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Richard L. Daft
Vanderbilt University
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viii Contents
HOW DO YOU FIT THE DESIGN? Mind and Environment 157 Design Essentials 202
Planning, Forecasting, and Chapter 5 Workshop: The Shamatosi 204
Responsiveness, 158 Case for Analysis: Why is Cooperation So Hard? 205
Framework for Adapting to Complexity Case for Analysis: Oxford Plastics Company 206
and Dynamism 159
Dependence on Financial Resources 160 Chapter 6: Designing Organizations
Influencing Financial Resources 161 for the International Environment 212
Establishing Formal Relationships, 161 Purpose of This Chapter, 214
IN PRACTICE: Omnicom and Publicis 162 Entering the Global Arena 214
Influencing Key Sectors, 164 Motivations for Global Expansion, 215
IN PRACTICE: Amazon and Walmart 164 BOOKMARK 6.0: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of
the Twenty-First Century 215
IN PRACTICE: Huawei Technologies 165
IN PRACTICE: Amway 218
Organization–Environment Integrative Framework 167
Stages of International Development, 219
Design Essentials 168
HOW DO YOU FIT THE DESIGN? What Is Your Cultural
Chapter 4 Workshop: Organizations You Rely On 169 Intelligence? 221
Case for Analysis: CPI Corporation: What Happened? 170 Global Expansion Through International
Case for Analysis: The Paradoxical Twins: Acme Alliances and Acquisitions, 222
and Omega Electronics 171
IN PRACTICE: China’s International Expansion 223
Chapter 5: Interorganizational The Challenges of Global Design 223
Relationships 178 Increased Complexity and Differentiation, 224
r Increased Need for Coordination, 225 r
Purpose of This Chapter, 180
More Difficult Transfer of Knowledge and
Organizational Ecosystems 180 Innovation, 226
Is Competition Dead?, 181 Designing Structure to Fit Global Strategy 228
IN PRACTICE: Apple and Samsung 183
Strategies for Global Versus Local
The Changing Role of Management, 183 r Opportunities, 228
Interorganizational Framework, 185 IN PRACTICE: Panasonic 231
Resource Dependence 185 International Division, 231 r Global Product
Types of Resource-Dependence Division Structure, 232 r Global Geographic
Relationships, 186 r Power Implications, 188 Division Structure, 234
IN PRACTICE: Facebook 188 IN PRACTICE: Colgate-Palmolive Company 235
Collaborative Networks 188 Global Matrix Structure, 235
HOW DO YOU FIT THE DESIGN? Personal Networking 189 IN PRACTICE: ABB Group 237
Why Collaboration?, 189 Additional Global Coordination Mechanisms 238
IN PRACTICE: Accelerating Medicines Partnership 191 Global Teams, 238
From Adversaries to Partners, 191 IN PRACTICE: L’Oréal 239
BOOKMARK 5.0: Managing Strategic Relationships: Headquarters Planning, 240 r Expanded
The Key to Business Success 192 Coordination Roles, 240 r Benefits of
Population Ecology 193 Coordination, 241
What Hinders Adaptation?, 194 The Transnational Model of Organization 242
IN PRACTICE: Barnes & Noble Versus Amazon 194 Design Essentials 246
Organizational Form and Niche, 195 r Chapter 6 Workshop: Made in the U.S.A.? 247
Process of Ecological Change, 195 r Strategies Case for Analysis: TopDog Software 248
for Survival, 196 Case for Analysis: Rhodes Indestries 249
Institutionalism 197
The Institutional View and Organization
Design, 198 r Institutional Similarity, 199
x Contents
The Changing Philosophy of Control, 308 r Size and Structural Control, 358
Feedback Control Model, 311
Contents xi
My vision for the Twelfth Edition of Organization Theory and Design is to integrate
current organization design problems with significant ideas and theories in a way
that is engaging and enjoyable for students. There is an average of 37 new citations
per chapter for new findings and examples that make the Twelfth Edition current
and applicable for students. In addition, significant elements of this edition include
“Managing by Design Questions” and “How Do You Fit the Design?” boxes, along
with updates to every chapter that incorporate the most recent ideas, new case
examples, new book reviews, and new end-of-book integrative cases. The research
and theories in the field of organization studies are rich and insightful and will help
students and managers understand their organizational world and solve real-life
problems. My mission is to combine the concepts and models from organizational
theory with changing events in the real world to provide the most up-to-date view
of organization design available.
How Do You Fit the Design? The “How Do You Fit the Design?” feature presents
a short questionnaire in each chapter about the student’s own style and preferences
to quickly provide feedback about how they fit particular organizations or situations.
For example, questionnaire topics include “What Is Your Cultural Intelligence?”
“Your Strategy Strength,” “Are You Ready to Fill an International Role?” “Corporate
Culture Preference,” “Is Goal-Setting Your Style?” “Making Important Decisions,”
xv
xvi Preface
Managing by Design Questions. Each chapter opens with three short opinion
questions that engage students in clarifying their thoughts about upcoming material
and concepts. These questions are based on the idea that when students express
their opinions first, they are more open to and interested in receiving material that
is relevant to the questions. Example questions, which ask students to agree or
disagree, include:
A certain amount of conflict is good for an organization.
