This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Dec. 10, 1938.
The Dicksons are respectable and intelligent people. John is a sales manager of a coal company in a Canadian city, and Kate, his wife, is a good housekeeper and a good manager. She is proud of her possessions, and willing to sacrifice for her family.
They pay the butcher and baker, send Christmas presents to their friends, contribute to the Community Chest, and live comfortably as far as material comfort goes.
The latest trouble in the Dickson family began with a tap in the bathroom — a tap that roared and shook, threatening to loosen the plaster. John Dickson, the head of the house, had said he would phone the plumber several days before, and his wife reminded him this morning of his lapse.
“I suppose you did not think of the tap,” she said as she handed him his coffee. Her tone suggested that she knew from the beginning that he would forget. He had forgotten other things.
John rushed to his own defence. “Say, if you had as many things on your mind as I have, you would forget a few, too!”
“Oh, I never have anything to think of,” said she, in a level tone, which irritated him more than if she shouted. “I only have a house to run, four children to dress with half enough money to do it on. I often wonder what to do with my time.”
“Why didn’t you phone about it yourself?” John said, ignoring the reference to the shortness of money. “You can use the phone, can’t you?”
“Every call costs four cents,” her voice was still calm and measured, “and that’s quite a sum to anyone who has to figure as closely as I do. It may not seem much to you.”
“I never knew you to hesitate to call any of your Diamond X friends, or whatever it is you call the Bright Babblers I hear on the line when I try to call you.”
That bought the flash of anger.
“I will phone my friends as often as I wish,” she said. “That’s all I have left of the social life I once had, and you aren’t going to interfere. The trouble with you, John, is that you are always right. If I forget, it’s just plain stupidity. If you forget, it’s because that big brain of yours is too full of weightier things. I would like to hear you admit once that you were wrong.”
“How about yourself?” he shouted. “You are a born nagger — a fault-finder. I wish you could hear yourself. If it isn’t me, it’s the youngsters. Everyone is wrong but you. You are the patient, plodding martyr, and I’m sick of it.”
He left the table and went out, slamming the door. John, the eldest boy, coming into the dining room, heard the quarrel and, taking his books, went out to school. He would rather do without his breakfast than face his mother in tears.
The rows all went the same way. Rages, tears, then long cold silence. The other children came in and ate and got away as soon as they could. The whole family were sunk in a slough of gloom.
John Dickson, still angry, drove past the corner where he usually picked up one of his neighbours. He did not see a man hurrying down the side road — but he thought of it, just as he was going up in the elevator, and it did not improve his temper.
At the office, where he arrived earlier than usual, he found the bookkeeper and stenographer talking about a play they had been at the night before. There were no pleasant greetings — one look at his face stopped that.
“A little less talk there,” he said crustily, “and more action.”
The stenographer, who had been with the firm of Ward and Jones for years, flushed painfully and said: “I am not aware of having neglected anything, Mr. Dickson, now or any other time.”
He went into his office, thoroughly ashamed of his outburst, and still more angry at his wife for having been the cause of all this embarrassment. He felt that he had made a bad start for the day and tried to get hold of himself, but when one of the drivers came in and told him he had not been able to collect the amount of his load but had left the coal for he knew the people, a sudden rage seized him.
It was unbusinesslike and dangerous. No one could run a business that way — he didn’t care who the people were — a COD had to be paid.
Bill, the driver, had remained calm and untroubled during the outburst.
“If you had let me finish, Mr. Dickson,” he said, “I was going to tell you that I sold two loads to this man’s brother who happened to be in the house. He is Bryson, the lawyer, who never spent a cent with us before. He had offered to pay me for the load but I said his brother’s credit was good with us. Of course, if you don’t want the order I can go over to the Consolidate and let them fill it … I’ve always used my own judgment in matters of this kind and the firm has never lost money on it.”
He gave a stingy apology to Bill, and muttered something about the principle being a poor one.
In the afternoon he had to meet the directors of his company to give them a survey of the three months since he had been made the sales manager. The meeting was a sticky one, where no one felt at ease. John knew he had been stiff and unconvincing.
When it was over, the president said to the vice-president as they drove home: “That manager of ours will never enlarge the business for us. He has no appeal — no sparkle — he is too busy defending himself. I wonder what’s wrong. He has a good appearance and came to us with fine references, but he is like a lamp with too heavy a shade. He can’t get his light through. Something is muffling him. I wonder what his home conditions are.”
The vice-president interrupted there.
“We haven’t time to investigate,” he said. “He is evidently not the man for us. I thought when we got him he might make a general manager, but he looks more like a bookkeeper to me. The whole office seemed out of sorts. Even Miss Gray had a frozen look. No, he is no asset.”
All that day, Mrs. Dickson worked viciously. Her temper carried her through the dishwashing, bedmaking and preparations for the children’s lunch. She could see she was a poor household drudge whom nobody loved. No one ever praised her. John was too selfish to think of anyone but himself.
In the afternoon, she had intended to go to a tea in the neighbourhood, but decided against it and became more and more sorry for herself as she stayed at home. She would not even listen to the radio — she might hear something cheerful. She was determined to be a martyr — a full-time martyr.
John had practically forbidden her to use the telephone. He begrudged her the four cents. And the tap could jump and choke and gargle and rip the pipe out for all she cared — she would never speak of it again.
If John loses his job with the coal company, it will never occur to her that she was in any way to blame. Neither will either of them take any responsibility if the eldest boy develops nervous indigestion. They will blame each other.
John will see himself as the overworked businessman, harassed with family cares. She will recount her many sacrifices — who did all her own work, how clean her house has always been, how hard she has worked, making over her own clothes and John’s for the children, and doing her own laundry.
The trouble today with the world is not with the villains. It lies in the pitiful inadequacy of good people.
Moral rearmament is the only remedy, and by that worn phrase we mean the advancing of the 30 and 60 per cent people to the place where selfishness and self-pity dies in the glow of loving and intelligent service — in the home, in the office and in the nation.
