Raintree County (121 page)

Cash sat down on the bench, flanked by Mr. Shawnessy and the Perfessor. He took off his derby and fanned his face with it.

Mr. Shawnessy had a feeling of unimportance. Around Cash Carney, he always felt like a little waystation between two really big terminals. Cash looked out of place sitting in Waycross Station. Even
now, there clung to him the aroma and strangeness of the linked, thundering coaches from which he had just descended. Senator Garwood B. Jones, the eternal Dan Populus, the Man of the People, had a foot in two worlds, but Cash had gone over so entirely to his one world of big deals and big business that he seemed a bloodless abstraction. His face had not so much aged as yellowed. His nervous hands palping the big cigar, his face, the thin sheet of his oiled hair, even his eyeballs were yellow. Mr. Shawnessy had the feeling that the whole man—derby, cigar, black suit, shirt, tie stud, gartered socks, black conventional shoes with shiny toes, gold watch, massive signet ring—had all been dipped at once into a solution that preserved but discolored.

And the whole world in which the man moved was stained with that tincture of the gilded years. It was a world shut in, a world of rooms in cities, opulent interiors, lobbies in hotels where brass cuspidors squatted like obscene gods, banquet halls filled with fat men choking on rich foods and dirty jokes, depots whose walls were darkened with the sooty breath of trains, office buildings, stock exchanges, banks that saw the world through myopic windows lettered with gilded names and gilded legends, houses that were not houses, but mansions—great cages of iron and stone, diseased lumps of rusty architecture, nightmarish agglomerations of lightless windows and unlofty towers. And everywhere there was the smell of smoke—cigarsmoke, trainsmoke, factorysmoke. And all these interiors were foursquare, squat, thickrinded, and reptilian.

—Let me see, John, Cash was saying, last time I saw you was just before you left New York in '77. I think I remember the very night—the night Laura threw the Grand Ball, and I couldn't stay because of the Strike. Correct?

—Correct.

The Perfessor hummed softly and smiled a bland smile.

—Those were busy days, Cash said. But no worse than now. Those Bastards are getting ideas again.

—You mean, the Perfessor said, you're expecting real trouble there at the Homestead Mill?

—Got it already, Cash said. I got word a couple days ago that an ugly situation is developing there. Of course we don't want that stuff to spread. Those Bastards have a tendency to stick together.

—What're they striking for this time? Mr. Shawnessy said.

—We had to cut their wage, Cash said. It's the times. Threatens to be the worst thing since '17, according to my private information. After all, imagine a shutdown in the steel industry! Imagine, for Christ's sake, the men who make steel, all these wops getting into their heads they don't want to make steel except on their own terms! Do you fellas realize that this nation is built on steel? If you pulled the steel out of it, it would fall to pieces like a house of cards. It isn't just a question of one factory or one city. This thing could get really big. But we don't aim to let it get out of hand. I've exchanged telegrams with Pittsburgh, and we're moving in a whole army of Pinkertons, if things look ugly.

—Of course, it's not to your interest to let it flare up into open warfare, is it? the Perfessor asked.

—Depends, Cash said. When they start shooting, it always antagonizes the public, and we can send the troops in to put it down. The biggest trouble is that the Populist Party is dragging it into the realm of politics. By the way, what does Garwood think about the Election chances? How much strength do the Populists have?

—The Man of the People is afraid of the People, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—And well he may be, Cash said. I don't know whether you fellas have changed your notions any since the last time I talked with you, but I wonder if you know what's happening to this country?

Cassius P. Carney took the cigar out of his mouth, sat briskly erect, placing one hand, fingers neatly folded under, on the knife-edge of his knee, and with the other hand began to wave his cigar.

—This country, he said, has grown great, strong, and rich on the principle of Free Enterprise. We've had the land, the means, the brains, the generosity to welcome and absorb the peoples of the earth. But, boys, it can't go on forever. Do you know why? It's simple. Because we've run out of land.