The best measures of business performance are financial.
Savvy organizations should encourage managers to use Twitter.
A CEO’s top priority is to make sure the organization is designed correctly.
Managers should use the most objective, rational process possible when making
a decision.
As a follow-up to the three “Managing by Design” questions, each chapter
contains three “Assess Your Answer” inserts that allow students to compare
their original opinions with the “correct” or most appropriate answers based on
chapter concepts. Students learn whether their mental models and beliefs about
organizations align with the world of organizations.
BookMarks. “BookMarks” are short book reviews that reflect current issues
of concern for managers working in real-life organizations. These reviews, which
represent a unique feature of this text, describe the varied ways companies are
dealing with the challenges of today’s changing environment. New “BookMarks” in
the Twelfth Edition include Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why
Some Thrive Despite Them All, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested
Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Conscious Capitalism:
Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, and Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the
Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration.
In Practice. This edition contains many new “In Practice” examples that illustrate
theoretical concepts in organizational settings. Many examples are international,
and all are based on real organizations. There are 50 new “In Practice” cases used
within chapters, including Fujifilm Holding Corporation, Carnival Cruise Lines,
Omnicom and Publicis, Amway, Harley Davidson, Morning Star, Valve Software,
Amazon, the Freaky Friday Management Technique, Bloomberg PLC, Apple, Taco
Bell and Frito Lay, L’Oreal, the U.S. Military, Box, BNSF Railway, Toyota Motor
Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, United Health Group, Allegiant Travel, The
Vatican, Nike, Richard Ginori, Caesar’s Entertainment, International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees, Dell, Town of Sandy Springs, Georgia, Panasonic,
Zappos, and Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital.
Manager’s Briefcase. Located in the chapter margins, this feature tells students
how to use concepts to analyze cases and manage organizations.
Text Exhibits. Frequent exhibits are used to help students visualize organizational
relationships, and the artwork has been redone to communicate concepts more
clearly.
Preface xvii
Design Essentials. This summary and interpretation section tells students how
the essential chapter points are important in the broader context of organization
theory and design.
Case for Analysis. These cases are tailored to chapter concepts and provide a
vehicle for student analysis and discussion. New cases for analysis include “It Isn’t
So Simple: Infrastructure Change at Royce Consulting,” “The Venable Museum of
Art,” “CPI Corporation: What Happened?,” “AV Corporate: Software Tool Project,”
“Yahoo: Get to Work!,” “The Boys Versus Corporate,” and “Medici Mediterranean
Restaurant.”
Integrative Cases. The integrative cases at the end of the text have been
expanded and positioned to encourage student discussion and involvement. The
new cases include W. L. Gore—Culture of Innovation, Engro Chemical Pakistan
Limited: Restructuring the Marketing Division, Sometimes a Simple Change Isn’t
So Simple, Rondell Data Corporation, and Disorganization at Semco: Human
Resource Practices as a Strategic Advantage. Previous cases that have been retained
include IKEA: Scandinavian Style, First Union: An Office Without Walls, Lean
Initiatives and Growth at Orlando Metering Company, Costco: Join the Club, The
Donor Services Department, Cisco Systems: Evolution of Structure, and Hartland
Memorial Hospital.
New Concepts
Many concepts have been added or expanded in this edition. New material has
been added on the increasing complexity of the organizational environment, social
business, goal conflict and the hybrid organization, big data analytics, the green
movement and sustainability, the need for collaboration, social network analysis,
quasirationality, manager decision-making biases, stages of disruptive innovation, the
smart factory and trends in manufacturing, innovation contests and crowdsourcing,
types of resource-dependent relationships, radical decentralization and bossless
organization design, conscious capitalism, and global teams as a way to resolve the
tension between a need for global uniformity and a need for local responsiveness.
Chapter Organization
Each chapter is highly focused and is organized into a logical framework. Many
organization theory textbooks treat material in sequential fashion, such as “Here’s
View A, Here’s View B, Here’s View C,” and so on. Organization Theory and
Design shows how they apply in organizations. Moreover, each chapter sticks to
the essential point. Students are not introduced to extraneous material or confusing
methodological squabbles that occur among organizational researchers. The body
of research in most areas points to a major trend, which is reported here. Several
chapters develop a framework that organizes major ideas into an overall scheme.
This book has been extensively tested on students. Feedback from students and
faculty members has been used in the revision. The combination of organization
theory concepts, book reviews, examples of leading organizations, self-insight
questionnaires, case illustrations, experiential exercises, and other teaching devices
is designed to meet student learning needs, and students have responded favorably.
xviii Preface
Supplements
Companion Website. Access important teaching resources on the companion
website. For your convenience, you can download electronic versions of the
instructor supplements at the password-protected section of the site, including the
Instructor’s Manual, Test Bank, and PowerPoint presentations.
To access these additional course materials and companion resources, please
visit www.cengagebrain.com. At the CengageBrain.com home page, search for
the ISBN of your title (from the back cover of your book) using the search box at
the top of the page. This will take you to the product page where free companion
resources can be found.
