"My sower of wheat!" murmured Lenore, seeing his rapt face through
tears.
"Dreams are coming true," he said, softly. "Lenore, just after I saw you
the second time--and fell so in love with you--I had vain dreams of you.
But even my wildest never pictured you as the wife of a wheat farmer. I
never dreamed you loved wheat."
"But, ah, I do!" replied Lenore. "Why, when I was born dad bought 'Many
Waters' and sowed the slopes in wheat. I remember how he used to take me
up to the fields all green or golden. I've grown up with wheat. I'd
never want to live anywhere away from it. Oh, you must listen to me some
day while I tell you what _I_ know--about the history and romance of
wheat."
"Begin," said Dorn, with a light of pride and love and wonder in his
gaze.
"Leave that for some other time," interposed Anderson. "Son, would it
surprise you if I'd tell you that I've switched a little in my ideas
about the I.W.W.?"
"No," replied Dorn.
"Well, things happen. What made me think hard was the way that
government man got results from the I.W.W. in the lumber country. You
see, the government had to have an immense amount of timber for ships,
an' spruce for aeroplanes. Had to have it quick. An' all the lumbermen
an' loggers were I.W.W.--or most of them. Anyhow, all the strikin'
lumbermen last summer belonged to the I.W.W. These fellows believed that
under the capitalistic order of labor the workers an' their employers
had nothin' in common, an' the government was hand an' glove with
capital. Now this government official went up there an' convinced the
I.W.W. that the best interest of the two were identical. An' he got the
work out of them, an' the government got the lumber. He dealt with them
fairly. Those who were on the level he paid high an' considered their
wants. Those who were crooked he punished accordin' to their offense.
An' the innocent didn't have to suffer with the guilty.
"That deal showed me how many of the I.W.W. could be handled. An' we've
got to reckon with the I.W.W. Most all the farm-hands in the country
belong to it. This summer I'll give the square harvesters what they
want, an' that's a big come-down for me. But I won't stand any
monkey-bizness from sore-headed disorganizers. If men want to work they
shall have work at big pay. You will follow out this plan up in the Bend
country. We'll meet this labor union half-way. After the war there may
come trouble between labor an capital. It begins to seem plain to me
that men who work hard ought to share somethin' of the profits. If that
doesn't settle the trouble, then we'll know we're up against an outfit
with socialist an' anarchist leaders. Time enough then to resort to
measures I regret we practised last summer."
"Anderson, you're fine--you're as big as the hills!" burst out Dorn.
"But you know there was bad blood here last summer. Did you ever get
proof that German money backed the I.W.W. to strike and embarrass our
government?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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