As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into

my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many

points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then,

for it had not fitted into my harbor. But Marsh had caught its meaning

at once and had promptly jotted it down for use. For it fitted his

harbor exactly.

Vaguely, in this and a dozen ways, I could feel him taking my harbor to

pieces, transforming each piece into something grim and so building a

harbor all his own. Disturbedly and angrily I struggled to find the

flaws in his building, eagerly I caught at distortions here and there,

twisted facts and wrong conclusions. But in all the terrible stuff which

he had so hastily gathered here, there was so much that I could not

deny. And he gave no chance for argument. Quickly jumping from point to

point he pictured a harbor of slaves overburdened, driven into fierce

revolt. It was hard to keep my footing.

For his talk was not only of this harbor. It ranged out over an ocean

world which was all in a state of ferment and change. Men of every race

and creed, from English, Germans, Russians to Coolies, Japs and Lascars,

had crowded into the stokeholes, mixing bowls for all the world. And the

mixing process had begun. At Copenhagen, two years before, in a great

marine convention that followed the socialist congress there, Marsh had

seen the delegates from seventeen different countries representing

millions of seamen. And this crude world parliament, this international

brotherhood, had placed itself on record as against wars of every kind,

except the one deepening bitter war of labor against capital. To further

this they had proposed to paralyze by strikes the whole international

transport world. The first had followed promptly, breaking out in

England. The second was to take place here.

"You don't see how it can happen," said Marsh, with one of those keen

sudden looks that showed he was aware of my presence. "You admit this

place is a watery hell, but you don't believe we can change it. You

don't see how ignorant mobs of men can rise up and take the whole game

in their hands. Do I get you right?"

"You do," I said.

"Look over there."

I followed his glance to the doorway. It was filled with a group of big

ragged men. Some of the faces were black with soot, some were smiling

stolidly, some scowling in the effort to hear. All eyes were intent on

the face of the man who had never been known to lose a strike.

"That's the beginning," Marsh told me. "You keep your eyes on their

faces--from now on right into the strike--and you may see something grow

there that'll give you a new religion."

As the day wore into evening the crowd from outside pressed into the

room until they were packed all around us.

"Let's get out of this," said Joe at last. We went to a neighboring

lunchroom and ate a hasty supper. But as here, too, the crowd pressed in

to get a look at Marsh, Joe asked us to come up to his room.

"They _know_ your room," Marsh answered. His tone was grim, as though he

had been accustomed for years to this ceaselessly curious pressing mass,

pressing, pressing around him tight. "Suppose we go up to mine," he

said. "I want you fellows to meet my wife. She has never met any writers

before," he added to me, "and she's interested in that kind of thing.

She was a music teacher once."

I was about to decline and start for home, but suddenly I recalled

Eleanore's saying that she would like to meet Mrs. Marsh. So I accepted

his invitation. And what I saw a few minutes later brought me down

abruptly from these world-wide schemes for labor.

We entered a small, cheap hotel, climbed a flight of stairs and came

into the narrow bedroom which was for the moment this notorious

wanderer's home. A little girl about six years old lay asleep on a cot

in one corner, and under the one electric light a woman sat reading a

magazine. She had a strong rather clever face which would have been

appealing if it were not for the bitter impatient glance she gave us as

we entered.

"Talk low, boys, our little girl's asleep," Marsh said. "Say, Sally," he

continued, with his faint, derisive smile, "here's a writer come to see

you."

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," she said, then relapsed into a stiff

silence. I tried to break through her awkwardness but entirely without

avail. I grew more and more sure of my first impression, that this woman

hated her husband's friends, his strikes, his "proletariate." She was

smart, pushing, ambitious, I thought, just the kind that would have got

on in any middle western town. Eleanore must meet her.

Then presently I noticed that only Marsh was talking. I glanced at Joe

and was startled by the intensity in his eyes.

For Joe was watching his leader's wife. And watching, he appeared to me

to be seeing her in a dreary succession of rooms like these, in cities,

towns and mining camps, wherever her husband was leading a strike--and

then trying to see his own home in such rooms, and Sue in his home, a

wife like this. The picture struck me suddenly cold. Sue pulled into

this for life! Again I remembered Eleanore's words--"Drawn into

revolution."

"Say, Joe," drawled Marsh, with a sharp look at him. "Got any of that

typhoid left?"

Joe laughed quickly, confusedly.

Soon after that I left them.

CHAPTER IX

The next day I went to the editor for whom I was doing most of my work.

When I told him I wanted to try Jim Marsh, the editor looked at me

curiously.

"Why?" he asked.

I spoke of the impending strike.

"Have you met Marsh?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"Do you like him?"

"No."

"But he struck you as big."

"Yes--he did."

"Are you getting interested in strikes?"

"I want to see a big one close."

"Why?"

"Why not?" I retorted. "They're getting to be significant, aren't they?

I want to see what they're like inside." The editor smiled:

"You'll find them rather hot inside. Don't get overheated."

"Oh you needn't think I'll lose my head."

"I hope not," he said quietly. "Go ahead with your story about Marsh.

I'll be interested to see what you do."

I went out of the office in no easy frame of mind. The editor's

inquisitive tone had started me thinking of how J. K. had been shut out

by the papers because he wrote "the truth about things."

"Oh that's all rot," I told myself. "Joe's case and mine are not the

same. The magazines aren't like the papers and I'm not like Joe. His

idea of the truth and mine will never be anywhere near alike."

But what would Eleanore think of it? I went home and told her of my

plan. To my surprise she made no objection.

"It's the best thing you can do," she said. "We're in this now--on

account of Sue--we can't keep out. And so long as we are, you might as

well write about it, too. You think so much better when you're at

work--more clearly--don't you--and that's what I want." She was looking

at me steadily out of those gray-blue eyes of hers. "I want you to think

yourself all out--as clearly as you possibly can--and then write just

what you think," she said. "I want you to feel that I'm never afraid of

anything you may ever write--so long as you're really sure it's true."

I held her a moment in my arms and felt her tremble slightly. And then

she said with her old quiet smile:

"Sue has asked us over to Brooklyn to-night--Joe Kramer is to be there,

too."

"That affair is moving rather fast."

"Oh yes, quite fast," she said cheerfully.

"How will Dad look at it?" I asked.

"As you did," said Eleanore dryly. "He'll look at it and see nothing at

all."

"I've half a mind to tell him!"

"Don't," she said. "If you did he would only get excited, become the

old-fashioned father and order Sue to leave Joe alone--which would be

all that is needed now to make Sue marry Joe in a week."

"Sue is about as selfish," I said hotly, "about as wrapped up in her own

little self----"

"As any girl is who thinks she's in love but isn't sure," said Eleanore.

"Sue isn't sure--poor thing--she's frightfully unsettled."

"But why drag Joe way over there?"

"Because she wants to look at him there. It's her home, you know, her

whole past life, all that she has been used to. It's the place where she

has breakfast. She wants to see how Joe fits in."

"But they'd never live _there_ if they married!"

"Nevertheless," said Eleanore, "that's one of the ways a girl makes up

her mind." She looked pityingly into my eyes. "Women are beyond

you--aren't they, dear?" she murmured.

"J. K. isn't," I rejoined. "And I can't see him in _any_ home!"

"Can't you! Then watch him a little closer the next time he comes to

ours."

I went out for a walk along the docks and tried to picture the coming

strike. When I came home I found Joe there, he had come to go with us to

Brooklyn. He was sitting on the floor with our boy gravely intent on a

toy circus. Neither one was saying a word, but as Joe carefully poised

an elephant on the top of a tall red ladder, I recalled my wife's

injunction. By Jove, he did fit into a home, here certainly was a

different Joe. He did not see me at the door. Later I called to him from

our bedroom:

"Say, Joe. Don't you want to come in and wash?"

He came in, and presently watching him I noticed his glances about our

room. It was most decidedly Eleanore's room, from the flowered curtains

to the warm soft rug on the floor. It was gay, it was quiet and restful,

it was intimately personal. Here was her desk with a small heap of

letters and photographs of our son and of me, and here close by was her

dressing-table strewn with all its dainty equipment. A few invitations

were stuck in the mirror. Eleanore's hat and crumpled white gloves lay

on our bed. I had thrown my coat beside them. There were such things in

this small room as Joe had never dreamed of.

