Lanny and Rick, according to their temperaments, were disposed to concentrate upon economics; but Laurel ranged farther afield and invited a young poet who had been present at the New Leader dinner. Richard Armour contributed brief satiric verses to the paper, and now he said, in substance, “I hope that your economics will be politico-social and not merely the economics of price and distribution. I understand the feeling that if physical wants could be supplied, everywhere in the world, everything might be well. But I am increasingly distrustful of a world dominated by economists and scientists, who make us comfortable—and narrow and dull and thankless. Your publications should have a column of relief from material things.”
Here was a new angle, and Laurel decided to look into the spiritual side of their task. The American people were religious by tradition, and there had been a Christian Socialist movement of great influence. Because some Church machines had become corrupted and had sold out to landlords and moneylenders was not sufficient reason for going over to the atheists. As Bernard Shaw had said of his own early career, he had thrown out the baby with the bath, and now he had lived to be ashamed of his folly.
There was a minister in New York to whom all thoughts turned when it was a question of applying the religious impulse to political and social affairs. John Haynes Holmes had been for years the pastor of a Unitarian church in a fashionable part of the city; after World War I he had made it a “Community Church.” He had been a pacifist through the two most dreadful wars in history; he had defended the rights of oppressed minorities and been a tower of strength for civil liberties. His voice was familiar on all forum platforms; he would say, “I am no orator”—and would say it oratorically.
Now to his study came two ladies, one American, the other English, and introduced themselves. They told him of their unusual project and asked his advice. All the ardor of an old crusader blazed up in his soul; yes, he knew exactly what to tell them to do. “You and your husbands must make a pilgrimage to Gandhi. He is the one who has the gospel; his way is the way to put an end to war.”
They were surprised, and Dr. Holmes expatiated. He was planning himself to make a pilgrimage to this shrine; the Mahatma was frail and it was hardly likely that he would last much longer. He was the true “Great Soul” of modern times; in his shrunken hands he held the secret of the future. His technique of non-violent resistance was the truly spiritual, and at the same time a political, doctrine. It had been prepared in solitude, with fasting and prayer, and had been tried out in the rough and tumble of mass struggle. All the power of the British Empire had been unable to prevail against it; in the end the proud rulers had bowed before it, and the freedom of India had been won. The way to world peace lay in a study of this technique and its application to the affairs of Western imperialism.
All this was interesting, but the wife of an English baronet could hardly be expected to swallow it without some gagging. Said she, “Don’t you think, Dr. Holmes, that at least a part of the credit for Gandhi’s victory might be given to his opponents? You must know that the British treated him with the utmost tenderness; when they arrested him he had every comfort, and care such as he could have had only in a modern hospital.”
“That may be true, Lady Nielson—”
“Suppose for a moment that it had been with the Nazis he was dealing. Do you think he could have driven them out of India? They wouldn’t have waited for him to open his mouth! They would have put him in a poison-gas chamber and burned his body in a furnace and scattered his ashes to the winds. His followers wouldn’t have had so much as a fingernail to cherish.”
“Yes, but his message—”
“They would have slaughtered every one of his followers, they would have burned his writings—”
“You cannot burn a message, Lady Nielson. That was proven in the case of Jesus. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. All through the ages—”
“But we are not talking about the ages, Dr. Holmes, we are trying to prevent the destruction of our present world in an atomic war. We have to use the symbols and the mechanisms that our people understand, here and now.”
“Mechanisms are one cause of our trouble; we have built so many that they have become more important than men. The machine is the master of our world.”
Nina would have liked to ask this friend of mankind whether he used a car in the course of his pastoral duties, and whether he took the subway when he had to speak at “Town Meeting” on Manhattan Island. But she was afraid that wouldn’t be polite. There was no need to travel to India to find a “Great Soul”; this was one—but, like his Hindu exemplar and many others throughout this ugly world, he found difficulty in keeping his actions in accord with his holy faith.
XII
There were great numbers of sacred creeds taught and solemn rites practiced in this megalopolis; they were contradictory, and couldn’t all be true. The skeptical Rick was sure that no one of them would have any better solution to offer. Some might try to send the researchers to Rome, some to Mecca, and some even to Tibet. These faiths had had centuries in which to show what they could do to bring peace on earth; they had brought innumerable wars—never more bloody than when they were carried on in the name of the Prince of Peace.
There were a number of modern religions which originated in America, and had their churches and groups of devotees in New York. One of them was based upon faith in immortality, as something real and not just a formula to be recited on Sundays. The souls of the dead existed, and it was possible to communicate with them; it wasn’t just fraud but something that could be proven and practiced. Laurel had talked with Nina about the strange gift of mediumship, and Nina knew about an old-time English medium who had settled in New York. Eileen Garrett was publishing a monthly magazine, Tomorrow, so there were two reasons for consulting her; she could tell them about costs and other business matters, and maybe the spirits would also make their appearance and have advice to give. This was just after their evening with Haldeman-Julius, and Laurel said with a smile, “We won’t tell him about it!”
