CHAPTER XXXVI. GROWLING FOR THE BOSSES' BLOOD

I thought I made a number of enemies among the men while I was head of

the mill committee. When a man dissipated and afterward came back to

work, trembling and weak, the boss would refuse to let him take up his

tools, but would lay the man off for a few days. The man usually thought

this a useless and cruel punishment; and to lose a few days' wages would

make him all the poorer.

The man thus laid off would come to me and ask that I get him

reinstated.

“Tell 'em you'll call a strike,” the man would say. “Tell 'em that if

they don't let me work, nobody will work.”

I always refused to take such complaints to the office. I never

approached the boss with a demand that I did not think was right. Some

of the men thought we ought to be vindictive and take every opportunity

to put a crimp in the business for the owners. I envied the owners

(we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich

and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling

fussy little strikes often enough I could have kept the profits close

to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business

and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions

be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid covetousness. The

Golden Rule also forbade my practicing sabotage. And I have never tried

to find a better guide than the Ten Commandments and the Golden

Rule. The test of my misconduct would have come when, having cleverly

destroyed their profits, I found them quitting in discouragement,

closing up the business and throwing us all out of our jobs for keeps.

I tried to point out these things to the men. Some of them felt as I did

about it. Others couldn't see it. So I learned darn early in life that

you can't reform 'em all.

I used to say to the complaining man:

“Look here, Bill; you're in no shape to work. Go home and lie down for

a couple of days. You wouldn't last here two hours in your present shaky

condition. You'd pinch the rolls with your tongs and probably get your

neck broke. That's why they won't let you work. You can't work. So back

to your bed, Bill, we will not call them out to-day.”

Bill usually went away cursing me as the friend of the “plutes” and

the enemy of labor. “I'll get you yet,” he'd say, “you black-headed

buzzard.”

And so while I was making enemies among many of the men who thought

I wasn't standing up for their rights, I was making myself even more

unpopular with the owners by sticking up too firmly for the rights of

the men. They told me they believed I knew as much about the tin plate

business as any man in the trade. This knowledge would enable me to

do better in the distributing end of the business, while as a worker I

could only make the union wages that all the fellows were getting. This

gave me an idea that has since become the dominating purpose of my life.

Handicraft is the basis of the best schooling. By working with my hands

as well as with my head I learned the actual cost of production of every

kind of plate they put out. This was something that I could not have

learned from books. Without such knowledge the business would have to be

run partly on guesswork. With a thorough knowledge of the production end

of the business I became a valuable man. The way was open for me to get

out of the labor field and into the field of management.

But here is where my natural feeling of fraternity stepped in. I liked

to be among the men. I felt at home there. I was only twenty-two, and

salesmanship was a field I had never tried, except for a season when I

sold Mark Twain's book, Following the Equator. There were plenty of

men who had the knack of selling. My natural gift, if I had any, was to

smooth the path for working men and help them solve their problems. I

had learned that labor was the first step on the road to knowledge. It

was the foundation of all true knowledge. I wanted to help the fellows

take the next step. That step would be to learn how labor can enrich

itself and do away with strikes and unemployment. That is a question

that still fascinates me. I did not care to dodge it and become a

manufacturer. I am the kind of fellow who, when he takes hold of a

question, never lets go. The picture of Comrade Bannerman shaking his

fist at the trainload of “plutes” lingered with me. I still heard the

voice of the knock-kneed reformer who envied my husky limbs. The cry for

bloody revolution was already in the air. When would the mob be started

and what would it do? When Comrade Bannerman had robbed the rich and

piled their corpses in a Caesar's column, would not the knock-kneed

uplifter break my legs in making all men equal? These men were moved by

envy and they lusted for blood. I faced the problem with a thirst

for accurate knowledge, and my passion was not for bloodshed but for

brotherhood.