"Oh Joe," said Eleanore from the hall. "Don't you want to come into the

nursery? Somebody wants a pillow fight."

"Sure," said Joe, with a queer little start.

"By the way," I heard her add outside. "Billy told me he saw Mrs. Marsh,

and I should so like to meet her, too. Couldn't you have us all down to

your room some evening?"

"If you like," he answered gruffly.

"I'm honestly curious," Eleanore said, "to see what kind of a person she

is. And I'm sure that Sue is, too. May we bring her with us?"

"Of course you may--whenever you like."

"Would Friday evening be too soon?"

"I'll see if I can fix it."

When Eleanore came in to me, her lips were set tight as though something

had hurt her.

"That was pretty tough," I muttered.

"Yes, wasn't it," she said quickly. "I don't care, I'm not going to have

him marrying Sue. I'm too fond of both of them. Besides, your father has

to be thought of. It would simply kill him!"

* * * * *

"Yes," I thought to myself that night. "No doubt about that, it would

kill him."

How much older he looked, in the strong light of the huge old-fashioned

gas lamp that hung over the dining-room table. He was making a visible

effort to be young and genial. He had not seen Joe in several years, and

he evidently knew nothing whatever of what Joe was up to, except that he

had been ill at our home. Joe spoke of what we had done for him, and Sue

eagerly took up the cue, keeping the talk upon us and "the Indian," to

my father's deep satisfaction. From this she turned to our childhood and

the life in this old house. Dad pictured it all in such glowing colors I

recognized almost nothing as real. But watching Sue's face as she

listened, she seemed to me trying to feel again as she had felt here

long ago when she had been his only chum. Every few moments she would

break off to throw a quick, restless glance at Joe.

When the time came for us to go, my father assured us warmly that he had

not felt so young in years. He said we had so stirred him up that he

must take a book and read or he wouldn't sleep a wink all night. Joe did

not come away with us. As we stood all together at the door, I saw

Eleanore glance into Dad's study where his heavy leather chair was

waiting, and then into the room across the hall where Sue had drawn up

two chairs to the fire. And I thought of the next hour or two. My father

already had under his arm a book on American shipping, which told about

the old despotic sea world of his day, in which there had been no

strikers but only mutineers.

* * * * *

"There's very little time to lose," said Eleanore on the way home.

"Look here," I suggested. "Why don't you talk this out with Sue, and

tell her just what you think of it all?"

"Because," said Eleanore, "what I think and what you think has nothing

whatever to do with the case. Sue would say it was none of our business.

And she'd be quite right. It isn't."

"Aren't we making it our business?" My wife at times gets me so

confused.

"I'm not _telling_ them anything," she rejoined. "I'm only trying to

_show_ them something and let the poor idiots see for themselves. If

they won't see, it's hopeless."

CHAPTER X

On Friday evening Sue sent word that she would be late and that she

would meet us at Joe's room. So we went down without her.

His room had changed since I'd seen it last, I took in at once his

pathetic attempts to fix it up for our coming. Gone were the dirty

curtains, the dirty collars and shirts, and the bed was concealed by an

old green screen borrowed from his landlady, the German saloon-keeper's

wife below. The same woman had scrubbed the floor and put down a faded

rag carpet in front of the old fireplace, in which now a coal fire was

burning. Poor Joe had turned up all the lights to make things bright and

cheerful, but it only showed things up as they were. The room was

glaringly forlorn.

And now that Eleanore had come, her presence made him feel at once what

a wretchedly dreary place it was. Eleanore knew what she wanted to do

and she had dressed herself for the part. And as Joe took in the effect

of her smart little suit, and waited for Sue and Mrs. Marsh, he became

so anxious and gloomy that he could only speak with an effort. He kept

glancing uneasily at the door.

"I don't like the idea," said Eleanore, "of Sue's coming down here alone

at night through this part of town." Joe looked around at her quickly.

"But I suppose," she added thoughtfully, "that she'd have to get used to

queer parts of towns if she ever took up the life you spoke of."

"I don't think that would bother her," Joe answered gruffly.

Presently there was a step on the stairs. He jumped up and went to the

door, and a moment later Sue entered the room.

Immediately its whole atmosphere changed. Sue was plainly excited. She,

too, had dressed herself with care--or rather with a careful neglect.

She wore the oldest suit she had and a simple blouse with a gay red tie.

With one sharp glance at Eleanore, she took in the strained situation

and set about to ease it.

"What a nice old fireplace," she exclaimed. "Let's turn down the lights

and draw 'round the fire. You need more chairs, Joe; go down and get

some."

And soon with the lights turned low and the coals stirred into a ruddy

glow, we were sitting in quite a dramatic place, the scene was set for

"revolution." The curtainless windows were no longer bleak, for through

them from the now darkened room we looked out on the lights of the

harbor. Sue thought the view thrilling, and equally thrilling she found

the last issue of Joe's weekly paper, _War Sure_, which lay on the

table. It was called "Our Special Sabotage Number," and in it various

stokers and dockers, in response to an appeal from Joe, had crudely

written their ideas upon just how the engines of a ship or the hoisting

winches on a dock could be most effectively put out of order in time of

strike. "So that the scabs," wrote one contributor, "can see how they

like it."

"Why not have blue-penciled some of this?" I asked, with a faint

premonition of trouble ahead.

"Because Joe believes in free speech, I suppose," Sue answered for him

quickly.

"I'm not much of a lawyer, Joe," I said. "But this stuff looks to me a

good deal like incitement to violence."

"Possibly," J. K replied.

"You don't look horribly frightened," laughed Sue. And she wanted to

hear all the latest strike news. The time was rapidly drawing near. It

was now close to the end of March and the strike was expected in April.

When Marsh arrived about nine o'clock, there was an awkward moment. For

behind him came his wife and their small daughter, both of whom were

stiffly dressed, and with one glance at Eleanore they felt immediately

out of place. Mrs. Marsh was even more hostile and curt than when I had

seen her last. She was angry at having been dragged into this and took

little pains to hide it.

"My husband would have me come," she said. "And I couldn't leave my

little girl, so I had to bring her along." And she stopped abruptly with

a look that asked us plainly, "Now that I'm here, what do you want?"

"How old is your little girl?" Eleanore inquired.

"Six last month."

"Are you going to put her in school in New York?"

And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her

child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town

they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her

helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing

woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now

and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have

Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made

to tell about her life.

"Don't you ever want to settle down?" she asked when there had come a

pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore.

"Of course she does," he answered. "Did you ever know a woman who

didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks

to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that

comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining

camp." And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, "That's the kind she is,

you little doll."

Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She

placidly folded her dainty gloved hands.

"I should think," she murmured in ladylike tones, "Mrs. Marsh would find

that rather difficult."

"She does," said Marsh aggressively. "But my wife has nerve enough to

stand up to the rough side of life--as the wives of most workingmen

have to--in this rich and glorious land."

"Won't you tell us about it?" asked Eleanore sweetly. "I should be so

interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been

accustomed to."

"Yes," Marsh answered grimly, "I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and

tell them about it."

And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started

out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief,

but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I

wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I

wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in

print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then

by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood

her bitterness.

* * * * *

"Mr. Marsh was born," she said, "in one of the poorest little towns in

Southern Iowa. It was nothing but a hole of a place about six miles from

the county seat where my father was a lawyer. But even in that little

hole his family was the poorest there. I've been all over the States

since then, and I've seen poor people, the Lord knows--but I want to say

I've never seen people anywhere that were any worse off than my husband

was when he was a boy. And yet he got out of it all by himself. He

didn't need any strikes to help him."

"But of course," Sue put in smoothly, "your husband was an exceptional

man." Mrs. Marsh threw her a bitter glance.

"He might have been," she answered.

"What was he like as a boy?" I asked.

