YETTA TAKES HOLD
But if Yetta did not think her work mattered very much, Isadore and
Rheinhardt and Paulding and all those who had the welfare of _The
Clarion_ at heart thought very differently about it. Gradually she
transformed the labor page into a vital force in the trade-union world.
Organized labor is fighting out the same problem in democracy which our
larger community is facing. "How shall elected delegates be made to
represent their constituents?" The rank and file of workers cannot
attend all the meetings of their central organizations any more than we
can spend all our time in watching Congress. Labor bosses, like
political crooks, love darkness. Yetta, taking a suggestion from the
progressive magazines, turned the light of publicity on the weekly
meetings of the Central Federated Union. She made the Monday afternoon
labor page a verbatim report of the Sunday session. Among the delegates
to the C. F. U. there were many fearless, upright men who were as much
opposed to gang politics as any insurgent senator at Washington. Yetta
knew them from her old work and drew them into a sort of informal Good
Government Club. Every day she tried to run some story dealing with
this issue of clean politics. More and more the "labor grafters"
denounced _The Clarion_, and more and more their opponents came to rely
on it as their greatest ally. The percentage of "crooked" and "straight"
among the unionists is about the same as in any church membership. The
circulation grew among the honest workers--the vast majority.
Her influence was not confined to her own department. Her experience in
the Woman's Trade Union League had made her an expert beggar; more and
more she helped Isadore, relieving him of some of the burden of
money-raising. This freed more of his time and energy for his page. He
listened more docilely to her suggestions about bettering the style of
his editorials--adding snap to them--than he had done when Paulding had
tried to help him. The improvement was noticeable. During her
apprenticeship under Mr. Brace Yetta had absorbed some of his "sense of
make-up." Harry Moore often appealed to her judgment. In time _The
Clarion_ began to look almost attractive.
One day Yetta's old friend Cowan, the sporting editor of _The Star_, met
her on the street.
"I hear you're working on this Socialist paper," he said. "How goes it?"
"I like it better than _The Star_," she replied.
"I've looked over some of the copies," he said. "You people aren't
handling local news the way you ought to. Why don't you tear the lid off
this Subway scandal? I'm not a Socialist. But I hate to see such good
stories going to waste."
Yetta rather wearily went over the long story of their limitations. She
had learned to recite it as glibly as Isadore or Paulding.
"It's too bad," Cowan said, as he left her. "I didn't realize you were
up against it so hard. I sure hate to see some of these hot stories
unused."
A couple of days later, Yetta received a long, unsigned typewritten
manuscript. It was a well-written story of a session of the Public
Service Commission. A witness had made a statement which seemed to offer
the key to the whole situation in the tangled effort of the city to get
decent transportation. A few more questions promised to bring out the
fact--generally suspected--that a well-known banker was obstructing
progress. The chairman had unexpectedly adjourned the sitting. When they
reassembled, the old witness--the only one who had ever shown any
willingness to remember important things--had left town. Then followed
from official court records a list of the cases in which the Chairman of
the Commission had served as personal attorney for the banker who was
under suspicion. It was a wrought-iron story, hardly a word in it was
not public record; chapter and verse were cited for every allegation.
Yetta called up Cowan and asked him about it. He denied all knowledge of
it so ardently that she was sure he had sent it. They made a screaming
front-page story of it. The regular papers denounced it as "a malicious
and audacious lie"--which was good advertising for _The Clarion_. More
anonymous stories followed. They attracted a new class of readers. The
circulation grew. Gradually Yetta and _The Clarion_ found firmer ground
underfoot.
Despite her strenuous work for _The Clarion_, Yetta did not lose
interest in, nor neglect, her vest-makers union. She was not alone in
her ambition to see all the garment trades allied in a strong
federation. There were many Socialists in the various unions, and there
were many who, while not party members, had been influenced by the
propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World. As the months passed
the sentiment for "One Big Union" grew steadily. At last, when Yetta had
been about a year on _The Clarion_, a convention of all the garment
trades was called to consider the matter.
The victory of Yetta's faction was by no means sure. Each union had its
own ambitions, which it was loath to sacrifice for the common good. In
all the unions there were little groups of "officials"--some of them
afraid of losing their salaries in the proposed new arrangement, more
who feared to lose their influence. A union man who is elected to the
executive committee by his fellows has all the personal pride in the
matter that a college graduate has in being on the board of governors of
his club. The union man has the same temptation to resort to petty
intrigues to hold his place. Officialdom always distrusts
innovations--is always conservative. Working-men are surprisingly like
the rest of us--especially in these little personal jealousies and
meannesses.
