V

Capuchin needed space in front of him. He put his hands against the table to move himself back, thinking he was in a chair. But it was not a chair. Then he lifted his end of the bench and moved it back, Miss Lillibridge teetering on the other end. Reseating himself, he put his hands in his pockets, assumed a crouching attitude, and talked.

He had a gift for dramatizing the incident, a kind of unexpectedness, and a comic sense from which nothing was withheld, not even himself. Almost at once his auditors were fascinated. Owing to his habit of making his final word sounds outside of his teeth he could not talk and smile at the same time. At the humorous episodes he stopped to smile, and it was irresistible. His emotions were uncontrolled. When he spoke of little children in their taties or of a woman in childbirth, the nearest doctor forty miles across the frozen prairie and nothing for the new Freemen’s Leaguer to wear but a flour sack nightie, he wept.

Afterward—perhaps long afterward—the reflection that these figures in any political sense were irrelevant. They were bits of color splashed in. When he was moved to weep he wept naturally, as a child would, with not the slightest embarrassment and without getting his eyes red. His narrative had the form of fiction. He might have been reciting a story.

First was where.

A state twice the size of Ireland and fewer people than in one first rate city. Climate, 40 below in winter to 110 in summer. There was one very rich valley, a river flowing north. The rest of it had been bison pasture. Then came the bonanza cattle men. They turned the bison out and drifted their cows up there from Texas to graze on the public domain. The first railroad was built, with enormous grants of land as a free kiss from the Federal government. The eastern owners of the railroad, led by Jay Cooke & Company, bankers, thought of a way to turn their land into money. They advertised it to land-hungry European peasants in the best Yankee manner. Virgin soil, almost for nothing, in a land where everything else was free. Immigrants, mostly Swedes and Norwegians, came in boat loads to buy and settle upon it.

Many Americans, even the newspapers, that were not so bad then, indignantly protested. They said it was immoral to sting confiding foreigners in that manner. The land was worthless. Thereupon the railroad people did what they had not thought of doing before. They tried it. They plowed and sowed some of it experimentally. And it turned out that the land was all right.

But wickedness went only the deeper with the fact of the land being good. All the more the settlers were exploited. That was what they were for. Generally they began with too little capital. They should have known better; yet think how they were beguiled by the legends that brought them. Everyone who touched them made money. Those in the first place who sold them seed, implements, lumber, bacon and flour at wilderness prices. Then the elevator men who bought their grain, the Minneapolis and Chicago speculators who played in it afterward, the railroads that hauled it out. The man whose labor produced this wealth delivered it to his creditors in the harvest moon and faced the long, hard winter with barely enough to sustain life in a state of hibernation. His winters were terrible. You would find him, if at all, by a length of six-inch stove-pipe sticking out of a snow drift. He lived there in gloom and brooding with his wife and children, eating fried potatoes, and when Spring came he had the shape of a shad. Then he borrowed some seed, some ten per cent. money, some hope from the Lord, and did it once more. If he got a crop, which was not always, the storekeeper who kept him in pawn, the* banker, the miller, the trader and the railroad again divided it among themselves. And these people were helpless. He had been looking at it a long time without seeing it. That was because he had been occupied in another way.

“What were you doing there?” Jael asked.

He was coming to that. Running a newspaper, an anti-railroad newspaper, first of that species. It was from that angle he had been assaulting the castle of privilege. The power of the railroads was tyrannical and absolute. There was no other authority in the state to mention. They controlled the elections and what was elected; they controlled economic conditions; they suppressed public opinion by suborning the press. He did not buy the newspaper; he found it. The man who owned it was about to bequeath it to his creditors, had in fact announced that he meant to stop printing it. There was a funny episode in the taking of it. They were looking at the books, he and the owner; apparently there was only one customer who ever paid, and it wasn’t clear what that one paid for. He hadn’t even a name. He was entered as Account A, and paid $250 a month regularly.

Capuchin asked what that was.

That, the bankrupt told him, was the only thing he need not worry about. The check came every fifteenth and the people who sent it didn’t want much. An editorial maybe twice or three times a year, and they wrote it themselves. It was a gratuity from the railroad, and but for that one little stream of juice the creditors might have had the paper long before..

Drawing a pencil through Account A, Capuchin said, “I’ll take it without that,” and signed the memorandum of sale that lay on the table.

The retiring owner sat for a minute regarding him in a strange way. Then taking thought for himself he said he should like to make one slight addition to the contract. Taking it under his hand, he made a caret after George Capuchin, party of the second part, and wrote, “being of sound mind,” comma, etc. The rest he left as it was, which was merely to say that the party of the first part, in consideration of one dollar paid, having transferred title and interest, the party of the second part assumed all the liabilities. “Just in case,” he said, referring to the change he had made in the paper requiring the buyer to acknowledge his sanity; and so he signed it and pushed it back. That was the complete transaction, except that the relieved owner looked back from the doorway and said: “If you write anything against those people the check will stop and you won’t last a month.”

