TO STRIKE OR NOT TO STRIKE
When the picnic party reached Cloverdale the day after the wedding, the
Jimsons were not there.
Where Mr. Jimson concealed his bride and himself during his brief
honeymoon no one ever knew, for he would not tell, and she could not,
being bound to secrecy.
No one, that is, no one except Mr. and Mrs. Everest, and old Mrs.
Jimson. To them Selina and the Mayor confided the news that they
had been in a quiet New Hampshire village, where they could enjoy
delightful drives among hills resplendent in autumn dress, and have no
society forced on them but that of their hostess--a farmer’s widow.
As a result of this reposeful life, Mr. Jimson came home looking ten
years younger, and Roger Stanisfield, meeting him in the street, told
him so.
“I’ve had a quiet time for once in my life,” said Mr. Jimson. “I ought
to have got married long ago. I have some one to look after me, and me
only now. How is your wife?”
“Well, thank you.”
“And Tom and Berty and Bonny--gracious! I feel as if I had been away a
year instead of three weeks.”
A shade passed over Roger’s face. “All well but Grandma and Berty.”
“What’s the matter with Grandma?”
“I don’t know. I am afraid she is breaking up.”
The Mayor looked serious, then he asked, abruptly, “And Berty?”
“Oh, River Street--it’s on her brain and conscience, and it is wearing
her body down.”
“She’s doing what the rest of us ought to do,” said Mr. Jimson,
shortly, “but, bless me--you can’t make over a city in a day; and we’re
no worse than others.”
“I suppose the city council is pretty bad.”
Mr. Jimson shrugged his shoulders.
“Lots of boodle--I say, some of those aldermen ought to be dumped in
the river.”
“You ought to get Berty out of city politics,” said Mr. Jimson,
energetically. “That is no girl’s work.”
“She’s going to get out, Margaretta thinks,” said Roger, turning round
and slowly walking down the main street of the city beside him. “But
we’ve got to let her work out the problem for herself. You see, she’s
no missionary. She is not actuated by the passion of a life-work. She
has come to live in a new neighbourhood, and is mad with the people
that they don’t try to better themselves, and that the city doesn’t
enable them to do it.”
“She’ll probably marry Tom Everest, and settle down to housekeeping.”
“That will be the upshot of it. I’d be doubtful about it, though, if
the River Street people had given her a hand in her schemes of reform.”
“She’s just an ordinary girl,” said the Mayor, briskly. “She’s no angel
to let the River Streeters walk all over her.”
“No, she’s no angel,” returned Roger, with a smile, “but she’s a pretty
good sort of a girl.”
“That she is,” replied Mr. Jimson, heartily. “Now tell me to a dot just
what she has been doing since I went away. She seemed all right then.”
Roger looked amused, then became grave. “Just after you left, she got
worked up on the subject of child labour. It seems the law is broken
here in Riverport.”
“How does our State law read?” inquired Mr. Jimson. “Upon my word, I
don’t know.”
“The statutes of Maine provide that no female under eighteen years
of age, no male under sixteen, and no woman shall be employed in any
manufactory or mechanical establishment more than ten hours each day.
We also have a compulsory education law which prohibits children
under fifteen years of either sex working, unless they can produce
certificates that during the year they have attended school during its
sessions.”
“Well?” said Mr. Jimson.
“Berty found that some old-clothes man here had a night-class of
children who came and sewed for him, and did not attend school. She
burst into our house one evening when Margaretta was having a party,
and before we knew where we were she had swept us all down to River
Street. It was a pitiful enough spectacle. A dozen sleepy youngsters
sitting on backless benches toiling at shirt-making, round a table
lighted by candles. If a child nodded, the old man tapped her with a
long stick. Some of us broke up that den, but Berty was furious at the
attitude of the parents.”
“I’ll bet they were mad to have their children’s earnings cut off,”
observed Mr. Jimson. “Poor people are so avaricious.”
“They were, and Berty was in a dancing rage. She got up a paper called
_The Cry of the Children_. You can imagine what her editorials would
be. Then she had the children of River Street walk in a procession
through the city. Nobody laughed at her, everybody was sympathetic
but apathetic. Now she is in a smouldering temper. Her paper is
discontinued, and I don’t know what she is going to do.”
