Book Two: Chapter III

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Bidwell, Ohio, was an old town as the ages of towns go in the Central West,long before Hugh McVey, in his search for a place where he could penetratethe wall that shut him off from humanity, went there to live and to tryto work out his problem. It is a busy manufacturing town now and has apopulation of nearly a hundred thousand people; but the time for thetelling of the story of its sudden and surprising growth has not yet come.

　　From the beginning Bidwell has been a prosperous place. The town lies inthe valley of a deep, rapid-flowing river that spreads out just above thetown, becomes for the time wide and shallow, and goes singing swiftly alongover stones. South of the town the river not only spreads out, but thehills recede. A wide flat valley stretches away to the north. In the daysbefore the factories came the land immediately about town was cut up intosmall farms devoted to fruit and berry raising, and beyond the area ofsmall farms lay larger tracts that were immensely productive and thatraised huge crops of wheat, corn, and cabbage.

　　When Hugh was a boy sleeping away his days in the grass beside his father'sfishing shack by the Mississippi River, Bidwell had already emerged out ofthe hardships of pioneer days. On the farms that lay in the wide valley tothe north the timber had been cut away and the stumps had all been rootedout of the ground by a generation of men that had passed. The soil was easyto cultivate and had lost little of its virgin fertility. Two railroads,the Lake Shore and Michigan Central--later a part of the great New YorkCentral System--and a less important coal-carrying road, called theWheeling and Lake Erie, ran through the town. Twenty-five hundred peoplelived then in Bidwell. They were for the most part descendants of thepioneers who had come into the country by boat through the Great Lakes orby wagon roads over the mountains from the States of New York andPennsylvania.

　　The town stood on a sloping incline running up from the river, and the LakeShore and Michigan Central Railroad had its station on the river bank atthe foot of Main Street. The Wheeling Station was a mile away to the north.It was to be reached by going over a bridge and along a piked road thateven then had begun to take on the semblance of a street. A dozen houseshad been built facing Turner's Pike and between these were berry fields andan occasional orchard planted to cherry, peach or apple trees. A hard pathwent down to the distant station beside the road, and in the evening thispath, wandering along under the branches of the fruit trees that extendedout over the farm fences, was a favorite walking place for lovers.

　　The small farms lying close about the town of Bidwell raised berries thatbrought top prices in the two cities, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, reached byits two railroads, and all of the people of the town who were not engagedin one of the trades--in shoe making, carpentry, horse shoeing, housepainting or the like--or who did not belong to the small merchant andprofessional classes, worked in summer on the land. On summer mornings,men, women and children went into the fields. In the early spring whenplanting went on and all through late May, June and early July when berriesand fruit began to ripen, every one was rushed with work and the streetsof the town were deserted. Every one went to the fields. Great hay wagonsloaded with children, laughing girls, and sedate women set out from MainStreet at dawn. Beside them walked tall boys, who pelted the girls withgreen apples and cherries from the trees along the road, and men who wentalong behind smoking their morning pipes and talking of the prevailingprices of the products of their fields. In the town after they had gone aSabbath quiet prevailed. The merchants and clerks loitered in the shade ofthe awnings before the doors of the stores, and only their wives and thewives of the two or three rich men in town came to buy and to disturb theirdiscussions of horse racing, politics and religion.

　　In the evening when the wagons came home, Bidwell awoke. The tired berrypickers walked home from the fields in the dust of the roads swinging theirdinner pails. The wagons creaked at their heels, piled high with boxes ofberries ready for shipment. In the stores after the evening meal crowdsgathered. Old men lit their pipes and sat gossiping along the curbing atthe edge of the sidewalks on Main Street; women with baskets on their armsdid the marketing for the next day's living; the young men put on stiffwhite collars and their Sunday clothes, and girls, who all day had beencrawling over the fields between the rows of berries or pushing their wayamong the tangled masses of raspberry bushes, put on white dresses andwalked up and down before the men. Friendships begun between boys and girlsin the fields ripened into love. Couples walked along residence streetsunder the trees and talked with subdued voices. They became silent andembarrassed. The bolder ones kissed. The end of the berry picking seasonbrought each year a new outbreak of marriages to the town of Bidwell.

