THAT week something unusual happened in the mill. People at work at their looms or frames suddenly found themselves being watched by strange men. If one of them went for a drink of water, or something more important than a drink of water, the man stood looking at his watch, and put down something in a book when they came back. It was very distressing, for the watching kept up over several days. But it had to be endured, for everyone knew that more people were to be laid off very soon, and each was hoping against hope that he would not be one of these.
In the third week hank clocks were installed on the machines, and people were paid by the time the hank clock registered. Sam Carver who worked on the night shift in the card room, and knew something about electricity, tinkered with his clock, and made his wages very high. The others did not approve of his behavior. They spoke to Sam in no uncertain way, but he went right on. “For,” he said, “they aim t’ get as much out of me as they can, so I aim t’ get the same from them.”
For all except Sam the wages went down further. And there were other changes. The mill took off all helpers, which meant that boys and girls were left without work, and slubber hands had to drag in the creels, and there were no more doffers, but people must doff their own spools and mark them, which took up time from the frames and so cut down their pay. Card hands were forced to run forty cards instead of twenty-one and were given less for the double work.
Automatic spoolers were put in, and when this was done thirty-five people were used where one hundred and sixty had been used before. Weavers who had tended eight to twenty looms now had nearly one hundred each: but when it was found that people fainted too often the number was reduced a little. Most of the women had to give up weaving. Ora stayed on, for old as she was, she was still as strong as a horse, as she herself said. It was very different with Frank, because he had one lung gone from tuberculosis.
Ora said a thing that many others repeated after her. “I don’t run the machines any more,” she said. “They run me.”
Everyone tried to take it all in the right way. They had been told how to take it. In each room Mr. Randolph, the manager, spoke to them. He said: “There is nothing that can disrupt the sincere spirit of brotherly love which for so long has been a bond between the management and the workers in our mills. Now when the management finds it necessary because of hard times to tighten up on time and wages, we hope that same spirit will continue so that we work together in harmony and peace.”
For several weeks everyone tried to accept his words. For one thing they were naturally easy going, and for another they felt that behind Mr. Randolph’s spoken words were others which said, “If you don’t like this, there are plenty of others who will.”
Then, like a cloud that comes without any warning over the top of a mountain, a feeling of misery came over the mill. Before there had been a feeling of deadness, which nothing perhaps could arouse, a feeling of stolid endurance. Now the feeling was different. It was one of acute, active misery. People fainted, others became sick because of the hard work, and lack of food, for in most of the homes, where there had been at least plenty of hominy and bacon, there was not even enough of these.
And always there was the thought of those who were waiting for a place if one of them should give up. There were so many who came to the village every day looking for work. They were lined up or in groups every morning outside the office.
Word went around in the mill that there were spies who listened for any word of complaint, so people became afraid to speak to their neighbors in the rooms, and so complaints were whispered from friend to friend, and even then there was suspicion.
Bonnie found Mary Allen crying at her work one day. Her tears were splashing on her hands that held the broom handle. Some of them she wiped away with her apron, but Bonnie could see them plainly. She went over and spoke to Mary, leaving the hated clocks to register that she was taking time off.
Mary was sweeping, and her eyes were looking at the floor. Bonnie, to get her attention, touched her on the shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I’ve got my time,” Mary said. She looked up at Bonnie and then down again, and pushed the broom, as if she was afraid to stop working even for a moment. But she had really stopped.
“To-day is my last day,” she said. “They’re making two sweepers do the work of four. And I ain’t one of them.”
She looked up then and smiled at Bonnie, trying to make the best of it. “Many is called,” she said, “but few is chosen.”
“I’ve got fifty cents,” Bonnie said to her. “You wait here till I go to the washroom.”
“No,” Mary insisted. “You better keep that. I got my pay to-day, my las’ pay and right now it’s enough. You keep your fifty cents, honey. But I thank you just the same.”
“You’re going t’ take hit,” Bonnie insisted stubbornly. And at last she did persuade her friend to accept what she had.
At closing time John was waiting for her outside the door of the mill. “Take the young ones to Ora’s,” he said, “and come to our house to-night with Frank and Ora.”
Bonnie spoke out loud, “What is it?”
But she saw that his voice was very quiet and still when he spoke, and she lowered her own before she had finished.
“Don’t tell anybody you’re coming,” he said. “Just come.”
She saw that he was speaking of something very important. “I’ll come then.”
When he left her she saw that he went up to others and spoke the same words to them. He did it casually, as if he was talking with good friends, and that of course was what he was doing. Then he came back to her and they walked on together.