"A fighter," she said. For a moment her sharp voice grew proud. "His

father took diabetes and died, and they went into debt to bury him. Jim

helped his mother run the farm and missed half his schooling. But his

teacher loaned him text-books--and at home they had no candles, so he

used to work with his back to the fire--half the night. My father used

to call him a regular little Honest Abe. That's a surprise to you, isn't

it," she added with a hard little laugh.

"But then the town had a sudden boom. A new branch of the railroad came

through that way and houses and stores went up over night. Jim was only

sixteen then, but he grabbed the chance to get into the building. In

less than a year he had earned enough money so he could quit and go to

school. He came over to high school in our town, walking his six miles

twice a day. And that's where I met him.

"My father took a shine to him right off and promised to make him a

lawyer. He loaned him law books the first year, and the second Jim

worked in his office." She looked for a moment at the wall. "I expect

it's not a love story you're after--so I'll leave that part of it out.

Papa was mad when I broke the news--and I can't say I blame him. He was

the richest man in town, the railroad lawyer of the place--and he had

meant that I should go to a polishing school in St. Louis.

"Well, I did go to St. Louis, but I was eloping at the time and I became

Jim's wife. We had a hard fight for a year or two, but we made up our

minds we'd make it go. Jim got a job on a skyscraper which was going up

at that time. I got him his breakfast at six every morning and he got

home about seven at night, and right after supper he went at his

Blackstone and dug into it all evening. As a rule he got to bed at one,

and five hours' sleep was all he had--with a few hours extra Sundays.

"I knew a girl from home in St. Louis whose husband was making money

fast. But Jim was too proud to make use of my friends or go to her home

when we were invited. We missed three card parties on that account. But

she helped me get some pupils and I gave piano lessons. When my baby was

born I had to quit--but I thought we were out of the woods by then, for

Jim was made foreman of his gang and was raised to a hundred dollars a

month. We moved from our boarding house into a flat. I hired a young

Swedish girl and began to feel that I knew where I was.

"But then the building workers struck. Jim had always been popular with

his men, and now he wanted his boss to give them half of what they asked

for. But his boss didn't see it that way at all, and he and Jim had

trouble. The next week Jim decided he wouldn't manage what he called

'scabs.' So he left his employment, went in with the men and made the

strike a great success. That left him leader of their union. The salary

they paid him was eighty dollars instead of a hundred--so I let our

Swedish girl go.

"He said his new position would give him more time to study law. But it

didn't turn out quite that way. He got so wrapped up in his union

affairs that he had no time for his law books. One day I put them up on

a shelf and found he didn't notice it."

Eleanore suddenly tightened at this, a quick sympathy came into her

eyes. Sue gave a restless little sigh.

"He'd be out at meetings most every night," Mrs. Marsh continued. "At

the end of the year he was one of three leaders in a strike of all the

building trades in town. All work of that kind in the city was stopped

and things got very ugly. One night a man came to our flat and informed

me that my husband was in jail. I went to the jail the next morning and

saw him. We had quite a talk. And that afternoon I gave up our flat."

"Why?" asked Eleanore softly.

"I presumed the landlord wished it," said Mrs. Marsh without looking

around. "I took a room in a cheap hotel. Mr. Marsh came out of jail with

ideas that were all new to me. He had left his old trade union and gone

in with a new crowd of men who stood for out-and-out revolution--which I

couldn't understand. But we made the best of it. We went to the theater

that night and then he took the midnight train on one of his first

labor trips. At first these trips were only for a week or so, but as

time went on they grew longer. As a rule I never wrote him because I

never knew his address. On one trip he was away five weeks--and before

he got back there was time enough for my second baby, a little boy, to

be born and die of pneumonia."

Eleanore flinched as though that had hurt. I saw her turn and look at

Sue, who seemed even more restless than before.

"You decided to travel with him then--didn't you?" Eleanore murmured.

"Yes," said the other gruffly. "We used to try to figure out what city

he would likely be in, or at least not far away from--and then my little

girl and I would find a place to board there. It has been like that for

the past four years. In that time we've lived in fourteen places all the

way between here and the Coast."

"Have you lived all the time at hotels?" Eleanore inquired.

"We have," said the woman curtly, "but hardly the kind you're accustomed

to. As a rule, as soon as we reach a town my husband's name appears in

the papers, and on that account the more refined houses wouldn't care to

keep us long."

Eleanore leaned forward, her eyes troubled and intent. She seemed to

have forgotten Sue.

"How do you know they wouldn't?" she asked.

"I found out by trying--twice."

I heard a sudden angry creak in the battered old chair in which Sue was

sitting.

"So my little girl Lucy and I," the embittered voice went on, "go to

hotels that don't ask many questions. We pass the time going to parks or

museums--or now and then to a concert--where I try to give her a taste

for good music."

"Do you find time to keep up your music?" I asked.

"There's time enough," came the quick reply. "You see as a rule I'm just

waiting around. One night in Pittsburgh it was my birthday, and as the

Grand Opera was there for a week and I had never been to one, I got Mr.

Marsh to take me. We made it a regular celebration, with dinner in a

first-class restaurant just for once. But my husband is generally

watched, and the papers all took it up the next day. 'Marsh and wife

dine and see opera after his speech to starving strikers,' or similar

words to that effect."

"Do you see anything of the strikers?" I asked.

"Not much," she replied. "We used to be invited to go to parties at

their homes. But most of them, even the leaders, were Irish, Germans,

Italians or Jews whose wives could barely speak English. I found them

not very pleasant affairs. Some of the wives drank a good deal of beer

and most of them had very little to say. Strike dances were no better.

The wives as a rule sat with their children around the walls--while a

lot of young factory girls, Jewesses for the most part, danced turkey

trots around the hall."

"There were speeches, I suppose?" Sue put in impatiently.

"Yes--Mr. Marsh and others made speeches between dances. They weren't

the kind of affairs I'd been used to in our home town," said Mrs. Marsh.

"I've lost track of the folks at home. I never write and they don't

write me. Only once when my mother knew where I was she sent me a box at

Christmas. Lucy and I got quite excited over that box, it was all the

presents we'd had from outside in quite a line of Christmases. So we

thought we'd celebrate."

"How did you celebrate Christmas?" Eleanore asked softly.

"We went out and bought a tree and candles, some gold balls and popcorn

and all the other fixings. And we popped the corn over the gas that

night. The next day we bought things for each other's stockings. Lucy

was then only four years old, but I'd leave her at a counter and tell

the clerk to let her have all she wanted to buy for me up to a dollar.

That was how we worked it. The next night we had the tree in our room. I

got Mr. Marsh to help me trim it. At last we lit the candles and let

Lucy in from the hotel hall, where she'd nearly caught her death of

cold. Then we opened the box from home. There was a doll for Lucy and a

framed photograph of my mother for me--and for Mr. Marsh a Bible. He got

laughing over that and so did I. And that ended Christmas.

"We had another Christmas last year," she said in a slow, intense sort

of way as though seeing the place as she spoke, "in a mining town in

Montana, where Jim had been in jail five days and the whole place was

under martial law. A major of the militia came to me on Christmas Eve.

He claimed that Jim had been seen by detectives traveling with another

woman and that I was not his wife. They locked me up for two hours that

night as an immoral woman."

Sue was sitting rigid now, her lips pressed tight. And Joe with a

strained unnatural face was staring into the fire.

"But of course," Mrs. Marsh concluded, "most of the time it isn't like

that. As a rule when we come to a city nothing especial happens at all.

We just take a room like the one we have now and wait till the strike is

over. I've got so I have a queer view of towns. I'm always there at the

time of a strike, when crowds of Italians and Poles and Jews fill the

streets on parade or jam into halls and talk about running the world by

themselves. And I guess they're going to do it some day--but I presume

not by to-morrow."

For some time while she was speaking her eyes had been fixed steadily

upon Joe's only picture. It stood on the mantel, a big charcoal sketch

of a crowd of immigrants just leaving Ellis Island. They were of all

races. Uncouth, heavy, stolid, with that hungry hope in all their eyes

for more of the good things of the earth, they seemed like some barbaric

horde about to pour in over the land. With her eyes upon their faces in

deep, quiet hatred this woman from the Middle West had told the story of

her life.