Cognero Test Bank. The Cognero Test Bank contains easy-to-use test creation
software. Instructors can add or edit questions, instructions, and answers and
can select questions (randomly or numerically) by previewing them on the screen.
Instructors can also create and administer quizzes online.
Acknowledgments
Textbook writing is a team enterprise. The Twelfth Edition has integrated ideas and
hard work from many people to whom I am grateful. Reviewers and focus group
participants made an especially important contribution. They praised many features,
were critical of things that didn’t work well, and offered valuable suggestions.
Preface xix
Richard L. Daft
Nashville, Tennessee
January 2015
Introduction to
1
PART
Organizations
Chapter 1 Organizations and Organization Design
That afternoon Evelyn informed her that Rose was still abed and had
sent for her favorite, Wanda, to console her. This meant that she would not
descend to the ground floor or be visible to any visitors before the next
evening, and that the Englishwoman, promoted to temporary command,
would have to pass the night in that reception of callers which necessitated
the appearance of drinking much and the fact of drinking almost nothing.
"She does that every time she goes on a bust, my dear," complained
Evelyn. "Of course she jolly well knows that she can trust me and that I
have some manners too, but I wish she would remember that I also have a
thirst and can't do without my drop of real liquor."
Violet's nerves tingled. With her best effort to bury all signs of her
mounting hope, she ventured:
It was almost the first mention that had been made to Violet of the latest
captive since the recent day of Evelyn's exposition of the entire traffic.
Violet had not dared to ask any more questions than those that she deemed
necessary for the perfection of her own plans, and she dared ask none now.
"I do hate the job," Evelyn was continuing, "even if it does mean a few
bits extra. Rose says that fellow Dyker is due to-night. She's not fit to see
him above all men, and he's the one I most particularly hate to meet,
because he was a friend of my friend the doctor and used to call with him
now and again at my flat. I always fancy he's making comparisons under
those narsty low lids of his."
Violet, in sudden reaction, felt choking with despair.
She tilted her sharp chin and strolled kitchenward for a drink; but,
though she left behind Her a Violet discouraged, it was not a Violet beaten.
In fact, the girl made her own opportunity. Noticing that evening that
Evelyn took up a dignified position in the parlor and had Cassie conduct all
the guests thither, Violet quickly disposed of the first person that claimed
her attention, and, having made her best toilet—having restored her cheeks
to a resemblance of their pristine glow, coiffed her russet hair, and donned
her best of linen—she descended quietly to the first landing on the stairway,
there to take up her watch. Before she was again in demand, she saw the
servant admit Wesley Dyker. She ran quickly downward and, just as Cassie
stepped forward to precede him, brushed by him in the rosy twilight of the
hall.
"Ask to see me," she whispered. "Ask to see Violet. Don't let on I told
you. I've heard something you want to know about O'Malley."
Before the man's shadowy figure could come to pause, she had passed
him and caught up to Cassie.
"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been calling for you for five
minutes. I need some more water in my room."
She turned and reascended the stairs, but her door had not long been
closed before the servant was knocking upon the panel.
"Here's you' water, Miss Vi'let," said Cassie. "An' Miste' Dyker wants
fer to see you daown in de back parlor."
Violet took the useless pitcher, made sure that the remnant of Katie's
note was secure in its hiding-place, and hurried, with Cassie following, to
the garish room in which Dyker was awaiting her.
He was seated on the lazy, pillowed sofa on which Violet had fallen
asleep so soon after her arrival in this house. He was in evening-clothes that
served him, on the East Side, much as the advertised portraits of certain
patent-medicine makers serve their proprietors, the flaccid whiteness of his
face still bearing traces of past beauty, the weakness of his mouth hidden by
his crisp, short, brown mustache, and his heavy lids concealing the secret of
his steel-gray eyes.
He half rose as she entered, but she motioned him to sit still.
"Hello!" she said, with the easy manner of the house, which always
seemed to presuppose a previous acquaintance. "Have you ordered
anything? I'm terribly dry."
She waited for the door to close, and then sat down beside Dyker.
"Speak low," she cautioned. "That girl will listen if she can. You'll have
to pretend to be making love to me."
Dyker regarded her with smiling approval. Her blue eyes shone with
excitement and red blood fought through the rouge on cheek and fully ripe
mouth.
"No, no; none of that. This is no time for bluffing. Put your arm around
my shoulder. That way. Now then, you heard what I told you in the hall?"
Dyker, with his type's disinclination to take seriously anything that any
woman has to say upon serious matters, smiled assent.
"You seem to have been doing some listening yourself," he said, as his
lingers tightened unnecessarily upon her shoulder.
"Yes, I did, and it's lucky for you I did it. Will you promise not to give
me away?"
"To look at you I should say that I'd do you any favor you asked, and do
it without expecting anything in return."
His pale lips were curled in a half-scoffing smile, but Violet's next
words brushed from his flaccid face all traces of amusement.
"You remember that night you told Miss Rose about what you wanted to
get at the next election? You said you were afraid of O'Malley giving you
the double cross."
Dyker stiffened.
"Hush! Keep your voice down, or I won't tell you nothing of what I
know. Remember you're supposed to be making love to me."
"Well, then, of course, I heard it. I was at the keyhole there—that's why
I want you to whisper now.—And I heard more."
