The Dream of Debs

The Dream of Debs

I awoke fully an hour before my customary time. This in itself was
remarkable, and I lay very wide awake, pondering over it.
Something was the matter, something was wrong--I knew not what. I
was oppressed by a premonition of something terrible that had
happened or was about to happen. But what was it? I strove to
orient myself. I remembered that at the time of the Great
Earthquake of 1906 many claimed they awakened some moments before
the first shock and that during these moments they experienced
strange feelings of dread. Was San Francisco again to be visited
by earthquake?

I lay for a full minute, numbly expectant, but there occurred no
reeling of walls nor shock and grind of falling masonry. All was
quiet. That was it! The silence! No wonder I had been perturbed.
The hum of the great live city was strangely absent. The surface
cars passed along my street, at that time of day, on an average of
one every three minutes; but in the ten succeeding minutes not a
car passed. Perhaps it was a street-railway strike, was my
thought; or perhaps there had been an accident and the power was
shut off. But no, the silence was too profound. I heard no jar
and rattle of waggon wheels, nor stamp of iron-shod hoofs straining
up the steep cobble-stones.

Pressing the push-button beside my bed, I strove to hear the sound
of the bell, though I well knew it was impossible for the sound to
rise three stories to me even if the bell did ring. It rang all
right, for a few minutes later Brown entered with the tray and
morning paper. Though his features were impassive as ever, I noted
a startled, apprehensive light in his eyes. I noted, also, that
there was no cream on the tray.

"The Creamery did not deliver this morning," he explained; "nor did
the bakery."

I glanced again at the tray. There were no fresh French rolls--
only slices of stale graham bread from yesterday, the most
detestable of bread so far as I was concerned.

"Nothing was delivered this morning, sir," Brown started to explain
apologetically; but I interrupted him.

"The paper?"

"Yes, sir, it was delivered, but it was the only thing, and it is
the last time, too. There won't be any paper to-morrow. The paper
says so. Can I send out and get you some condensed milk?"

I shook my head, accepted the coffee black, and spread open the
paper. The headlines explained everything--explained too much, in
fact, for the lengths of pessimism to which the journal went were
ridiculous. A general strike, it said, had been called all over
the United States; and most foreboding anxieties were expressed
concerning the provisioning of the great cities.

I read on hastily, skimming much and remembering much of labour
troubles in the past. For a generation the general strike had been
the dream of organized labour, which dream had arisen originally in
the mind of Debs, one of the great labour leaders of thirty years
before. I recollected that in my young college-settlement days I
had even written an article on the subject for one of the magazines
and that I had entitled it "The Dream of Debs." And I must confess
that I had treated the idea very cavalierly and academically as a
dream and nothing more. Time and the world had rolled on, Gompers
was gone, the American Federation of Labour was gone, and gone was
Debs with all his wild revolutionary ideas; but the dream had
persisted, and here it was at last realized in fact. But I
laughed, as I read, at the journal's gloomy outlook. I knew
better. I had seen organized labour worsted in too many conflicts.
It would be a matter only of days when the thing would be settled.
This was a national strike, and it wouldn't take the Government
long to break it.

I threw the paper down and proceeded to dress. It would certainly
be interesting to be out in the streets of San Francisco when not a
wheel was turning and the whole city was taking an enforced
vacation.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Brown said, as he handed me my cigar-
case, "but Mr. Harmmed has asked to see you before you go out."

"Send him in right away," I answered.

Harmmed was the butler. When he entered I could see he was
labouring under controlled excitement. He came at once to the
point.

"What shall I do, sir? There will be needed provisions, and the
delivery drivers are on strike. And the electricity is shut off--I
guess they're on strike, too."

"Are the shops open?" I asked.

"Only the small ones, sir. The retail clerks are out, and the big
ones can't open; but the owners and their families are running the
little ones themselves."

"Then take the machine," I said, "and go the rounds and make your
purchases. Buy plenty of everything you need or may need. Get a
box of candles--no, get half-a-dozen boxes. And, when you're done,
tell Harrison to bring the machine around to the club for me--not
later than eleven."

Harmmed shook his head gravely. "Mr. Harrison has struck along
with the Chauffeurs' Union, and I don't know how to run the machine
myself."

"Oh, ho, he has, has he?" said. "Well, when next Mister Harrison
happens around you tell him that he can look elsewhere for a
position."

"Yes, sir."

"You don't happen to belong to a Butlers' Union, do you, Harmmed?"

