In another part of town, a stranger to Frank Pinell was speaking into his pocket transceiver. He was saying, "He pulled in on the three o'clock from Madrid. At the airport, those sons of bitches, MacDonald and Roskin, pulled their usual little romp. He got into Hamad's cab and Hamari took him to Luigi's and was able to take off with his luggage. He must be running scared by now. It looks as though we've found our patsy."
Chapter Three: Roy Cos
Roy Cos looked out over the small, shabby hall in Baltimore with its pitiful group, members of the Industrial Workers of the World—"Wobblies," in their own jargon. Inwardly, he felt depressed and weary. It was the same old story: there were sixteen in the audience. At least ten of these were either Wobblies or sympathizers who had heard or read all that he had to say a hundred times. They were there not to learn but to give him support. Another two or three, looking bored, had drifted in from the street out of mild curiosity, or because they had nothing else to do. Another trio, seated together at the rear with identical condescending sneers, were hecklers come to give him a bad time. Only one stranger, who sat in the last row on one of the rickety folding chairs, looked at all like promising material. He was a small man, better dressed than the prole audience, and he had a notepad on his lap. From time to time he took notes. But for all Roy Cos knew, the man could be an IABI agent checking out just how subversive the speaker might be.
Roy took in the tattered banners which the committee members had hung about the walls. SOLIDARITY! UNITE! And, the longest of them all, PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITE. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS. Roy Cos knew that such signs had once read, WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE. But there were no workers any more, for all practical purposes. Over ninety percent of the population was on GAS. Two percent were affluent members of the upper class, who did not worry about employment. And five percent were actually all that were needed to produce an abundance of goods and supply the services of this automated, computerized society. And they, the professional technicians, engineers, scientists, doctors, and teachers, seldom thought of themselves as workers. Their pay was such that they identified with the upper class, rather than the proles on GAS.
Roy Cos, a second-generation radical, was in his early forties. He was an outwardly average, unprepossessing man, faded brown of hair, hazel of eye, earnest of expression, but projecting a hint that somehow he realized that life had passed him by and that his efforts were meaningless in the long run. He was some ten pounds overweight. Too many hours studying, too many hours sitting around tables, arguing dialectics, too many hours talking, talking, talking, largely to people not really interested in blueprints of Utopia.
He was saying: "And is this the final destiny of man? The overwhelming majority living on the verge of poverty? The history of the human race has been a hard and proud one. Since first our ancestors emerged from the caves, we have fought upward. And from the beginning we have been the thinking animals, the tool users. Who first utilized fire, we cannot know. What early men first developed the hand ax, the knife, the spear, the bow and arrow is unknown to us. But each generation that came along added its contribution to human knowledge and we slowly acquired agriculture, the domestication of animals, the wheel, the hoe, the plow. And as each generation emerged, its geniuses now forgotten, our knowledge grew. The arts and the sciences began to emerge."
"Great!" one of the three cynical listeners called out. "So what? Get to the point."
Roy nodded and went on. "The point is that all of these developments, this accumulated knowledge down through the centuries, is the common heritage of all mankind. They are not the property of a few, but of the race as a whole. A modern, automated factory is possible only because these tools were handed down to us over the centuries. The products of modern society should be the common property of the race, not of a mere fraction of it. And if this is true, where is justice today when a few live idle, in luxury, while the rest of us are forgotten? As John Ball, centuries ago, put it in a sermon to English poorer class rebels:
" 'When Adam dalfe and Eve span Who was thanne a gentil man?' "
The stranger made a note on his pad. He was thin, gray-faced, probably in his mid-forties, and Roy largely directed his talk toward the man. If you could make one convert at a typical Wobbly meeting you were doing fine. One valid convert, potentially an activist, would more than pay for an otherwise depressing evening.
He went on to explain the Wobbly program: organizing all presently employed workers so that they could use the only clout that really counted—the control of production, distribution, communications.
When the question period came, the chairman took over again. No one seemed prepared to ask an initial question of the speaker. As usual, in such a case, one of the Wobbly members stood up and started the ball rolling.
He said, "Since so few people support the Wobbly program, won't it take one hell of a long time for it to ever come about?"
Roy took over the podium again, nodded, and said, "Good question. And the answer is, no… not necessarily. What counts is the correctness of the program, the extent to which it solves our common problems. Our support can grow very quickly, given a breakdown in the current system and an obvious need for change. Take the American Revolution of 1776, for instance. Had you suggested to the average colonist in 1774 that he needed to throw off the rule of King George in favor of an independent union, he probably would have taken a patriotic swing at you. But the need was there and, overnight, a handful of farseeing men like Tom Paine, Sam Adams, Jefferson, pointed out the way. The revolution wasn't long in coming."
One of the hecklers held up his hand. When Roy Cos recognized him, he came to his feet and yelled, louder than was called for, "Aren't you people just a bunch of soreheads? There's only so many jobs around these days. The computers select the best men and women to hold them. Those that get jobs, deserve the extra money. The rest of us are lucky to get GAS. It's a pretty good system when everybody eats regular and is taken care of, even if he's not chosen for a job. What the hell are you beefing about?"
Roy nodded, and paused a moment before answering. "In the first place, let's not give those computers more credit than
they deserve. Science is great but it mustn't be a sacred cow. Computers can be programmed into shortcomings."
"Like what!" one of the hecklers called out. His friends laughed, backing him. Several of the Wobblies, seated down front, turned and glared at them.
Roy said, "Well, let's take a couple of scientists that the computers would have passed by. Two of their big requirements are a good education and a top-notch Ability Quotient. Thomas Edison had only a couple of years of formal education—he never got through grammar school. The computers wouldn't have picked him for a job. Steinmetz was a hunchback cripple, in spite of his I.Q., and would never have gotten a high Ability Quotient, much of which depends on physical attributes.
"But science isn't the only thing. Lincoln had practically no formal schooling and wouldn't have been chosen. Winston Churchill was a rotten student. Among writers, Jack London had very little schooling and was an alcoholic from his teens onward. O. Henry, poorly educated, also had a prison record. Scott Fitzgerald was a dropout at Princeton and never did learn much grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Hemingway finished high school but certainly took no honors there. Let's face it: few outstanding artists, musicians, or actors would stand up to the scrutiny of the computers. No, I'm afraid the computers are not yet programmed for judging the arts. And we Wobblies look forward to going further into the arts as well as the sciences. Millions of citizens could be employed in the arts."