Chapter 28 #3
“I’ve avoided writing advertisements, too, for that matter. No, Chary. Sorry, but no. This is a rich man’s solution.”
“I want Chary to have the patent,” August said, louder, “under his name. Every piece of it. Is that enough common ownership, socialist?”
Under his name. He didn’t mean Charles Wright, Jr.
“One rich man to another.” Laurie shrugged. “Nothing common about that.”
Chary said, “August, no. You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. You’ve done enough. Why can’t I give it to you? I’ll sign it over right here, in front of Tulley.”
They weren’t talking about the machine any longer, Chary was sure. In front of Tulley. August wanted him to be honest with Laurie about his name. His identity. August’s.
“No.”
August clutched hard at his knees, knuckles whitening. “It’s not your choice. It’s mine. I should’ve done it a long time ago.”
“I said no,” Chary gritted out. “It’s not worth— It’s worth too much,” he corrected himself. “You’ve spent years on it. No.”
“I could’ve spent a lifetime, and it wouldn’t be worth too much, Chary.”
“By rights, it should’ve been a lifetime! I don’t want it! You hear me?”
“Fuck!” August groaned, put his hands over his eyes. Full of temper, he flung himself back on his stool. “Why are you like this?”
“An additional antecedent or two might be nice,” Laurie suggested. “Somehow, I’ve lost the correlatives. Can’t see how.”
“Enh?” This, somehow, had broken August’s anger.
He stared, a little glazed, then slumped.
“Not everyone’s been to university, Tulley,” he said wearily.
“Excuse, a moment.” He stood, turned to Chary, drew him closer to the stairs.
“Just tell him the truth,” he whispered, very low.
“All of it. You must, if you love him. It won’t go like it did with…
Tjo, you see? I promise. If he loves you, he will accept you.
Love all the true flaws. And if he is not worth it and tells the world…
” He shrugged. “It’s all right. It was still worth it. ”
Before Chary could respond, August slipped around him, up the stairs, through the cellar door. Chary, both regretful and relieved, didn’t call him back.
Laurie raised one eyebrow. “Which one’s the elder brother again?”
Chary was so frustrated that he found himself beginning to tear up.
“He’s right,” he said thickly. “It doesn’t really matter who owns the machine.
The first, the next, or any of them. But you called them inevitable.
I believe they will naturally result in lower employment of children.
You do too. And they must begin to be used as soon as possible.
The pursuit of profit will make that happen but with this very good and necessary effect alongside.
I thought you would want—that—for boys to be out of the workplace— It seems very uncomplicated to me. Doesn’t it to you?”
“No,” Laurie said bluntly.
“I am not asking you to advertise for our benefit. Not even to mention this machine specifically. If August gives me the patent, I’ll publish it for common use, I swear to you.
It doesn’t matter if it’s another’s or merely…
that you set the very example that mechanization can eliminate child labor in this instance, if that could be enough to spur change in the industry… ”
Chary trailed off. Laurie pursed his lips, seeming to weigh this.
“Chary,” he said quietly. “It’s just you’re putting a lot of faith, a lot of hope, into this one, untested machine.” Faith in me, his eyes said. They looked terribly sad.
“I know it will work,” Chary insisted. “August was right. If we only get the machine out there—through economic reasoning—”
Laurie waved, gently, as though to remind him: Yes, economics, I went to Columbia, but also I know you know.
“I don’t dispute that every glassworks will want the thing for its massive profitability. That’s obvious. I’m saying, is this the only way to make it so that boys will stop being hired?”
“No—”
“And if they don’t stop working, or move elsewhere, can their working conditions still be improved? What if boys could join the unions? Can we put more pressure to raise the working age?”
“Again? To raise it again, you mean.” Chary put his fingers to his forehead.
“I have lost my mind. You sound quite like—like a conservative! To speak in hypotheticals! To speak in minute, indirect change! Are you not a syndicalist socialist? Strikes and protests and destruction of state? All I am asking you to do,” he said carefully, “is to take a very obvious solution to child labor and present it handily before your sympathetic and built-in Labor readership.”
Laurie was silent a long while, staring, hands in pockets.