"No, sir," was the answer. "And even if I did I'd not desert my
employer in a crisis like this. No, sir, I would--"

"All right, thank you," I said. "Now you get ready to accompany
me. I'll run the machine myself, and we'll lay in a stock of
provisions to stand a siege."

It was a beautiful first of May, even as May days go. The sky was
cloudless, there was no wind, and the air was warm--almost balmy.
Many autos were out, but the owners were driving them themselves.
The streets were crowded but quiet. The working class, dressed in
its Sunday best, was out taking the air and observing the effects
of the strike. It was all so unusual, and withal so peaceful, that
I found myself enjoying it. My nerves were tingling with mild
excitement. It was a sort of placid adventure. I passed Miss
Chickering. She was at the helm of her little runabout. She swung
around and came after me, catching me at the corner.

"Oh, Mr. Corf!"' she hailed. "Do you know where I can buy candles?
I've been to a dozen shops, and they're all sold out. It's
dreadfully awful, isn't it?"

But her sparkling eyes gave the lie to her words. Like the rest of
us, she was enjoying it hugely. Quite an adventure it was, getting
those candles. It was not until we went across the city and down
into the working-class quarter south of Market Street that we found
small corner groceries that had not yet sold out. Miss Chickering
thought one box was sufficient, but I persuaded her into taking
four. My car was large, and I laid in a dozen boxes. There was no
telling what delays might arise in the settlement of the strike.
Also, I filled the car with sacks of flour, baking-powder, tinned
goods, and all the ordinary necessaries of life suggested by
Harmmed, who fussed around and clucked over the purchases like an
anxious old hen.

The remarkable thing, that first day of the strike, was that no one
really apprehended anything serious. The announcement of organized
labour in the morning papers that it was prepared to stay out a
month or three months was laughed at. And yet that very first day
we might have guessed as much from the fact that the working class
took practically no part in the great rush to buy provisions. Of
course not. For weeks and months, craftily and secretly, the whole
working class had been laying in private stocks of provisions.
That was why we were permitted to go down and buy out the little
groceries in the working-class neighbourhoods.

It was not until I arrived at the club that afternoon that I began
to feel the first alarm. Everything was in confusion. There were
no olives for the cocktails, and the service was by hitches and
jerks. Most of the men were angry, and all were worried. A babel
of voices greeted me as I entered. General Folsom, nursing his
capacious paunch in a window-seat in the smoking-room was defending
himself against half-a-dozen excited gentlemen who were demanding
that he should do something.

"What can I do more than I have done?" he was saying. "There are
no orders from Washington. If you gentlemen will get a wire
through I'll do anything I am commanded to do. But I don't see
what can be done. The first thing I did this morning, as soon as I
learned of the strike, was to order in the troops from the
Presidio--three thousand of them. They're guarding the banks, the
Mint, the post office, and all the public buildings. There is no
disorder whatever. The strikers are keeping the peace perfectly.
You can't expect me to shoot them down as they walk along the
streets with wives and children all in their best bib and tucker."

"I'd like to know what's happening on Wall Street," I heard Jimmy
Wombold say as I passed along. I could imagine his anxiety, for I
knew that he was deep in the big Consolidated-Western deal.

"Say, Corf," Atkinson bustled up to me, "is your machine running?"

"Yes," I answered, "but what's the matter with your own?"

"Broken down, and the garages are all closed. And my wife's
somewhere around Truckee, I think, stalled on the overland. Can't
get a wire to her for love or money. She should have arrived this
evening. She may be starving. Lend me your machine."

"Can't get it across the bay," Halstead spoke up. "The ferries
aren't running. But I tell you what you can do. There's
Rollinson--oh, Rollinson, come here a moment. Atkinson wants to
get a machine across the bay. His wife is stuck on the overland at
Truckee. Can't you bring the Lurlette across from Tiburon and
carry the machine over for him?"

The Lurlette was a two-hundred-ton, ocean-going schooner-yacht.

Rollinson shook his head. "You couldn't get a longshoreman to land
the machine on board, even if I could get the Lurlette over, which
I can't, for the crew are members of the Coast Seamen's Union, and
they're on strike along with the rest."

"But my wife may be starving," I could hear Atkinson wailing as I
moved on.