* * * * *

"Well, Sally," said her husband, who had grown restive toward the end,

"I guess that'll do. Let's go on home."

"I'm sure I'm ready," she quickly replied. Now that she had come out of

herself she seemed angry at having told so much.

When they had left there was a silence, which Sue broke with a breath of

impatience.

"What a frightful thing it must be for a man in this work," she

exclaimed, "to have a wife like that! A woman so hard and narrow, so

wrapped up in her own little life, with not a spark of sympathy for any

of his big ideals!"

"I suppose it's the life that has done it," said Eleanore quietly,

looking at Sue.

"I'd like to see some women," Sue retorted angrily, "who have been in

that life for years and years, and _have_ sympathy, have _everything_,

don't care for anything else in the world!" She turned suddenly to Joe.

"You said there were hundreds, didn't you?"

Joe looked back at her a moment. There was a startled, groping,

searching expression in his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "There are hundreds."

"Are many of them married?" Eleanore inquired.

"Some of them are," he answered.

"When a woman who, as Sue has just said, throws herself into this heart

and soul, marries a man who is in it, too, how much of their time can

they spend together?"

"That depends on the kind of work," he said. Eleanore held his eyes with

hers.

"In some cases, I suppose," she went on, "like yours, for example, where

the man's work keeps him moving--if the woman's work wouldn't let her

go with him they would have to be half their time apart."

"Yes."

"As Mrs. Marsh and her husband were at the time when her second baby was

born."

"Yes," said Joe, still watching her.

"Aren't there a good many, too, who don't exactly marry--but marry just

a little--one woman here, another there, and so on?"

"Yes," said Joe, "there are some who do that."

"I should think," said Eleanore thoughtfully, "that in a movement of

this kind a man ought not to marry at all--or else marry a little a good

many times--so as always to be free for the Cause."

"Unless," said Joe, quite steadily, "he finds a woman like some I've

known, whose feeling for a man, one man, seems to be planted in her for

life--who can easily stand not being with him because she herself is

deep in her own job, and her job is about the same as his--and because

the two of them have decided to see the whole job through to the end."

His eyes went up to the charcoal sketch.

"It's a job worth seeing through," he said.

Sue was leaning forward now.

"Where did you get that picture, Joe?" she asked.

"It was an illustration," he said, "for a thing I once had in a

magazine." And then as though almost forgetting us all, his eyes still

upon those immigrant faces, he said with a slow, rough intensity:

"I know every figure in it. I know just where they're strong and where

each one of 'em is weak. I've never made gods out of 'em. But I know

they do all the real work in the world. They're the ones who get all the

rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in

time of peace. They're the ones who are ready to go out on strike and

risk their lives to change all this. They're the people worth spending

your life with. But it's a job for your whole life--and before a man or

a woman jumps in they want to be sure they're ready."

He did not look at Sue as he spoke. He seemed barely able to hold

himself in. His relief was plain when we took her away.

Sue took a car to Brooklyn and we started homeward. Eleanore wanted to

walk for a while. She walked quickly, her face set.

"What do you think of it?" I asked.

"I wasn't thinking of Sue," she said. "I was thinking of Mrs. Marsh.

I've never tormented a woman like that and I never will again in my

life--not for Sue or anyone else--she can marry anybody she likes!"

"Well, she won't marry Joe," I said. "Did you see his face--poor devil?

You've certainly settled that affair."

"Have I?" she asked sharply. And then her curious feminine mind took a

long leap. "And what are _you_ going to be," she asked, "in a year from

now?" I smiled at her.

"Not a second Marsh," I said. "But even if I were the man in the moon,

you'd make a success of being my wife."

"I think I would," said Eleanore. "It must be so quiet up there in the

moon."

CHAPTER XI

"Come over here at once." My father's voice over the telephone, one

morning a few days later, sounded thick and unnatural.

"What about?" I asked.

"Your sister."

When I reached the house in Brooklyn he came himself to let me in and

took me into the library. I was shocked by his face, it was terribly

worn, quite plainly he had been up all night. As he began speaking his

voice shook and he leaned forward, every inch of him tense.

Sue had told him the night before that she was going to marry Joe

Kramer. In reply to his anxious questions she had given him some of the

facts about what Joe was doing. And Dad had stormed at her half the

night.

"She wants to marry him, Billy," he cried. "She's got her mind set on a

man like that! What has he got to support her with? Not a cent, not even

a decent job! He's not writing now. Do you know what he's doing?

Stirring up strikes--of the ugliest kind--of the most ignorant class of

men--foreigners! I know such strikes--I've fought 'em myself and I know

how they're handled! That young man will land in jail! And it's where he

belongs! Do you know what he's up to right here on the docks?"

"Yes, I know----"

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let him come to the house?"

"I was doing my best to stop it, Dad."

"You were, eh--well, you'll stop it now! Understand me, Billy, he's

your friend--you brought him here--way back at the start. You've got to

put a stop to this----"

"But how?" I asked, trying to steady my voice. "What do you think that I

can do?"

"You can talk to her, can't you? God Almighty! Make her see this will

ruin her life!"

"I can't do that."

"Can't you?" He rose and bent over me gripping my arms, and I felt his

violent trembling. "If you don't, it's the end of me," he said.

"Steady, Dad--now steady--this is coming out all right, you know----" I

got him back into his chair. "I'm going to do all I possibly can. I'm

going to see Joe Kramer now--he's the only one who can influence her.

I'm going to get him to come to Sue and help me make her feel what's

ahead--the hardest, ugliest parts of his life. Now promise you'll keep

out of it, promise you'll leave her alone while I'm gone."

He agreed to this at last and I left him. But as I went into the hall

Sue came to me from the other room. Her face was white and strained.

"Well, Billy?" she said. My throat tightened. She looked so pitifully

worn.

"I'm sorry, Sue----"

"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cut in with a quick catch of

her breath.

"No, no." I took her in my arms. "Dear old Sue--don't you know how I

feel? I want to see you happy. I'm trying to see what on earth we can

do."

"Why can't you all leave me alone?" she demanded, in low broken tones.

"That's all I want--I'm old enough! I love him! Isn't that enough? To be

treated like this--like a bad little child! If you'd been here and heard

him--Dad, I mean--I tell you he's half out of his mind! I'm afraid to be

left alone with him!"

"Sue?" It was our father's voice. He had come out close behind us.

"Leave me alone!" Sue started back, but he caught her arm:

"You'll stay right here with me till he comes."

"Till who comes?"

"Kramer."

"Who said he was coming?"

"Your brother."

"Billy!"

"Now, Sis, I'm going to talk to Joe and try to persuade him to see you

and me together, that's all--quietly--over in our apartment."

"No," said our father. "He'll see her right here!"

"Now, Dad----"

"Careful, son, don't get in my way. I'm standing about as much as I can.

Kramer is to come right here. If there's any seeing Sue to be done it's

to be in her home, where she belongs. I won't let her out of it--not for

an hour out of my sight!"

"You'll lock me in here?" she panted. He turned on her.

"You can call the police if you want to." He let go his hold and turned

to me. "I'm thinking of her mother. If she sees this man at all again

I'll see him too."

"Can't you leave us?" I implored her. "Sue--please! Go up to your room!"

When she'd gone I tried to quiet him. And now that Sue was out of the

way I partly succeeded. But he stuck to his purpose. Joe must come and

see Sue here.

"I want to be on hand when she sees him," he insisted. "I don't want to

talk--I've done all that--I won't say a word--but I want to be here. You

think you know her better than I do because you're younger--but you

don't. We've lived right here together--she's been my chum for

twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's

wilful, she's as wild as a hawk--but she can't hold out, she hasn't it

in her."

"She will if you act as you did just now----"

"But I won't," he said sharply. "That was a mistake--and I won't let it

happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy--and if we're beaten

I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that.

But, son, don't make any mistake about this--I have an influence over

this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me

beside her."

He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him.

* * * * *

I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached

for his hat.

"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me:

"Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to

help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any

sleep last night--she's been through hell with that father of hers----"

"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more

of that."

"You mean you think she's faking?"

