
rushed in and cut him down. "Now what do you think of that?" he cried. "He
was in love with our Clara, I tell you."
After the telling of the tale, Clara got up from the table and ran out of
the room. The farm hands joined by her father laughed heartily. Her aunt
shook her finger at Jim Priest, the hero of the occasion. "Why don't you
let her alone?" she asked.
"She'll never get married if she stays here where you make fun of every
young man who pays her any attention." At the door Clara stopped and,
turning, put out her tongue at Jim Priest. Another roar of laughter arose.
Chairs were scraped along the floor and the men filed out of the house to
go back to the work in the barns and about the farm.
In the summer when the change came over her Clara sat at the table and did
not hear the tales told by Jim Priest. She thought the farm hands who ate
so greedily were vulgar, a notion she had never had before, and wished she
did not have to eat with them. One afternoon as she lay in the hammock in
the orchard, she heard several of the men in a nearby barn discussing the
change that had come over her. Jim Priest was explaining what had happened.
"Our fun's over with Clara," he said. "Now we'll have to treat her in a new
way. She's no longer a kid. We'll have to let her alone or pretty soon she
won't speak to any of us. It's a thing that happens when a girl begins to
think about being a woman. The sap has begun to run up the tree."
The puzzled girl lay in the hammock and looked up at the sky. She thought
about Jim Priest's words and tried to understand what he meant. Sadness
crept over her and tears came into her eyes. Although she did not know what
the old man meant by the words about the sap and the tree, she did, in a
detached subconscious way, understand something of the import of the words,
and she was grateful for the thoughtfulness that had led to his telling the
others to stop trying to tease her at the table. The half worn-out old farm
hand, with the bristly beard and the strong old body, became a figure full
of significance to her mind. She remembered with gratitude that, in spite
of all of his teasing, Jim Priest had never said anything that had in any
way hurt her. In the new mood that had come upon her that meant much. A
greater hunger for understanding, love, and friendliness took possession of
her. She did not think of turning to her father or to her aunt, with whom
she had never talked of anything intimate or close to herself, but turned
instead to the crude old man. A hundred minor points in the character of
Jim Priest she had never thought of before came sharply into her mind.
In the barns he had never mistreated the animals as the other farm hands
sometimes did. When on Sunday afternoons he was drunk and went staggering
through the barns, he did not strike the horses or swear at them. She
wondered if it would be possible for her to talk to Jim Priest, to ask him
questions about life and people and what he meant by his words regarding
the sap and the tree. The farm hand was old and unmarried. She wondered if
in his youth he had ever loved a woman. She decided he had. His words about
the sap were, she was sure, in some way connected with the idea of love.
How strong his hands were. They were gnarled and rough, but there was