At the other end of the smoking-room I ran into a group of men
bunched excitedly and angrily around Bertie Messener. And Bertie
was stirring them up and prodding them in his cool, cynical way.
Bertie didn't care about the strike. He didn't care much about
anything. He was blase--at least in all the clean things of life;
the nasty things had no attraction for him. He was worth twenty
millions, all of it in safe investments, and he had never done a
tap of productive work in his life--inherited it all from his
father and two uncles. He had been everywhere, seen everything,
and done everything but get married, and this last in the face of
the grim and determined attack of a few hundred ambitious mammas.
For years he had been the greatest catch, and as yet he had avoided
being caught. He was disgracefully eligible. On top of his wealth
he was young, handsome, and, as I said before, clean. He was a
great athlete, a young blond god that did everything perfectly and
admirably with the solitary exception of matrimony. And he didn't
care about anything, had no ambitions, no passions, no desire to do
the very things he did so much better than other men.

"This is sedition!" one man in the group was crying. Another
called it revolt and revolution, and another called it anarchy.

"I can't see it," Bertie said. "I have been out in the streets all
morning. Perfect order reigns. I never saw a more law-abiding
populace. There's no use calling it names. It's not any of those
things. It's just what it claims to be, a general strike, and it's
your turn to play, gentlemen."

"And we'll play all right!" cried Garfield, one of the traction
millionaires. "We'll show this dirt where its place is--the
beasts! Wait till the Government takes a hand."

"But where is the Government?" Bertie interposed. "It might as
well be at the bottom of the sea so far as you're concerned. You
don't know what's happening at Washington. You don't know whether
you've got a Government or not."

"Don't you worry about that," Garfield blurted out.

"I assure you I'm not worrying," Bertie smiled languidly. "But it
seems to me it's what you fellows are doing. Look in the glass,
Garfield."

Garfield did not look, but had he looked he would have seen a very
excited gentleman with rumpled, iron-grey hair, a flushed face,
mouth sullen and vindictive, and eyes wildly gleaming.

"It's not right, I tell you," little Hanover said; and from his
tone I was sure that he had already said it a number of times.

"Now that's going too far, Hanover," Bertie replied. "You fellows
make me tired. You're all open-shop men. You've eroded my
eardrums with your endless gabble for the open shop and the right
of a man to work. You've harangued along those lines for years.
Labour is doing nothing wrong in going out on this general strike.
It is violating no law of God nor man. Don't you talk, Hanover.
You've been ringing the changes too long on the God-given right to
work . . . or not to work; you can't escape the corollary. It's a
dirty little sordid scrap, that's all the whole thing is. You've
got labour down and gouged it, and now labour's got you down and is
gouging you, that's all, and you're squealing."

Every man in the group broke out in indignant denials that labour
had ever been gouged.

"No, sir!" Garfield was shouting. "We've done the best for labour.
Instead of gouging it, we've given it a chance to live. We've made
work for it. Where would labour be if it hadn't been for us?"

"A whole lot better off," Bertie sneered. "You've got labour down
and gouged it every time you got a chance, and you went out of your
way to make chances."

"No! No!" were the cries.

"There was the teamsters' strike, right here in San Francisco,"
Bertie went on imperturbably. "The Employers' Association
precipitated that strike. You know that. And you know I know it,
too, for I've sat in these very rooms and heard the inside talk and
news of the fight. First you precipitated the strike, then you
bought the Mayor and the Chief of Police and broke the strike. A
pretty spectacle, you philanthropists getting the teamsters down
and gouging them.

"Hold on, I'm not through with you. It's only last year that the
labour ticket of Colorado elected a governor. He was never seated.
You know why. You know how your brother philanthropists and
capitalists of Colorado worked it. It was a case of getting labour
down and gouging it. You kept the president of the South-western
Amalgamated Association of Miners in jail for three years on
trumped-up murder charges, and with him out of the way you broke up
the association. That was gouging labour, you'll admit. The third
time the graduated income tax was declared unconstitutional was a
gouge. So was the eight-hour Bill you killed in the last Congress.

"And of all unmitigated immoral gouges, your destruction of the
closed-shop principle was the limit. You know how it was done. You
bought out Farburg, the last president of the old American
Federation of Labour. He was your creature--or the creature of all
the trusts and employers' associations, which is the same thing.
You precipitated the big closed-shop strike. Farburg betrayed that
strike. You won, and the old American Federation of Labour
crumbled to pieces. You follows destroyed it, and by so doing
undid yourselves; for right on top of it began the organization of
the I.L.W.--the biggest and solidest organization of labour the
United States has ever seen, and you are responsible for its
existence and for the present general strike. You smashed all the
old federations and drove labour into the I.L.W., and the I.L.W.
called the general strike--still fighting for the closed shop. And
then you have the effrontery to stand here face to face and tell me
that you never got labour down and gouged it. Bah!"

This time there were no denials. Garfield broke out in self-
defence--

"We've done nothing we were not compelled to do, if we were to
win."

