THE GOOD PEOPLE

Joe broke through the fire line. He stepped like a calcium-lit figure over the wet, gleaming pavement, over the snaky hose, and among the rubber-sheathed, glistening firemen, gave one look at the ghastly heap on the sidewalk, and then became, like the host of raving relatives and friends and lovers, a man insane. It was as if the common surfaces of life the busy days, the labor, the tools, the houses had been drawn aside like a curtain and revealed the terrific powers that engulf humanity.

In his ears sounded the hoarse cries of the firemen, the shout of the sprayed water, the crash of axes, the shatter of glass. It was too magnificent a spectacle, nature, like a Nero, using humanity to make a sublime torch in the night. And through his head pulsed and pulsed the defiant throb of the engines. Cinders fell, sticks, papers, and Joe saw fitfully the wide ring of hypnotized faces. It was as if the world had fallen into a pit, and human beings looked on each other aghast.

“Get back there!” cried a burly policeman.

Joe resisted his shouldering.

“I’m Mr. Blaine;... it’s my loft burning. I’m looking for my men....”

“Go to the morgue then,” snapped the policeman. “A fire line’s a fire line.”

Joe was pushed back, and as the crowd closed about him, a soft pressure of clothing, men and women, he became aware of the fact that he had lost his head. He pulled himself together; he told himself that he, a human being, was greater than anything that could happen; that he must set his jaw and fight and brave his way through the facts. He must get to work.

Myra clutched his sleeve. He turned to her a face of death, but she brought her wide eyes close to him.

“Joe! Joe!”

“Myra,” he said, in a whisper, suddenly in that moment getting a sharp revelation of his changed life. “I may never see you again. I belong to those dead girls.” He paused. “Go home ... do that for me, anyway.”

He had passed beyond her; there was no opposing him.

“I’ll go,” she murmured.

Then, dizzily, she reeled back, and was lost in the crowd.

And then he set to work. He was strangely calm now, numb, unfeeling. There was nothing more to experience, and the overwrought brain refused any new emotions. So stupendous was the catastrophe that it left him finally calm, ready, and eagerly awake. He stepped gently through the crowd, searching, and found John Rann, the pressman. John wept like a little boy when they met.

“Marty got out ... yes ... most of us did ... but Eddie Baker, Morty, and Sam Bender.... It was the cotton waste, Mr. Joe, and the cigarettes....”

Joe put his arm about the rough man.

“Never mind, Johnny ... Go home to the kiddies....”

There was so little he could do. He went to a few homes he knew, he went to the hospital to ask after the injured, he went to the morgue. At midnight the fire, like an evil thing, drew him back, and he encountered only a steamy blackness lit by the search-light of the engine. There was still the insistent throbbing. And then he thought of his mother and her fears, and sped swiftly up the street, over deserted Lexington Avenue, and up the lamp-lit block. Already newsboys were hoarsely shouting in the night, as they waved their papers a cry of the underworld palpitating through the hushed city: “Wuxtra! Wuxtra! Great fire horror! Sixty killed! Wuxtra!”

The house was still open, lighted, awake. People came into the hall as he entered, but he shunned them and started up the stairs. One called after him.

“Your mother’s out, Mr. Joe.”

He turned.

“Out? How long?”

“Since the fire started ... She’s been back and forth several times ...”

He went on up, entered the neat, still front room, lit the gas beside the bureau mirror, and began to pace up and down. His mother was searching for him; he might have known it; he should have remembered it.

And then he heard the uncanny shouting of the newsboys as if those dead girls had risen from their ashes and were running like flaming furies through the city streets, flinging handfuls of their fire into a million homes, shaking New York into a realization of its careless, guilty heart, crying for vengeance, stirring horror and anger and pity. Who was the guilty one, if not he, the boss?

And then the inquisition began, the repeated sting of lashing thoughts and cruel questions. He asked himself what right he had to be an employer, to take the responsibility of thirty lives in his hands. He was careless, easy-going, he was in business for profits. Had such a man any right to be placed over others, to be given the power over other lives? The guilt was his; the blame fell on him. He should have kept clean house; he should have stamped out the smoking; he should not have smoked himself. There fell upon his shoulders a burden not to be borne, the burden of his blame, and he felt as if nothing now in the world could assuage that sense of guilt.

Life, he found, was a fury, a cyclone, not the simple, easy affair he had thought it. It was his living for himself, his living alone, his ignorance of the fact that his life was tangled in with the lives of all human beings, so that he was socially responsible, responsible for the misery and poverty and pain all about him.