He made some wonder in the community, daring the lightning to strike him; but that was nothing to live on. Those who owed the paper money now laughed at the idea of paying. Somehow he lasted nearly two years. He did get an anti-railroad bill introduced in the legislature by the only free member there was in it, and that was all.

One night the paper was set up and might have issued once more if there had been anybody to print it or anything to print it on. The sheriff was strolling about the premises. Word had come from the capitol that his anti-railroad bill, splashed with a quid of tobacco, was hanging upside down on the bulletin board in the public corridor. Of a sudden it occurred to him as an original, astonishing thought that he could quit. He walked out the front door, locked the sheriff inside, threw the key in the gutter and remembered a saying that ran in his family: the tick crawls out of a dead dog’s ear.

With nothing else to do he sauntered toward the state capitol. It was the last night of the session, and there was no other diversion. The rotunda was full of people.

A delegation of farmers had come to beg for a bill that was introduced regularly at the beginning of each session and then purposely forgotten. It was a bill providing for grain elevators to be built by the state so that the farmers might store their grain in their own keeping and sell it when, as and to whom they pleased, instead of having to sell it wet on the harvest glut to the private elevator combine that docked away one-fifth of it, graded away another fifth, and paid for the remainder a take-or-be-damned price. It was never intended that the bill should pass. Its use was to be dangled before the farmers at election time.

The delegation had not been honored with a formal reception. The legislature who had thought it worth while to receive it at all met it standing in this public space. The farmer’s spokesman was arguing the matter in a weak, egotistical voice. Nobody was listening. He was very dull; besides, all that he was saying had been said many times before.

A Swede with a long white mustache kept saying, “Aay pro meest! Aay pro meest!”

A man at the edge of the crowd, getting suddenly what the Swede meant, set up the tune, “Oh, Promise Me.” There was rude and cynical laughter at that.

Then from among the members of the legislature, who were all on one side, came a loud voice, saying, “A-a-h-h, go home and slop your hogs.”

That insult was the climax. There was a moment of ominous silence. Then the legislators disappeared up the marble stairway, one leading, the others straggling. They had business above.

For a while the farmers lurched and shuffled, about, some dumbly gazing, others muttering, and then melted away.

Capuchin was next conscious of himself in the experience of having a vision.

Did they remember the story of Rousseau, father of the French revolution, walking to Vincennes? How under a tree he was struck with a vision that changed the mind of the world? The vision that man was naturally perfect and altogether good and was made wicked by his institutions? It was as sudden as that. Only, it was a very cold night, his tree was a trolley post, and there was no Vincennes.

His vision was of the utmost simplicity. Why shouldn’t these people have what they wanted? It was their state, not the railroads’ state. What they Were talking about was a way to sell the wealth produced by their own labor. Their own, not the railroads’ wealth. These legislators telling them to go borne and slop their hogs were men whom they, the people themselves, elected, always of course after they had been nominated by the railroads, the bankers, et al. All they needed was someone who could show them how to unite, declare their freedom and take possession of their own. He could do that.

Two of the farmers in that delegation named Swanson, brothers, he knew; and he returned to the capital to look for them. They were gone. He found them in the town, just as they were starting home, and he went with them.

They sat in the kitchen and talked. A kerosene lamp was both heat and light. The stove was cold and useless because the women and children had taken the lids to bed with them. It got colder and colder, and still they talked. They talked all night and the Freemen’s League was born at dawn. The enacting words were written in pencil on the pages of a child’s copy book; and they were few. The fewer the better. That was why it took so long.

It was not a political organization though it proposed to employ political means.

The subscriber pledged himself to vote only for men of any political party who were pledged to the League.

Ten or more subscribers constituted a local folkmote, autonomous, self-organizing, electing its own leader.

All the local folkmotes in a county constituted a county folkmote, also autonomous, self-organizing, choosing its own leader.

The Freeman’s League was the total organism thus built up, with its head at the capital, its body everywhere. It was authorized beforehand to use such funds as were necessary to conduct a newspaper, which, received by every member, should possess them all of the truth alike and inform them of the program.

And the whole purpose of the League was to disestablish the predatory profit makers, all private privilege, and establish instead the rights of the people.

Amen.

(Sign here.)

$2.50 payable.

Principles only. That left the program to be talked about. It should be flexible, accommodating itself to the opportunity. All the more it could contain everything the Leaguers wished—state elevators, a state flour mill, a chain of co-operative stores, a government for the people first, one that should fix reasonable prices for the things the people were obliged to buy and profitable prices for what they sold.