"I'm not saying anything about that," Bertie answered. "What I am
complaining about is your squealing now that you're getting a taste
of your own medicine. How many strikes have you won by starving
labour into submission? Well, labour's worked out a scheme whereby
to starve you into submission. It wants the closed shop, and, if
it can get it by starving you, why, starve you shall."

"I notice that you have profited in the past by those very labour
gouges you mention," insinuated Brentwood, one of the wiliest and
most astute of our corporation lawyers. "The receiver is as bad as
the thief," he sneered. "You had no hand in the gouging, but you
took your whack out of the gouge."

"That is quite beside the question, Brentwood," Bertie drawled.
"You're as bad as Hanover, intruding the moral element. I haven't
said that anything is right or wrong. It's all a rotten game, I
know; and my sole kick is that you fellows are squealing now that
you're down and labour's taking a gouge out of you. Of course I've
taken the profits from the gouging and, thanks to you, gentlemen,
without having personally to do the dirty work. You did that for
me--oh, believe me, not because I am more virtuous than you, but
because my good father and his various brothers left me a lot of
money with which to pay for the dirty work."

"If you mean to insinuate--" Brentwood began hotly.

"Hold on, don't get all-ruffled up," Bertie interposed insolently.
"There's no use in playing hypocrites in this thieves' den. The
high and lofty is all right for the newspapers, boys' clubs, and
Sunday schools--that's part of the game; but for heaven's sake
don't let's play it on one another. You know, and you know that I
know just what jobbery was done in the building trades' strike last
fall, who put up the money, who did the work, and who profited by
it." (Brentwood flushed darkly.) "But we are all tarred with the
same brush, and the best thing for us to do is to leave morality
out of it. Again I repeat, play the game, play it to the last
finish, but for goodness' sake don't squeal when you get hurt."

When I left the group Bertie was off on a new tack tormenting them
with the more serious aspects of the situation, pointing out the
shortage of supplies that was already making itself felt, and
asking them what they were going to do about it. A little later I
met him in the cloak-room, leaving, and gave him a lift home in my
machine.

"It's a great stroke, this general strike," he said, as we bowled
along through the crowded but orderly streets. "It's a smashing
body-blow. Labour caught us napping and struck at our weakest
place, the stomach. I'm going to get out of San Francisco, Corf.
Take my advice and get out, too. Head for the country, anywhere.
You'll have more chance. Buy up a stock of supplies and get into a
tent or a cabin somewhere. Soon there'll be nothing but starvation
in this city for such as we."

How correct Bertie Messener was I never dreamed. I decided that he
was an alarmist. As for myself, I was content to remain and watch
the fun. After I dropped him, instead of going directly home, I
went on in a hunt for more food. To my surprise, I learned that
the small groceries where I had bought in the morning were sold
out. I extended my search to the Potrero, and by good luck managed
to pick up another box of candles, two sacks of wheat flour, ten
pounds of graham flour (which would do for the servants), a case of
tinned corn, and two cases of tinned tomatoes. It did look as
though there was going to be at least a temporary food shortage,
and I hugged myself over the goodly stock of provisions I had laid
in.

The next morning I had my coffee in bed as usual, and, more than
the cream, I missed the daily paper. It was this absence of
knowledge of what was going on in the world that I found the chief
hardship. Down at the club there was little news. Rider had
crossed from Oakland in his launch, and Halstead had been down to
San Jose and back in his machine. They reported the same
conditions in those places as in San Francisco. Everything was
tied up by the strike. All grocery stocks had been bought out by
the upper classes. And perfect order reigned. But what was
happening over the rest of the country--in Chicago? New York?
Washington? Most probably the same things that were happening with
us, we concluded; but the fact that we did not know with absolute
surety was irritating.

General Folsom had a bit of news. An attempt had been made to
place army telegraphers in the telegraph offices, but the wires had
been cut in every direction. This was, so far, the one unlawful
act committed by labour, and that it was a concerted act he was
fully convinced. He had communicated by wireless with the army
post at Benicia, the telegraph lines were even then being patrolled
by soldiers all the way to Sacramento. Once, for one short
instant, they had got the Sacramento call, then the wires,
somewhere, were cut again. General Folsom reasoned that similar
attempts to open communication were being made by the authorities
all the way across the continent, but he was non-committal as to
whether or not he thought the attempt would succeed. What worried
him was the wire-cutting; he could not but believe that it was an
important part of the deep-laid labour conspiracy. Also, he
regretted that the Government had not long since established its
projected chain of wireless stations.