That he should be the one! Had he not lived just the average life blameless, cheerful, hard-working, fun-loving the life of the average American? Just by every-day standards his was the useful and good life. But no, that was not enough. In his rush for success he had made property his treasure instead of human beings. That was the crime. And so these dead lay all about him as if he had murdered them with his hands. It was his being an average man that had killed sixty-three girls and men. And what had he been after? Money? He did not use his money, did not need so much. Just a little shared with his employees would have saved them. No, the average man must cease to exist, and the social man take his place, the brother careful of his fellow-men, not careless of all but his own gain.

A boy passed, hoarsely shouting that terrible extra. Would nothing in the world silence that sound? The cold sweat came out on his face. He was the guilty one. That was the one fact that he knew.

And then he paused; the door opened creakingly and his mother entered. She was a magnificent young-old woman, her body sixty-three years old, her mind singularly fresh and young. She was tall, straight, spirited, and under the neat glossy-white hair was a noble face, somewhat long, somewhat slim, a little pallid, but with firm chin and large forehead and living large black eyes set among sharp lines of lids. The whole woman was focussed in the eyes, sparkled there, lived there, deep, limpid, quick, piercing. Her pallor changed to pure whiteness.

“Joe ...” her voice broke. “I’ve been looking for you....”

He paused, walled away from her by years of isolation. She advanced slowly; her face became terrible in its hungry love, its mother passion. She met his eyes, and then he fled to her, and his body shook with rough, tearless sobs. Her relief came in great tears.

“And all those girls,” she was murmuring, “and those men. How did it happen?”

He drew back; his eyes became strange.

“Mother,” he said, harshly, “I’m the guilty one. There was a heap of cotton waste in the corner, shouldn’t have been there. And I let the men smoke cigarettes.”

She was horrified.

“But why did you do that?” she whispered, moving a little away from him.

“My thoughtlessness ... my business.” The word was charged with bitterness. “Business! business! I’m a business man! I wasn’t in business” he gave a weird laugh “for the health of my employees! I was making money!”

She looked at him as if he had ceased being her son and had turned into a monster. Then she swayed, grasped the bedpost and sank on the bed.

Her voice was low and harsh.

“Your fault ... and all those young girls....”

His mother had judged him; he looked at her with haggard eyes, and spoke in a hollow voice.

“Nothing will ever wipe this guilt from my mind.... I’m branded for life ... this thing will go on and on and on every day that I live....”

She glanced at him then, and saw only her son, the child she had carried in her arms, the boy who had romped with her, and she only knew now that he was suffering, that no one on earth could be in greater pain.

“Oh, my poor Joe!” she murmured.

“Yes,” he went on, beside himself, “I’m blasted with guilt....”

She cried out:

“If you go on like this, we’ll both go out of our minds, Joe! Fight! It’s done ... it’s over.... From now on, make amends.... Joe!” She rose magnificently then “Your father lost his arm in the war.... Now give your life to setting things right!”

And she drew him close again. Her words, her love, her belief in him roused him at last.

“You know the fault isn’t all yours,” she said. “The factory inspector’s to blame, too and the men and the people up-stairs and the law because it didn’t demand better protection and fire-drills all are to blame. You take too much on yourself....”

And gradually, striving with him through the early morning hours, she calmed him, she soothed him, and got him to bed. He was at last too weary to think or feel and he slept deep into the day. And thinking a little of herself, she realized that the tragedy had brought them closer together than they had been for years.

Out of those ashes on East Eighty-first Street rose a certain splendor over the city. All of New York drew together with indignation and wondrous pity. It did not bring the dead girls to life again it was too late for that but it brought many other dead people to life.

Fifty thousand dollars flowed to the newspapers for relief; an inquest probed causes and guilt and prevention; mass meetings were held; the rich and the powerful forgot position and remembered their common humanity; and the philanthropic societies set to work with money, with doctors and nurses and visitors. The head of one huge association said to the relief committee in a low, trembling voice: “Of course, our whole staff is at your service.” Just for a time, a little time, the five-million-manned city flavored its confused, selfish struggle with simple brotherhood.

How had it happened? Whose was the fault? How came it that sixty girls were imprisoned in the skies, as it were, and could only fling themselves down to the stone pavement in an insanity of terror? What war was more horrible than this Peace of Industry? Such things must be prevented in future, said New York, rising like a wrathful god and for a while the busy wheels of progress turned.

