“On the contrary,” McQuade said suddenly.
“Do you have any ideas on this, Mac?” Manelli asked, grateful to have been let off the hook.
“Yes, a few,” McQuade said. “I don’t want to interrupt, though, without the permission of everyone present. After all, it’s your problem and not mine.” He smiled graciously. “Besides, I keep remembering what one Mr. Grant did to us back in the eighteen-hundreds, and I’m a little leery of getting into an engagement with another one now.”
John Grant chuckled, but at the same time he told himself to watch out for McQuade, who seemed to be a pretty smooth character. “I’d like to hear what you have to say, Mr. McQuade,” he said, puffing on his cigar. “I understand it was you who turned the hose on.”
“Yes,” McQuade said, “that’s right. I did turn the hose on, but only as a last resort. You’ll forgive my saying so, Mr. Grant, but neither you nor any of these men were up on the eighth floor that day. You did not see those cutters, and so you don’t know how close they were to doing actual physical harm to each other, and perhaps to throwing the entire floor into a state of panic.”
“Still—”
“I think, Mr. Grant,” McQuade went on forcefully, “that you would have done the same thing under the circumstances. I assure you, I do not have a cruel or insensitive soul. I was trying to stop a fight which might have led to a free-for-all in the Cutting Room, a dangerous place — you will admit — for any display of violence.”
“You could have stopped them by—”
“Mr. Grant,” McQuade said, “there is only one way to combat force, and that is by counterforce. Do you talk logic to a man with a knife in his hand, Mr. Grant? You do not. You kick him in the groin.” McQuade smiled disarmingly. “I wasn’t brave enough to walk out there and kick either of those two men. I used a fire hose instead. I think I did the right thing.” His voice lowered. “Believe me, Mr. Grant, I was not thinking of dignity or lack of dignity. I was thinking of the safety, yes, the safety and well-being of every citizen of this company.” He paused. “Are you surprised that I call them citizens? Please don’t be. I consider this factory a city, or even a small state, if you will. Everyone working here is a citizen, and he is entitled to his rights as a citizen, but those rights do not include endangering the lives of fellow citizens.”
“Do they include the right of trial by jury?” Gardiner asked.
“Eh?” McQuade asked, off guard for a moment.
“Mr. McQuade,” Gardiner said, “you’re a good talker and you’re probably a very nice fellow, and I got nothing against you personally, believe me. But I’ve worked for Julien Kahn for close to twenty-five years now, from when he had only the old factory, and I’m a little bit older than you are, and maybe I know just a little bit more about how the workers in this factory feel. And I can tell you they don’t like to be shoved around. All right, you call them citizens; well, if they are citizens they want to be treated like citizens, and I don’t know of any citizen friends of mine who were ever dragged into a police station and accused of a crime they didn’t commit.”
“Are you referring to Martha Goldstein?” McQuade asked.
“Martha Goldstein is a good woman, and she’s been with us a long time. I’m talking about her, and I’m also talking about Maria who used to work in my department.”
“What about Maria? She did steal a pair of shoes, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, she did. I suppose she did. But that’s no reason to treat her like an animal. She told me what happened, Mr. McQuade, and she told a lot of other people, too, and I can tell you that doesn’t help build any good will for Titanic.”
“No,” McQuade said, “but perhaps it will stop stealing. You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Gardiner—”
“I understand fine,” Gardiner said. “I understand that—”
“Now, now, fellers,” Manelli said.
“May I finish please, Joe?” McQuade asked. “You don’t seem to understand that the good of the factory is the good of the workers.” He turned to Grant. “Look, John — may I call you John? — Titanic is interested in your people. Titanic—”
“Titanic sure shows it in a funny way,” Gardiner said.
“Titanic is going to do a lot for you. Have you been on the eighth floor recently? New toilets are already being installed, and new lighting fixtures, and new—”
“We can’t eat toilets or electric lights,” Karojilian said.
“Nor do we expect you to,” McQuade said, smiling.
“We want to know why all those people were fired,” Hensen said.
“Economy,” McQuade said.
Grant cleared his throat. “Mr. McQuade,” he said, “keep the toilets and keep the Coke machines. These men want assurance that they’re not going to be out in the street tomorrow, and if you can’t give them that assurance—”
“I can,” McQuade said.
“Then why were those men dropped from Lasting? And Heeling? And what about the eagle-eyer? Why was he—”
“He was costing us money, and he was not essential to the operation. Nor were the other men we dropped. The departments are functioning perfectly without them.”
“I find that a little hard to swallow, Mr. McQuade,” Grant said. “Are you trying to tell me that men who’ve been with the company for ten, fifteen years are suddenly no longer essential to the operation? Now how am I expected to swallow that?”
“You’re not expected to swallow anything, John,” McQuade said. “But if I showed you books, would that help? If I showed you that the release of those men boosted our profit without any loss in production, would that validate my argument?”
“Well…” Grant paused. “I’d have to see the books.”
“And I’ll show you the books, whenever you want to see them.”
“Well…” Grant paused again. “I can only tell you what the men are thinking, and they sure as hell ain’t happy, Mr. McQuade. Now, we’ve got ways to beat this, you know. We’re a strong union. You ain’t been here long, so you can’t appreciate the loss you’d suffer if we called a slowdown or a sitdown. Instead of twenty-six hundred pairs a day, you’d get a thousand pairs, and see if Titanic could stand up under that loss.”
McQuade smiled happily. “In the first place, John, I don’t see what you have to beat. There’s really nothing to beat when you get down to facts. In the second place — and please listen carefully because I’ll say it only once, and I hope it penetrates — if we get union trouble, Titanic can close this whole damned factory tomorrow, and not miss it one damned bit. Now, what do you think of that?”
“I doubt if Titanic would do that, Mr. McQuade,” Grant said confidently. “I don’t know how many millions of dollars were involved in this purchase but even Titanic doesn’t buy factories just to close them.”
“Of course not,” McQuade said, “but it can be done. Titanic closed down a factory in New Hampshire because of union trouble, and, when the union still wouldn’t play ball, we moved that factory down to Georgia, and that’s right where it sits today. We threw that whole damned town out of work, John, so do you think we’d hesitate over a tiny little factory in New Jersey?”
“I can see your point, Mr. McQuade,” Grant said calmly, “but I don’t think it would be feasible to transport Julien Kahn to Georgia. You can undoubtedly get labor down there, Mr. McQuade, but you’re not going to get the Donatos and the Cohens down there, and these are the men who know how to make shoes. You’re running a fashion house here, Mr. McQuade. Quality is your product. You can’t pull in a bunch of farmers and run your factory with them.” Grant paused. “It’s your Italians and your Jews and your Poles who are running those sewing machines for you, Mr. McQuade. You won’t find them down in Georgia.”