The days came and went, and for a while it was a humdrum time.
Nothing happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. The
streets were not so crowded. The working class did not come uptown
any more to see how we were taking the strike. And there were not
so many automobiles running around. The repair-shops and garages
were closed, and whenever a machine broke down it went out of
commission. The clutch on mine broke, and neither love nor money
could get it repaired. Like the rest, I was now walking. San
Francisco lay dead, and we did not know what was happening over the
rest of the country. But from the very fact that we did not know
we could conclude only that the rest of the country lay as dead as
San Francisco. From time to time the city was placarded with the
proclamations of organized labour--these had been printed months
before, and evidenced how thoroughly the I.L.W. had prepared for
the strike. Every detail had been worked out long in advance. No
violence had occurred as yet, with the exception of the shooting of
a few wire-cutters by the soldiers, but the people of the slums
were starving and growing ominously restless.

The business men, the millionaires, and the professional class held
meetings and passed resolutions, but there was no way of making the
proclamations public. They could not even get them printed. One
result of these meetings, however, was that General Folsom was
persuaded into taking military possession of the wholesale houses
and of all the flour, grain, and food warehouses. It was high
time, for suffering was becoming acute in the homes of the rich,
and bread-lines were necessary. I knew that my servants were
beginning to draw long faces, and it was amazing--the hole they
made in my stock of provisions. In fact, as I afterward surmised,
each servant was stealing from me and secreting a private stock of
provisions for himself.

But with the formation of the bread-lines came new troubles. There
was only so much of a food reserve in San Francisco, and at the
best it could not last long. Organized labour, we knew, had its
private supplies; nevertheless, the whole working class joined the
bread-lines. As a result, the provisions General Folsom had taken
possession of diminished with perilous rapidity. How were the
soldiers to distinguish between a shabby middle-class man, a member
of the I.L.W., or a slum dweller? The first and the last had to be
fed, but the soldiers did not know all the I.L.W. men in the city,
much less the wives and sons and daughters of the I.L.W. men. The
employers helping, a few of the known union men were flung out of
the bread-lines; but that amounted to nothing. To make matters
worse, the Government tugs that had been hauling food from the army
depots on Mare Island to Angel Island found no more food to haul.
The soldiers now received their rations from the confiscated
provisions, and they received them first.

The beginning of the end was in sight. Violence was beginning to
show its face. Law and order were passing away, and passing away,
I must confess, among the slum people and the upper classes.
Organized labour still maintained perfect order. It could well
afford to--it had plenty to eat. I remember the afternoon at the
club when I caught Halstead and Brentwood whispering in a corner.
They took me in on the venture. Brentwood's machine was still in
running order, and they were going out cow-stealing. Halstead had
a long butcher knife and a cleaver. We went out to the outskirts
of the city. Here and there were cows grazing, but always they
were guarded by their owners. We pursued our quest, following
along the fringe of the city to the east, and on the hills near
Hunter's Point we came upon a cow guarded by a little girl. There
was also a young calf with the cow. We wasted no time on
preliminaries. The little girl ran away screaming, while we
slaughtered the cow. I omit the details, for they are not nice--we
were unaccustomed to such work, and we bungled it.

But in the midst of it, working with the haste of fear, we heard
cries, and we saw a number of men running toward us. We abandoned
the spoils and took to our heels. To our surprise we were not
pursued. Looking back, we saw the men hurriedly cutting up the
cow. They had been on the same lay as ourselves. We argued that
there was plenty for all, and ran back. The scene that followed
beggars description. We fought and squabbled over the division
like savages. Brentwood, I remember, was a perfect brute, snarling
and snapping and threatening that murder would be done if we did
not get our proper share.

And we were getting our share when there occurred a new irruption
on the scene. This time it was the dreaded peace officers of the
I.L.W. The little girl had brought them. They were armed with
whips and clubs, and there were a score of them. The little girl
danced up and down in anger, the tears streaming down her cheeks,
crying: "Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em! That guy with the
specs--he did it! Mash his face for him! Mash his face!" That
guy with the specs was I, and I got my face mashed, too, though I
had the presence of mind to take off my glasses at the first. My!
but we did receive a trouncing as we scattered in all directions.
Brentwood, Halstead, and I fled away for the machine. Brentwood's
nose was bleeding, while Halstead's cheek was cut across with the
scarlet slash of a black-snake whip.