After breakfast they set forth. Evangels three. They had agreed to test it first on Knutson, a hard, grunting Norwegian to whom substance had been added. The more grouch the more substance. He had pigs—more pigs than words—a painted barn and money in the bank. If they could sell it to him they could sell it to anybody. They did sell it to him. It was easy. He had been one of the delegation, and had not been able to sleep for burning with anger at the insult received from the legislators. To him it was personal, for he had hogs; few of the others had. Knutson went with them to see that Steenerson signed. Evangels four. Steenerson made one difficulty. He had not the two-fifty; but he offered to give his check, dated the next fall, after harvest. They took it, and it was an idea.

They spent the day at it, and when they turned back they had twenty subscribers and nineteen postdated checks, payable after harvest. The League was launched. On its note, payable after harvest, it borrowed from Knutson enough money to buy a used Ford for traveling about.

Returning that night to the capital Capuchin’s first official deed, after finding the key he had flung in the gutter, was to write a notice and paste it in the newspaper window: “SOLD! To the Freeman’s League. George Capuchin, president.”

There had been no election of officers but someone had to be president; there had been no sale or purchase of the paper, but all the same it belonged to the League.

It was nothing to sell the idea of the League; it was easy to get post-dated checks. To get any real money, enough to keep the paper going—that was a nightmare. Nevertheless, it was managed. He advertised for torch bearers, practiced them in what they should say so that they should all say it alike, as the paper was saying it, and sent them forth to sell the League—for one-tenth of the subscription money. In ninety days there was at least one folkmote in every county, and he—rather the League—had a drawer full of post-dated checks. A few of these now and then he was able to pawn for some real money.

So much of genesis. The rest was generally though imperfectly known.

At the first political election in the spring the League had been unable to get any of its own men up on either party ticket. What it should do in that case had been planned beforehand. No Leaguer voted at all.

The boss politicians were amazed at the extent of the missing vote. They began to inquire about the League and then of course to denounce it as inimical to the peace and morals of the state. It grew all the faster.

As the post-dated checks began to turn up after harvest the banks were able to identify many of the League’s members and wickedly black-listed them as borrowers. That was persecution, and the League had made strong wine of it.

Before the autumn election came there was a folkmote in nearly every township. The weaker of the two political parties put four Leaguers on its ticket for the Legislature. They were elected in a manner to show that the Freemen’s League, if it held together, would swing the balance of power.

Then of course all the reactionary forces of the state came together in one mind to fight it. Those who belonged to the party that had admitted Leaguers to its ticket went over to stand with the other against the League; that left the League in possession of the first one’s skin, which it immediately filled.

In the next election, which was the big one, the League had its own people up for all offices. The fight was desperate.

On the side of the conservatives the most effective man was not a politician. He was a banker, Anx. Plaino, who, never having made a speech before in his life, developed suddenly a remarkable gift of simple exposition. He was dangerous for two reasons. It was not only that he could argue for Satan too plausibly; his bank had tremendous influence with rich farmers, many of whom it had built up and then corrupted into the machine of privilege. So, this person, Old Anxiety, they called him, had begun to make some very offensive speeches.

Coming to a sudden stop Capuchin smiled and looked into the faces around the table, one after the other, with an air of letting them all in.

“My grandfather had asthma,” he said. “He never went near the horses, for if he did he was sure to be violently seized with it. That’s how I happened to think of the trick we played on Anx. Plaino. We waited until he was to bring off a speech a lot of us could get to. He was surprised at the size of his crowd; more perhaps at the applause he got. The Leaguers came early and sat well up front. Every man had a pocket full of horse dander. We dropped it on the floor. When we applauded the speaker we stomped our feet and raised the dust. That was the last of Mr. Plaino. He didn’t recover until long after the election. He nearly died.”

He was silent again, then passed under signs of strong emotion.

“Did you hear that on the Sunday before election they prayed for foul weather? Perhaps not. That wouldn’t be news. But they did, thinking it would keep our people away from the polls. And the prayer was answered. Two feet of snow. I doubted them myself. The first returns came from the towns and we were beaten. I thought so. Then slowly the returns from the country began to come in. They came in for three days, piling higher and higher, and the folkmotes had won. Everything! Apples and basket.”

This he seemed to be saying to himself, forgetting where he was. He was thinking of the steadfastness of his Leaguers, re-creating his own excitement, feeling again the ecstasy akin to grief of victory against great odds. Tears stood in his eyes.

“So there we are,” he said, coming to with a start. “The state of New Freedom, capital, Liberty. That’s what you asked for, wasn’t it?”

He looked at Grinling.