The line broke up, disintegrated into a shapeless throng--a throng that crowded forward
and collected in front of the shut door whereon the placard was affixed. Lewiston, with
the others, pushed forward. On the placard he read these words:
"Owing to the fact that the price of grain has been increased to two dollars a bushel, there
will be no distribution of bread from this bakery until further notice."
Lewiston turned away, dumb, bewildered. Till morning he walked the streets, going on
without purpose, without direction. But now at last his luck had turned. Overnight the
wheel of his fortunes had creaked and swung upon its axis, and before noon he had found
a job in the street-cleaning brigade. In the course of time he rose to be first shift-boss,
then deputy inspector, then inspector, promoted to the dignity of driving in a red wagon
with rubber tires and drawing a salary instead of mere wages. The wife was sent for and a
new start made.
But Lewiston never forgot. Dimly he began to see the significance of things. Caught once
in the cogs and wheels of a great and terrible engine, he had seen--none better--its
workings. Of all the men who had vainly stood in the "bread line" on that rainy night in
early summer, he, perhaps, had been the only one who had struggled up to the surface
again. How many others had gone down in the great ebb? Grim question; he dared not
think how many.
He had seen the two ends of a great wheat operation--a battle between Bear and Bull. The
stories (subsequently published in the city's press) of Truslow's countermove in selling
Hornung his own wheat, supplied the unseen section. The farmer--he who raised the
wheat--was ruined upon one hand; the working-man--he who consumed it--was ruined
upon the other. But between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat they
traded in, bought and sold the world's food, gambled in the nourishment of entire nations,
practised their tricks, their chicanery and oblique shifty "deals," were reconciled in their
differences, and went on through their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned, and
unassailable.