“This is mighty interesting,” said Mr. Jimson, “but there’s Jones, the
lumber merchant from Greenport. I’ve got to speak to him--excuse me,”
and he crossed the street.
Roger continued on his way to the iron works, and two minutes later
encountered Berty herself coming out of a fancy-work store.
“Good morning,” he said, planting himself directly before her.
“Good morning,” she returned, composedly.
“What have you been buying?” he asked, looking curiously at the parcel
in her hand.
“Embroidery.”
“For some other person, I suppose.”
“No, for myself.”
“Why, I never saw you with a needle in your hand in my life.”
“You will now,” she said, calmly.
“How’s the park getting on, Berty?”
“Famously; we have electric lights, and the children can stay till all
hours.”
“Is your helper satisfactory?”
“She is magnificent--a host in herself. She can shake a bad boy on one
side of the park, and slap another at the other side, at the same time.
I think I’ll resign my curatorship in favour of her. She only gets half
my pay now.”
“Why resign, Berty?”
“Well, I may have other things to do,” she said, evasively.
“You’re going to get married.”
“Not that I know of,” she said, calmly.
“Good-bye,” replied Roger; “come oftener to see us, and be sure to
bring your embroidery.”
Berty gazed after him with a peculiar smile, as he swung quickly away,
then she made her way to River Street.
At one of the many corners where lanes led down to wharves, a group of
men stood talking with their hands in their pockets.
Berty stopped abruptly. Through the women in the street she knew what
the chief topic of conversation among the wharf labourers just now
happened to be.
“Are you talking of your projected strike?” she asked, shortly.
Not one of them spoke, but she knew by their assenting looks that they
were.
“It’s a lovely time for a strike,” she said, dryly; “winter just coming
on, and your wives and children needing extra supplies.”
The men surveyed her indulgently. Not one of them would discuss their
proposed course of action with her, but not one resented her knowledge
of it, or interference with them.
“You men don’t suffer,” she said, and as she spoke she pulled up the
collar of her jacket, and took a few steps down the lane to avoid the
chilly wind. “See, here you stand without overcoats, and some of you
with nothing but woollen shirts on. It’s the women and children that
feel the cold.”
One of the men thoughtfully turned a piece of tobacco in his mouth, and
said, “That’s true.”
“What do you strike for, anyway?” she asked.
One of the stevedores who trundled the drums of codfish along the
wharves for West Indian shipment, said, amiably, “A strike is usually
for higher wages and shorter hours, miss.”
“Oh, I have no patience with you,” exclaimed Berty, bursting into
sudden wrath. “You are so unreasonable. You bear all things, suffer
like martyrs, then all at once you flare up and do some idiotic thing
that turns the sympathy of the public against you. Now in this case,
you ought to have the public with you. I know your wages are small,
your hours too long, but you are not taking the right way to improve
your condition. Because the Greenport wharf labourers have struck, you
think you must do the same. A strike among you will mean lawlessness
and violence, and you strikers will blink at this same lawlessness
and violence because you say it is in a good cause. Then we, the
long-suffering public, hate you for your illegality. There’s the strong
arm of the law held equally over employers and employed. Why don’t you
appeal to that? If you are right, that arm will strike your oppressors.
You can keep in the background.”
“There’s a machine back of that arm,” said a red-haired man, gloomily,
“and, anyway, there ain’t a law standing to cover our case.”
“Then make one,” said Berty, irritably. “You men all have votes,
haven’t you?”
“Yes, miss,” said a man in a blue shirt, “all except this lad. He’s
just out from Ireland. He’s only been ashore two weeks.”
“That’s the way to settle things,” said Berty, warmly. “I’ve found out
that votes are the only things that make anybody afraid of you--you all
know how I came to this street. I found living conditions unbearable.
In my feeble way I have tried to rectify them. Nobody cares anything
for me. The only good I have accomplished is to get a park for the
children.”
“And that was a great thing,” said the man in the blue shirt, “and I
guess we all think of it when we look at you.”