"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just

now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you."

"That's not exactly your business, is it?"

"It wouldn't be if I didn't know Sue."

"What do you know?"

"I know that in spite of all her talk and the way she acts and honestly

feels whenever she's with you," I replied, "Sue wants to hang on to her

home and us. She isn't the heroic kind. She can't just follow along with

you and leave all this she's used to."

Joe's face clouded a little.

"She'll get over that," he muttered.

"Perhaps she will and perhaps she won't. How do you know? You want to

know, don't you? You want her to be happy?"

"No, that's not what I want most. Being happy isn't the only thing----"

"Then tell her so. That's all I ask. I'll tell you what I've come for,

Joe. You've always been more honest, more painfully blunt and open than

any man I've ever known. Be that way now with Sue. Give her the

plainest, hardest picture you can of the life you're getting her into."

"I've tried to do that already."

"You haven't! If you want to know what you've done I can tell you.

You've painted up this life of yours--and all these things you believe

in--with power enough and smash enough to knock holes through all I

believe in myself. And I'm stronger than Sue--you've done more to her.

What I ask of you now is to drop all the fire and punch of your dreams,

and line out the cold facts of your life on its personal side--what it's

going to be. I'll help draw it out by asking you questions."

"What's the use of that? I know it won't change her!"

"Maybe it won't. But if it won't, at least it'll make my father give up.

Can't you see? If you and I together--I asking and you answering--paint

your life the way it's to be, and she says, 'Good, that's what I

want'--he'll feel she's so far away from him then that he'll throw up

his hands and let her go. He can rest then, we can help him

then--Eleanore and I can--it may save the last years of his life. And

Sue will be free to come to you."

"You mean the more ugly we make it the better."

"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other."

"All right. I agree to that."

* * * * *

When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his

chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious

mental process two memories flashed into my mind. One was of the

towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day

on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had

thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word

should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the

age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of

the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like

a lot of bums--and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in

common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own.

"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?"

"Nothing."

Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had

agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by

her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward,

painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as

though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier

the better," I kept repeating to myself.

"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?"

"No."

"Such as it is, where does it come from?"

"Out of the stokers."

"How much do you get?"

"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I

got three dollars and eighty-seven cents."

"Is that likely to grow steadier?"

"Possibly--more likely worse."

"But can two of you live on pay like that--say an average of ten dollars

a week?"

"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have

children too."

"And you'd expect to live like that?"

"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he

had not heard just right.

"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you?

You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself."

"I hope so--if she wants to--it's my idea of a woman's life."

"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe

in--organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?"

"Yes. She's a good speaker----"

"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let

her support you?"

Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his

hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and

done with." Then he turned quietly back to me.

"Why yes--I'd let her support me," he said.

"You mean you don't care one way or the other. You'd both be working for

what you believe in, and how you lived wouldn't especially count?"

"That's about it."

"What do you believe in, Joe? Just briefly, what's your main idea in

stirring up millions of ignorant men?"

"Mainly to pull down what's on top."

"As for instance?"

"All of it. Business, industry and finance as it's being run at

present."

"A clean sweep. And in place of that?"

"Everything run by the workers themselves."

"For example?" I asked. "The ships by the stokers?"

"Yes, the ships by the stokers," he said. And I felt Dad stiffen in his

chair. "As they will be when the time comes," Joe added.

"How soon will that be?"

"I'll see it," he said.

"The working people in full control. No restraints whatever from above."

"There won't be anyone left above. No more gods," he answered.

"Not even one?"

"Is there one?" he asked.

"You're an atheist, aren't you," I said.

"Yes, when I happen to think of it."

"And Sue would likely be the same."

"Isn't she now?" he inquired. I dropped the point and hurried on.

"How about Sue's friends, Joe? In a life like that--always in

strikes--she'd have to give them up, wouldn't she?"

"Probably. Some of 'em think they're radicals, but I doubt if they'd

come far out of the parlor."

"So her new friends would be either strikers or the people who lead in

strikes. Her life would be practically sunk in the mass."

"I hope so."

"You may be in jail at times."

"Quite probably."

"Sue too?"

"Possibly."

I caught the look in my father's face and knew that I had but a few

moments more.

"Do you want to marry her, Joe?" I asked.

"Yes, I'll go down to City Hall--if a large fat Tammany alderman can

make our love any cleaner."

"You mean you don't believe in marriage."

"Not especially," he said.

"And so if either gets sick of the other he just leaves without any

fuss."

"Naturally."

There was a pause. And then Joe spoke again.

"You're a better interviewer than I thought you were," he said. "You've

made the picture quite complete--as far as you can see it. Of course

you've left all the real stuff out----"

"What is the real stuff, as you call it, young man?" My father's voice

had a deadly ring. Joe turned and looked at him as before.

"You couldn't understand," he said.

"I think I understand enough." Dad rose abruptly and turned to Sue.

"Sue," he said. "Shall I ask your anarchist friend to go?"

I could feel Sue gather herself. She was white.

"I'll have to go with him," she managed to say. A slight spasm shot over

our father's face. For a moment there was silence.

"You've heard all he said of this life of his?"

"Yes."

"And what he wants and expects you to do?"

"I heard it."

"And just how he wants you to live--with nothing you've been used

to--nothing? No money but what a few drunken stokers throw your way, no

decent ideals, no religion, no home?"

Again a pause.

"I want to go with him," she brought out at last.

Dad turned sharply and left the room.

* * * * *

I heard a deep breath behind me. It came from Joe Kramer, whose face was

set in a frown of pain.

"He's so damn old," Joe muttered. "You operated on him hard."

Suddenly Sue threw herself on the lounge. She huddled there shaking and

motioned us off.

"Leave me alone, can't you, go away!" we heard between her sobs. "It's

all right--I'm ready--I'll come to you, Joe--but not now--not just now!

Go away, both of you--leave me alone!"

Joe left the house. Soon after that Eleanore arrived and I told her what

had happened. She went in to Sue, I left them together and went up to

my father's room. He lay on the bed breathing quickly.

"You did splendidly, son," he said. "You slashed into her hard. It hurt

me to listen--but it's all right. Let her suffer--she had to. It hit

her, I tell you--she'll break down! If we can only keep her here! Get

Eleanore!"

He stopped with a jerk, his hand went to his heart, and he panted and

scowled with pain.

"I sent for her," I told him. "She's come and she's in Sue's room now.

Let's leave them alone. It's going to be all right, Dad."

I sent for a doctor who was an old friend of my father's. He came and

spent a long time in the room, and I could hear them talking. At last he

came out.

"It won't do," he said. "We can't have any more of this. We must keep

your sister out of his sight. She can't stay alone with him in this

house, and she can't go now to your anarchist friend. If she does it may

be the end of your father. Suppose you persuade her to come to you."

But here Eleanore joined us.

"I have a better plan," she said. "I've been talking to Sue and she has

agreed. She's to stay--and we'll move over here and try to keep Sue and

her father apart."

"What about Joe?" I asked her.

"Sue has promised me not to see Joe until the strike is over. It will

only be a matter of weeks--perhaps even days--it may break out

to-morrow. It's not much of a time for Joe to get married--besides, it's

the least she can do for her father--to wait that long. And she has

agreed. So that much is settled."

She went home to pack up a few things for the night. When she came back

it was evening. She spent some time with Sue in her room, while I stayed

in with father. I gave him a powder the doctor had left and he was soon

sleeping heavily.

At last in my old bedroom Eleanore and I were alone. It was a long time

before we could sleep.

"Funny," said Eleanore presently, "how thoroughly selfish people can be.

Here's Sue and your father going through a perfectly ghastly crisis. But

I haven't been thinking of them--not at all. I've been thinking of

us--of you, I mean--of what this strike will do to you. You're getting

so terribly tense these days."

I reached over and took her hand:

"You don't want me to run away from it now?"