Mr. Shawnessy looked up and down the track, quiet from its recurrent thunders. Was it possible then to run out of America?

—Yes, sir, boys, we've run out of land at last. God knows, some of us got our share of it.

Cash smiled for the first time since he had landed in the Station—a nervous, almost lecherous smile.

—Yep, the Government don't give it away anymore. Now, it used to be that when the laborer didn't like his job, he couldn't crab about it because there was always that hundred and sixty acres of black stuff waiting for him out in the Golden West. But all that's over now. And here we are, with the immigrants still pouring into this country and looking for work. The cities are alive and stinking with 'em right now, and still they come. These people are willing to work at any wage, and we've still got the work for 'em. But that don't mean we can give 'em all a house on Fifth Avenue, a lot of gilt-edged securities, and a family vault. Hell, no, we can barely make room for 'em at the current wage, what with the country going hellbent toward another panic. And yet Those Bastards blame us for holding down their wages. Let 'em blame each other. Let 'em blame the Law of Supply and Demand. Let 'em blame the Constitution of the United States, which protects the right of an American citizen to own his business and run it as he sees fit.

—Cash, Mr. Shawnessy said, those people are Americans too, and they have a right to a decent living in this big country.

—Of course they do, John, Cash said. You don't need to go and get idealistic on me, son. I love this country and believe in her as much as you do. Every dollar I spend is a bet on the future of America. I always play America as a bull market. And incidentally I've done more for Those Bastards than practically any man living. How many of your social reformers and labor-leaders have given even fifty dollars of their dirty money to help out the cause of the poor and needy? Do you fellas want to know something? Last week, I delivered to the Society for the Independent Relief of Indigent Children a check for exactly one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars! Let's see some of these anarchists and communists tie that.

—Guilt money, Mr. Shawnessy said. You're just bribing them, Cash. That money's in the same category with the money that keeps Garwood winning in a Populist stronghold. Put it on the campaign fund. Write it off to expenses for running the business.

—Money, Cash said, belongs to the man who knows how to use it. Money has to be on the move. If you went and distributed the money in this country equally, the money would stand still, and
everything else would stand still. Money makes money, not just for the capitalist, but for everybody. That's the American secret as I see it. Keep capital fluid and in the hands of men who are willing to take risks and who don't have their hands tied. Hell, there's no limit to what we can do in this country if we don't get our hands tied by the kind of legislation the Populists are yelling for.

—Nevertheless, Mr. Shawnessy said, here are a lot of people who are eager to work, who have big families, who are honest citizens of the Republic, and yet they don't have decent homes or enough to eat. How do you propose to remedy this situation?

—Who ever said you could remedy the situation? Cash Carney said. To be perfectly frank, it's a situation that never has had a solution, because there isn't any solution. We've come closer in America than anywhere else.

—There you are, John, the Perfessor said. Malthus and Darwin were right: there are too many Americans. There are too many bugs in the swamp. Some of them will just have to die for the race. Life's a great cannibal.

—But, Mr. Shawnessy said, America's going to get bigger and bigger. If we have troubles like these now, what will it be in fifty years? Is it merely an idle dream, then, to suppose that the Machine, instead of manufacturing more trouble for the human race, might manufacture more leisure, more food, more happiness for more people?

—Put this Machine in the hands of the State, the Perfessor said, sitting up suddenly and waving his cane. Take it away from the control of private individuals like our friend Carney here, and let it work for the best interests of all.

—By God, that's Communism, Perfessor! Cash said.

—By God, you're right! the Perfessor said. And like it or not, gentlemen, that's what we're coming to. I say it without a particle of personal concern, because I frankly don't give a hoot myself. But Marx was right. The bourgeois culture contains the seeds of its own destruction. The Many will some day be more powerful than the Few, just because they are the Many. The Proletariat will some day have a Plan and a Planner, and then God help that little band of rich men who have nothing but fluid resources to stop the flood.