　　In all the towns of mid-western America it was a time of waiting. Thecountry having been cleared and the Indians driven away into a vast distantplace spoken of vaguely as the West, the Civil War having been fought andwon, and there being no great national problems that touched closely theirlives, the minds of men were turned in upon themselves. The soul and itsdestiny was spoken of openly on the streets. Robert Ingersoll came toBidwell to speak in Terry's Hall, and after he had gone the question ofthe divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens. Theministers preached sermons on the subject and in the evening it was talkedabout in the stores. Every one had something to say. Even Charley Mook, whodug ditches, who stuttered so that not a half dozen people in town couldunderstand him, expressed his opinion.

　　In all the great Mississippi Valley each town came to have a character ofits own, and the people who lived in the towns were to each other likemembers of a great family. The individual idiosyncrasies of each member ofthe great family stood forth. A kind of invisible roof beneath which everyone lived spread itself over each town. Beneath the roof boys and girlswere born, grew up, quarreled, fought, and formed friendships with theirfellows, were introduced into the mysteries of love, married, and becamethe fathers and mothers of children, grew old, sickened, and died.

　　Within the invisible circle and under the great roof every one knew hisneighbor and was known to him. Strangers did not come and go swiftly andmysteriously and there was no constant and confusing roar of machinery andof new projects afoot. For the moment mankind seemed about to take time totry to understand itself.

　　In Bidwell there was a man named Peter White who was a tailor and workedhard at his trade, but who once or twice a year got drunk and beat hiswife. He was arrested each time and had to pay a fine, but there was ageneral understanding of the impulse that led to the beating. Most of thewomen knowing the wife sympathized with Peter. "She is a noisy thing andher jaw is never still," the wife of Henry Teeters, the grocer, said to herhusband. "If he gets drunk it's only to forget he's married to her. Thenhe goes home to sleep it off and she begins jawing at him. He stands it aslong as he can. It takes a fist to shut up that woman. If he strikes herit's the only thing he can do."

　　Allie Mulberry the half-wit was one of the highlights of life in the town.He lived with his mother in a tumble-down house at the edge of town onMedina Road. Beside being a half-wit he had something the matter with hislegs. They were trembling and weak and he could only move them with greatdifficulty. On summer afternoons when the streets were deserted, he hobbledalong Main Street with his lower jaw hanging down. Allie carried a largeclub, partly for the support of his weak legs and partly to scare off dogsand mischievous boys. He liked to sit in the shade with his back against abuilding and whittle, and he liked to be near people and have his talent asa whittler appreciated. He made fans out of pieces of pine, long chains ofwooden beads, and he once achieved a singular mechanical triumph that wonhim wide renown. He made a ship that would float in a beer bottle halffilled with water and laid on its side. The ship had sails and three tinywooden sailors who stood at attention with their hands to their caps insalute. After it was constructed and put into the bottle it was too largeto be taken out through the neck. How Allie got it in no one ever knew. Theclerks and merchants who crowded about to watch him at work discussed thematter for days. It became a never-ending wonder among them. In the eveningthey spoke of the matter to the berry pickers who came into the stores,and in the eyes of the people of Bidwell Allie Mulberry became a hero. Thebottle, half-filled with water and securely corked, was laid on a cushionin the window of Hunter's Jewelry Store. As it floated about on its ownlittle ocean crowds gathered to look at it. Over the bottle was a sign withthe words--"Carved by Allie Mulberry of Bidwell"--prominently displayed.Below these words a query had been printed. "How Did He Get It Into TheBottle?" was the question asked. The bottle stayed in the window for monthsand merchants took the traveling men who visited them, to see it. Then theyescorted their guests to where Allie, with his back against the wall of abuilding and his club beside him, was at work on some new creation of thewhittler's art. The travelers were impressed and told the tale abroad.Allie's fame spread to other towns. "He has a good brain," the citizen ofBidwell said, shaking his head. "He don't appear to know very much, butlook what he does! He must be carrying all sorts of notions around insideof his head."