They wrote, introducing themselves, a playwright’s wife and a woman novelist who was a medium. Naturally the editor was interested, and they called at her office, and later she came for an evening. Mrs. Garrett, retired head of the British College of Psychic Science, began by telling them the surprising news that Emily Chattersworth’s bequest was not unique; there was a World Federation group to which a rich woman had just bequeathed a million dollars to be used in the effort to prevent the next war. “Indeed and indeed!” said Laurel. “We shall have to get in touch with those people and find out what they are going to do.”
Then, unannounced and still more surprising, came a remark to Nina. “You have been having trouble with delayed menstruation, and you have been afraid of the possibility of cancer.”
“How wonderful!” exclaimed the younger woman. “It is true.”
“You don’t need to worry about cancer, for you don’t have it.”
“How can you know that, Mrs. Garrett?”
“I don’t know how; it has been happening to me all my life. The moment a person comes into my presence and I touch his hand, something comes to me. I give it instantly, spontaneously, and that puts me in touch with people, so that I can help them if they need it. I have found it a wonderful thing in my life, for it makes human relationships light and easy. I don’t need a couch and a dark room to persuade people to tell me what’s in their hearts.”
So this was a clinic as well as a magazine office, something of a novelty in a commercial world. It was something of a church too. Said the editor, “Everyone, from the President of the United States to the street cleaner outside the White House, is in need of a new religion. The dollar sign is not enough. Men earn their first thousand, and then they strive for five thousand, and it’s a rat race until they get a million. Cars, refrigerators, and a hundred luxuries do not make peace of mind; neither Russia nor America has it today. People sense that Gandhi has it and sp
eak of him as a saint. He is a shrewd politician who has the clarity of goodness; but I have no doubt that future generations will be portraying him with a halo about his head.”
Nina and Laurel looked at each other and smiled. They told this unusual editor about their talk with Dr. Holmes, and she said, “You don’t need to travel to India. God is here also. All you need is to believe in spiritual power without dogma or superstition, and you have it. Tel’ people that, and they will pay more heed to what you say about peace and social justice.”
21
The Sheep Wander Alone
I
The wars were over, and into all the harbors were coming transports loaded with men. For a weary year or two, or perhaps three or four, these men had been looking forward to the hour when they would set their feet on the soil of God’s country, and now they slapped one another on the back and shouted or laughed for joy. They, the lucky-ones who had returned, had money in their pockets and girls waiting for them. Many of the girls had money too; they had been earning as much as two dollars an hour in factories, something out of this world, as their lively phrase had it.
Only a thoughtful student of economics could understand the hidden forces that were conspiring to cause this happiness to fade and these bright hopes to turn gray. It wasn’t anybody’s devilment, but just the normal operation of a competitive business system, so highly lauded in newspaper and magazine editorials. The country was flooded with money, and goods were scarce; prices were bound to be forced up, and those who had the most money would, as always, be the first to be served. Government statistics, based on wholesale prices for basic commodities, would show a gradual rise; but that wouldn’t mean anything to the housewife, who knew that she was paying two prices for meat and butter and three or four for fresh fruits and vegetables.
Just as the soldiers were clamoring to be “demobbed,” so the businessmen were clamoring to be freed from price controls. The big fellows sent their lobbyists to lay siege to the Seventy-ninth Congress—supposed to be Democratic, having been swept in with Roosevelt’s last victory; but a good part of it was made up of Southern reactionaries, and others were carried away by the tide. “Back to normalcy,” was the cry, and the confused new President accepted the solemn assurance of the businessmen around him that if he would let them have their way reconversion would be swift and a flood of civilian goods would soon be pouring out of the factories.
One by one the controls were being lifted; and so it came about that lumber and cement went into the building of night clubs and race tracks instead of homes for the veterans. You could get a twenty-five-thousand-dollar home built, provided that you were willing to pay fifty thousand for it, but you couldn’t get a five-thousand-dollar home built at any price; such homes just ceased to exist, and when they came into sight again they were eight and ten-thousand-dollar homes. So the young married couples crowded in with their parents, or they fixed up a shed, if they could find some scrap lumber, or they lived in a trailer, or in one room in a lodging house, cooking on a gas burner. That wasn’t very happy, and moralists were shocked by the increase in the divorce rate.
To the returned veteran the whole of America presented itself as a gigantic conspiracy to get his money away from him as quickly as possible; and again there was no malice about it, just the normal operation of free enterprise. He could not turn on the radio without hearing a clamor of profit-seekers beseeching him to purchase gadgets on easy credit terms, or patent medicines and processed foods in “economy-size packages”—meaning big ones. The originators of fashions were in a conspiracy to make him uncomfortable in his perfectly good clothing; he must throw it away and get a new outfit, because a vague “they” were wearing two-button coats instead of three-button coats, or vice versa. Despite the fact that cloth was scarce and millions in Europe freezing, women’s short skirts would suddenly become long. That would be called the “new look,” and women with the old look would feel passé and humiliated.
II
Few businessmen in the country were harder hit by the bad news of peace than Robbie Budd; all his contracts were canceled and his country needed him no longer. There was going to be peace all over the world, protected by a United Nations, and nobody would ever again want those marvelous swift engines of destruction which Robbie had been pouring off his assembly line. As it happened, the president of Budd-Erling was an old man and had been through it once before; so he hadn’t paid out all his profits as dividends but had salted them away as reserves, invested in the hated Roosevelt’s bonds. Now he could sell them, a few at a time, and pay his taxes and keep his head above water.