John spoke to her quietly, for there were people still around them. “A man came up to me the other night, and asked which way I was going. I told him. And he said, ‘How would you like to come up to my boarding house. I’m boarding with Mrs. Sevier.’ I looked at him, for I wasn’t sure he was a friend. He spoke in a way that we don’t speak. So I asked, ‘What do you want?’ And he said, ‘John Stevens sent me.’ Then I knew. I went up to the boarding house, and we sat there and listened to the victrola in the dining-room that was empty, for everybody had eaten. Then he said to me, ‘What do you think of unions?’ And I said. ‘I think they’re good.’ So we talked. He’s a-coming tonight. His name is Tom Moore, and he has worked in a mill the same as this one, only in the North.”
The next day people who had been to the meeting the night before spoke to others, in the washroom, and at the frames, or between bites of food at lunch time. And that night Ora’s house where they met was filled to the doors. They pulled down the curtains and had one light on, for the meetings were to be kept secret.
For a week they went on and had to be held in more than one house, since so many wanted to hear the words that Tom Moore had to speak. And they had words to speak for themselves, words that had been kept hidden. Everyone understood the importance of keeping what was going on a secret until it was time to carry out certain plans. And they were careful. But there must have been a spy among them.
Tom Moore went away on Saturday to another village which had sent for him, for there were many places where people were discontented.
On Monday, about the middle of the morning, something unexpected happened. In the room where John worked the section boss was summoned to the office. He came back, walked up to John and said, “Here’s your time. You’re to leave the mill right away.”
He spoke softly, but John answered him in a loud voice, loud enough for the others to hear.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“You heard me,” the section boss told him.
“I want you t’ say hit for others t’ hear.”
“All right. You’ve got your time. Now get out.”
Someone near by heard the loud talk and went up to the two men. Others, seeing that something was wrong, left their frames and gathered around.
“Will you tell me why?” John asked.
“No, I won’t.”
John looked around him. He recognized some of those who had come to the meetings. One of them was Jesse McDonald.
The section boss turned to Jesse. “And you, too,” he said. “You’re fired.”
“Anybody else?” John asked.
“Not in this room.”
He and Jesse were members of the committee that had been elected at one of the secret meetings.
“Get back to work, you,” the section boss said to the other men.
Some of them slunk off to their frames, but others stood by John and Jesse. They spoke in low tones to each other.
“Get back to work,” the section boss cried out, “all except those two.”
“No,” one of the men said slowly, “I reckon if they go I’m a-going too.”
“And me,” another one said.
“Well, John. It looks like we’re in for it. Let’s go,” another neighbor spoke up.
The overseer came in the room and up to the group.
“Now, men,” he said firmly, “get to work.”
The men looked at him. In the short time that they had stood together they had felt something. They had felt a sense of standing up for each other. For so long each had been alone with his family striving after enough food to keep from starving, and enough clothes to keep from going naked. And they had been alone in that fight. Now they were going to stand together, side by side, and there came to them the feeling of strength.
They looked at each other with a new light in their eyes, as if they were seeing each other for the first time. And very slowly, almost imperceptibly, they smiled, before their faces turned to Dewey Fayon, the overseer.
One of them said. “We’ll see you again, Dewey.” And as John turned toward the door they walked with him.
In the hall they met others coming out. Almost the same thing had happened in the rooms where Bonnie, Ora, Frank and ten others had been given their time. Those who had attended the secret meetings, and some who had not, but were indignant over the dismissal of their friends, went out from the mill. In the middle of the morning they walked out into the sunshine. It was an amazing thing, that they felt the courage to leave their machines. There was excitement in this thought, yet they still felt the mill on them, and were quiet and thoughtful, for if this was a new thing they had done, it was also a serious thing.
They stood in the road near the gate, and did not look back at the mill which stood behind them, huge and quiet except for the low throb of the machines—until John called to them.
He had climbed up a little way on the thick wire fence.
“Come to this place to-morrow, at half past eleven,” he said.
As they walked on the road people began talking, for they had been as if they were dumb before. But the talking was not loud. They seemed to have a fear that the mill would hear them.
John spoke to Bonnie who was walking beside him.
“We’ve got to let Tom Moore know about this.”
“I know hit,” Bonnie said. She raised her face, and he saw that it was lit up with the warm fire that had not been there since she was first married.
“I’ll find him.” John said. “You leave your young ones with Ora, and all of you keep your eyes on the mill. Ill find him and get back to-night if I can.”