John Wesley, Jr. Part 10

J.W. found himself taking notice in a way he had not done before through all his years in Delafield. As might be expected, he had come home from college with new ideas and new standards. The town looked rather more sordid and commonplace than was his boy's remembrance of it. Of late it had taken to growing, and a large part of its development had come during his college years. So he must needs learn his own town all over again.

Cheris.h.i.+ng his young college graduate's vague new enthusiasm for a better world, he had little sympathy with much that Delafield opinion acclaimed as progress.

The Delafield Daily Dispatch carried at its masthead every afternoon one or more of such slogans as these: "Be a Delafield Booster," "Boost for more Industries," "Put Delafield on the Map," "Double Delafield in Half a Decade," "Delafield, the Darling of Destiny," "Watch Delafield Grow, but Don't Stop Boosting to Rubber."

These were taken by many citizens as a sort of business gospel; any "theorist" who ventured to question the wisdom of bringing more people to town, whether the town's business could give them all a decent living or not, was told to sell his hammer and buy a horn. J.W. said nothing; he was too young and too recent a comer into the town's business life.

But he could not work up any zeal for this form of town "loyalty."

A big cannery had been built down near the river, where truck gardens flourished, and there was a new furniture factory at the edge of the freight yards. Hereabouts a lot of supremely ugly flats had gone up, two families to each floor and three stories high; and in J.W.'s eyes the rubbish and disorder and generally slattern appearance of the region was no great addition to Delafield's attractions.

Still more did the tumbledown shacks in the neighborhood of the cannery offend the eyes and, to be frank, the ears and nose as well. It was a forlorn-looking lot of hovels, occupied by listless, frowsy adults and noisy children. Here existence seemed to be a grim caricature of life; the children, the only symbol of abundance to be seen, continued to be grotesque in their very dirt. What clothes they had were second or third-hand garments too large for them, which they seemed to be perpetually in danger of losing altogether.

To J.W., Delafield had always been a town of homes; but in these dismal quarters there was little to answer to the home idea. They were merely places where people contrived to camp for a time, longer or shorter; none but a Gradgrind could call them homes.

One of the factory foremen was a great admirer of Mr. Drury, who introduced him to J.W. one day when the foreman had come to the store for some tools. He had talked with J.W., and in time a rather casual friendliness developed between them. It was this same Foreman Angus MacPherson, a Scot with a name for shrewdness, who gave the boy his first glimpse of what the factory and the cannery meant to Delafield--especially the factory.

J.W. was down at the factory to see about some new band-saws that had been installed; and, his errand finished, he stopped for a chat with Angus.

"This factory wasn't here when I went off to college," he said. "What ever brought it to Delafield?"

At that MacPherson was off to a perfect start.

"Ye see, my boy," he began, "Delafield is so central it is a good town for a good-working plant; freights on lumber and finished stuff are not so high as in some places. And then there's labor. Lots of husky fellows around here want better than farm wages, and they want a chance at town life as well. Men from the big cities, with families, hope to find a quieter, cheaper place to live. So we've had no trouble getting help.

Skill isn't essential for most of the work. It's not much of a trick nowadays to get by in most factories--the machines do most of the thinking for you, and that's good in some ways. Only the men that 'tend the machines can't work up much pride in the output. Things go well enough when business is good. But when the factory begins to run short time, and lay men off, like it did last winter, there's trouble."

J.W. wanted to know what sort of trouble.

"Oh, well," said MacPherson, "strikes hurt worst at the time, but strikes are just like boils, a sign of something wrong inside. And short-time and lay-offs--well, ye can't expect the factory to go on making golden oak rockers just to store in the sheds. Somebody has to buy 'em. But the boys ain't happy over four-day weeks, let alone no jobs at all."

His sociology professor at Cartwright, J.W. recalled, had talked a good deal about the labor question, but maybe this foreman knew something about it too. So J.W. put it up to him: "What is at the bottom of it all, MacPherson? What makes the thing the papers call 'labor unrest'?"

MacPherson hesitated a moment. Then he settled himself more comfortably on a pile of boards and proceeded to deliver his soul, or part of it.

"I can tell you; but there's them that would s.h.i.+p me out of town if I talked too much, so I'll have to be careful. John Wesley, you've got a grand name, and the church John Wesley started has a good name, though it's not my church. I'm a Scot, you know. But I know your preacher, and he and I are of the same mind about this, I know. Well, then, if your Methodist Church could find a method with labor, it would get hold of the same sort of common people as the ones who heard Jesus gladly. These working-men are not in the way of being saints, ye ken, but they think that somewhere there is a rotten spot in the world of factories and shops and mills. They think they learn from experience, who by the way, is the dominie of a high-priced school, that they get most of the losses and few of the profits of industry. They get a living wage when times are good. When times are bad they lose the one thing they've got to sell, and that's their day's work; when a loafing day is gone there's nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know the working man is headstrong. I'll tell you privately, I think he's a fool, because so often he gets into a blind rage and wants to smash the very tools that earn his bite and sup. He may have reason to hate some employer, but why hate the job? It's a good job, if he makes good chairs. He goes on strike, many's the time, without caring that it hurts him and his worse than it hurts the boss. And often the boss thinks he wants nothing bigger than a few more things. Maybe he _is_ wild for a phonograph and a Ford and golden oak rockers of his own in the parlor, and photographs enlarged in crayon hanging on the walls--and a steady job. But, listen to me, John Wesley, Jr., and you'll be a credit to your namesake: these wild, unreasonable workers, with all their foolishness and sometimes wickedness, are whiles dreaming of a different world, a better world for everybody. 'Twould be no harm if some bosses dreamed more about that too, me boy. Your preacher--he's a fine man too, is Mr.

