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Youth Challenges

C >> Clarence B Kelland >> Youth Challenges



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




Youth Challenges

By

CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

AUTHOR OF

"The Little Moment of Happiness," "The High Flyers," "Sudden Jim,"
"The Source," "The Hidden Spring," etc.






CHAPTER I


Bonbright Foote VI arose and stood behind the long table which served
him as a desk and extended his hand across it. His bearing was that
of a man taking a leading part in an event of historic importance.

"My son," said he, "it gratifies me to welcome you to your place in
this firm." Then he smiled. When Bonbright Foote VI smiled it was as
though he said to himself, "To smile one must do thus and so with the
features," and then systematically put into practice his
instructions. It was a cultured smile, one that could have been
smiled only by a gentleman conscious of generations of correct
antecedents; it was an aristocratic smile. On the whole it was not
unpleasant, though so excellently and formally done.

"Thank you, father," replied Bonbright Foote VII. "I hope I shall be
of some use to you."

"Your office is ready for you," said his father, stepping to a door
which he unlocked with the gravity of a man laying a corner stone.
"This door," said he, "has not been opened since I took my place at
the head of the business--since I moved from the desk you are to
occupy to the one in this room. It will not be closed again until the
time arrives for you to assume command. We have--we Footes--always
regarded this open door as a patent token of partnership between
father and son."

Young Foote was well acquainted with this--as a piece of his family's
regalia. He knew he was about to enter and to labor in the office of
the heir apparent, a room which had been tenantless since the death
of his grandfather and the consequent coronation of his father. Such
was the custom. For twelve years that office had been closed and
waiting. None had ventured into it, except for a janitor whose weekly
dustings and cleanings had been performed with scrupulous care. He
knew that Bonbright Foote VI had occupied the room for seventeen
years. Before that it had stood vacant eleven years awaiting for
Bonbright Foote VI to reach such age and attainments as were
essential. Young Foote realized that upon the death of his father the
office would be closed again until his son, Bonbright Foote VIII,
should be equipped, by time and the university founded by John
Harvard, to enter as he was entering to-day. So the thing had been
done since the first Bonbright Foote invested Bonbright Foote II with
dignities and powers.

Father and son entered the long-closed office, a large, indeed a
stately room. It contained the same mahogany table at which Bonbright
Foote II had worked; the same chairs, the same fittings, the same
pictures hung on the walls, that had been the property of the first
crown prince of the Foote dynasty. It was not a bright place,
suggestive of liveliness or gayety, but it was decorously inviting--a
place in which one could work with comfort and satisfaction.

"Let me see you at your desk," said the father, smiling again. "I
have looked forward to seeing you there, just as you will look
forward to seeing YOUR son there."

Bonbright sat down, wondering if his father had felt oppressed as HE
felt oppressed at this moment. He had a feeling of stepping from one
existence into another, almost of stepping from one body, one
identity, to another. When he sat at that desk he would be taking up,
not his own career, but the career of the entity who had occupied
this office through generations, and would occupy it in perpetual
succession. Vaguely he began to miss something. The sensation was
like that of one who has long worn a ring on his finger, but omits to
put it on one morning. For that person there is a vague sense of
something missing throughout the day. Bonbright did not know what he
felt the lack of--it was his identity.

"For the next month or so," said his father, "about all you can hope
to do is to become acquainted with the plant and with our methods.
Rangar will always be at your disposal to explain or to give you
desired information. I think it would be well if he were to conduct
you through the plant. It will give you a basis to work from."

"The plant is still growing, I see," said Bonbright. "It seems as if
a new building were being put up every time I come home."

"Yes, growing past the prophecy of any of our predecessors," said his
father. He paused. "I am not certain," he said, as one who asks a
question of his inner self, "but I would have preferred a slower,
more conservative growth."

"The automobile has done it, of course."

"Axles," said his father, with a hint of distaste. "The manufacturing
of rear axles has overshadowed everything else. We retain as much of
the old business--the manufacturing of machinery--as ever. Indeed,
THAT branch has shown a healthy growth. But axles! A mushroom that
has overgrown us in a night."

It was apparent that Bonbright Foote VI did not approve of axles, as
it was a known fact that he frowned upon automobiles. He would not
own one of them. They were too new, too blatant. His stables were
still stables. His coachman had not been transmuted into a chauffeur.
When he drove it was in a carriage drawn by horses--as his ancestors
had driven.

