Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
“I came to a turning point,” he said aloud. “All men come to that point.
To be sure the great mass of people drift quite stupidly but we are not
now talking of people in general. There is you and me and there is the
thing McGregor might be. We are each in our way something special. We
come, people like us, to a place where there are two roads to take. I
took one and McGregor has taken another. I know why and perhaps he knows
why. I concede to him knowledge of what he has done. But now it is time
for you to decide which road you will take. You have seen the crowds
moving along the broad way he has chosen and now you will set out on
your own way. I want you to look down my road with me.”
They came to a bridge over a canal and David stopped the horses. A body
of McGregor's marchers passed and Margaret's pulse began to beat high
again. When she looked at her father however he was unmoved and she was
a little ashamed of her emotions. For a moment David waited, as though
for inspiration, and when the horses started on again he began to talk.
“A labour leader came to my factory, a miniature McGregor with a crooked
twist to him. He was a rascal but the things he said to my men were
all true enough. I was making money for my investors, a lot of it.
They might have won in a fight with me. One evening I went out into the
country to walk alone under the trees and think it over.”
David's voice became harsh and Margaret thought it had become strangely
like the voice of McGregor talking to workingmen. “I bought the man
off,” David said. “I used the cruel weapon men like me have to use.
I gave him money and told him to get out, to let me alone. I did it
because I had to win. My kind of men always have to win. During the walk
I took alone I got hold of my dream, my belief. I have the same dream
now. It means more to me than the welfare of a million men. For it I
would crush whatever opposed me. I am going to tell you of the dream.
“It is too bad one has to talk. Talk kills dreams and talk will also
kill all such men as McGregor. Now that he has begun to talk we will get
the best of him. I do not worry about McGregor. Time and talk will bring
about his destruction.”
David's mind ran off in a new direction. “I do not think a man's life
is of much importance,” he said. “No man is big enough to grasp all
of life. That is the foolish fancy of children. The grown man knows he
cannot see life at one great sweep. It cannot be comprehended so. One
has to realise that he lives in a patchwork of many lives and many
impulses.
“The man must strike at beauty. That is the realisation maturity brings
and that is where the woman conies in. That is what McGregor was not
wise enough to understand. He is a child you see in a land of excitable
children.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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