There was also the hostility of the American Federation of Labor to
overcome. Within that great organization the same struggle between
industrialism and the old-fashioned craft-unionism was waxing more
bitter every year. A bitter opposition was growing against the rule of
Samuel Gompers and his _satellites_. No one denied that this group had
done great service to the cause of labor--ten, fifteen, twenty years
ago. But the younger union men--especially those most in sympathy with
Socialism or the I. W. W.--said these "leaders" were getting old, that
they were out of touch with the times. Naturally these leaders did not
look with favor on the spread of such ideas.
Yetta and her friends saw at once that their only hope of success lay in
appealing to the rank and file. So during the first days of the
convention, while the official delegates were denouncing the principles
of Industrial Unionism, Yetta spoke at noon factory meetings, two or
three times each evening, and devoted almost all of _The Clarion's_
"Labor Page" to the same subject. This is the secret of democratic
politics. If the mass of the people can be stirred into watching and
controlling their representatives, Democracy is safe. The mass of the
garment workers believed in federation. They made their wishes heard
even in the Convention Hall,--it is rare, indeed, that the will of the
people control such assemblies,--and when the crucial vote was taken,
the resolution of the industrial unionists was carried by an
unexpectedly large majority.
For close to five years, Yetta had been working towards this end. At
first she had been laughed at and snubbed. The victory made her wild
with joy--but also she felt very tired. The meeting did not break up
till after one in the morning. The last week had been a ceaseless rush.
She felt that if she went to sleep she would not wake up for a month or
so. It was important to have the story in the morrow's _Clarion_, and
Isadore ought to write an editorial on the victory. She decided to go to
the office, hammer out the "copy," leave a note for Isadore, and then go
home to sleep with a clear conscience.
The elevator was not running at this hour, and Yetta had to climb up
the six flights to the _Clarion's_ loft in the dark. There is something
eerie and weird about a deserted office. The feverish activity of the
day haunts the place like a ghost, even in the stillest hours of the
night. Although Yetta knew the room was empty there was a very distinct
feeling that some one was there. She was not afraid of the dark, but it
was a decided relief when, after much fumbling about, she found the way
to her table and turned on the light. The electric globe hung low, and
the light was so concentrated, by a green glass shade, that it shone
glaringly on the table and typewriter, but did not illumine the rest of
the room at all.
Once Yetta had a sheet of paper arranged in her machine, the feeling of
weirdness left her, and soon the spirit of composition made her forget
that she was tired. For an hour she hammered the keyboard without
interruption. It was not till she had finished her "story" that the
fatigue reasserted itself. She ought to look over the copy to make
corrections. She ought also to write a note to Isadore about the
convention and to say that she was going home to sleep a week. She
stretched herself energetically to drive away the drowsiness
and--unconsciously--her arms went down on the table, her head down on
her arms, and she was hopelessly asleep.
Isadore was generally the first of the editorial force to come to the
office. His "eight-hour" workday was from 4 A.M. till noon. On his way
to the office in the morning he picked up the early editions of the
other papers, clipped the news he wanted worked up for their afternoon
edition, and got his day's editorial finished before the rest of the
staff turned up. It was his theory that if he had an evening
engagement,--a committee meeting or a speech to make,--he would sleep
four hours in the afternoon. If he had work in the afternoon, he went to
bed before nine. So he got in seven hours of sleep every
day--theoretically. But it so often happened that he had work to do both
afternoon and evening that the week was rare when he averaged more than
five hours sleep a day.
He generally found the office empty when he arrived. But this morning a
light was burning in the back of the loft--"the composing room." One of
the linotypers, who was also a mechanic, had come a few minutes before
him to repair one of the machines which had gone wrong, and so save the
expense of bringing in an expert. It was a violation of the union rules,
but this linotyper was a Socialist.
"Comrade," he said, when he saw Braun, "it's a crime. This linotype is
worn out. I'm getting it so it will run again, but it's dead slow. And
it'll break down again in a couple of days. It ought to be scrapped. It
costs more to keep it going than the interest on the price of a new
machine. It's uneconomic."