　　Jane Orange, widow of a lawyer, and with the single exception of ThomasButterworth, a farmer who owned over a thousand acres of land and livedwith his daughter on a farm a mile south of town, the richest person intown, was known to every one in Bidwell, but was not liked. She was calledstingy and it was said that she and her husband had cheated every one withwhom they had dealings in order to get their start in life. The town achedfor the privilege of doing what they called "bringing them down a peg."Jane's husband had once been the Bidwell town attorney and later hadcharge of the settlement of an estate belonging to Ed Lucas, a farmer whodied leaving two hundred acres of land and two daughters. The farmer'sdaughters, every one said, "came out at the small end of the horn," andJohn Orange began to grow rich. It was said he was worth fifty thousanddollars. All during the latter part of his life the lawyer went to the cityof Cleveland on business every week, and when he was at home and even inthe hottest weather he went about dressed in a long black coat. When shewent to the stores to buy supplies for her house Jane Orange was watchedclosely by the merchants. She was suspected of carrying away small articlesthat could be slipped into the pockets of her dress. One afternoon inToddmore's grocery, when she thought no one was looking, she took a halfdozen eggs out of a basket and looking quickly around to be sure she wasunobserved, put them into her dress pocket. Harry Toddmore, the grocer'sson who had seen the theft, said nothing, but went unobserved out at theback door. He got three or four clerks from other stores and they waitedfor Jane Orange at a corner. When she came along they hurried out and HarryToddmore fell against her. Throwing out his hand he struck the pocketcontaining the eggs a quick, sharp blow. Jane Orange turned and hurriedaway toward home, but as she half ran through Main Street clerks andmerchants came out of the stores, and from the assembled crowd a voicecalled attention to the fact that the contents of the stolen eggs havingrun down the inside of her dress and over her stockings began to make astream on the sidewalk. A pack of town dogs excited by the shouts of thecrowd ran at her heels, barking and sniffing at the yellow stream thatdripped from her shoes.

　　An old man with a long white beard came to Bidwell to live. He had been acarpet-bag Governor of a southern state in the reconstruction days afterthe Civil War and had made money. He bought a house on Turner's Pike closebeside the river and spent his days puttering about in a small garden. Inthe evening he came across the bridge into Main Street and went to loaf inBirdie Spink's drug store. He talked with great frankness and candor of hislife in the South during the terrible time when the country was trying toemerge from the black gloom of defeat, and brought to the Bidwell men a newpoint of view on their old enemies, the "Rebs."

　　The old man--the name by which he had introduced himself in Bidwell wasthat of Judge Horace Hanby--believed in the manliness and honesty ofpurpose of the men he had for a time governed and who had fought a longgrim war with the North, with the New Englanders and sons of New Englandersfrom the West and Northwest. "They're all right," he said with a grin. "Icheated them and made some money, but I liked them. Once a crowd of themcame to my house and threatened to kill me and I told them that I did notblame them very much, so they let me alone." The judge, an ex-politicianfrom the city of New York who had been involved in some affair that made ituncomfortable for him to return to live in that city, grew prophetic andphilosophic after he came to live in Bidwell. In spite of the doubt everyone felt concerning his past, he was something of a scholar and a reader ofbooks, and won respect by his apparent wisdom. "Well, there's going to be anew war here," he said. "It won't be like the Civil War, just shooting offguns and killing peoples' bodies. At first it's going to be a war betweenindividuals to see to what class a man must belong; then it is going to bea long, silent war between classes, between those who have and those whocan't get. It'll be the worst war of all."

　　The talk of Judge Hanby, carried along and elaborated almost every eveningbefore a silent, attentive group in the drug store, began to have aninfluence on the minds of Bidwell young men. At his suggestion severalof the town boys, Cliff Bacon, Albert Small, Ed Prawl, and two or threeothers, began to save money for the purpose of going east to college. Alsoat his suggestion Tom Butterworth the rich farmer sent his daughter away toschool. The old man made many prophecies concerning what would happen inAmerica. "I tell you, the country isn't going to stay as it is," he saidearnestly. "In eastern towns the change has already come. Factories arebeing built and every one is going to work in the factories. It takes anold man like me to see how that changes their lives. Some of the men standat one bench and do one thing not only for hours but for days and years.There are signs hung up saying they mustn't talk. Some of them make moremoney than they did before the factories came, but I tell you it's likebeing in prison. What would you say if I told you all America, all youfellows who talk so big about freedom, are going to be put in a prison, eh?

　　"And there's something else. In New York there are already a dozen men whoare worth a million dollars. Yes, sir, I tell you it's true, a milliondollars. What do you think of that, eh?"