"What was that?"
"Anything," he smiled.
"But this is business. If I tell you something that it's worth your while to
know, will you promise not to blow on me to Miss Rose?"
"I promise."
"Surely."
"Then sit tight. I don't know as much about O'Malley as I pretended out
there in the hall, but I do know about Miss Rose. I don't know whether
O'Malley is goin' to double-cross you or not, but I do know that Miss Rose
has given you the double-cross already."
She had thought that passion played a large part in his relations with her
mistress, and she had counted upon awakening his jealousy. What, however,
had far exceeded his affection was a poor pride of possession, and when
Violet's words, in addition to touching his ambition, struck at that pride,
they aroused an anger that was far more dangerous than any sense of love
betrayed.
Two red beacons flashed into his pale checks, and his heavy lids,
shooting upward for a single instant, disclosed hard, gray eyes gone hot and
malevolent.
"Be careful. Speak low, I tell you," she cautioned; "and remember your
promise."
They waited while the black opened the champagne and filled the
glasses.
Violet brushed Dyker's hair over his eyes and laughed at the effect.
Dyker caught the offending hand and kissed it by way of punishment.
"Cassie," he banteringly asked, "why didn't you ever tell me there was
such a nice little girl in this house? I had to get the news from a friend on
the outside."
He tossed the now grinning negress a dollar and, as soon as she had left
them, dropped the farce as promptly as did Violet.
"I say I can't believe you," he resumed, the two spots of anger still
glowering in his cheeks.
Violet knew that her whole hope rested upon her ability to force
conviction.
"You've got to believe me," she said. "I'll tell you all that you told Miss
Rose till I had to run away, that evening."
"May be. But what does that prove? It only shows that you heard me."
"It shows that I can hear Miss Rose when she talks to somebody else.
And I did hear her."
"He was in the kitchen with her when you came in. Why, he's here all
the time! I don't care what she pretends to you, she's stuck on him, an' every
girl in the house knows it."
Rapidly, but as fully as she had sketched the dialogue between Rose and
Dyker, she now described the first conversation that she had overheard
between her mistress and the Italian.
"I'd come down to graft a drink," she said, "an' I heard them from the
stairs. That's how, after he'd left, I came to listen to you too."
Dyker had quailed under the revelation, thus made to him, of political
danger. He now quivered in anger at the comments upon himself, somewhat
colored, that Violet had placed in the mouths of Rose and Angel.
"I'll find out about this!" he said, struggling against the desperate arms
flung swiftly around him to keep him on the sofa. "Let me go! By God, I'll
have that drunken cat down here and squeeze the truth out of her throat!"
All the caution, all the craft, all that she had counted upon as the real
Wesley Dyker seemed to have escaped him. His voice was still low, but in
every other respect he was a raging beast.
"You can't get anything out of her that way," Violet urged, as the man
twisted under her strong hands. "Of course she'll say it's all lies. And you'd
only be warning her. You don't want her to know that you know; you want a
chance to block her game."
"Well, I ought to tell her." The high tide of his anger was slowly
subsiding, and the rocky Dyker that she had built on was beginning to show
its crest above the still hissing waves. "Look here, Violet," he said, "I'm
sorry I behaved like such a fool. I beg your pardon, but you must see that I
have got to put this thing up to Rose."
"Listen," she said; "I told you I wanted you to do something for me an'
you gave your word you'd do it.—Will you?"
"I want you to go over to the avenue right away," she said, "and buy me
a long cloak and a hat and bring them back, and then take me out of here
without a word to anybody. You needn't walk more'n three squares with me,
an' then I won't bother you no more."
Dyker drew away and whistled softly. His face grew quite composed
again. The heavy lids fell over his eyes.
"And so you've cooked up this little mess of lies to make me the goat,
eh?"
Violet felt the sands slipping beneath her feet. She laced her fingers
together till the knuckles bruised her flesh.
"Don't do that," she pleaded; "don't take it that way; it's true, what I told
you, every word of it. I only want you to keep your promise to me."
Wesley reached calmly for a glass of wine, drank it, put down the glass,
thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, and, stretching out his long
legs, regarded, humming, the toes of his shining pumps.
"I was tricked. The man said he wanted to marry me. I didn't know. I
believed him. An' they beat me an' starved me and did things I couldn't
think about an' couldn't help thinkin' about. An' all I want is just for you to
do me this one little favor. I won't bother you. I won't blow on you——"
"What's that?"
"Oh, you know I wouldn't blow on you! I couldn't. I want to forget the
whole thing. I've got friends to go to who'll get me work. I only want you to
get me out of the door and safe away."
Like most men of his sort Dyker, although ready enough to make a
living out of the results of cruelty, hated the sight of cruelty's self. The girl's
words touched, though lightly, his selfish heart.
"But I can't afford to help you," he protested. "You see how I'm tied up
here. I can't have Rose jump on me now."
"You know she's jumping on you already. You know she's knifing you in
the back. The only way you can stop her is by using what I've told you."
"Of course," said Dyker in the tone of a man thinking aloud, "if she
really was playing both ends against the middle, I could pull her teeth by
going straight to O'Malley and telling him so."