Isadore said he would talk it over with the executive committee. He made
his way through the shadowy machines to the front part of the loft,
which was by courtesy called "the Editorial Room." No one who has not
experienced the expensiveness of poverty can realize how maddening it is
to throw money away because you are not rich enough to save it. Isadore
knew there was very little chance of buying a new linotype. He turned
the end of a long bookcase and suddenly saw the light burning over
Yetta's table; he saw her stretched out motionless across her work. He
had never seen her asleep. With an awful sinking of the heart the
thought came that she might be dead. He sprang towards her and called
her name. In the semidarkness he upset a chair with appalling clatter.
Yetta, startled out of profound sleep, sprang to her feet. Her head
struck the light, which hung low, broke the glass shade; the jar
dislocated the fragile film of the lamp. In the instant before the light
went out, the only thing which Yetta realized was that her surroundings
were unfamiliar. She had never been so frightened before in her life.
When they told her afterwards that she had screamed, she could hardly
believe it. She could not recall having done so. The first thing she was
conscious of was that some one's arms were about her and Isadore's voice
was saying,--ungrammatically but convincingly,--"It's me."
After the hideous nightmare of fright, his accustomed voice, his strong
arms about her, were utterly comforting. She told herself afterwards
that she must have been partly over the verge of fainting, for Isadore
kissed her and she made no motion--had no idea--of resistance. First, in
the darkness, his hand had found the way to her neck and face; then she
had felt the hot wave of his breath,--murmuring words which made no
sense to her,--and then his lips on her cheek and mouth. She was never
quite sure if she had kissed him back. Whether she had or not she knew
she had been very close to doing so.
But the moment of forgetfulness had been interrupted by the linotyper,
running towards them and asking the cause of the commotion. At the idea
of an onlooker, Yetta disengaged herself from Isadore's arms--just in
time. The linotyper turned on a light. Isadore tried to laugh.
"We scared ourselves nearly to death," he explained. "Comrade Rayefsky
had fallen asleep. The sight of her scared me into upsetting a chair.
That startled her awake. She jumped up so quick she broke the lamp."
The linotyper was a good fellow. He unscrewed a lamp from another socket
and substituted it for the one Yetta had broken, and went decently back
to his work.
Isadore seemed on the point of coming towards her, and Yetta retreated
back of the chair.
"How stupid of me to fall asleep. We won out at the convention. I came
down to write it up. I must have just started to look it over when I
went to sleep. You'll have to grind out an editorial on it. I'll finish
it up at once."
She sat down to her work.
Isadore found it harder to bring his wits together. But her movement of
retreat had been like a blow in the face to him. It steadied him a
trifle--but only a trifle. He had kissed Yetta. All these years he had
loved her. Suddenly--utterly unexpectedly--the Heavens had opened. He
had held her in his arms, he had kissed her.
The foolish idea came to him that he would like to look at his lips,
which--after waiting so long--had at last found their goal. As there was
no mirror in the office, this was manifestly impossible. But his
hand--at least he could look at that--it also had caressed the beloved
face. His hand was stained with blood. For an instant he was dazed.
Yetta--her cheeks aflame--was bent over her work. A little stream of
blood ran down her neck, where a bit of the broken lamp-shade had cut
her in its fall.
"Yetta, Yetta!" he cried, "you're wounded."
"What?" she said in amazement. She had been preparing a crushing answer
in case he started to make love again. The emotions that were tearing
her were too violent to let her take note of a little cut.
"Look," he said, showing her his hand. "Broken glass. On your neck. Let
me see."
Impressed by the sight of blood, she bent her head for the examination.
But Isadore's ideas of treating such a wound were sentimental rather
than scientific.
"Oh, don't. Please!" she protested, agonized by shame. She struggled up
to her feet, but somehow she had forgotten the crushing retort she had
prepared. "It isn't serious. It doesn't hurt. Please let me finish this
work."
Isadore retreated before her distressed eyes.
"Wipe the blood off your lips," she ordered sternly.
Then she sat down again, utterly confused. It seemed such a stupid,
inane thing she had said. It was all her fault, she unjustly told
herself. If only she had kept her wits that first moment instead of
being so childishly frightened. She felt humiliated. It took an extreme
effort of will to turn her attention to the garment workers and the
article she must correct. It would have helped if she could have heard
the scratching of his pen or the rustle of his newspaper. There was not
a sound from his desk. She did not dare to look around.