"No," she said quickly. "I don't want that. I've told you that I'm not

afraid----"

"Then we'll have to wait and see, won't we, dear? We can't help

ourselves now. I've got to keep on writing, you know--we depend on that

for our living. And I can't write what I did before--I don't seem to

have it in me. So I'm going into this strike as hard as I can--I'm going

to watch it as hard as I can and think it out as clearly. I know I'll

never be like Joe--but I do feel now I'm going to change. I've got

to--after what I've been shown. The harbor is so different now. Don't

you understand?"

I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine.

"Yes, dear," she said, "I understand----"

CHAPTER XII

The events of that day dropped out of my mind in the turbulent weeks

that followed. For day by day I felt myself sink deeper and deeper into

the crowd, into surging multitudes of men--till something that I found

down there lifted me up and swept me on--into a strange new harbor.

Of the strike I can give only one man's view, what I could see with my

one pair of eyes in that swiftly spreading confusion that soon embraced

the whole port of New York and other ports both here and abroad. War

correspondents, I suppose, must feel the same chaos around them, but in

my case it rose from within me as well. I was like a war correspondent

who is trying to make up his mind about war. What was good in this labor

rebellion? What was bad? Where was it taking me?

From the beginning I could feel that it meant for me a breaking of ties

with the safe strong world that had been my life. I felt this first

before the strike, when I went to my magazine editor. He had taken my

story about Jim Marsh, but when I came to him now and told him that I

wanted to cover the strike,

"Go ahead if you like," he answered, a weary indulgence in his tone, "I

don't want to interfere in your work. But I can't promise you now that

we'll buy it. If you feel you must write up this strike you'll have to

do it at your own risk."

"Why?" I asked. For years my work had been ordered ahead. I thought of

that small apartment of ours, of my father sick at home--and I felt

myself suddenly insecure.

"Because," he answered coolly, "I'm not quite sure that what you write

will be a fair unbiassed presentation of the facts. I've seen so many

good reporters utterly spoiled in strikes like this. They lose their

whole sense of proportion and never seem to get it quite back."

This little talk left me deeply disturbed. But I was unwilling to give

up my plan, and so, after some anxious thinking, I decided to free-lance

it. After all, if this one story didn't sell I could borrow until I

wrote something that did. And I set to work with an angry vim. The very

thought that my old world was closing up behind me made my mind the more

ready now for the new world opening ahead.

From the old house in Brooklyn I once more explored my harbor. All day

and the greater part of each night I went back over my old ground. Old

memories rose in sharp contrast to new views I was getting. From the top

I had come to the bottom. Crowds of sweating laborers rose everywhere

between me and my past. And as between me and my past, and between these

masses and their rulers, I felt the struggle drawing near, the whole

immense region took on for me the aspect of a battlefield, with puffs

and clouds and darting lines of smoke and steam from its ships and

trains and factories. Through it I moved confusedly, troubled and

absorbed.

I saw the work of the harbor go now with an even mightier rush, because

of the impending strike. The rumor of its coming had spread far over the

country, and shippers were hurrying cargoes in. I saw boxes and barrels

by thousands marked "Rush." And they were rushed! On one dock I saw the

dockers begin at seven in the morning and when I came back late in the

evening the same men were there. At midnight I went home to sleep. When

I came back at daybreak the same men were there, and I watched them

straining through the last rush until the ship sailed that day at noon.

They had worked for twenty-nine hours. In that last hour I drew

close--so close that I could feel them heaving, sweating, panting, feel

their laboring hearts and lungs. Long ago I had watched them thus, but

then I had seen from a different world. I had felt the pulse of a nation

beating and I had gloried in its speed. But now I felt the pulse-beats

of exhausted straining men, I saw that undertaker's sign staring fixedly

from across the way. "_Certainly_ I'm talking to you!" Six thousand

killed and injured!

I saw accidents that week. I saw a Polish docker knocked on the head by

the end of a heavy chain that broke. I saw a little Italian caught by

the foot in a rope net, swung yelling with terror into the air, then

dropped--his leg was broken. And toward the end of a long night's work I

saw a tired man slip and fall with a huge bag on his shoulders. The bag

came down on top of him, and he lay there white and still. Later I

learned that his spine had been broken, that he would be paralyzed for

life.

But what I saw was only a part. From the policemen's books alone I found

a record for that week of six dockers killed and eighty-seven injured. I

traced about a score of these cases back into their tenement homes, and

there I found haggard, crippled men and silent, anxious women, the

mothers of small children. Curious and deeply thrilled, these children

looked at the man on the bed, between his groans of pain I heard their

eager questions, they kept getting in their mother's way. One thin

Italian mother, whose nerves were plainly all on edge, suddenly slapped

the child at her skirts, and then when it began to cry she herself burst

into tears.

These tragic people gripped me hard. The stokers down in their foul hole

in the bottom of the ship had only disturbed and repelled me. But these

crippled dockers in their homes, with their women and their children,

their shattered lives, their agony, starvation looming up ahead--they

brought a tightening at my throat--nor was it all of pity. For these

labor victims were not dumb, I heard the word "strike!" spoken bitterly

here, and now I felt that they had a right to this bitter passion of

revolt.

But still I felt their way was wrong. How could any real good, any sure

intelligent remedies for all this fearful misery, come out of the minds

of such people as these, who were rushing so blindly into revolt? I went

into saloons full of dockers and stokers, and out of the low harsh

hubbub there the word "strike!" came repeatedly to my ears, recklessly

from drunken tongues. Wherever I went I heard that word. I heard it

spoken in many languages, in many tones. Anxious old women said

"strike!" with fear. Little street urchins shouted it joyously. Even the

greenest foreigner understood its meaning. A little Greek, who had

broken his arm and was one of the cases I traced home, understood none

of my questions. "You speak no English?" He shook his head. "Strike!" I

ventured. Up he leaped. "Yo' bet!" he cried emphatically.

What was it deep within me that leaped up then as though to meet that

burning passion in his eyes?

"Keep your head," I warned myself. "To change all this means years of

work--thinking of the clearest kind. And what clear thinking can these

men do? The ships have got them down so low they've no minds left to get

out of their holes!"

And yet--as now on every dock, that "strike feeling" in the air kept

growing tenser, tenser--its tensity crept into me. What was it that lay

just ahead? I felt like a man starting out on a journey--a journey from

which when he comes back he will find nothing quite the same.

I had a talk about the strike one day with Eleanore's father. I can

still see the affectionate smile on his face, he looked as though he

were seeing me off.

"My dear boy," he said, in his kind quiet voice, "don't forget for even

a minute that the men who stand behind my work are going to stamp out

this strike. This modern world is too complex to allow brute force and

violence to wreck all that civilization has done. I'm sorry you've gone

into this--but so long as you have, as Eleanore's father, I want you now

to promise you won't write a line until the strike is over and you have

had plenty of time to get clear. Don't let yourself get swamped in

this--remember that you have a wife and a small son to think of."

My father had put it more sharply. He was out of bed now and he seemed

to take strength from the news reports that he eagerly read of the

struggle so fast approaching.

"At sea," he said, "when stokers try to quit their jobs and force their

way on deck, they're either put in irons or shot down as mutineers.

You'll see your friend Kramer dead or in jail. No danger to your sister

now. Only see that _you_ keep out of it!"

I did not tell him of my work, for I knew it would only excite him

again, and excitement would be dangerous.

"Now you and Eleanore must go home," said Sue that night. "You'll have

enough to think of. I'll be all right with father--he knows there's

nothing to do but wait, and he's so kind to me now that it hurts. Poor

old Dad--how well he means. But he's the old and we're the new--and

that's the whole trouble between us." A sudden light came in her eyes.

"The new are bound to win!" she said.

But I was not so sure of the new. To me it was still very vague and

chaotic. After we had moved back to New York, at the times when I came

home to sleep, Eleanore was silent or quietly casual in her remarks, but

I felt her always watching me. One night when I came in very late and

thought her asleep, being too tired to sleep myself, I went to our

bedroom window and stood looking off down, into the distant expanse of

the harbor. How quiet and cool it seemed down there. But presently out

of the darkness behind, Eleanore's arm came around me.

"I wonder whether the harbor will ever let us alone," she said. "It was

so good to us at first--we were getting on so splendidly. But it's

taking hold of us now again--as though we had wandered too far away and

were living too smoothly and needed a jolt. Never mind, we're not

afraid. Only let's be very sure we know what we are doing."