But that magnificent machine of production that he had built up just faded away, not exactly overnight but in a few weeks. The workers were turned off wholesale, with a very sincere “Thank you,” and a “Sorry.” If they had paid for their trailers they rolled away with them; or they went in their ten- or fifteen-year-old jalopies, or by train, back to Quebec or Maine or Arkansas or Texas. They had their savings, hidden under the car seat or made secure with a safety pin inside the women’s stockings. They would hunt jobs in peace industries, and whether they would find them was a subject about which the economic experts argued without ever coming to agreement.
To what could you reconvert a huge plant for making fighter planes? Next door was Budd Gunmakers, and they could turn to tack hammers and frying pans—they still had the old jigs and dies, carefully preserved. But what could Budd-Erling make? A few cub planes for the civilian trade, a few luxury jobs for the rich—and what else? Robbie had canvassed the field with his experts. Gas heaters? Refrigerators? Radios? Every field was covered by patents, and you would have to buy them or pay royalties; you would have to learn a new business and install complete new equipment at enormous expense; and just when you got started the market would be glutted and the slump would come. Robbie Budd suddenly decided that he wanted to sit back and rest.
There were his two boys, now nearing their forties, vice-presidents of the company. They would want to go on, and Robbie would let them run the old portion of the plant, the part that predated the war. As for the rest, they would seal up the machinery in cellophane or coat it with grease and let it wait. If Robbie was right in his guess that World War III was only a few years away, all right, the boys could start things up again. Meantime Budd-Erling would live on its fat, like a bear in wintertime; the stockholders would have to reconvert themselves or else learn to be bears. If they hadn’t saved part of the huge dividends Robbie had paid them they were fools and deserved what they would get.
A tough decision, for the town as well as for Robbie and his investors. All the little merchants, the grocers who had sold food to the workers, the café and lunch-wagon proprietors who had fed them, these would have to fail or move away or both. The slum part of Newcastle would become a ghost town, or at least an invalid town, half alive. A topsy-turvy world, in which war meant prosperity and peace meant stagnation; in which slaughter and waste were good, and mercy, kindness, and love were intolerable. That was the way it was, and if you talked about changing it you were a dreamer, a crackpot.
III
In this world of confusion and uncertainty people fought to get to the top, where money was plentiful and there were pleasure and luxury for all. If you were known to have money, or any form of distinction, you were besieged by persons on the make; your mail was full of begging letters, salesmen and agents knocked on your door, “climbers” tried to make your acquaintance, and poor relations came to stay with you. The quartet of reformers had put themselves in especially exposed positions: Lanny as a rich man’s son, Rick and Nina as titled persons, Mary Morrow as a writer, and all four of them as idealists and easy marks.
Laurel came to her husband, looking worried, and said, “My sister Flo writes that she is coming to town, so I have the unpleasant task of telling you about her.”
Lanny had heard very little about Laurel’s family. He had known well her Uncle Reverdy, a Baltimore capitalist, and his
daughter Lizbeth, who had traveled to Hong Kong on a yacht which had been sunk trying to escape from the Japanese. Lanny knew that Laurel’s mother had died when Laurel was young, and that her father had died as an old man, not long before Lanny had met her. Laurel had said, “I never got along with my family, and there is no reason for you to be bothered with them.”
But now Sister Flo was coming and would force herself on Laurel, and Lanny too, if she got a chance—but he mustn’t let it happen. He listened to one of those ugly stories of parasitism and what it did to families. Laurel’s father had been a considerable landowner on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; he had lived to what is called a ripe old age and had had three grown daughters. The youngest, Laurel herself, had come to New York and lived in a boarding-house, making herself into a writer. The middle one had visited her wealthy uncle in Baltimore, and there had made a “catch,” marrying a man of wealth and fashion who made her wretched by drinking and persistent infidelity. Flo was the eldest, and the least good looking, and she had stayed in the old family mansion with her father.
At the age of seventy-plus this respectable church elder had horrified her by getting hurt in a motorcar accident, going to a hospital, being nursed by a designing young woman, and then bringing her home as his wife. Flo had flown into a fury and made it her task in life to punish that vile interloper. Even the fact that the new wife bore two children didn’t help; it made matters worse by diminishing the share of the inheritance that Flo could expect to get. She left her father’s home, and when he died soon afterward she took up the notion of proving that he had been mentally incompetent and that his will was invalid.
“Of course she had no case,” said Laurel. “Reputable lawyers told her so; but there are always shysters ready to prey upon a woman, and Flo has paid most of her inheritance over to them. If she isn’t mentally deranged she is close to it, and spends all her time hating our stepmother and trying to figure out ways of punishing her. Nothing can keep her from talking about her grievance, and she is always in debt and trying to borrow money. Now she has the idea that I have married a rich man, and she will want to try you, and to meet your family, and tell her troubles to them. I want you to be out when she calls, or stay in your room and read.”