head.
“I chucked off the belt with my right hand,” he said, “an’ made a reach for the flint with my left. I didn’t stop to see if the belt was off. I thought my right hand had done it—only it didn’t. I reached quick, and the belt wasn’t all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off.”
“It must have been painful,” I said sympathetically.
“The crunchin’ of the bones wasn’t nice,” was his answer.
His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he put it, “wasn’t what it ought to have ben.” And to them I resolved to go.
One thing was plain, Jackson’s situation was wretched. His wife was in ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling, sufficient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.
“They might a-given me that watchman’s job,” were his last words as I went away.
By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson’s case, and the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I began to feel that there was something after all in Ernest’s contention.
He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of him I did not wonder that Jackson’s case had been lost. My first thought was that it had served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer. But the next moment two of Ernest’s statements came flashing into my consciousness: “The company employs very efficient lawyers” and “Colonel Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.” I did some rapid thinking. It dawned upon me that of course the company could afford finer legal talent than could a workingman like Jackson. But this was merely a minor detail. There was some very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson’s case had gone against him.
“Why did you lose the case?” I asked.
The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it in my heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to whine. I do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth. He whined about the testimony. The witnesses had given only the evidence that helped the other side. Not one word could he get out of them that would have helped Jackson. They knew which side their bread was buttered on. Jackson was a fool. He had been brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram. Colonel Ingram was brilliant at cross-examination. He had made Jackson answer damaging questions.
“How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his side?” I demanded.
“What’s right got to do with it?” he demanded back. “You see all those books.” He moved his hand over the array of volumes on the walls of his tiny office. “All my reading and studying of them has taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right. But you go to those books to learn . . . law.”
“Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side and yet was beaten?” I queried tentatively. “Do you mean to tell me that there is no justice in Judge Caldwell’s court?”
The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then the belligerence faded out of his face.
“I hadn’t a fair chance,” he began whining again. “They made a fool out of Jackson and out of me, too. What chance had I? Colonel Ingram is a great lawyer. If he wasn’t great, would he have charge of the law business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston Land Syndicate, of the Berkeley Consolidated, of the Oakland, San Leandro, and Pleasanton Electric? He’s a corporation lawyer, and corporation lawyers are not paid for being fools.27 What do you think the Sierra Mills alone give him twenty thousand dollars a year for? Because he’s worth twenty thousand dollars a year to them, that’s what for. I’m not worth that much. If I was, I wouldn’t be on the outside, starving and taking cases like Jackson’s. What do you think I’d have got if I’d won Jackson’s case?”
“You’d have robbed him, most probably,” I answered.
“Of course I would,” he cried angrily. “I’ve got to live, haven’t I?” 28
“He has a wife and children,” I chided.
“So have I a wife and children,” he retorted. “And there’s not a soul in this world except myself that cares whether they starve or not.”
His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed me a small photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside the case.
“There they are. Look at them. We’ve had a hard time, a hard time. I had hoped to send them away to the country if I’d won Jackson’s case. They’re not healthy here, but I can’t afford to send them away.”
When I started to leave, he dropped back into his whine.
“I hadn’t the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram and Judge Caldwell are pretty friendly. I’m not saying that if I’d got the right kind of testimony out of their witnesses on cross-examination, that friendship would have decided the case. And yet I must say that Judge Caldwell did a whole lot to prevent my getting that very testimony. Why, Judge Caldwell and Colonel Ingram belong to the same lodge and the same club. They live in the same neighborhood—one I can’t afford. And their wives are always in and out of each other’s houses. They’re always having whist parties and such things back and forth.”
“And yet you think Jackson had the right of it?” I asked, pausing for the moment on the threshold.
“I don’t think; I know it,” was his answer. “And at first I thought he had some show, too. But I didn’t tell my wife. I didn’t want to disappoint her. She had her heart set on a trip to the country hard enough as it was.”
“Why did you not call attention to the fact that Jackson was trying to save the machinery from being injured?” I asked Peter Donnelly, one of the foremen who had testified at the trial.
He pondered a long time before replying. Then he cast an anxious look about him and said:
“Because I’ve a good wife an’ three of the sweetest children ye ever laid eyes on, that’s why.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“In other words, because it wouldn’t a-ben healthy,” he answered.
“You mean—” I began.
But he interrupted passionately.
“I mean what I said. It’s long years I’ve worked in the mills. I began as a little lad on the spindles. I worked up ever since. It’s by hard work I got to my present exalted position. I’m a foreman, if you please. An’ I doubt me if there’s a man in the mills that’d put out a hand to drag me from drownin’. I used to belong to the union. But I’ve stayed by the company through two strikes. They called me ‘scab.’ There’s not a man among ‘em to-day to take a drink with me if I asked him. D’ye see the scars on me head where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain’t a child at the spindles but what would curse me name. Me only friend is the company. It’s not me duty, but me bread an’ butter an’ the life of me children to stand by the mills. That’s why.”
“Was Jackson to blame?” I asked.
“He should a-got the damages. He was a good worker an’ never made trouble.”
“Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole truth, as you had sworn to do?”
He shook his head.
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” I said solemnly.
Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted it, not to me, but to heaven.