Jimmie Higgins eBook

When Jimmie had definitely learned what was in process, he was brought face to face with a grave moral problem.  Could he, as an international Socialist, spend his time making shells to kill his German comrades?  Could he spend his time making the machinery to make the shells?  Would he take the bribe of old man Granitch, a working man’s share of the hideous loot—­an increase of four cents an hour, with the prospect of another four when the works got started?  Jimmie had to meet this issue, just when it happened that one of his babies was sick, and he was cudgelling his head to think how he could ever squeeze out of his scanty wage the money to pay the doctor!

The answer was easy to Comrade Schneider, the stout and sturdy brewer, who stood up in the local and spoke with bitter scorn of those Socialists who stayed on in the pay of that old hell-devil, Granitch.  Schneider wanted a strike in the Empire Machine Shops, and he wanted it that very night!  But then rose Comrade Mabel Smith, whose brother was a bookkeeper for the concern.  It was all very well for Schneider to talk, but suppose someone were to demand that the brewery-workers should strike and refuse to make beer for munition-workers?  That was a mere quibble, argued Schneider; but the other denied this, declaring that it was an illustration of what the worker was up against, with no control of his own destiny, no voice as to what use should be made of his product.  A man might say that he would have nothing to do with munition-work, and go out into the fields as a farmer—­to raise grain, to be shipped to the armies!  The solidarity of capitalist society was such that nowhere could a man find work that would not in some way be helping to kill his fellow-workers in other lands.

Jimmie Higgins talked solemnly to Lizzie of moving to Hubbardtown—­tempted thereto by the signs he saw in an agency which had been set up in a vacant store on Main Street.  The Hubbard Engine Company was trying to steal old man Granitch’s workers, and was offering thirty-two cents an hour for semi-skilled labour!  Jimmie made inquiry and learned that the company was extending its plant for gas-engines; for what purpose was not told, but men suspected that the engines were to go into motor-boats and be used for the sinking of submarines.  So Jimmie decided that Comrade Mabel Smith was right; he might as well stay where he was.  He would take as much money as he could get and use his new-found prosperity to make trouble for the war-profiteers.  It was the first time in his life that Jimmie had ever been free from money-fear.  He could now get a job anywhere at good wages, and so he did not care a hang what the boss might say.  He would talk to his fellow-workers, and explain the war to them; a war of the capitalists at present, but destined perhaps to turn into another kind of war, which the capitalists would not find to their taste!

II