And, lo, when the pursuit ceased and we had gained the machine,
there, hiding behind it, was the frightened calf. Brentwood warned
us to be cautious, and crept up on it like a wolf or tiger. Knife
and cleaver had been left behind, but Brentwood still had his
hands, and over and over on the ground he rolled with the poor
little calf as he throttled it. We threw the carcass into the
machine, covered it over with a robe, and started for home. But
our misfortunes had only begun. We blew out a tyre. There was no
way of fixing it, and twilight was coming on. We abandoned the
machine, Brentwood pulling and staggering along in advance, the
calf, covered by the robe, slung across his shoulders. We took
turn about carrying that calf, and it nearly killed us. Also, we
lost our way. And then, after hours of wandering and toil, we
encountered a gang of hoodlums. They were not I.L.W. men, and I
guess they were as hungry as we. At any rate, they got the calf
and we got the thrashing. Brentwood raged like a madman the rest
of the way home, and he looked like one, with his torn clothes,
swollen nose, and blackened eyes.

There wasn't any more cow-stealing after that. General Folsom sent
his troopers out and confiscated all the cows, and his troopers,
aided by the militia, ate most of the meat. General Folsom was not
to be blamed; it was his duty to maintain law and order, and he
maintained it by means of the soldiers, wherefore he was compelled
to feed them first of all.

It was about this time that the great panic occurred. The wealthy
classes precipitated the flight, and then the slum people caught
the contagion and stampeded wildly out of the city. General Folsom
was pleased. It was estimated that at least 200,000 had deserted
San Francisco, and by that much was his food problem solved. Well
do I remember that day. In the morning I had eaten a crust of
bread. Half of the afternoon I had stood in the bread-line; and
after dark I returned home, tired and miserable, carrying a quart
of rice and a slice of bacon. Brown met me at the door. His face
was worn and terrified. All the servants had fled, he informed me.
He alone remained. I was touched by his faithfulness and, when I
learned that he had eaten nothing all day, I divided my food with
him. We cooked half the rice and half the bacon, sharing it
equally and reserving the other half for morning. I went to bed
with my hunger, and tossed restlessly all night. In the morning I
found Brown had deserted me, and, greater misfortune still, he had
stolen what remained of the rice and bacon.

It was a gloomy handful of men that came together at the club that
morning. There was no service at all. The last servant was gone.
I noticed, too, that the silver was gone, and I learned where it
had gone. The servants had not taken it, for the reason, I
presume, that the club members got to it first. Their method of
disposing of it was simple. Down south of Market Street, in the
dwellings of the I.L.W., the housewives had given square meals in
exchange for it. I went back to my house. Yes, my silver was
gone--all but a massive pitcher. This I wrapped up and carried
down south of Market Street.

I felt better after the meal, and returned to the club to learn if
there was anything new in the situation. Hanover, Collins, and
Dakon were just leaving. There was no one inside, they told me,
and they invited me to come along with them. They were leaving the
city, they said, on Dakon's horses, and there was a spare one for
me. Dakon had four magnificent carriage horses that he wanted to
save, and General Folsom had given him the tip that next morning
all the horses that remained in the city were to be confiscated for
food. There were not many horses left, for tens of thousands of
them had been turned loose into the country when the hay and grain
gave out during the first days. Birdall, I remember, who had great
draying interests, had turned loose three hundred dray horses. At
an average value of five hundred dollars, this had amounted to
$150,000. He had hoped, at first, to recover most of the horses
after the strike was over, but in the end he never recovered one of
them. They were all eaten by the people that fled from San
Francisco. For that matter, the killing of the army mules and
horses for food had already begun.

Fortunately for Dakon, he had had a plentiful supply of hay and
grain stored in his stable. We managed to raise four saddles, and
we found the animals in good condition and spirited, withal unused
to being ridden. I remembered the San Francisco of the great
earthquake as we rode through the streets, but this San Francisco
was vastly more pitiable. No cataclysm of nature had caused this,
but, rather, the tyranny of the labour unions. We rode down past
Union Square and through the theatre, hotel, and shopping
districts. The streets were deserted. Here and there stood
automobiles, abandoned where they had broken down or when the
gasolene had given out. There was no sign of life, save for the
occasional policemen and the soldiers guarding the banks and public
buildings. Once we came upon an I.L.W. man pasting up the latest
proclamation. We stopped to read. "We have maintained an orderly
strike," it ran; "and we shall maintain order to the end. The end
will come when our demands are satisfied, and our demands will be
satisfied when we have starved our employers into submission, as we
ourselves in the past have often been starved into submission."

"Messener's very words," Collins said. "And I, for one, am ready
to submit, only they won't give me a chance to submit. I haven't
had a full meal in an age. I wonder what horse-meat tastes like?"

