The Leather Duke

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Mort Murray was the cause of it all. Mort Murray, publisher of Every Man A Samson, the book that had earned a livelihood for Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg for so many years. Mort Murray, that Rock of Gibraltar, that lighthouse on the rocky shore, that friend-in-need-is-a-friend-indeed.

Mort Murray had let them down. In their hour of need, he had failed Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg. Yes, he had failed to pay his rent and the sheriff had put a padlock on his door. So he had been unable to send the books that Johnny had ordered by Western Union, collect.

And now Johnny and Sam were walking the streets of Chicago homeless and hungry. They had caught fitful snatches of sleep in the Northwestern and Union Depots, but you can’t really get a good night’s repose in those places. The benches are hard and there are always policemen and station attendants to annoy you.

Things were bad.

Silently, Johnny and Sam turned north on Larrabee Street and silently they walked past the dingy factory buildings of the near North Side. People were working in those buildings, lifting barrels, wrestling crates and cartons, and operating whirring machines. It rained and snowed; sometimes the wind howled and sometimes the sun shone brightly. But those people in the buildings were oblivious to it all. They came to work at eight o’clock in the morning, they toiled all day and at five o’clock they went home. They went to work in these factories as boys and girls, they fell in love and were married. They raised children and the children in their turn went to work in the same factories. There was no end to it. Oh, yes, they changed jobs sometimes, these workers. They quit one factory and went into another.

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