The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1914-11-21
Socialism or Faith
By Rev. R. A. Maher o. S. A. in the Ecclesiastical Record

. III sAS ISS!cSldStICdl RECORD X
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was as though death had taken a man
or boy out of every family of them all.
On their shoulders men carried the
body all the weary length of the way.
Not a wheel was allowed to stir in
that part of the town where it should
pass. So silent was the crowd as it
moved down the street that the rattle
of beads slipping through hard hands
could be heard by those on the side.
walks.
A regiment of state troops had just
put the town under martial law and
were stationing themselves at differ
ent points to enforce that law. These
soldiers had come to try an expert
ment which the men in the procession,
as labor men, had all their lives been
clamoring for. Yet, the men did not
raise an eye to look at the soldiers.
AS Sargent had remarked, they had
but one business in hand.
Harry Lloyd had been killed, as
every man believed, by the orders of
John Sargent. Jim Lloyd, the man
who had held them together, and had
made such a strike as theirs possible,
and had somehow fed them such food
as they had had for months, Jim Lloyd
was in Jail, through John Sargent's
contrivance. But no man raised his
head to look at John Sargent's
window.
Professionals there were, men of
every faith, and men of no faith, who
walked silent and bowed in that
march, and did not know what was
upon them. The great spiritualizing,
visualizing power of Catholic faith,
which strips death of it's sentimental.
ity and shows it for what it is, the
one elemental fact with which men
have to deal, was at work upon these
people. 1t was showing them and
pressing into their hearts the eternal
lesson of the littleness of a regiment
of soldiers, of Jim Lloyd in Jail, or of
John Sargent in his mill, compared
with the dignity Of young Harry Lloyd
in death.
John Sargent, like most of our men
large enough to live in the glare of
daily newspaper discussion, had moth
ing but contempt for criticism for or
against himself. 1t never reached him,
If the Angel had come to him with the
Book of Doom and shown him the rec
ord he had gained in that quarter, he
would have answered that all men
who do things in the world are blamed.
naturally.
Here, however, was a great crowd
of men and women whom he, John
Sargent, had been feeding all their
lives. They had been SO reared that
they had always had to consider him
the most important man in the world.
No government, no power could exer-
else over their lives force so COM
polling, for happiness or for suffering,
as could he with a single word. For,
really, nothing was important to them
except a pay envelope. Good govern
ment or bad, heat or cold, flood or
drought-all these could be dealt with
If the envelope were right. A word
from John Sargent could at any time
make man or a family reasonably
content and happy. A word from him
could plunge man or a family or the
whole of the little city into want and
misery. It was not exactly the an
cient unanswering kingly power of
life and death; but it sometimes
amounted to that, in effect, and was
certainly as near to- it as any man
may come in this day. To all intents,
John Sargent was the lord and master
of everybody in that long line of men.
And they walked past him and his
mill, giving no thought to him or it..
He could understand that. If they
had turned, as they passed, and cursed
him, he could have explained it:
Things went that way in the world"
But that they could ignore him, could
put him out of their minds, was not
to be understood.
They were intent upon matter in
which he certainly was concerned,
and they forgot him. 1t was-discon-
certing, that that great crowd could
be so heart-and-soul intent upon the
burying of mere boy as to forget
John Sargent. 1t disturbed him. It
seemed to cheaper his power over
them. And it was a lonesome bust
ness, too, watching this crowd that
had forgotten him. He seemed to be
the only man in the town who was not
in the procession.
No-there was another man who
should have been in that procession
and who was not there-Jim Lloyd.
He was in Jail. And there was an
other whom Sargent missed, girl.
He would have known her by sight,
for he had often seen her. She had
charge of one Of the hip rooms Of the