—That day, Cassius Carney said, if and when it comes, will be
the end of the American Republic. I hope I won't be alive to see it.

—That Day will come! the Perfessor said. In Economics as in everything else, Mass and Vitality prevail. Can't you see it coming yourself? Freedom, friends—freedom and democratic institutions—were manufactured by happy gentlemen with prosperous acres and contented slaves on the fringe of a wilderness. They and our tradition of rugged individualism, our capitalists, our log-cabin presidents, our millionaire paperboys—all belong not only to the youth of America but also to the youth of the human race. Americans are the frontiersmen of history, and America is running out of frontier. As Cash says, the times are changing. In America history has been speeded up. Wealth and all the power and prestige that go with it have flowed into huge concentrations in the hands of a few individuals. Industrial empires own whole towns, railroad systems, States, and—yes—the Senate of the United States. In a sense a few great combines may be said to own the country. But they own it how? By the remarkable acquiescence of the people they exploit. In creating these empires of wealth and power, our Capitalists have created the instruments of their own destruction. Behold, the day is almost at hand! When several million men suddenly awaken to find that they are forging with their toil the chains that bind them, when, I say, that historic moment arrives, they will find also that they have in their hands the simple means of emancipation. Then will come, gentlemen, the Great Confiscation! For the workers will say, These machines belong to us because we are the people who work them. Then it will also occur to them to say, We are the Government. That, friends, will be the end of our free and easy, hell-for-leather, capitalistic democracy, and the Revolution will be here!

The Perfessor leaned back, vastly satisfied with himself.

—The trouble with you, Perfessor, Cash Carney said, is that you read too much.

—The trouble with you, Professor, Mr. Shawnessy said, is that for you everything is growing old. For my part, I don't think America will ever be either young or old. America is an Idea, and ideas are neither young nor old, they are simply—Ideas. It's entirely possible for the laborer to improve his lot and for the State to own some of the agents of production without an invasion of the individual's sacred rights.

—Even a condition of that kind, Cash Carney said, would be completely alien to the American form of government and the spirit of the men who made America.

—Alien to the spirit of the America we have known, Mr. Shawnessy said. But the Declaration of Independence, like the Constitution, has to be rewritten by each generation, to have any meaning. The Civil War was the second American Revolution. And unless I'm much mistaken, in
1877,
a third American Revolution had its beginning in the coalyards and train stations of this republic. The Strike of 77 was the Sumter of a new Civil War for Liberty and Union, a confused War fought by an Army leaderless and lost in darkness. Nevertheless—

—I don't know where you expect to get with this talk of Revolution, Cash Carney broke in. Most Americans know they're pretty well off, and like yourself, they sit on their tails and watch from the sidelines, while cheering a little for the so-called underdog. Meanwhile, by God, a few of us get out there and get the work of the Nation done. By Jerusalem, if some of us didn't keep the mills humming and the railroads running, you'd soon find out about your Revolution. You'd find yourself in the power of a bunch of ignorant dagoes that can't even talk good English, and you'd begin to wish you had back the good old America of Unlimited Opportunity for Everybody and the Protection of Home Industries.

—What a Century! the Perfessor said, suddenly leaning back into one of his gentle, nostalgic moods. And when you stop to think of it, we were there. We've been in on everything. When I look back on the Great Strike of 77 now, it seems incredible. As you say, John, it was like a beginning, an obscure and terrible dawn, which hasn't yet found its day. My God, where have we been heading, anyway? What did we think that we were doing? You remember, of course

of America's second century as a nation. How it spread through the Republic in the summer of 1877, following the trunklines of the Nation's railroads. How it smouldered in the smoky yards of the Republic's mightiest cities. And how John Shawnessy saw the writhings of this belated Centennial monster, which the Exhibitors of Progress had wisely reserved until the other exhibits were dismantled and sent home.