Drury--he understands that, and he wants to use it for something to build on. That's why I tell folks he's a Methodist preacher with a real method in his ministry. Now I'll quit me fas.h.i.+n' and get back to the job. I doubt you'll be busy yourself this afternoon."

He gripped J.W.'s hand, so that the knuckles were unable to forget him all day, but what he had said gripped harder than his handshake. If the furniture factory was a mixed blessing, what of the cannery?

Somewhat to his own surprise, J.W. was getting interested in his town, but if at first he was inclined to wonder how he happened to develop all this new concern, he soon ceased to think of it. So slight a matter could not stay in the front of his thinking when he really began to know something of the Delafield to which he had never paid much attention.

It was through Joe Carbrook that he got his next jolt. Joe, now spending his vacations in ways that amazed people who had memories of his wild younger manner, was in and out of the Farwell store a good deal. Also he spent considerable time with Pastor Drury, though there is no record of what they talked about.

"J.W., old boy," Joe asked one day, coming away from the pastor's study, "have you ever by any chance observed Main Street?"

"Why, yes," J.W. answered, "seeing that two or three or four times a day I walk six blocks of it back and forth to this store door, I suppose I have."

"Oh, yes, that way," Joe came back at him, "and you've seen me, a thousand times. But did you ever observe me? My ears, for instance," and he put his hands over them. "Which one is the larger?"

Without in the least understanding what his friend was driving at, and stupidly wondering if he ever had noticed any difference in Joe's ears, J.W. stared with inane bewilderment. "Is one really larger than the other?" he asked, helplessly.

Joe took his hands down, and laughed. "I knew it," he said. "You've never observed my ears, and yet you think you have observed Main Street.

As it happens, each of my ears takes the same-sized ear-m.u.f.f. But you didn't know it. Well, never mind ears; I'm thinking about Main Street.

What do you know of Main Street?"

J.W. thought he could make up for the ear question. So he said, boldly, "Joe Carbrook, I can name every place from here to the livery barn north, and from here to the bridge south, on both sides of the street.

Want me to prove it?"

"No, J.W., I don't. I reckon you can. But I believe you're still as blind as I've been about Main Street, just the same. I know Chicago pretty well and I doubt if there's as big a percentage of graft and littleness and dollar-pinching and going to the devil generally on State Street or Wabash Avenue as there is an Main Street, Delafield."

"You're not trying to say that our business men are crooks, are you, Joe?" J.W. asked, with a touch of resentment. "You know I happen to be connected with a business house on Main Street myself."

"Sure, I know it, and there's Marshall Field's on State Street, and Lyon & Healy's on Wabash Avenue, and Hart, Schaffner & Marx over by the Chicago River; just the same as here. But I--well, of course, there's a story back of it all. Mother heard a couple of weeks ago that one of our old Epworth League girls was having a hard time of it--she's working at the Racket store, helping to support her folks. They've had sickness, and the girl doesn't get big wages. So mother asked me to look her up.

Mother can't get about very easily, you know, and since I'm studying medicine she seems to think I'm the original Mr. Fix-It. I made a few discreet inquiries, discreet, that is, for me, and can you guess who that girl is? You can't, I know. Well, she's Alma Wetherell, and that's the identical girl who gave me such a dressing down one day at the Cartwright Inst.i.tute four years ago. Remember? Say, J.W., that day she told me so much of the deadly truth about myself that I hated her even more for knowing what to say than I did for saying it. But she had a big lot to do with waking me up, and I owe her something."

J.W. had not remembered the Inst.i.tute incident. But he recalled that Alma was at Cartwright that summer, and he had seen her at church occasionally since he came home from college. She was living in town and working in some store or other he knew, but that was all.

"What did you find out?" he asked Joe.

"I found out enough so that Alma has a better job, and things are going easier at home. But that was just a starter. My brave John Wesley, do you remember your college sociology and economics and civics and all the rest? Never mind confessing; you don't; I didn't either. But I began to review 'em in actual business practice. First I told the right merchant what sort of a bookkeeper I had found slaving away for ten dollars a week on the dark, smelly balcony of the Racket--and he's given Alma a job at twenty in a sun-lighted office. Then I told Mr. Peters of the Racket what I had done, and why. He didn't like it, but it will do him good. That made me feel able to settle anything, and I'm looking around for my next joy as journeyman rescuer and expert business adjuster.