"Yes... yes..." he said, slowly, with satisfaction, "it is good to
have you in the business, son. It's a satisfaction to see you sitting
there. ... Now we must look about to find a suitable girl for you to
marry. We must begin to think about Bonbright Foote VIII." There was
no smile as he said this; the observation was made in sober earnest.
Bonbright saw that, just as his ancestors looked to him to carry on
the business, so they looked to him to produce with all convenient
dispatch a male successor to himself. It was, so to speak, an
important feature of his job.

"I'll send in Rangar," said his father, not waiting for Bonbright to
reply to the last suggestion, and walked with long-legged dignity out
of the room.

Bonbright rested his chin on his palm and stared gloomily at the
wall. He felt bound and helpless; he saw himself surrounded by firm
and dignified shades of departed Bonbright Footes whose collective
wills compelled him to this or prohibited that course of action.

Adventure, chance, were eliminated from his life. He was to be no
errant musician, improvising according to his mood; the score he was
to play was before him, and he must play it note for note, paying
strict attention to rests, keys, andantes, fortissimos, pianissimos.
He had been born to this, had been made conscious of his destiny from
babyhood, but never had he comprehended it as he did on this day of
his investiture.

Even the selection and courting of a mate, that greatest of all
adventures (to the young), was made humdrum. Doubtless his mother
already had selected the girl, and presently would marry him to her.
... Somehow this was the one phase of the situation that galled him
most.

"I'll see about that," he muttered, rebelliously, "I'll see about
that."

Not that marriage was of importance to him yet, except as a thing to
be avoided until some dim future. Women had not assumed consequence
to him; his relations with them had been scant surface relations.
They were creatures who did or did not please the eye, who did or did
not dance well, who did or did not amuse one. That was all. He was
only twenty-three.

Rangar, his father's secretary, and the man who stood as shield
between Bonbright Foote VI and unpleasant contacts with his business
and the world's business, entered. Rangar was a capable man whose
place as secretary to the head of the business did not measure his
importance in the organization. Another man of his abilities and
opportunity and position would have carried the title of general
manager or vice president--something respect-carrying. As for Rangar,
he was content. He drew the salary that would have accompanied those
other titles, possessed in an indirect sort of way the authority, and
yet managed to remain disentangled from the responsibilities. Had he
suddenly vanished the elder Foote would have been left suspended in
rarefied heights between heaven and his business, lacking direct
contact with the mills and machine shops and foundries; yet,
doubtless, would have been unable to realize that the loss of Rangar
had left him so. Rangar was a competent, efficient man, if peculiar
in his ambitions.

"Your father," said he, "has asked me to show you through the plant."

"Thank you--yes," said Bonbright, rising.

They went out, passing from the old, the family, wing of the office
building, into the larger, newer, general offices, made necessary by
the vastly increased business of the firm. Here, in a huge room, were
bookkeepers, stenographers, clerks, filing cabinets, desks,
typewriters--with several cubicles glassed off for the more important
employees and minor executives.

"We have tried," said Rangar, "to retain as far as possible the old
methods and systems. Your father, Mr. Foote, is conservative. He
clings to the ways of his father and his grandfather."

"I remember," said Bonbright, "when we had no typewriting machines."

"We had to come to them," said Rangar, with a note of regret. "Axles
compelled us. But we have never taken up with these new contraptions
--fads--like phonographs to dictate to, card indices, loose-leaf
systems, adding machines, and the like. Of course it requires more
clerks and stenographers, and possibly we are a bit slower than some.
Your father says, however, that he prefers conducting his business as
a gentleman should, rather than to make a mere machine of it. His
idea," said Rangar, "of a gentleman in business is one who refuses to
make use of abbreviations in his correspondence."

Bonbright was looking about the busy room, conscious that he was
being covertly studied by every occupant of it. It made him
uncomfortable, uneasy.

"Let's go on into the shops," he said, impatiently.