We stopped to read another proclamation: "When we think our
employers are ready to submit we shall open up the telegraphs and
place the employers' associations of the United States in
communication. But only messages relating to peace terms shall be
permitted over the wires."

We rode on, crossed Market Street, and a little later were passing
through the working-class district. Here the streets were not
deserted. Leaning over the gates or standing in groups were the
I.L.W. men. Happy, well-fed children were playing games, and stout
housewives sat on the front steps gossiping. One and all cast
amused glances at us. Little children ran after us, crying: "Hey,
mister, ain't you hungry?" And one woman, nursing a child at her
breast, called to Dakon: "Say, Fatty, I'll give you a meal for
your skate--ham and potatoes, currant jelly, white bread, canned
butter, and two cups of coffee."

"Have you noticed, the last few days," Hanover remarked to me,
"that there's not been a stray dog in the streets?"

I had noticed, but I had not thought about it before. It was high
time to leave the unfortunate city. We at last managed to connect
with the San Bruno Road, along which we headed south. I had a
country place near Menlo, and it was our objective. But soon we
began to discover that the country was worse off and far more
dangerous than the city. There the soldiers and the I.L.W. kept
order; but the country had been turned over to anarchy. Two
hundred thousand people had fled from San Francisco, and we had
countless evidences that their flight had been like that of an army
of locusts.

They had swept everything clean. There had been robbery and
fighting. Here and there we passed bodies by the roadside and saw
the blackened ruins of farm-houses. The fences were down, and the
crops had been trampled by the feet of a multitude. All the
vegetable patches had been rooted up by the famished hordes. All
the chickens and farm animals had been slaughtered. This was true
of all the main roads that led out of San Francisco. Here and
there, away from the roads, farmers had held their own with
shotguns and revolvers, and were still holding their own. They
warned us away and refused to parley with us. And all the
destruction and violence had been done by the slum-dwellers and the
upper classes. The I.L.W. men, with plentiful food supplies,
remained quietly in their homes in the cities.

Early in the ride we received concrete proof of how desperate was
the situation. To the right of us we heard cries and rifle-shots.
Bullets whistled dangerously near. There was a crashing in the
underbrush; then a magnificent black truck-horse broke across the
road in front of us and was gone. We had barely time to notice
that he was bleeding and lame. He was followed by three soldiers.
The chase went on among the trees on the left. We could hear the
soldiers calling to one another. A fourth soldier limped out upon
the road from the right, sat down on a boulder, and mopped the
sweat from his face.

"Militia," Dakon whispered. "Deserters."

The man grinned up at us and asked for a match. In reply to
Dakon's "What's the word?" he informed us that the militiamen were
deserting. "No grub," he explained. "They're feedin' it all to
the regulars." We also learned from him that the military
prisoners had been released from Alcatraz Island because they could
no longer be fed.

I shall never forget the next sight we encountered. We came upon
it abruptly around a turn of the road. Overhead arched the trees.
The sunshine was filtering down through the branches. Butterflies
were fluttering by, and from the fields came the song of larks.
And there it stood, a powerful touring car. About it and in it lay
a number of corpses. It told its own tale. Its occupants, fleeing
from the city, had been attacked and dragged down by a gang of slum
dwellers--hoodlums. The thing had occurred within twenty-four
hours. Freshly opened meat and fruit tins explained the reason for
the attack. Dakon examined the bodies.

"I thought so," he reported. "I've ridden in that car. It was
Perriton--the whole family. We've got to watch out for ourselves
from now on."

"But we have no food with which to invite attack," I objected.

Dakon pointed to the horse I rode, and I understood.

Early in the day Dakon's horse had cast a shoe. The delicate hoof
had split, and by noon the animal was limping. Dakon refused to
ride it farther, and refused to desert it. So, on his
solicitation, we went on. He would lead the horse and join us at
my place. That was the last we saw of him; nor did we ever learn
his end.

By one o'clock we arrived at the town of Menlo, or, rather, at the
site of Menlo, for it was in ruins. Corpses lay everywhere. The
business part of the town, as well as part of the residences, had
been gutted by fire. Here and there a residence still held out;
but there was no getting near them. When we approached too closely
we were fired upon. We met a woman who was poking about in the
smoking ruins of her cottage. The first attack, she told us had
been on the stores, and as she talked we could picture that raging,
roaring, hungry mob flinging itself on the handful of townspeople.
Millionaires and paupers had fought side by side for the food, and
then fought with one another after they got it. The town of Palo
Alto and Stanford University had been sacked in similar fashion, we
learned. Ahead of us lay a desolate, wasted land; and we thought
we were wise in turning off to my place. It lay three miles to the
west, snuggling among the first rolling swells of the foothills.

