III.
The strike made a good deal of talk in it he office of 'Every Other Week'that is,it made Fulkerson talk a good deal.He congratulated himself that he was not personally incommoded by it,like some of the fellows who lived uptown,and had not everything under one roof,as it were.He enjoyed the excitement of it,and he kept the office boy running out to buy the extras which the newsmen came crying through the street almost every hour with a lamentable,unintelligible noise.He read not only the latest intelligence of the strike,but the editorial comments on it,which praised the firm attitude of both parties,and the admirable measures taken by the police to preserve order.Fulkerson enjoyed the interviews with the police captains and the leaders of the strike;he equally enjoyed the attempts of the reporters to interview the road managers,which were so graphically detailed,and with such a fine feeling for the right use of scare-heads as to have almost the value of direct expression from them,though it seemed that they had resolutely refused to speak.He said,at second-hand from the papers,that if the men behaved themselves and respected the rights of property,they would have public sympathy with them every time;but just as soon as they began to interfere with the roads'right to manage their own affairs in their own way,they must be put down with an iron hand;the phrase "iron hand"did Fulkerson almost as much good as if it had never been used before.
News began to come of fighting between the police and the strikers when the roads tried to move their cars with men imported from Philadelphia,and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage of the police.At the same time,he believed what the strikers said,and that the trouble was not made by them,but by gangs of roughs acting without their approval.In this juncture he was relieved by the arrival of the State Board of Arbitration,which took up its quarters,with a great many scare-heads,at one of the principal hotels,and invited the roads and the strikers to lay the matter in dispute before them;he said that now we should see the working of the greatest piece of social machinery in modern times.But it appeared to work only in the alacrity of the strikers to submit their grievance.The road;were as one road in declaring that there was nothing to arbitrate,and that they were merely asserting their right to manage their own affairs in their own way.
One of the presidents was reported to have told a member of the Board,who personally summoned him,to get out and to go about his business.
Then,to Fulkerson's extreme disappointment,the august tribunal,acting on behalf of the sovereign people in the interest of peace,declared itself powerless,and got out,and would,no doubt,have gone about its business if it had had any.Fulkerson did not know what to say,perhaps because the extras did not;but March laughed at this result.
"It's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France and his forty thousand men.I suppose somebody told him at the top of the hill that there was nothing to arbitrate,and to get out and go about his business,and that was the reason he marched down after he had marched up with all that ceremony.What amuses me is to find that in an affair of this kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights,but the public has no rights at all.The roads and the strikers are allowed to fight out a private war in our midst as thoroughly and precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having tolerated--as any street war in Florence or Verona--and to fight it out at our pains and expense,and we stand by like sheep and wait till they get tired.
It's a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants.""What would you do?"asked Fulkerson,a good deal daunted by this view of the case.
"Do?Nothing.Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration declared itself powerless?We have no hold upon the strikers;and we're so used to being snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our hold on the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way,quite as if we had nothing to do with them and they owed us no services in return for their privileges.""That's a good deal so,"said Fulkerson,disordering his hair."Well,it's nuts for the colonel nowadays.He says if he was boss of this town he would seize the roads on behalf of the people,and man 'em with policemen,and run 'em till the managers had come to terms with the strikers;and he'd do that every time there was a strike.""Doesn't that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned in Lindau?"asked March.
"I don't know.It savors of horse sense.""You are pretty far gone,Fulkerson.I thought you were the most engaged man I ever saw;but I guess you're more father-in-lawed.And before you're married,too.""Well,the colonel's a glorious old fellow,March.I wish he had the power to do that thing,just for the fun of looking on while he waltzed in.He's on the keen jump from morning till night,and he's up late and early to see the row.I'm afraid he'll get shot at some of the fights;he sees them all;I can't get any show at them:haven't seen a brickbat shied or a club swung yet.Have you?""No,I find I can philosophize the situation about as well from the papers,and that's what I really want to do,I suppose.Besides,I'm solemnly pledged by Mrs.March not to go near any sort of crowd,under penalty of having her bring the children and go with me.Her theory is that we must all die together;the children haven't been at school since the strike began.There's no precaution that Mrs.March hasn't used.
