Stacey looked at him with silent sympathy.
“Here!” said Edwards, tearing papers from his pocket. “Here are the figures. Here’s what it costs a family of three to live—Government statistics. Here’s what the men were getting. Here’s what they’re to get now if they yield.” He pushed the papers across the table.
Stacey fingered them, but kept his eyes on his friend. “I know,” he said. “I can imagine without studying them. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Edwards nervously. “I’d thought of two or three things. If you were to print the facts—just the facts—with your name signed to them, in one of the papers. . . .”
Stacey smiled bitterly. “Fat chance! How much of a power in this town do you think I am? Don’t you know that Colin Jeffries, who owns the street-railway, controls the papers?”
“Yes, I know that, damn him!” Edwards burst out. “He’s everywhere! You can’t get out from under his shadow.”
“And even if I could get such an article printed, what would it accomplish? When did the public ever budge? Inert mass of sheep! And all the time the papers harping on the idea that the street-railway company can’t pay its stock-holders even a nominal interest on their investment under current conditions.”
“Well,” Edwards fairly shouted, “and if they can’t! Do you know anything about that company? I do. I’ve looked into it with a lawyer. Way over-capitalized. Three millions of water, Carroll,—three cool millions into private pockets! So men must starve, must they, to pay interest on that stock?”
Stacey’s face was grim. “No,” he said shortly, “I hadn’t looked into it, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ll tell you what I _could_ do,” he said hesitatingly after a moment. “I—er—the only available income I have is what I make here at the office. I could turn over—say two hundred and fifty dollars a month of it to the union. And I might—that is, I don’t know what my sister does with her income—gives most of it away, I fancy—but I dare say she’d put in as much more.”
Edwards stared. “Say,” he said shakily, “that’s decent! I thought you had—well, it’s none of my business. But it wouldn’t be any use, Carroll. Not a hundredth part enough. But—thanks!”
“Oh!” said Stacey deprecatingly, then fell to thinking. “Look here,” he remarked finally, “there’s only one thing I can think of, and it will have to be you to do it rather than I. Also it’s only a faint chance. Now my father is an honest man—set in his beliefs, but honest. And he’s also influential. Colin Jeffries probably defers as much to him as to any one living, because father’s very likely the only thoroughly honest, disinterested friend Jeffries has. Father believes in the principles Jeffries only exploits to make money out of. If you can get him—my father, I mean—on your side, he might take the matter up to Jeffries personally.”