They turned, and encountered in the aisle a girl with a
stenographer's notebook in her hand; indeed, Bonbright all but
stepped on her. She was a slight, tiny thing, not thin, but small.
Her eyes met Bonbright's eyes and she grinned. No other word can
describe it. It was not an impertinent grin, nor a familiar grin, nor
a COMMON grin. It was spontaneous, unstudied--it lay at the opposite
end of the scale from Bonbright Foote VI's smile. Somehow the flash
of it COMFORTED Bonbright. His sensations responded to it. It was a
grin that radiated with well wishes for all the world. Bonbright
smiled back, awkwardly, and bobbed his head as she stepped aside for
him to pass.

"What a grin!" he said, presently.

"Oh," said Rangar. "Yes--to be sure. The Girl with the Grin--that's
what they call her in the office. She's always doing it. Your father
hasn't noticed. I hope he doesn't, for I'm sure he wouldn't like it."

"As if," said Bonbright to himself, "she were happy--and wanted
everybody else to be."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Rangar. "She's competent."

They passed outside and through a covered passageway into the older
of the shops. Bonbright was not thinking about the shops, but about
the girl. She was the only thing he had encountered that momentous
morning that had interested him, the only thing upon which Bonbright
Foote, Incorporated, had not set the stamp of its repressing
personality.

He tried to visualize her and her smile that he might experience
again that sensation of relief, of lightened spirit. In a measure he
was able to do so. Her mouth was large, he saw--no small mouth could
have managed that grin. She was not pretty, but, somehow, attractive.
Her eyes were bully; intelligent, humorous sort of eyes, he decided.

"Bet she's a darn nice kid," he concluded, boyishly. His father would
have been shocked at a thought expressed in such words.

"The business has done wonders these last five years," said Rangar,
intruding on Bonbright's thoughts. "Five years ago we employed less
than a thousand hands; to-day we have more than five thousand on the
payroll. Another few years and we shall have ten thousand."

"Axles?" asked Bonbright, mechanically.

"Axles," replied Rangar.

"Father doesn't approve of them--but they must be doing considerable
for the family bank account."

Rangar shot a quick glance at the boy, a glance with reproof in it
for such a flippancy. Vaguely he had heard that this young man had
done things not expected from a Foote; had, for instance, gone in for
athletics at the university. It was reported he had actually allowed
himself to be carried once on the shoulders of a cheering mob of
students! There were other rumors, also, which did not sit well on
the Foote tradition. Rangar wondered if at last a Foote had been born
into the family who was not off the old piece of cloth, who might,
indeed, prove difficult and disappointing. The flippancy indicated
it.

"Our inventory," he said, severely, "five years ago, showed a trifle
over a million dollars. To-day these mills would show a valuation of
five millions. The earnings," he added, "have increased in even
greater ratio."

"Hum," said Bonbright, his mind already elsewhere. His thought,
unspoken, was, "If we've got so blamed much, what's the use piling it
up?"

At noon they had not finished the inspection of the plant; it was
well toward five o'clock when they did so, for Rangar did his duty
conscientiously. His explanations were long, careful, technical.
Bonbright set his mind to the task and listened well. He was even
interested, for there were interesting things to see, processes
requiring skilled men, machines that had required inventive genius to
devise. He began to be oppressed by the bigness of it. The plant was
huge; it was enormously busy. The whole world seemed to need axles,
preferably Foote axles, and to need them in a hurry.

At last, a trifle dazed, startled by the vastness of the domain to
which he was heir apparent, Bonbright returned to the aloof quiet of
his historic room.

"I've a lot to learn," he told Rangar.

"It will grow on you. ... By the way, you will need a secretary."
(The Footes had secretaries, not stenographers.) "Shall I select one
for you?"

"Yes," said Bonbright, without interest; then he looked up quickly.
"No," he said, "I've selected my own. You say that girl--the one who
grinned--is competent?"

"Yes, indeed--but a girl! It has been the custom for the members of
the firm to employ only men."

Bonbright looked steadily at Rangar a moment, then said:

"Please have that girl notified at once that she is to be my
secretary."

"Yes, sir," said Rangar. The boy WAS going to prove difficult. He
owned a will. Well, thought the man, others may have had it in the
family before--but it has not remained long.

"Anything more, Mr. Foote?"

"Thank you, no," said Bonbright, and Rangar said good evening and
disappeared.

The boy rested his chin on his hand again, and reflected gloomily. He
hunched up his shoulders and sighed. "Anyhow," he said to himself,
"I'll have SOMEBODY around me who is human."