Joe had to attend the inquest as a witness. He gave his testimony in a simple, sincere, and candid way that gained him sympathy. His men testified in his behalf, trying to wholly exonerate him and inculpate themselves, and the lawyers cleverly scattered blame from one power to another the city, the State, the fire department, the building department, etc. It became clear that Joe could not be officially punished; it was evident that he had done as much as the run of employers to protect life, and that his intentions had been blameless.

However, that did not ease Joe’s real punishment. He was a changed man that week, calm, ready with his smile, but haggard and bowed, nervous and overwrought, bearing a burden too heavy for his heart. He made over the twenty thousand dollars of insurance money to the Relief and Prevention Work; he visited the injured and the bereaved; he forgot Myra and tried to forget himself; he attended committee meetings.

Myra wrote him a little note:

Dear Joe, Don’t forget that whatever happens I
believe in you utterly and I love you and shall always
love you, and that you have me when all else is lost.

Your
Myra.

To which he merely replied:

Dear Myra, I shall remember what you say, and I
shall see you when I can.

Yours,
Joe.

It was on Sunday afternoon that Joe met Fannie Lemick on the street. Her eyes filled with tears and he noticed she was trembling.

“Mr. Joe!” she cried.

“Yes, Fannie....”

“Are you going, too?”

“Going where?”

“Don’t you know? The mass-meeting at Carnegie Hall!”

He looked at her, smiling.

“I’ll go with you, if I may!”

So they went down together. A jam of poor people was crowding the doors, and a string of automobiles drew up and passed at the curb. Joe and Fannie got in the throng. There was no room left in the orchestra and they were swept with the flood up and up, flight after flight, to the high gallery. Here they found seats and looked down, down as if on the side of the planet, on the far-away stage filled with the speakers and the committees, and on that sea of humanity that swept back and up through the boxes to themselves. All in the subdued light, the golden light that crowd sat, silent, remorseful, stirred by a sense of having risen to a great occasion; thousands of human beings, the middle class, the rich, the poor; Americans, Germans, Italians, Jews. But all about him Joe felt a silent hatred, a still cry for vengeance, a class bitterness. Many of these were relatives of the dead.

It was a demonstration of the human power that refuses to submit to environment and circumstance and fate; that rises and rebukes facts, reshapes destiny. And then the speaking began: the bishop, the rabbi, the financier, the philanthropist, the social worker. They spoke eloquently, they showed pity, they were constructive, they were prepared to act; they represented the “better classes” and promised the “poor,” the toilers, that they would see that relief and protection were given; but somehow their eloquence did not carry; somehow that mass of commonest men and women refused to be stirred and thrilled. There was even a little hissing when it was announced that a committee of big men would see to the matter.

Joe had a dull sense of some monstrous social cleavage; the world divided into the rulers and the ruled, the drivers and the driven. He felt uncomfortable, and so did the throng. There was a feeling as if the crowd ought to have a throat to give vent to some strange, fierce fact that festered in its heart.

And then toward the end the chairman announced that one of the hat-trimmers, one of the girls who worked in another hat factory, would address the meeting Miss Sally Heffer.

A girl arose, a young woman with thin, sparse, gold-glinting hair, with face pallid and rounded, with broad forehead and gray eyes of remarkable clarity. She was slim, dressed in a little brown coat and a short brown skirt. She came forward, trembling, as if overcome by the audience. She paused, raised her head and tried to speak. There was not a sound, and suddenly the audience became strangely still, leaning forward, waiting.

Then again she tried to speak; it was hardly above a whisper; and yet so clear was the hush that Joe heard every word. And he knew, and all knew, that this young woman was overcome, not by the audience, but by the passion of the tragedy, the passion of an oppressed class. She was the voice of the toilers at last dimly audible; she was the voice of a million years of sore labor and bitter poverty and thwarted life. And the audience was thrilled, and the powerful were shaken with remorse.

Trembling, terrible came the words out of that little body on the far stage:

“I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good-fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are to-day: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the fire-trap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.

“This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city. Every week I learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if sixty of us are burned to death.

“We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press heavily down on us.

“Public officials have only words of warning to us warning that we must be intensely orderly and intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings.