“I just wanted common necessities,” said Berty, eloquently, “air,
light, water, and space--wanted them for myself and my neighbours on
the street. I have badgered the city council till I have got to be a
joke and a reproach. Nobody cares anything about you down here, because
you haven’t any influence. I’ve found out that if I could say to the
city council, ‘Gentlemen, I have five hundred votes to control,’ they
would listen to me fast enough.”
The men smiled, and one said, kindly, “I’m sure, miss, you’d get our
votes in a bunch, if we could give them.”
“I don’t want them,” said Berty, quickly. “It isn’t a woman’s business
to go into reforming city politics. It’s the men’s place. You men
fight for your homes if a foreign enemy menaces us. Why don’t you
organize, and fight against the city council? Drive it out, and put in
a good one. Those few men aren’t there to make the laws. They are to
administer them. You are the people. Make what laws you please. If they
are not workable, make new ones. I’m disgusted with those aldermen.
The very idea of their arrogating to themselves so much authority. You
would think they were emperors.”
The men smiled again. From him in the blue shirt came the emphatic
remark, “We couldn’t turn out the present lot, miss. They’re too strong
for us.”
“Oh, you could,” replied Berty, impatiently. “I’ve been going over
our voting-list, and I find that the city of Riverport consists of
‘poor people,’ as we call them, to the extent of two-thirds of the
population. You poor men have the votes. Now don’t tell me you can’t
get what you want.”
“But there’s party politics, miss,” suggested a quiet man in the
background.
“Shame on you, Malone,” and Berty pointed a finger at him, “shame on
you, to put party politics before family politics. Vote for the man
who will do the best for your wife and children. If you haven’t got
such a man, organize and put one in. Let him give you equal privileges
with the rich--or, rather, not equal privileges--I am no socialist. I
believe that some men have more brains than others, and are entitled by
virtue of their brains to more enjoyments and more power, but I mean
that the city owes to every citizen, however poor, a comfortable house
and a decently kept street.”
“That’s sound, miss,” said Malone, slipping still further forward, “but
we’d never get it from the city.”
“Put in some of your number as aldermen. Why shouldn’t you in
democratic America, when even in conservative England there can exist
a city council made up of men who work by the day--masons, painters,
bricklayers, and so on. Do that, and you will have a chance to carry
out all sorts of municipal reforms. I think it is disgraceful that this
ward is represented by that oiled and perfumed old gentleman Demarley,
who never comes to this street unless he wants a vote.”
Malone stared intently at Berty, while a man beside him murmured
something about the board of aldermen having promised certain reforms.
“Don’t speak to me of reforms from those men that we have now,”
returned Berty, with flashing eyes. “When I came to River Street, I
used to blame the policemen that they didn’t enforce the law. Now I
see that each policeman is a chained dog for some alderman. He can
only go the length of his chain. A strapping great creature in uniform
comes along to your house, Mr. Malone, and says, in a lordly way, ‘Mrs.
Malone, you are obstructing the sidewalk with those boxes; you must
remove them.’
“‘And you are obstructing my peace of mind,’ she says, ‘with that old
drug-store over there open all hours, and with our young lads slipping
in and out the back door, when they ought to be in bed. Haven’t you
eyes or a nose for anything but boxes?’
“And the policeman says, meekly, ‘I see nothing, I hear nothing; there
must be something wrong with your own eyes and hearing, Mrs. Malone.
It’s getting old you are.’ Then he moves on to look for more boxes and
small boys. That’s the length of his chain.”
They were silent, and Berty, with increasing heat and irritation, went
on. “This city is entirely corrupt. I say it again and again, and you
know it better than I do--but I am going to stop talking about it. I
had a lovely scheme for setting up a shop to sell pure milk to try to
keep the breath of life in your babies a little longer, and I was going
to get out plans for model dwellings, but I am going to stop short
right here, and mind my own business.”
The men stood looking sheepishly at her, and at themselves, and, while
they stood, Tom Everest, in a short walking-coat, and with his hat on
the back of his head, came hurrying down the street.
He put his hat on straight when he saw Berty, and stopped to glance
at her. He had got into the way of dodging down to River Street if he
had any business that brought him in the neighbourhood, or if he could
spare an hour from his office.