Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership
in the union and frequented the meetings. He learned various things,
that the strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the
Radicals had taken advantage of the absence of some of the conservative
leaders to secure such support as they had received. He found the better
class of workmen dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved
their tools, had resented the order to put them down where they were and
walk out, and this resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression
of their general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves
built up.
Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his
war record, brought him reward. He was elected member of a conference to
take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike.
It was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other,
and hold it for as long as possible. Then they were to ask the President
of the Council to put the question.
The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be
urged as the one salvation of the labor movement. It would prove the
solidarity of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the
rank and file were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails
and listening, watched anxiously. The idea was favorably received,
and the delegates went back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and
threaten.
Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence,
but violence was in the air, nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary
literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and now it
was no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all
meetings; it flooded the various headquarters with its skillful compound
of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended
that it was harmless raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed
discontents.
Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following,
there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business agent of
one of the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new
grievances, said that the government had failed to live up to its
promises, that the government boards were always unjust to the workers,
and ended with a statement of the steel makers' profits. Dan turned
impatiently to a man beside him.
“Why doesn't he say how much of that profit the government gets?” he
demanded.
But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue.
It was at that meeting that for the first time he heard used the word
“revolution.”