Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

I conscientiously made myself as useful as I could. I handled all phone calls, of which there were hundreds a day, did all sorts of small errands, kept the callers entertained while he was conferring with two or three of them in the inside room of the suite, kept a record of his expenditures. These were startlingly large. They included the pay of a large number of organizers who were working with him, the expenses of these men, the rent of halls whenever he felt it necessary to hold a large meeting, hiring of automobiles and all sorts of things.

In less than a week I could feel we were embarked on something on a very large scale that was going to mean a fight to the death. All these men who kept coming in and out, “key men,” as Mr. Holden called them, from the positions they occupied in the factory, were very grim and terribly in earnest. They had little to say when they were brought in by the organizers and waited their turn to see Mr. Holden, but there was no mistaking the frame of mind they were in. They meant business, and it was very different from the noisy pep meeting we had in Reliance Hall that night when the Karb waitresses got ready to strike.

And yet, try as I would to take some interest in it, since I realized it was important and would soon concern everybody, I remained throughout wholly indifferent to it. All I could think of was the desperate gamble I had undertaken on how it would all turn out. I was on the long distance phone every night talking to Mr. Hunt, and could hardly wait to get the afternoon papers to see what Geerlock common had done in the course of the day. For the first week things went very badly with me. Mr. Hunt made the short sales the day before Christmas while I was on the train at 111, 111⅛ and 111½ in lots of 300, 300 and 400, and then the stock climbed ½ or ¾ a point a day until it was selling for 113. He was frantic. He told me I was half wiped out already and pleaded with me to let him cover before I lost my whole $10,000. My hands would feel like ice every time I thought of it, but I made myself hold on and send him $5,000 more margin. A day or two before New Year’s one of our organizers was beaten up by company guards and ejected from the plant, and nine men were fired because they had been seen talking with him. Mr. Holden at once wired the National Labor Relations Board, then jumped in a taxicab, went downtown and gave the story to the newspapers, with a copy of his telegram. The day after that, the item appeared in the papers. That was the first general knowledge, I think, that things were brewing in the Geerlock factory. The day after that, while the market as a whole moved up, Geerlock had a little dash after it, meaning “no change.” Once more I felt a throb inside of me, for I felt it was the news of union activity that had caused my stock to sag below the others.

Next day there were more beatings at the factory, and then a representative of the National Board arrived and the day after that there was a long interview in the papers with Mr. Beauvais, the president of the company, who said the union was infested with Communists and charged the National Board with trying to run his company, and then went on to say he would fight to the last ditch. “And we’ll knock him into it,” said Mr. Holden, when he finished reading the paper. “He weighs 250 pounds, so he’ll make a fine splash.”

The day after that, although the market again moved upward, Geerlock went down a point to 112. When I went up to my room to change for dinner a message was there saying call an operator of a certain number in New York. I called and of course she put me right through to Mr. Hunt. He was quite excited. “Listen, you, what’s going on out there anyway?”

“Who’s looney now?”

“But, Carrie — baby needs shoes!”

“...It might go down more yet.”

“When?”

“Before it goes up. It might sag a little more the next few days and then drop. But if you lose your shirt don’t blame me.”

Next day, on another rising market, the stock dropped a half point to 111½.

The day after New Year’s several big union officials arrived from Washington. Except for Mr. Holden they were the first men of their type I had ever seen and I began to understand why the labor movement is much more formidable than most people seem to realize. They were all men of fine presence, with beautiful manners, but that wasn’t what struck me about them. Although one or two were only medium size, and some of them were well up in middle age, they all seemed to walk in that same springy way that Mr. Holden walked, and you knew instinctively that they were fighters. In this respect they were exactly like Mr. Holden, and this side of him I could never quite forget, even in his most romantic moments. I don’t mean that it repelled me. There was something thrilling about it and yet something a little frightening about it too.

They arrived just before noon and went into a conference with Mr. Holden to which I was not admitted. I had sandwiches and coffee sent up and when I went in to serve them they seemed to know who I was, for they joked with me in a very friendly way. Then men from the factory began to arrive and for an hour or more they were packed in the inside sitting-room so tight I wondered how they could breathe. Then, by threes and fours, they began to leave. Then, around four o’clock, Mr. Holden and the men from Washington all went out very quickly and I was left alone. I knew something was about to happen. I sent down for a paper but there was very little about Geerlock. I turned to the financial page. Geerlock, which had been sagging steadily the last few days, was down to 109. I had about a $2,000 profit. I wondered if I ought to call Mr. Hunt and tell him to cover.

About five o’clock I remembered the radio which Mr. Holden always had in his suite, as he was very fond of music. I turned it on. There was music, but then all of a sudden it stopped in the middle and an announcer very excitedly said a meeting was being held that night by Geerlock employees to take a strike vote and it was expected they would all be out by morning.

From then on things happened so fast I don’t think I could remember all the details even if I tried. Whether it was the first big automobile strike I don’t know, but it was the first that I had anything to do with, and Mr. Holden directed it with an audacity that took my breath away. Once the blow had been struck he completely abandoned his policy of secrecy and invented a succession of stunts calculated to get him space in the newspapers. The day after the strike started he hired helicopters to drop food supplies to the pickets, on the pretense that the police had placed them in a state of siege. I protested against the cost and pointed out that police were permitting pickets’ wives to visit them, or anybody else who had sensible business, and that they could bring food. He laughed and said the helicopters made a better show. Then another day he found a number of GI students who happened to be musicians, called for their cards to make sure they were members of the union, and had them go over and give a concert to serenade the pickets who by now had put up some barricades. Almost every day he thought of something new and the result was that most of the stories in the newspapers were about what the union was doing, with the company’s end of it occupying almost no space at all. Not that the company kept quiet by any means. Mr. Beauvais called on the governor to declare martial law, and to use troops, and I don’t know what all, and in addition to that demanded that the police disperse the pickets with tear bombs, but they didn’t. Then he began denouncing Mr. Holden by name and calling him a Communist and saying that such a strike was really sedition against the Government. All this seemed to entertain Mr. Holden hugely, for he would laugh loudly every time he read the paper, and comment on “the stupidity of Capital” in dealing with the public. “Who reads statements?” he wanted to know. “And who believes them? You can see a helicopter. And you can listen to music. And it sounds friendly. Didn’t Henry Ford bring a lot of bagpipers into this town once? I’ve a notion to put them on the payroll, if they have their kilts with them... No, it was the King of England that had the bagpipers. Ford had fiddlers. I guess I’ll stick to trombones.”