But as we rode along we saw that the devastation was not confined
to the main roads. The van of the flight had kept to the roads,
sacking the small towns as it went; while those that followed had
scattered out and swept the whole countryside like a great broom.
My place was built of concrete, masonry, and tiles, and so had
escaped being burned, but it was gutted clean. We found the
gardener's body in the windmill, littered around with empty shot-
gun shells. He had put up a good fight. But no trace could we
find of the two Italian labourers, nor of the house-keeper and her
husband. Not a live thing remained. The calves, the colts, all
the fancy poultry and thoroughbred stock, everything, was gone.
The kitchen and the fireplaces, where the mob had cooked, were a
mess, while many camp-fires outside bore witness to the large
number that had fed and spent the night. What they had not eaten
they had carried away. There was not a bite for us.

We spent the rest of the night vainly waiting for Dakon, and in the
morning, with our revolvers, fought off half-a-dozen marauders.
Then we killed one of Dakon's horses, hiding for the future what
meat we did not immediately eat. In the afternoon Collins went out
for a walk, but failed to return. This was the last straw to
Hanover. He was for flight there and then, and I had great
difficulty in persuading him to wait for daylight. As for myself,
I was convinced that the end of the general strike was near, and I
was resolved to return to San Francisco. So, in the morning, we
parted company, Hanover heading south, fifty pounds of horse-meat
strapped to his saddle, while I, similarly loaded, headed north.
Little Hanover pulled through all right, and to the end of his life
he will persist, I know, in boring everybody with the narrative of
his subsequent adventures.

I got as far as Belmont, on the main road back, when I was robbed
of my horse-meat by three militiamen. There was no change in the
situation, they said, except that it was going from bad to worse.
The I.L.W. had plenty of provisions hidden away and could last out
for months. I managed to get as far as Baden, when my horse was
taken away from me by a dozen men. Two of them were San Francisco
policemen, and the remainder were regular soldiers. This was
ominous. The situation was certainly extreme when the regulars
were beginning to desert. When I continued my way on foot, they
already had the fire started, and the last of Dakon's horses lay
slaughtered on the ground.

As luck would have it, I sprained my ankle, and succeeded in
getting no farther than South San Francisco. I lay there that
night in an out-house, shivering with the cold and at the same time
burning with fever. Two days I lay there, too sick to move, and on
the third, reeling and giddy, supporting myself on an extemporized
crutch, I tottered on toward San Francisco. I was weak as well,
for it was the third day since food had passed my lips. It was a
day of nightmare and torment. As in a dream I passed hundreds of
regular soldiers drifting along in the opposite direction, and many
policemen, with their families, organized in large groups for
mutual protection.

As I entered the city I remembered the workman's house at which I
had traded the silver pitcher, and in that direction my hunger
drove me. Twilight was falling when I came to the place. I passed
around by the alleyway and crawled up the black steps, on which I
collapsed. I managed to reach out with the crutch and knock on the
door. Then I must have fainted, for I came to in the kitchen, my
face wet with water, and whisky being poured down my throat. I
choked and spluttered and tried to talk. I began saying something
about not having any more silver pitchers, but that I would make it
up to them afterward if they would only give me something to eat.
But the housewife interrupted me.

"Why, you poor man," she said, "haven't you heard? The strike was
called off this afternoon. Of course we'll give you something to
eat."

She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparing
to fry it.

"Let me have some now, please," I begged; and I ate the raw bacon
on a slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demands
of the I.L.W. had been granted. The wires had been opened up in
the early afternoon, and everywhere the employers' associations had
given in. There hadn't been any employers left in San Francisco,
but General Folsom had spoken for them. The trains and steamers
would start running in the morning, and so would everything else
just as soon as system could be established.

And that was the end of the general strike. I never want to see
another one. It was worse than a war. A general strike is a cruel
and immoral thing, and the brain of man should be capable of
running industry in a more rational way. Harrison is still my
chauffeur. It was part of the conditions of the I.L.W. that all of
its members should be reinstated in their old positions. Brown
never came back, but the rest of the servants are with me. I
hadn't the heart to discharge them--poor creatures, they were
pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver.
And now I can't discharge them. They have all been unionized by
the I.L.W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human
endurance. Something must be done.

-THE END-
Jack London's short story: The Dream of Debs

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