Children of the rich -- Fiction; Industrial relations -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
"I can't help it if you're Mr. Roosevelt, you can't go any farther than
this.... Now GIT." He gave Bonbright a violent and unexpected shove,
which almost sent the young man off his feet. He staggered, recovered
himself, and stood glowering at the officer. "Move!" came the short
command, and once more burning with indignation, he obeyed. Here was
another man acting in his behalf, summoned to his help. It was thus the
police behaved, roughly, intolerantly, neither asking nor accepting
explanations. It did not seem to Bonbright this could be the right way
to meet the emergency. It seemed to him calculated only to aggravate
it. The application of brute force might conquer a mob or stifle a
riot, but it would leave unquenched fires of animosity. A violent
operation may be necessary to remove a malignant growth. It may be the
only possible cure; but no physician would hope to cure typhoid fever
by knocking the patient insensible with a club. True, the delirium
would cease for a time, but the deep-seated ailment would remain and
the patient only be the worse for the treatment.... Here the disease
was disagreement, misunderstanding, suspicion, bitterness of heart
between employer and employees. Neither hired strike breaker nor
policeman's baton could get to the root of it.... Yet he, Bonbright
Foote VII, was the man held out to all the world as favoring this
treatment, as authorizing it, as ordering it!
He walked quite around the block, approaching again on a side street
that brought him back again just ahead of the police. This street was
blocked by excited, restless, crowding, jeering men, but Bonbright
wormed his way through and climbed upon a porch from which he could see
over the heads of the foremost to where a line of police and the front
rank of strikers faced each other across a vacant space of pavement,
the square at the intersection of the streets.
Behind him a hatless man in a high state of excitement was making an
inflammatory speech from a doorstep. He was urging the mob to charge
the police, to trample them under.... Bonbright leaned far over the
railing so he could look down the street where the main body of the mob
was assembled. There was another speaker. Bonbright recognized
Dulac--and Dulac, with all his eloquence, was urging the men to
disperse to their homes in quiet. Bonbright listened. The man was
talking sense! He was pointing out the folly of mob violence! He was
showing them that it achieved nothing.... But the mob was beyond the
control of wise counsel. Possibly the feet of many had pressed brass
rails while elbows crooked. Certainly there was present a leaven of
toughs, idlers, in no way connected with the business, but sent by the
devil to add to the horror of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account