　　Judge Hanby grew excited and, inspired by the absorbed attention of hisaudience, talked of the sweep of events. In England, he explained, thecities were constantly growing larger, and already almost every one eitherworked in a factory or owned stock in a factory. "In New England it isgetting the same way fast," he explained. "The same thing'll happen here.Farming'll be done with tools. Almost everything now done by hand'll bedone by machinery. Some'll grow rich and some poor. The thing is to geteducated, yes, sir, that's the thing, to get ready for what's coming. It'sthe only way. The younger generation has got to be sharper and shrewder."

　　The words of the old man, who had been in many places and had seen men andcities, were repeated in the streets of Bidwell. The blacksmith and thewheelwright repeated his words when they stopped to exchange news of theiraffairs before the post-office. Ben Peeler, the carpenter, who had beensaving money to buy a house and a small farm to which he could retire whenhe became too old to climb about on the framework of buildings, used themoney instead to send his son to Cleveland to a new technical school. SteveHunter, the son of Abraham Hunter the Bidwell jeweler, declared that he wasgoing to get up with the times, and when he went into a factory, would gointo the office, not into the shop. He went to Buffalo, New York, to attenda business college.

　　The air of Bidwell began to stir with talk of new times. The evil thingssaid of the new life coming were soon forgotten. The youth and optimisticspirit of the country led it to take hold of the hand of the giant,industrialism, and lead him laughing into the land. The cry, "get on inthe world," that ran all over America at that period and that still echoesin the pages of American newspapers and magazines, rang in the streets ofBidwell.

　　In the harness shop belonging to Joseph Wainsworth it one day struck anew note. The harness maker was a tradesman of the old school and wasvastly independent. He had learned his trade after five years' service asapprentice, and had spent an additional five years in going from place toplace as a journeyman workman, and felt that he knew his business. Also heowned his shop and his home and had twelve hundred dollars in the bank. Atnoon one day when he was alone in the shop, Tom Butterworth came in andtold him he had ordered four sets of farm work harness from a factory inPhiladelphia. "I came in to ask if you'll repair them if they get out oforder," he said.

　　Joe Wainsworth began to fumble with the tools on his bench. Then he turnedto look the farmer in the eye and to do what he later spoke of to hiscronies as "laying down the law." "When the cheap things begin to go topieces take them somewhere else to have them repaired," he said sharply. Hegrew furiously angry. "Take the damn things to Philadelphia where you got'em," he shouted at the back of the farmer who had turned to go out of theshop.

　　Joe Wainsworth was upset and thought about the incident all the afternoon.When farmer-customers came in and stood about to talk of their affairshe had nothing to say. He was a talkative man and his apprentice, WillSellinger, son of the Bidwell house painter, was puzzled by his silence.

　　When the boy and the man were alone in the shop, it was Joe Wainsworth'scustom to talk of his days as a journeyman workman when he had gone fromplace to place working at his trade. If a trace were being stitched or abridle fashioned, he told how the thing was done at a shop where he hadworked in the city of Boston and in another shop at Providence, RhodeIsland. Getting a piece of paper he made drawings illustrating the cuts ofleather that were made in the other places and the methods of stitching. Heclaimed to have worked out his own method for doing things, and that hismethod was better than anything he had seen in all his travels. To themen who came into the shop to loaf during winter afternoons he presenteda smiling front and talked of their affairs, of the price of cabbage inCleveland or the effect of a cold snap on the winter wheat, but alone withthe boy, he talked only of harness making. "I don't say anything about it.What's the good bragging? Just the same, I could learn something to all theharness makers I've ever seen, and I've seen the best of them," he declaredemphatically.

　　During the afternoon, after he had heard of the four factory-made workharnesses brought into what he had always thought of as a trade thatbelonged to him by the rights of a first-class workman, Joe remained silentfor two or three hours. He thought of the words of old Judge Hanby andthe constant talk of the new times now coming. Turning suddenly to hisapprentice, who was puzzled by his long silence and who knew nothing ofthe incident that had disturbed his employer, he broke forth into words.He was defiant and expressed his defiance. "Well, then, let 'em go toPhiladelphia, let 'em go any damn place they please," he growled, andthen, as though his own words had re-established his self-respect, hestraightened his shoulders and glared at the puzzled and alarmed boy. "Iknow my trade and do not have to bow down to any man," he declared. Heexpressed the old tradesman's faith in his craft and the rights it gave thecraftsman. "Learn your trade. Don't listen to talk," he said earnestly."The man who knows his trade is a man. He can tell every one to go to thedevil."