“I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”

Joe heard nothing further. There were several other speakers, but no words penetrated to his brain. He felt as if he must stifle. He felt the globe of earth cracking, breaking in two under his feet, and for the first time in his life he was acutely aware of the division of humanity. All through his career he had taken his middle-class position for granted; he tacitly agreed that there were employees and employers; but in his own case his camaraderie had hidden the cleavage. Now he saw a double world on the one side the moneyed owners, on the other the crowded, scrambling, disorganized hordes of the toilers each one of them helpless, a victim, worked for all that was in him, and then flung aside in the scrap heap. And behold, this horde was becoming self-conscious, was beginning to organize, was finding a voice. And he, who was one of the “good people,” was rejected by this voice. He had been “tried” and found wanting. He was on the other side of the fence. And it was the fault of his class that fire horrors and all the chaos and cruelty of industry arose. So that now the working people had found that they must “save themselves.”

In an agony of guilt again he felt what he had said to Myra: “From now on I belong to those dead girls” yes, and to their fellow-workers. Suddenly it seemed to him that he must see Sally Heffer that to her he must carry the burden of his guilt to her he must personally make answer to the terrible accusations she had voiced. It was all at once, as if only in this way could he go on living, that otherwise he would end in the insanity of the mad-house or the insanity of suicide.

He was walking down the stairs with Fannie, and he was trembling.

“Do you know this Sally Heffer?”

“Know her? We all do!” she cried, with all a young girl’s enthusiasm.

“I want to see her, Fannie. Where does she live?”

“Oh, somewhere in Greenwich Village. But she’ll be up at the Woman’s League after the meeting.”

He went up to the Woman’s League and found the office crowded with women and men. He asked for Miss Heffer.

“I’ll take your name,” said the young woman, and then came back with the answer that “he’d have to wait.”

So he took a seat and waited. He felt feverish and sick, as if he could no longer carry this burden with him. It seemed impossible to sit still. And yet he waited over an hour, waited until it was eight at night, all the gas-jets lit.

The young woman came up to him.

“You want to see Miss Heffer? Come this way.”

He was led up a flight of stairs to a little narrow hall-room. Sally Heffer was there at a roll-top desk, still in her little brown coat quiet, pale, her clear eyes remarkably penetrating. She turned.

“Yes?”

He shook pitifully,... then he sat down, holding his hat in his hands.

“I’m Joe Blaine....”

“Joe Blaine ... of what?”

“Of the printery ... that burned....”

She looked at him sharply.

“So, you’re the employer.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well,” she said, brusquely, “what do you want?”

“I heard you speak this afternoon.” His face flickered with a smile.

“And so you ...?”

He could say nothing; and she looked closer. She saw his gray face, his unsteady eyes, the tragedy of the broken man. Then she spoke with a lovely gentleness.

“You want to do something?”

“Yes,” he murmured, “I want to give all.”

She lowered her voice, and it thrilled him.

“It won’t help to give your money you must give yourself. We don’t want charity.”

He said nothing for a moment; and then strength rose in him.

“I’ll tell you why I came.... I felt I had to.... I felt that you were accusing me. I know I am guilty. I have come here to be” he smiled strangely “sentenced.”

She drew closer.

“You came here for that?”

“Yes.”

She rose and took a step either way. She gazed on him, and suddenly she broke down and cried, her hands to her face.

“O God,” she sobbed, “when will all this be over? When will we get rid of this tragedy? I can’t stand it longer.”

He rose, too, confused.

“Listen,” he whispered. “I swear to you, I swear, that from this day on my life belongs to those” his voice broke “dead girls ... to the toilers....”

She impulsively reached out a hand, and he seized it. Then, when she became more quiet, she murmured:

“I can see you mean it. Oh, this is wonderful! It is a miracle springing out of the fire!”

There was a strange throbbing silence that brought them close together. And Sally, glancing at him again, whispered:

“I can see how you have suffered! Let me help you ... all that I can!”

He spoke in great pain.

“What can I do? I know so little.”

“Do? You must learn that for yourself. You must fit in where you belong. Do you know anything of the working-class movement?”

“No,” he said.

“Then I will make a list of books and magazines for you.”

She sat down and wrote a list on a slip, and arose and handed it to him.

She was gazing at him again, gazing at the tragic face. Then she whispered:

“I believe in you.... Is there anything else?”

And again she reached out her hand and he clasped it. Her fine faith smote something hard in him, shriveled it like fire, and all at once, miraculously, divinely, a little liquid gush of lovely joy, of wonderful beatitude began to rise from his heart, to rise and overflow and fill him. He was being cleansed, he had expiated his guilt by confessing it to his accuser and receiving her strange and gentle forgiveness; tears came to his eyes, came and paused on the lashes and trickled down. He gulped a sob.

“I can go on now,” he said.

She looked at him, wondering.

“You can!” she whispered.

And he went out, a free man again, at the beginning of a new life.