At last the task was finished. She put on her cloak and hat and wrapped
the muffler about her throat before she found courage to look at
Isadore. He was sunk down in his chair, watching her hungrily. She bit
her lip at the sight and had trouble speaking.
"Isad--Comrade, here's the copy. I hope you can make an editorial out of
it. It's awfully important for Organized Labor.--This convention has
finished me. I'm dead tired. I'll take a vacation to-morrow--I mean
to-day--and sleep."
Isadore did not reply. He just looked at her, a dumb plea in his
eyes--which she did not want to seem to understand.
"So long," she said.
She was almost out of sight before he spoke.
"You'll come back? When you're rested?"
"Why, yes," she said. "Of course."
It was at least half an hour before Isadore pulled himself together and
got to work. But the editorial which he wrote on the Federated Garment
Trades was very creditable.
Yetta walked home through the dawn. She was very tired, and she tried
not to think. But she could not free herself from the insistent
question--"Did I really kiss him?" She looked at herself in the glass,
just before she turned out the gas and went to bed. "Did I really kiss
him?" she asked her reflected image. She got no answer, and, as though
vexed at this silence, she spoke defiantly. "If I did, I'm sorry. I
don't love him." This rather comforted her, and she fell asleep at once.
But when she woke up in the early afternoon, she felt worse about the
night's adventure than ever. Very emphatically she told herself that she
loved Walter. That had been _La grande passion_. No. Not "had been"; it
"was." It was a treason to think of it as "having been." She had told
Walter that love had no tenses, that it was "somehow eternally always
and now and for ever and ever." Romance still dominated all her
thinking. The books and poems said there could only be one real love.
She was sure that her love for Walter had been real--hence, in strict
logic, she loved him still and always would and could never love any one
else.
Although she really believed this--wanted to believe it, felt that life
would be impossible on any other hypothesis--she was beginning to
realize that somehow the Romantic Explanation of Life does not quite
explain. For the poets it was beautifully simple--either you loved or
you did not love. It was the crudest sort of dualism. Things were black
or white. The gray tones were not mentioned.
But while she did not love Isadore as she had loved Walter, he was
certainly in a different category from all the other men whom she did
not love. The men at the office, for instance. She was the best of chums
with them; she respected them, admired them, liked them--and did not
love them. But it was different with Isadore.
The hungry look in his eyes haunted her. The memory of his sudden,
unexpected ardor--the rough vehemence of his caresses, his stormy
outbreak of passionate tenderness--disturbed and distressed her. She had
never taken him quite seriously before. She had deliberately, but
unconsciously, refused to look the matter in the face. It is very hard
to be sympathetic and just to a love we do not return. It had not
occurred to her that Isadore's love was as painful to him as hers for
Walter had been. That startling contact in the dark of the office had
opened her eyes to the reality of his passion. What a mess it all was!
Isadore loved her. She loved Walter. Walter loved Mabel!
The sun was resplendent, and Yetta--having promised herself a
holiday--walked over to Washington Square and took a bus up to Riverside
Drive. It was zero weather, the sun shone dazzlingly on the blanket of
snow, which had given an unwonted beauty to the Jersey shore. Yetta
walked up and down the Drive till the sinking sun had reddened the West
with an added glory. It was not often that she had such outings. The
crisp air stimulated her. She was happy with the pure joy of being alive
and outdoors in a way she had not known since Walter went away. To be
sure her mood was tinged with melancholy. She was sorry for Isadore. But
less sorry than usual for herself. Somehow she felt less bitterly the
appalling loneliness.
As she was going downtown in the dusk she noticed a poster of the
Russian Symphony Orchestra. It offered a programme from Tchaikovsky. She
had some neglected work she ought to finish up. She had barely enough
money in her pocket for a ticket--and a hundred things she ought to use
it for. But in a sudden daredevil expansiveness, she dropped off the
bus, got a scrap of supper at a Childs' restaurant, and went to the
concert.
Under the spell of the music she forgot all her preoccupations. Her
intellect dropped down into subconsciousness. She did not think--she
felt.
Music can be the most decorative of all the Arts--or the most
intellectual. The trained musician, who knows the meaning of "theme" and
"development," who can recite glibly all the arguments for or against
"programme" music, who will tell you offhand in what year this Symphony
was written, whether it is a production of the composer's "first period"
or a mature work, cannot avoid bringing a large assortment of purely
intellectual considerations--historical and technical--to the
appreciation of music. But to the naïve listener, like Yetta, music is
decorative. It appeals solely to the emotions. It is never
interesting--it is either pleasing or displeasing. Yetta sat dreamily
through the concert--half the time with closed eyes--and found it
wonderful. There was too little chance for the play of sentiments in her
life. Every waking hour she had to think. Tchaikovsky laid a caressing
hand over the tired eyes of her intellect and showed beautiful things to
her heart.