Violet did not wholly understand this, but she agreed immediately.
"And I suppose I could have her pinched then, if you'd testify against
her. Would you do that? Would you go into court?"
"And of course there are other girls who've been in the same scrape
here?"
"There is? Um. That's good." He rattled the money in his pocket. "Only,
look here," he persisted, "if you have been telling the truth, it will probably
make me solid with O'Malley, but if you haven't, I'll go clean to smash."
Violet saw the turn of affairs and, with hope's revival, her mind cleared
immediately.
"I haven't told you all," she said, "and I guess the rest will make you
sure enough."
"There's more then?"
"A lot."
"What is it?"
"If you convince me.—Let's see; the shops around here are still open.—
Yes, if you convince me, you'll be out of here in half an hour."
It was her only chance. She did not hesitate. She told him the whole of
what she had heard of the later assuring interview between Rose and
Angelelli.
"Ain't I sayin' it proof that it's true? How could I make it up? I don't
know all that it means."
"Lucky for you I did, too; but I don't know all it means—how could I?
—and you do know, an' that ought to be proof enough that it's God's truth,
Mr. Dyker."
Dyker rose.
"Cassie!" he called.
Violet leaped to her feet and laid her hands on his arm.
"What are you goin' to do?" she whispered.
"Cassie," he continued, flipping the maid another dollar, "I'm a little off
my feed. I'm going to the drugstore on the corner and get fixed up."
"Thank you, Miste' Dyker.—Ah kin go fer you, Miste' Dyker," said the
negress. "Thank you, sah."
"No, thanks, Cassie, I can go myself; I want the air. But you can do
something else for me. You can just not let this girl run away from me. I
know she would run if she could, but I like her too well to let her, so if
anybody wants her, just you say she's in here and engaged for the evening
by me. I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
He left one door as the willingly assenting Cassie closed the other, and
Violet flung herself on the sofa and buried her face in the cushions, now
fearful that the servant, notwithstanding their precautions, had overheard
her, now afraid that Dyker would change his purpose and fail to return, and
again dreading that he might betray her to Rose. Since the night she had
waited for Max to telephone in the café, since the terrible morning that had
followed, it was the longest quarter of an hour that she had known, but it at
last dragged its quivering length away. The doorbell rang. Cassie passed
through the room to find Violet sitting suddenly upright, and at once
returned with Dyker, his summer raincoat tossed across his arm.
As the servant left them, he lifted the coat. Below it, not wrapped in the
paper usual to a new purchase, was a dark cloak. He unrolled it, uncovered
a beaver hat, and handed them both to the panting Violet.
"She'll never learn that, though here, by the way, is a ten-dollar bill that
will come in handy.—The doors will be open and I'll be on the pavement.
Keep only a yard behind me. Riley's at the other end of his beat, and I have
a cab at the curb. Ready?"
She could not speak, but she nodded her russet head.
Violet, following, her lips tight, her breathing suspended, her heart
pounding against her breast, was dimly aware of her own soft footfalls
sounding hideously loud, of the blast of light and laughter from the parlor.
She heard Evelyn rise. She heard the front door open. She saw Wesley
raise his arm.
She hurried by the parlor door, and then, instead of turning to the stairs,
gathered up her red kimona and ran through the vestibule, through a patch
of soft, fresh darkness, and was tossed precipitately into a cab into which
Dyker followed her just as the horse, under a quick blow, dashed madly up
the street.
At the open cab-window the night air beat upon her fevered face. She
drank it deep into her thirsting lungs. It was the wine of freedom.
XIV
RIVINGTON STREET
The carts are end-to-end now; one could walk upon them from cross-
street to cross-street. Each has its separate gasoline torch leaping up, in
flame and smoke, to the descending darkness. Upon them charge the
returning army of workers. The crowd is all moving eastward; you could
not make six yards of progress to the west; the sidewalks overflow, the
street is filled. The silence of the morning has changed to a mad chorus of
discords. The thousand weary feet shuffle, the venders shriek their wares;
there is every imaginable sound of strife and traffic, but there is no
distinguishable note of mirth. Wagons jostle pedestrians, graze children, are
blocked, held up, turned away. The thoroughfare is like a boiling cauldron;
it can hold no more, and still it must hold more and more.
Only very slowly, as the night wears on, do the crowd and noise lessen;
but at last, by tardy degrees, they do lessen. Imperceptibly, but inevitably,
even this portion of New York breathes somewhat easier. By twos and
threes the people melt away; a note at a time, the cries weaken and the
shuffling dies; and finally, in the small hours of the morning, Rivington
Street turns over, with a troubled sigh, to a restless doze.
But to doze only. Its bad conscience will grant it no absolute oblivion,
no perfect rest, however brief. Cats yell from the dizzy edges of the lower
roofs; dogs howl from the doorsteps. Back in the narrow courts and alleys
and passages, drunken battles are won and lost. The elevated cars roar out
the minutes through the nocturnal distances. An ambulance clangs into a
byway street. A patrol-wagon clatters past. Rivington Street turns and tosses
on its hot couch, and through its dreams slink hideous shadows that dare not
show themselves by day. One, ten, a hundred, each alone, they come and
go: vague, inhuman. And then, reluctantly, the hesitant dawn creeps
shivering out of the East River, and the weary day begins again.