"We'll be very sure," I whispered, and I held her very close.

"Let's try to be sure together," she said. "Don't leave me out--I want

to be in. I want to see as much as I can--and help in any way I can. If

you make any friends I want to know them. Remember that whatever comes,

thy people shall be mine, my dear."

* * * * *

The next day the strike began.

Out of the docks at nine in the morning I saw dockers pour in crowds.

They moved on to other docks, merged themselves in other crowds,

scattered here and gathered there, until at last a black tide of men,

here straggling wide, here densely massed, moved slowly along the

waterfront.

In and out of these surging throngs I moved, so close that in the quiver

of muscles, the excited movements of big limbs, the rough eagerness of

voices that spoke in a babel of many tongues, such a storm of emotions

beat in upon me that I felt I had suddenly dived into an ocean of human

beings, each one of whom was as human as I. I caught a glimpse of Joe

hurrying by. And I thought of Sue, and of Joe's appeal to her and to me

to throw in our lives with such strangers as these whose coarse heavy

faces were pressing so close. And I thought of Eleanore at home. "Thy

people shall be mine, my dear."

Teamsters drove clattering trucks through the crowds. Some of them did

not unload, but others dumped piles of freight by the docks. The dam had

begun. All day long the freight piled up, and by evening the light of a

pale moon shone down upon acres of barrels and boxes. Then the teamsters

unharnessed their teams, left the empty trucks with poles in air, and

the teamsters and their horses and all the crowds of strikers scattered

by degrees up into the tenement regions. Bursts of laughter and singing

came now and then out of the saloons.

Silence settled down over the docks. Walking now down the waterfront I

met only a figure here and there. A taxi came tearing and screeching by,

and later down the long empty space came a single wagon slowly. A smoky

lantern swung under its wheels, and its old white horse with his shaggy

head down came plodding wearily along. He alone had no strike feeling.

Battered and worn from the day's impressions I wanted to be alone and to

think. I made my way in and out among trucks and around a dockshed out

to a slip. It was filled with barges, tugs and floats jammed in between

the two big vessels that loomed one at either pier. It was a dark jumble

of spars and masts, derricks, funnels and cabin roofs, all shadowy and

silent. A single light gleamed here and there from the long dark deck of

the Morgan coaster close to my right. She was heavily loaded still, for

she had come to dock too late. Smoke still drifted from her stout

funnel, steam puffed now and then from her side. Behind her, reaching a

mile to the North, were ships by the dozen, coasters and great ocean

liners, loaded and waiting to discharge or empty and waiting to reload.

And to the South were miles of railroad sheds already packed to

bursting. I thought of the trains from all over the land still rushing a

nation's produce here, and of the starlit ocean roads, of ships coming

from all over the world, the men in their fiery caverns below feeding

faster the fires to quicken their speed, all bringing cargoes to this

port. More barrels, boxes, crates and bags to be piled high up on the

waterfront. For the workers had gone away from their work, and the great

white ships were still.

"What has all this to do with me?"

There came into my mind the picture of a little man I had seen that day,

a suburban commuter by his looks, frowning from a ferryboat upon a

cheering crowd of strikers. I laughed to myself as I thought of him. He

had seemed so ludicrously small.

"Yes, my friend," I thought, "you and I are a couple of two-spots here,

swallowed up in the scenery."

I thought of what Joe had said that day: "When you see the crowd, in a

strike like this, loosen up and show all it could be if it had the

chance--that sight is so big it blots you out--you sink--you melt into

the crowd."

Something like that happened to me. I had seen the multitudes "loosen

up," I had felt myself melt into the crowd. But I had not seen what they

could be nor did I see what they could do. Far to the south, high over

all the squalid tenement dwellings, rose that tower of lights I had

known so well, the airy place where Eleanore's father had dreamed and

planned his clean vigorous world. It was lighted to-night as usual, as

though nothing whatever had happened. I thought of the men I had seen

that day. How crassly ignorant they seemed. And yet in a few brief hours

they had paralyzed all that the tower had planned, reduced it all to

silence, nothing. Could it be that such upheavals as these meant an end

to the rule of the world from above, by the keen minds of the men at the

top? Was that great idol which had been mine for so many glad years,

that last of my gods, Efficiency, beginning to rock a little now upon

its deep foundations?

What could these men ever put in its place? I recalled the words of an

old dock watchman with whom I had talked the evening before. From the

days of the Knights of Labor he had been through many strikes, and all

had failed, he told me. His dog sat there beside him, a solemn old red

spaniel, looking wistfully into his master's face. And with somewhat the

same expression, looking out on the moonlit Hudson, the old striker had

said slowly:

"Before these labor leaders will do half of what they say--a pile of

water will have to go by."

A sharp slight sound behind me jerked me suddenly out of my thoughts. I

jumped as though at a shot. How infernally tight my nerves were getting.

The sound had come from a mere piece of paper blown by the wind--a rough

salt wind which now blew in from the ocean as though impatient of all

this stillness. From below came a lapping and slapping of waves. Above

me a derrick mast growled and whined as it rocked. And now as I looked

about me all those densely crowded derricks moved to and fro against the

sky. I had never felt in this watery world such deep restlessness as

now.

"I wonder if you'll ever stop heaving," I thought half angrily. "I

wonder what I'll be like when you finally get through with me. When will

you ever let me stand pat and get things settled for good and all? When

stop this endless starting out?"

CHAPTER XIII

What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they

had stilled?

At first only chaos.

As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep

under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I

would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of

angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes

at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some

talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the

streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing

wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And

to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an

appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had

been to hope. The harbor held no miracles.

The strike leaders seemed to have little control. Headquarters were in

the wildest disorder. Into the big bare meeting hall and through the

rooms adjoining drifted multitudes of men. There were no inner private

rooms and Marsh saw everyone who came. He was constantly shaking hands

or drawling casual orders, more like suggestions than commands. I caught

sight of Joe Kramer's face at his desk, where he was signing and giving

out union cards to a changing throng that kept pressing around him.

Joe's face was set and haggard. He had been at that desk all night.

"It's hopeless. They can do nothing," I thought.

But when I came back the next morning I felt a sudden shock of

surprise. For in some mysterious fashion a crude order had appeared. The

striker throng had poured into the hall, filled all the seats and then

wedged in around the walls. They were silent and attentive now. On the

stage sat Marsh and his fellow leaders. Before them in the first three

rows of seats was the Central Committee, a rough parliament sprung up

over night. Each member, I found, had been elected the night before by

his "district committee." These district bodies had somehow formed in

the last two days and in them leaders had arisen. The leaders were here

to plan together, the mass was here to make sure they planned right. And

watching the deep rough eagerness on all those silent faces, that vague

hope stirred again in my breast.

Presently I caught Joe's eye. At once he left his platform seat and came

to me in the rear of the hall.

"Come on, Bill," he said. "We want you up here." And we made our way up

to the platform. There Marsh reached over and gripped my hand.

"Hello, Bill, glad you're with us," he said. I tingled slightly at his

tone and at a thousand friendly eyes that met mine for an instant. Then

it was over. The work went on.

What they did at first seemed haphazard enough. Reports from the

districts were being read with frequent interruptions, petty corrections

and useless discussions that strayed from the point and made me

impatient. And yet wide vistas opened here. Telegrams by the dozen were

read from labor unions all over the country, from groups of socialists

East and West, there were cables from England, Germany, France, from

Russia, Poland, Norway, from Italy, Spain and even Japan. "Greetings to

our comrades!" came pouring in from all over the earth. What measureless

army of labor was this? All at once the dense mass in the rear would

part to let a new body of men march through. These were new strikers to

swell the ranks, and at their coming all business would stop, there

would be wild cheers and stamping of feet, shrill whistles, pandemonium!

Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first

"strike feeling"--diffused, shifting and uncertain--was condensing as in

a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly

to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of

that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was

to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the

common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when

they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great

spirit of the crowd was born.

