Governor Tennant--his pet name among friends and enemies alike was
"Whiskey-barrel Tennant"--dismissed the committee with a few curt
platitudes about law and order. When they reached Adamsville, they found
the shack colony sacked, the strikers and their dependents either jailed
or scattered. The militia had done a thorough job.
Wearily Pelham dragged himself to the meeting at Arlington Hall.
Jack Bowden, of the local miners' organization, who always came like a
bird of carrion at evil news, secured the floor, and moved that the
strike committee be discharged and the strike settled on whatever terms
could be secured. "They've bashed in our heads," he said vigorously. "Do
we want 'em to cut our throats as well?"
There was no John Dawson to reply to him. From many groups of the
strikers came discouraged support for the motion. Most of the old tried
unionists saw nothing to be gained in wasting energy on a dead struggle.
"Makes mighty little difference now," Pelham whispered hopelessly to
Serrano, seated in explosive agitation beside him.
"_You'll_ never quit!"
"Not quit.... But start a newer fight, with some chance of winning it."
One violent industrial unionist demanded the floor, and pounded out
that the strike must continue, with a general tie-up of every trade,
organized and unorganized, in Adamsville.
"One big union!" he continued to shout, even after the ready ushers had
pushed him into his seat.
"That's the sort of fool advice," Jack Bowden said, "that's lost this
strike. For it is lost; and I'll tell you who's lost it. Not the
company, nor Paul Judson's money, not his murdering gunmen; but----" and
his lean arm pointed straight to Pelham, "but crazy radicals in and out
of the union movement; lounge Socialists, lemonade trade-unionists, men
who claim to be with us, but were born with scab hearts. It's them and
their kind have led to this smash-up. And the sooner we reckernize it,
the better!"
There was a tossing roar of applause at this. The crowd, Pelham grasped
at once, was ready to quit, and only wanted someone to blame for the
failure.
Nils Jensen, still under bond pending the decision of his case by the
Supreme Court, answered the charge at once. "Men, brothers," his voice
rang out, "I've been a miner, and a member of this local, for thirteen
years. I don't know who is to blame, but I know who isn't--and that's
the Socialists among us. We've fought, in the union and at the polls,
day in, day out, while your old-fashioned unionists have been pulling
down fat jobs under Democratic sheriffs,----" a hit at Pooley, who had
been first deputy under the previous official. "I'm not in favor of
going on now, if the crowd's ready to stop. I can get work, here or
somewhere else, in or out of jail,----" There was a friendly smile at
this. "I know that the war between our class and the Paul Judson class
will go on until classes are ended. If you're to blame anybody, blame
ignorant laborers, who can't see that scabbing against their fellows
cuts their own throats, and betrays their wives and children. Blame the
labor fakers, the crooked bunch who 'lead' you so that their pockets are
lined for delivering your votes to the old parties, while you get
nothing. And when Jack Bowden says that Comrade Pelham Judson, as good a
socialist as any one of us, is a lounging lemonade socialist, with a
scab heart, he lies, and he knows he lies!"
The chair's rappings were lost in the outcries. "Order!" "Order!" broke
all over the hall. An uproar circled around Jensen and also Bowden; for
a minute the meeting threatened to break into a riot.
Jack Bowden jumped up to the platform, a document waving over his head.
"Brothers!... Brothers!... Let me answer him!" He paused, while they
quieted. "I'll answer him. When I moved that the committee be discharged
without thanks, I knew what I was doing. When I charged that 'Mister'"
(with an ugly sneer) "Pelham Judson, son of the vice-president of the
Birrell-Florence-Mountain Iron and Steel Company, was born with a scab
heart, I knew what I was doing!"