Into this street—into its noisiest quarter at its noisiest time—the cab that
bore Violet on her way to liberty at last turned and proceeded as far under
the flaring gasoline torches as the evening crowd of workers, buyers, and
sellers, would permit. The girl, through the dark thoroughfares that had
preceded it, had answered a score of questions, which Dyker had asked her,
the fever of escape beating high in her breast and tossing ready replies to
her heated lips; but now, in the roar and brilliance of Rivington Street's
nocturnal traffic, there had come upon her a terror almost equal to that
which had assailed her when, with Max for her guide, the lighted length of
East Fourteenth Street had first unrolled itself before her. The city was
again an inimical monster awaiting her descent from the cab, and the newly
acquired habit of seclusion, the habit of the prisoner, recoiled upon her.
Freedom was strange; it became awesome, and when the horse was stopped
and Violet knew that she must soon fare alone, she cowered in a corner,
breathing hard.
"Can't go no furder, boss," said the cabby, leaning far around from his
seat. "Where to now?"
"Nowhere right away," answered Dyker. "Just stand where you are for a
minute."
Violet hesitated.
"Surely not. If you have, just ask the way of the first policeman you
see."
"Of course, a policeman. He won't hurt you as long as you keep your
cloak tight. Now, you're sure you've given me the right address?"
"That's so; only I thought—well, I beg your pardon, Violet. You have
my office-address on that card. I'll send for you in a day or two—be sure to
be home every afternoon—and then we'll fix Madame Rose with the
District-Attorney.—Good-by. Sure you're not afraid?"
"Then remember: the first street to your right, the next to your left, and
then to your right again—third or fourth house in the row."
He opened the cab-door and alighted, holding out his hand.
She straightened her beaver hat, drew the folds of her dark cloak tightly
over the betraying crimson of her kimona, and, helped by his grasp,
followed him to the swarming curb.
"Then don't try," returned Dyker, laughing easily. "You can make it all
right with me when you testify against Rose."
She kept his hand a moment longer, partly in fear of the human
multitude about her and partly in genuine gratitude.
Dyker, not too well liking the white light of publicity in which this little
scene was being enacted, pressed her hand and dropped it.
"Good-by," he heard her answer, and then, with his head out of the cab-
window, he saw her pause bewilderedly. "To your right," he cautioned.
He watched her turn. He saw her plunge into the crowd. He saw the
crowd swallow her up.
Once there, he dismissed the cab, climbed the steps of what seemed an
old and modest little house, and, opening the door and turning into the front
room, lit a gas-jet the flame of which revealed an apartment surprisingly
new and arrogant. The walls were lined with new bookcases holding rows
of new law-books, and surrounded by rows of new chairs. The flat-top desk
in the center, at which his stenographer sat by daylight, was a new desk,
with new wire-baskets upon it, and a new telephone, to which Dyker now
immediately proceeded and called a number.
"Hello," he said into the transmitter, adopting the low tone that he
always used in his wired conversations. "Is that Schleger's?—It is?—That
you, Ludwig?—This is Dyker.—Yes, good-evening, Ludwig.—Yes, pretty
good, thank you. How are you, and how's business?—That's good. Mrs.
Schleger and the babies all right?—I'll bet that boy's gained three pounds!
—He has? I'm glad to hear it. You're a wonder.—Yes.—That's what I said.
And, say, Ludwig, is O'Malley anywhere around?—He isn't?—Hasn't been
in this evening?—Oh! Well, I wonder where I can find him.—You don't?
Perhaps he's at Dugan's place.—No, it's not anything important: I just
wanted to take a drink with him, that's all. He's sure to be at Dugan's or
Venturio's, but I guess I won't bother. Ever so much obliged, Ludwig.—
Good-by."
In spite of his word, Dyker did, however, bother. He called three other
numbers in his quest of the political boss, and when he found him, the
underling made a pressing appointment for an important conference on the
next morning, though what it was that he wanted then to discuss he
carefully neglected to mention over a telephone-wire.
"And now," he said, "I think I'll get away for the night. I don't care to
have any arguments with Rose for a day or two."
Yet, even as he said it, the telephone-bell uttered its staccato summons.
He stood uncertainly beside the desk.
"She wouldn't have the nerve to use the wire," he argued. "Perhaps it's
O'Malley with more to say."
Again the bell rang, and his curiosity overcame his caution. He took up
the receiver.
"Hello!" he said sharply, and then his tone mellowed, for the voice that
came to him across the hurrying New York night was the voice of Marian
Lennox.
"I am glad you're glad," the voice pursued, "because I want to ask a
favor."
"I have been down town, and remained longer than I intended, and I
want you, please, to take me home."
"I thought you were asking a favor, not bestowing one. Where are you?"
"Yes."
He rang off and left the office. He was sorry that he had dismissed the
cab, for he expected to need it when he reached the first stage of his
journey; but the way was not long to the place that Marian had named, and,
even had it been twice as far to the settlement, Dyker, who walked thither
with the feet of chagrin, would not have remarked the distance.