CHAPTER II


Bonbright's father had left the office an hour before he and Rangar
had finished their tour of the works. It was always his custom to
leave his business early and to retire to the library in his home,
where daily he devoted two hours to adding to the manuscript of The
Philosophical Biography of Marquis Lafayette. This work was
ultimately to appear in several severe volumes and was being written,
not so much to enlighten the world upon the details of the career of
the marquis as it was to utilize the marquis as a clotheshorse to be
dressed in Bonbright Foote VI's mature reflections on men, events,
and humanity at large.

Bonbright VII sat at his desk motionless, studying his career as it
lay circumscribed before him. He did not study it rebelliously, for
as yet rebellion had not occurred to him. The idea that he might
assert his individuality and depart from the family pattern had not
ventured to show its face. For too many years had his ancestors been
impressing him with his duty to the family traditions. He merely
studied it, as one who has no fancy for geometry will study geometry,
because it cannot be helped. The path was there, carefully staked out
and bordered; to-day his feet had been placed on it, and now he must
walk. As he sat he looked ahead for bypaths--none were visible.

The shutting-down whistle aroused him. He walked out through the
rapidly emptying office to the street, and there he stood, interested
by the spectacle of the army that poured out of the employees'
entrances. It was an inundation of men, flooding street from sidewalk
to sidewalk. It jostled and joked and scuffled, sweating, grimy, each
unit of it eager to board waiting, overcrowded street cars, where
acute discomfort would be suffered until distant destinations were
reached. Somehow the sight of that surging, tossing stream of
humanity impressed Bonbright with the magnitude of Bonbright Foote,
Incorporated, even more than the circuit of the immense plant had
done.

Five thousand men, in a newspaper paragraph, do not affect the
imagination. Five thousand men in the concrete are quite another
matter, especially if you suddenly realize that each of them has a
wife, probably children, and that the whole are dependent upon the
dynasty of which you are a member for their daily bread.

"Father and I," he said to himself, as the sudden shock of the idea
impacted against his consciousness, "are SUPPORTING that whole mob."

It gave him a sense of mightiness. It presented itself to him in that
instant that he was not a mere business man, no mere manufacturer,
but a commander of men--more than that, a lord over the destinies of
men. It was overwhelming. This realization of his potency made him
gasp. Bonbright was very young.

He turned, to be carried on by the current. Presently it was choked.
A stagnant pool of humanity formed around some center, pressing
toward it curiously. This center was a tiny park, about which the
street divided, and the center was a man standing on a barrel by the
side of a sign painted on cloth. The man was speaking in a loud,
clear voice, which was able to make itself perfectly audible even to
Bonbright on the extreme edge of the mass.

"You are helpless as individuals," the man was saying. "If one of you
has a grievance, what can he do?... Nothing. You are a flock of
sheep. ... If ALL of you have a grievance, what can you do? You are
still a pack of sheep. ... Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, owns you,
body and soul. ... Suppose this Foote who does you the favor to let
you earn millions for him--suppose he wants to buy his wife a diamond
necklace. ... What's to prevent him lowering your wages next week to
pay for it?... YOU couldn't stop him!... Why can an army beat a mob
of double its numbers? Because the army is ORGANIZED! Because the
army fights as one man for one object! ... You are a mob. Capital is
organized against you. ... How can you hope to defend yourselves? How
can you force a betterment of your conditions, of your wage? ... By
becoming an army--a labor army!... By organizing. ... That's why I'm
here, sent by the National Federation--to organize you. To show you
how to resist! ... To teach you how to make yourselves
irresistible!..." There were shouts and cheers which blotted out the
speaker's words. Then Bonbright heard him again:

"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, is entitled to fair interest on the
money it has invested in its plant. It is entitled to a fair profit
on the raw materials it uses in manufacture. ... But how much of the
final cost of its axles does raw material represent? A fraction! What
gives the axles the rest of their value?... LABOR! You men are paid
two, three, some of you even four dollars a day--for your labor.
Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, adds a little pig iron to your labor,
and gives you a place to work in, and takes his millions of dollars a
year. ... Do you get your fair share?... You do NOT, and you will
never get a respectable fraction of your fair share till you
organize--and seize it."