He looked tired. A little betrayed. “I would,” he began, “in a heartbeat, if that’s what it was.
But it’s a bandage, Chary, a rich man’s bandage, this machine of your brother’s.
At least for what you want it to do. It may happen to invoke change while furthering industry greed, but…
it isn’t a solution. Solutions are… long-term change.
Legislation. Shift of public attention and opinion over years.
I report, and I expose, and it’s that I chip away at.
I evoke sympathy for those who have little voice and littler time for change—I stir feelings within the hearts of those who do have the breathing room for them.
Bit by bit. The white workingmen, sitting smoking and marking their ballots.
The white women who prod their husbands to vote for the sake of the children. You understand?”
“But you won’t enable any and all routes toward direct change,” Chary said bitterly. “Not if the route is mechanization, the great evil.”
“It isn’t that I don’t agree with you, Chary, or see its merits.
I can see the path you’re forging here, and it’s plausible.
More than. Honest. But I can’t be your mouthpiece.
If I suddenly promote mechanization over labor, I won’t have a sympathetic readership anymore.
It won’t even get that far, ’cause Sam is gonna veto this, hard, and then he’ll ask me precisely when it was I took money, and was it from the National Manufacturer’s Association.
” He was pale to the lips at the thought, rubbing his thumb over them anxiously.
“From the man who furnished your sodomy bail?” Chary scoffed.
“This isn’t about money. As though those boys haven’t done their last resort.
As though they have not tried to find other avenues, used the last of their voices.
They have petitioned the unions to represent them and failed.
They have gone on strike, unrepresented, and they have been replaced.
In Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Jersey, here.
They have protested and been beaten. And I have worked beside them—been them— They will work because they must, but they shouldn’t have to—” He swiped at his face.
“August knew how I felt about those boys, and I’ve not even spoken to him about it.
But you’re Lawrence Tulley. If you, who have advocated for the working boy his whole career, cannot understand—cannot do this—”
His voice had broken, and he was crying. He’d been so hopeful—possibly misguided, he could see that now, but hope obliterated reason sometimes, because it had to—he’d been so hopeful that Laurie would understand.
“Chary.” Laurie brought him down into his arms, and Chary went, helplessly. “God, Chary. I’m so sorry. It’s been a hell of a couple weeks, hasn’t it? It’s all right.”
No. Mostly, they’d been wonderful, and that was the problem.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been a fool.”
“No. We just… have different ways of seeing things, I think, you and I. And I can’t endorse the replacement of men with machines.
I can’t, and I won’t, not even for the best of intentions, not even if it’s predestined.
Money corrupts everything. But listen. It’s not the only way.
It isn’t hinging on this. It really isn’t, I swear.
Look, just look at it. It is inevitable.
That’s good. It’s amazing. It means you’re right.
It means things won’t be like this forever. Give it ten or twenty years.”
“I— I wish it would be d-different today,” Chary said plaintively, into tweed. It was a child’s complaint, utterly useless; he didn’t think he could be any more shamed, any more wrong, and in front of someone he most admired. His eyes streamed harder.
Laurie wrapped one hand around the back of his head, fingers threading in hair Chary hadn’t pomaded this morning. He smelled so good, even through tears and linen slightly reminiscent of the train; it wasn’t fair.
“Yeah, love,” he murmured. “I know. I get it. But the kind of solutions we need can’t be done at the snap of fingers.”
Then Laurie simply stood and let him cry. Chary, with nothing—almost nothing—left to lose, took him up on it with a handful of short, bitter sobs.
When he had finished, he whispered, “Laurie, I think I murdered that man. Sawyer.”
Laurie squeezed him tight, clutching Chary hard into his vest. “No. No, you didn’t. That was self-defense.”
“You didn’t tell August. You lied for me.” Like Chary had lied for August for so, so long. He was weary of secrets.
“What’s to lie about? You didn’t murder anybody. Someone tried to kill you, out of nowhere, for something you didn’t do and have no blame for. You fought back. You survived, love. That’s it.”
Chary snuffled into his handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wept all over your shirt collar. You see these things committed every day, worse things—face hardship and barriers I cannot imagine—and yet you go on without despairing.”