"Some of our people we retain, but most of them slip away, and, even
with the best of fortune, we seem, somehow, able to do so little."
Dyker knew the place by reputation. He had always scorned it for its
own sake, and now he had come to hate it for Marian's. For want of a better
term, it may be repeated that he was in love with Marian. Moreover, he
wished the assistance that an early marriage with the daughter of a wealthy
department-store owner would give him in the coming campaign. And,
finally, his peculiar legal activities were already well enough known on the
East Side to make it probable that any young woman entering the settlement
would speedily learn of them.
After the night of the opera his cooler reflection had rejected Marian's
plan of joining the Rivington Street colony as a fervently girlish dream
destined to fade before the reality of action. He had decided that the best
way to aid its dissipation was no longer to combat it, and he had even,
during the months that had followed, seen Marian but rarely, and never
alone. Occupied with politics and knowing the tactical value of restraint, he
had not so much as pressed his wooing. He had relied upon what he chose
to describe as his sweetheart's basic commonsense to work out their
common salvation, and had decided that, this commonsense being what he
esteemed it, Marian was a woman more likely to be won by a Fabian
campaign than by a Varric attack.
Perhaps Wesley's silence and the subtle sense of pique that it awakened
played a part in this; perhaps the purpose was self-sufficient; but, in either
case, Marian missed scarcely an evening at the settlement. Two of her
former classmates were knee-deep in the work there, and what she saw and
what they told her served only to confirm her. It thus happened that, anxious
again to see him alone, and more anxious to let him know the endurance of
her resolution, she had, on this evening, telephoned on the chance of finding
him late at his office.
What, as a matter of fact, she had been doing was to listen to slim little
Luigi Malatesta and fat little Morris Binderwitz respectively attacking and
defending the proposition that Abraham Lincoln was a greater American
than George Washington; but what she thought she had been doing was
assisting in raising the lower half of society. Under this impression, her fine
brown eyes shone with the consciousness of moral rectitude, her mouth was
even more than usually firm, and her head even more than usually like
some delicate cameo.
"Now," he said, continuing their interrupted talk, "I should really like to
know what you, of all people in the world, were doing on Rivington Street."
He had, naturally, chosen precisely the tone that, were any additional
incentive required, would have compelled her to resolution. Her mind, as it
chanced, was, however, made up, and what he now said served only to turn
her toward that feminine logic which assumes as done that which is
determined.
"I am past consideration," she said. "I have already virtually begun."
"I am simply stating a fact. Why do you suppose I have been staying in
town this summer? I begin my real work at the settlement with the first of
next week."
Her classmates in Rivington Street, could they have heard this, would
have been pleased, but they would also have been surprised. Nevertheless,
she at once mentally decided to make good her declaration.
In the darkness Dyker bit the lip that, under his short, crisp mustache,
trembled with vexation.
"Then what, if you please, do you propose to do when you get there?"
"You ought to know," she said, "how these people are living; you ought
to know how the girls—hundreds and hundreds of them—are every week
going into lives of shame and death. I mean to do what I can to stop them."
It would have been a hard thing for her to say to him had he not
wrought upon her anger, and had not the freshness of her partial glimpse of
earth's lower seven-eighths fired her heart with a blind inspiration. She had
the partial vision that makes the martyr: a vision that shows just enough of
an evil to confirm the necessity of action and not enough to prove how little
individual action individually directed can be worth.
For the second time Wesley gasped. Here were depths in her of which
he had not dreamed, and because he had not dreamed of them he would not
admit them.
"But you can't!" he protested. "It is impossible that you should. It's
inconceivable that a woman of your delicacy should go into such coarse
work!"
"But this—why, it's something that one can't even speak about!"
"Yes, something that we are not permitted even to mention, Wesley; and
because we aren't permitted even to mention it, the thing grows and grows,
night by night. It thrives in the shadow of our silence. They tell me that the
liquor laws are broken, because nobody will mention it; that bestial men get
rich in it, because nobody will mention it; that in this city alone there are
three hundred saloon dance-halls intended to furnish its supply, because
nobody will mention it!"
Figuratively, Dyker threw up his hands in horror, but actually, like all
desperate men, he seized at the straws of detail.
"Now, that just shows how wrong your view of the whole subject
happens to be," he declared. "My work has put me in a position to know
something about these dance-halls, and I know that they exist simply
because the girls that go to them want them to exist—the girls, mark you;
not the men. Why, the girls aren't taken to such places; they go of
themselves, they pay their own admission, and it is the usual thing for a girl
earning six dollars a week in a store to save fifty cents out of every salary-
envelope for the dance-halls."
"Then you want me to conclude that the fact that they want to do the
thing makes the thing right?"
"You can't learn. No matter how closely you study this whole matter,
you can't learn, Marian. How can a clean-hearted, clean-lived American girl
ever get the point of view of these low-down, low-browed foreigners? It's
the sort of thing they're used to."
"That is all theory, Marian; it won't work out in practice. The great point
is that these unfortunate women, whether they become unfortunate through
the dance-halls or anywhere else, are simply not our sort of clay: they're not
Americans."
"And they are more Americans than your ancestors or mine were three
hundred years ago."
"Well, it does."
"The lower they are, the more plainly it is our duty to raise them."