The next morning as Yetta went to the office she thought with some
uneasiness of meeting Isadore. As usual in such matters she decided to
face the affair frankly.
"Good morning," she said, going at once to his desk; "I'm sorry about
what happened the other night. I was startled and bewildered."
Isadore knew that she had been taken unawares--that the kiss did not
belong to him by rights.
"If there's any apology necessary," he said, "I'm the one to make it. I
was as much startled and bewildered as you were. I'm sorry if you feel
bad about it."
"We'll forget it," Yetta said.
Isadore did not look as if he were certain on this point.
They fell again into the accustomed rut of comradeship. Neither of them
spoke again of the outburst. No one in the office noticed any change in
their relationship.
But there was a change. Isadore could never forget that wonderful
moment; he could never be quite the same. And Yetta--when in time the
memory of it lost its element of excitement, when she got over being
afraid that Isadore might begin again--found that she also had changed.
The fact that Isadore loved her passionately had taken a definite place
in her consciousness. She could not ignore this any more, as she had
done before. In a way it made him more interesting. She did not for a
moment think of marrying him--she loved Walter. But she was sorry for
Isadore. They had this added thing in common--the pain of a hopeless
love.
It seemed wildly unjust to her that she might not in any way show her
sympathy to him without encouraging his love--making him "hope." She
knew when he was tired and discouraged; she would have liked to cheer
him. She sometimes sewed on a button for Harry Smith. She ordered Levine
about severely. She did not like either of them half as much as she did
Isadore, but she must not show him any of these womanly attentions. It
was stupid and vexatious that just because Isadore loved her, she must
be carefully and particularly unfriendly to him.
Paulding was raising Yetta's salary among his personal friends, and his
check came to her directly without passing through the general treasury.
Her work kept her out of the office most of the time, and it was not
until her second year that she chanced to be at her desk on a Saturday
morning. About twelve-thirty Harry Moore came in from the
composing-room, where he had been attending to the lock-up. He leaned
back in his chair and stretched wearily.
"About time for the 'ghost' to walk," he said.
"Not much of a ghost this week," the pessimistic Levine growled.
A few minutes later Mary Ames, the treasurer, bustled in. Her face was
round and unattractive; she was short and had been fat, but her clothes
hung about her loosely as though she had lost much flesh.
"It's a bad week, Comrades," she announced cheerfully. "Thought I wasn't
going to be able to meet the union pay-roll to-day. Six dollars short.
But the ten o'clock mail brought in twenty. Isadore went out and touched
Mrs. Wainwright for fifty, and Branch 3 just sent in eleven from a
special collection. So I've seventy-five for you. Who comes first?"
"Locke's wife is sick," Levine said mournfully.
"That's twenty dollars, isn't it?" Mary said, counting off the bills.
"And you know Isadore hasn't had full pay for months. We must be a
hundred and fifty back on his salary."
"Twenty-five to him," the stenographer said. "It'll give him a
surprise."
"Surprise?" Levine said gloomily. "It'll give him apoplexy."
"That's forty-five gone," Mary said. "There's thirty left."
"How much do you need, Nell?" Moore asked the stenographer.
"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could
get along with ten."
"Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons
and ice-cream sodas."
"That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a
dog's life."
"Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to
Sherry's for lunch.--It's on me."
Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the
office.
Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry.
"If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys."
She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards
Yetta's desk.
"I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop--crying like this. You're
always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm
discouraged--rushing round all week begging money, and every Saturday
morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed--that I haven't
enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me
cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after
week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Saturdays. It's those two
boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And--I
know--sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the
hole they sleep in!"
Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her
cheeks.
"I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with
people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices--everybody
selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of
the other. It's hard for me to believe in this.
"I don't know much about Socialism," she went on. "I ain't educated
like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day
is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't
the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit
there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world,
and we're part of it."
Yetta put her arms about the older woman.
"I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's
too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It
would go on just the same--if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry
over a little baby--if it was mine. But not over this--"
She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words.
Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a
young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry
over.