There was more. Bonbright had never heard the like of it before and
it fascinated him. Here was a point of view that was new to him. What
did it mean? Vaguely he had heard of Socialism, of labor unions, of
the existence of a spirit of suspicion and discord between capital
and labor. Now he saw it, face uncovered starkly.

A moment before he had realized his power over these men; now he
perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than
he. ... Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all
the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it topple in
ruin.

His mind was a caldron into which cross currents of thought poured
and tossed. He had no experience to draw on. Here was a thing he was
being plunged into all unprepared. It had taken him unprepared, and
shaken him as he had never been shaken before. He turned away.

Half a dozen feet away he saw the Girl with the Grin--not grinning
now, but tense, pale, listening with her soul in her eyes, and with
the light of enthusiasm glowing beside it.

He walked to her side, touched her shoulder. ... It was
unpremeditated, something besides his own will had urged him to speak
to her.

"I don't understand it," he said, unsteadily.

"Your class never does," she replied, not sharply, not as a retort,
but merely as one states a fact to give enlightenment.

"My father," she said, "was killed leading the strikers at Homestead.
... The unions educated me."

"What is this man--this speaker--trying to do? Stir up a riot?"

She smiled. "No. He is an organizer sent by the National Federation.
... They're going to try to unionize our plant."

"Unionize?"

"Bonbright Foote, Incorporated," she said, "is a non-union shop."

"I didn't know," said he, after a brief pause. "I'm afraid I don't
understand these things. ... I suppose one should know about them if
he is to own a plant like ours." Again he paused while he fumbled for
an idea that was taking shape. "I suppose one should understand about
his employees just as much as he does about his machinery."

She looked at him with a touch of awakened interest. "Do you class
men with machinery?" she asked, well knowing that was not his
meaning. He did not reply. Presently he said:

"Rangar told you you were to be my secretary?"

"Yes, sir," she said, using that respectful form for the first time.
The relation of employer and employee had been re-established by his
words. "Thank you for the promotion."

"You understand what this is all about," he said. "I shall want to
ask you about it. ... Perhaps you even know the man who is speaking?"

"He boards with my mother," said she. "That was natural," she added,
"my father being who he was."

Bonbright turned and looked at the speaker with curiosity awakened as
to the man's personality. The man was young--under thirty, and
handsome in a black, curly, quasi-foreign manner.

Bonbright turned his eyes from the man to the girl at his side. "He
looks--" said Bonbright.

"How?" she asked, when it was apparent he was not going to finish.

"As if," he said, musingly, "he wouldn't be the man to call on for a
line smash in the last quarter of a tough game."

Suddenly the speech came to an end, and the crowd poured on.

"Good night," said the girl. "I must find Mr. Dulac. I promised I
would walk home with him."

"Good night," said Bonbright. "His name is Dulac?"

"Yes."

Men like Dulac--the work they were engaged upon--had not fallen
within the circle of Bonbright's experience. Bonbright's training and
instincts had all been aristocratic. At Harvard he had belonged to
the most exclusive clubs and had associated with youths of training
similar to his. In his athletics there had been something democratic,
but nothing to impress him with democracy. Where college broadens
some men by its contacts it had not broadened Bonbright, for his
contacts had been limited to individuals chipped from the same strata
as himself. ... In his home life, before going to college, this had
been even more marked. As some boys are taught arithmetic and table
manners, Bonbright had been taught veneration for his family,
appreciation for his position in the world, and to look upon himself
and the few associates of his circumscribed world as selected stock,
looked upon with especial favor and graciousness by the Creator of
the universe.

Therefore this sudden dip into reality set him shivering more than it
would another who entered the water by degrees. It upset him. ... The
man Dulac stirred to life in him something that was deeper than mere
curiosity.

"Miss--" said he, and paused. "I really don't know your name."

"Frazer," she supplied.

"Miss Frazer, I should like to meet this Dulac. Would you be
willing?"

She considered. It was an unusual request in unusual circumstances,
but why not? She looked up into his boyish face and smiled. "Why
not?" she said, aloud.

They pressed forward through the crowd until they reached Dulac,
standing beside his barrel, surrounded by a little knot of men. He
saw the girl approaching, and lifted his hand in acknowledgment of
her presence. Presently he came to her, casting a careless glance at
Bonbright.

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