Honest, J.W., I've not seen near all there is to see, but I'm swamped already. You've got to come along, you and some others, and see for yourself what's the matter with Main Street."

Not all at once, but before very long, J.W. shared Joe's aroused interest. Pastor Drury was with them, of course; and the three called into consultation a few other capable and trustworthy men and women.

Marcia Dayne had come home for a few weeks' holiday, and at once enlisted. Alma Wetherell was able to give some highly significant suggestions.

There was no noise of trumpets, and no publicity of any sort. Mr. Drury insisted that what they needed first and most was not newspaper attention, and not even organization, but exact information. So for many days a group of puzzled and increasingly astonished people set about the study of their own town's princ.i.p.al street, as though they had never seen it before. And, in truth, they never had.

It was no different from all other small town business districts. The Gem Theater vied with the Star and the Orpheum in lavish display of gaudy posters advertising pictures that were "coming to-morrow," and in two weeks of observation the investigators learned what sort of moving pictures Delafield demanded, or, at least what sort it got. They took note of the Amethyst Coterie's Sat.u.r.day night dances--"Wardrobe, 50 cents, Ladies Free"--and of the boys and girls who patronized the place.

The various cigar and pocket-billiards combinations were quietly observed, some of the observers learning for the first time that young men are so determined to get together that they are not to be deterred by dirt or bad air or foul and brainless talk.

The candy stores with soda fountains and some of the drug stores which served refreshments took on a new importance. Instead of being no more than handy purveyors of sweets, of soft drinks and household remedies, they were seen to be also social centers, places for "dates" and telephone flirtations and dalliance. Much of their doings was the merest silly time-killing, but generally the youthful patrons welcomed all this because it was a change from the empty dullness of homes that had missed the home secret, and from the still duller and wasting monotony of uninteresting toil.

It was Pastor Drury who suggested the explanation for all these forms of profitless and often dangerous amus.e.m.e.nt. He was chatting with the whole group one night, and merely happened to address himself first to J.W., Jr.

Your great namesake, J.W., was so much a part of his day that he believed with most other great religious thinkers of his time that play was a device of the devil. His belief belonged to eighteenth-century theology and psychology. But even more it grew out of the vicious diversions of the rich and the brutalizing amus.e.m.e.nts of the poor. Both were bad, and there was not much middle ground. But here on Main Street we see people, most of them young, who feel, without always understanding why, that they simply must be amused. They feel it so strongly that they will pay any price for it if circ.u.mstances won't let them get it any other way. And Main Street is ready to oblige them.

There could be no amus.e.m.e.nt business if people were not clamoring to be amused. And we know now why we have no right to say that all this clamor is the devil's prompting. Isn't it queer that the church is only now beginning to believe in the genuineness and wholesomeness of the play instinct, though it is a proper and natural human hunger? Literally everybody wants to play.

"People pay more for the gratification of this hunger than they do for bread or shoes or education or religion. They take greater moral risks for it than they do for money. We have seen people who undoubtedly are going to the devil by the amus.e.m.e.nt route, unless something is done to stop them. They go wrong quicker and oftener in their play than in their work. Are we going to be content with denouncing the dance hall and the poolroom and the vile pictures and the loose conduct of the soft-drink places and Electric Park? Haven't we some sort of duty to see that every young person in Delafield has a chance at first-hand, enjoyable, and decent play?"

All agreed that the pastor was right, though they were not so clear about what could be done.

But commercialized amus.e.m.e.nt was not all they found in their quiet voyages of discovery up and down Main Street.

The chain stores had come to Delafield--not the "5 and 10" only, but stores which specialized in groceries, tobacco, shoes, dry goods, drugs, and other commodities. Alongside of them were the locally owned stores.

Altogether, Main Street had far too many stores to afford good service or reasonable prices. With all this duplication on the one hand, and absentee-control on the other, Main Street was a street of underlings--clerks and salespeople and delivery men. That condition produced low wages and inefficient methods, many of the workers being too young to be out of school and too dense to show any intelligence about the work they were supposed to do. Cheap help was costly, and the efficient help was scarcely to be found at any price.

The investigators were frankly dismayed at the extent and complexity of the situation. They had thought to find occasional cases calling for adjustment, or even for the law. But instead they had found a whole fabric of interwoven questions--amus.e.m.e.nts, wages, compet.i.tion, cooperation, ignorance, vulgarity, vice, cheapness, trickery, "business is business." True, they had found more honest businesses than shady ones, more faithful clerks than s.h.i.+rkers, more decent people in the pleasure resorts than doubtful people. But the total of folly and evil was very great; could the church do anything to decrease it?

And that question led the little company of inquisitive Christians into yet wider reaches of inquiry. J.W. and Joe and Marcia at Mr. Drury's suggestion agreed to be a sort of unofficial committee to find out about the churches of Delafield. He told them that this was first of all a work for laymen. The preachers might come in later.