"My dear Marian, how can you raise them when you don't understand
them?"
"You will come back to that," she said; "and all that I can answer is that,
not being utterly stupid, and having come to understand a few abstract
problems, I have hopes of mastering something so close at hand to me and
so concrete as a fellow human being."
"What, for instance?" asked Wesley, "can you understand of the typical
Jewish girl of the East Side?"
"A good deal, I think. They were talking about that type at the
settlement this evening. We were looking from the front windows at an
endless stream of Jewish girls tramping home from the factories where they
worked to the tenements where they slept. Somebody said there are nearly
four hundred thousand Jews living east of the Bowery; that in most Jewish
families the ambition to which every comfort must be sacrificed is the
education of the boys; that for this reason the girls must work and are
worked until there is nowhere else in the world where so much labor is got
out of young women, and yet that the Jewess that is not married and a
mother before she is twenty is regarded as a family disgrace. It seems to
me, Wesley, that the case of those girls is pretty easy to understand. It seems
to me that they are on the horns of a rather ugly dilemma."
It was a blow at her conventions, and she shuddered; but she stood by
her guns. They had crossed down Twenty-sixth Street now and they turned
into the quiet of Madison Avenue, among comfortable houses and silent
churches, as she answered.
"If they do that," she said, "it is because they have to."
"I don't know, but I know that the very use they make of the money
shows what they do is only a means and not an end."
"Are trousseaus so necessary that these girls have to sell their souls for
them?"
"Souls have been sold for less. Even you and I make considerable
sacrifices for things that other people in other classes would not think
needful at all."
He had done his best to bridle his annoyance, but now he could bridle it
no longer. He was wholly sincere in his inability to take seriously either the
girl or her point of view, and now, though he felt as if he were riding a
hunter at a butterfly, he charged blindly.
"I know that," she frankly acknowledged, "and I don't know what it is
that's to blame; but I know that there isn't any evil that hasn't some cure if
we can only find it out."
"Then why not leave the search for a cure to the experienced?"
"I shall; but I propose to become one of the experienced. I mean to give
my time, at least for a while, to first-hand study. Perhaps then I shall learn
enough to know that it's useless for me to go on, but I shall keep trying to
go on until I am convinced that there isn't any use in the trying."
"That's absurd, Marian—simply absurd. The condition is, after all, one
that must be dealt with by the law, and I tell you honestly that, as yet, even
the law is helpless."
"Has the law really tried? Has it ever attempted, for instance, to do
anything to the men that take these immigrant girls at the dock and make
slaves of them?"
"Yes, it has; it has tried just that. In Chicago two men were arrested for
taking a couple of such girls—they had brought them from New York—and
when the case was appealed, the United States Supreme Court found that,
though importation of girls was a violation of federal law, yet the federal
law providing a punishment for merely harboring such girls after their
arrival was unconstitutional."
"Absolutely," said Dyker. Like most lawyers of his generation, his ideas
of what was right were limited only by the final decisions of what was
legal, and if the Supreme Court of the United States had, by even a majority
of one, declared that the sun moved around the earth, Dyker would have
first denied and then forgotten all previous astronomy.
But Marian did not capitulate. She merely drew a long breath and
answered:
"After all, that, of course, is just a small portion of the big question, and
the only way it moves me is to lessen my opinion of the Supreme Court."
It was Wesley's turn to gasp, and he did so. He had always suspected
that these college-settlements were hotbeds of Socialism and Anarchy—two
theories that, to Dyker, were one and the same—and now he had his
confirmation.
He was too cynically wrong upon one side of their subject to realize
how emotionally wrong she, in her hope of accomplishment through
personal appeal, might be upon the other. But here was a concrete denial of
his one sincere conviction, and, though he was at last calm enough to see
that he must not allow this conviction to wreck his suit, he was not so calm
as to maintain a clear judgment. It was plain that Marian would not be
turned from her experiment. His best course was, he then reasoned,
immediately to put on record his opinion of its futility, even to quarrel with
her in defense of that opinion, and then, when experience brought the
awakening upon which his own worldly experience counted, to stand ready
to profit by the inevitable reaction that would most likely show the perfidy
of the women whom Marian hoped to help, detract from the credibility of
any gossip they might recount concerning him, and end by winning him his
wife.
The worst thing that a man can impute to a handsome woman is a lack
of intellect. Marian's cheeks flushed.
"I quite agree with you," she replied. "I am utterly incapable of arguing
with anybody that so confuses law and justice."
"Very well," said Dyker; "but I want you to remember what I have said
upon the subject as a whole. When you have trusted these women and been
betrayed by them, when they have poisoned your mind against all the
principles you have been brought up to believe, when you have left the
world of sentiment and bruised your poor hands with hammering at the
door of fact, then you will acknowledge that I have been right. I am not
angry——"
"I am not angry, but I am firm. I only ask you to believe that I shall
never be far away from the settlement, and that you have only to telephone
for me when you have need of me."
Marian compressed her lips to a more severe firmness, and the ride from
Thirty-fourth Street to Riverside Drive was made in silence; but the
following Monday found her, against all parental protests, enlisted as a
settlement-worker in Rivington Street.