For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown

out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and

thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once

transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in

applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence

in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will

through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few

moments, then sat down and were lost to sight--some to rise later again

and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be

seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had

made them rise and speak.

On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was

no committeeman but simply a member of the throng.

"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two--East

Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing

heavily.

"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from

across the hall.

"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically.

"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst of laughter, and

the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went

on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough,

you Pollock."

The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light

his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The

next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of

the hall.

"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him,

it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a

glow of pride.

A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was

so wonderful that no one could understand.

"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said.

"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass

backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come

forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets

a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one

checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we

need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?"

There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of

it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely.

"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of

the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a

Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between

nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says

he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians."

Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached

often on Sundays.

"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights. Let us desist--let

us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last

speaker came from Norway--he came from way up there in the North. My

father came from Africa----"

"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of

the hall, and there was a laugh.

"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At

my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us

in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?"

"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted.

"They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in

boats from the South. And you scabbed--you scabbed yourself! Didn't you?

You did! You ---- of a nigger!"

A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He

was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie:

"Fellow workers--I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop--you

call another man Coon, Nigger--you call another man a Sheeny! Stop

calling names--call men fellow workers! We are on strike--let us not

fight each other--let us have peace--let us have a good time! I know a

man who has a big boat--and he say now we can have it for nothing--to

take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat

we will have a good time. I am a musician--I play the violin on a boat

till I strike--so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that

boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock--we have

our own stokers, our own engineers--we have our own pilots--we have all!

And it will be easy to steer that boat--for we have made the harbor

empty--we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon

we have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be free!

All battle boats we shall sink in the sea--we stop all wars! So now we

begin--we stop all our fighting--we take out this boat--all our

comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow

workers--I tell you the name of our boat! _The Internationale!_"

The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For

the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to

put it down. _The Internationale_ made her first trip on the following

day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the

strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their

wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The

little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet,

"Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat

while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was

he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and

longings of all the toilers on the sea--while this ship that was run by

the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it

one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of

song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were

singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out

over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant

prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away--and still I sat

there wondering.

"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves--and we shall be

free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So

now we begin!"

Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that

would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it

merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep

compelling force was here--this curious power of the crowd that had so

suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on

excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour

into music the fire of its world-wide dreams?

I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A

stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely

dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech

before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could

not control.

"Comrades--fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and

set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I

know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We

have thousands of kids and old people--sick people too, and cripples and

drunks--all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs.

They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor

'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does

anyone know about that?"

She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the

platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to

what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been

waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her

question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they

could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for

nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean

liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who

had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again

and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first

relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in

charge.

I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was

Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I

want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"--I

thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would be good at this,

she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at

once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey,

though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be

kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two

became fast friends.

Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a

typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public

halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her

food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes,

looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food.

She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she

began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the

city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one

night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in

Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was

not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed

as though she had jumped to another world.

Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker

friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers

and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt

myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one

I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With

a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its

strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What

could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon

and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty

problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those

men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast

experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense,

heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would

find only chaos.

But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would

be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge

personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world

set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they

bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here--which

day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to

feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And

this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years

I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to

shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his

self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving

day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred

bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse

together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to

me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion

for the freedom of mankind.

Was this another god of mine?

CHAPTER XIV

The great voice of the crowd--incessant, demanding of me and of all

within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new

free world regardless of all risk to ourselves--grew clear to me now.

I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity

work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the

press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow

and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself

at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the

night--slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the

habit of asking:

"How much can _we_ do? How sane and vigilant can _we_ be to keep clear

of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold

together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?"

In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling

strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold

meetings out on "the Farm." There are many "farms" on the waterfront,

for a "farm" is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But

this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as

"the Farm," and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes

here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For

them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by--in one of

those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on.

From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the

end of a soft April day, I saw the whole Farm massed solid with people.

This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity over the piles of brick

and sand and of crates and barrels dumped by the trucks, and out over

the water they covered the barges and the tugs, and there were even

hundreds upon the roofs of docksheds. The yelp of a dog was heard now

and then and the faint cries of children. But the mass as a whole stood

motionless, without a sound. They had stood thus since two o'clock, and

now the sun was setting. To the west the harbor was empty, no smoke from

ships obscured the sun, and it shone with radiant clearness upon eleven

races of men, upon Italians, Germans, French, on English, Poles and

Russians, on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies, on

figures burly, figures puny, faces white and faces swarthy, yellow,

brown and black. The sun shone upon all alike--except where that Morgan

liner, still lying unloaded at her dock, threw a long dark creeping

shadow out across the throng.

Thirty thousand people were here. Thirty thousand intensely alive. As I

eagerly watched their faces it was not their poverty now but their

boundless fresh vitality that took hold of me so hard. I had read many

radical books of late, in my groping for a foothold, and I had found

most of them dry affairs. But now the crowd through its leaders had laid

hold upon the thoughts in these books, had made them its own and so

given them life. In the process the thoughts had been twisted and bent,

some parts ignored and others brought out of all their nice proportions.

Exaggeration, sentiment, all kinds of crudity were here. But it was

crudity alive, a creed was here in action. Out of all the turmoil, the

take and give, the jar and clash back there in the meeting hall, had

come certain thoughts and passions, hopes and plans, that the multitude

had not ignored or hooted but had caught up and cheered into life. And

these ideas that they had cheered were now being pounded back into their

minds. Monotonous repetition, you say? Yes, monotonous repetition--slow

sledgehammer blows upon something red hot--pounding, pounding,

pounding--that when it cooled its shape might be changed.

Nora Ganey was speaking.

"Look at those ocean liners!" she cried. Her voice was sharp and

strident. "They're paralyzed now, and because they are they're costing

the big companies millions of dollars every day. That's what their time

is worth to their owners. But what are those ships worth to you? Ten

dollars a week and a broken arm--or a leg or a skull, you can take your

choice. Six thousand of you men were crippled or crushed to death last

year--and that, let me remind you, was only in the port of New York. Why

was it? Why did it have to be? And why will it always have to be until

you make these ships your own? Because, fellow workers, the time of the

ships is worth so much to their owners that the work has got to be

rushed day and night--and in that rush somebody's bound to get hurt--if

he isn't killed he's lucky! And as for the rest, when at last you're

through and dead tired--they point to the saloons and say, 'Now have a

few drinks! We won't need you again till next Tuesday'! Do you know what

all this means in your homes? It means drunks, cripples, sick and poor!

It means such sights as I'll never forget. I've seen 'em all--just

lately!

"I never thought of such things before. I liked my office job on the

dock and all the jobs around me--and when sailing time drew near I liked

the last excitement. I liked the rich furs and dresses and the cute

little earrings and slippers and dogs that were attached to the women

who came. I liked to see them pile out of their motors and laugh and

make eyes at the men they belonged to. I liked to peep into the cabins

they had--get on to all the luxuries there.

"But out of all this magnificence, friends, and this work that keeps it

going--I saw one day a man come on a stretcher. He was dead. And that

started me thinking. That's why I came out when the strike was called.

And in the strike I've gone into your homes. I've seen what those soft

expensive female dolls and all the work that makes them costs. And I've

got a thrill of another kind! It's a thrill that'll last for the rest of

my life! And in yours, too, fellow workers! For I believe that you'll go

right on--that you'll strike and strike and strike again--till you make

these tenements own these ships--and a life won't be thrown away for a

dollar!"

She stopped sharply and stepped back, and there burst out a frenzy of

applause, which died down to be caught up and prolonged and deepened

into a steady roar, as Marsh came slowly forward. He stood there

bareheaded, impassive and quiet, listening to the great voice of the

mass. At last he turned to the chairman. The latter picked up a whistle,

and at that piercing call to order slowly the cheering began to subside.

Faces pressed eagerly closer. Marsh looked all around him.

"Fellow workers," he began, "it's hard for a man to be understood when

he's talking to men from all over the world." He pointed down to a

cluster of Lascars with white turbans on their heads. "_You_ don't

understand me. But some of your comrades will give you my speech, for we

are all strike brothers here. On the ship there is no flag--on the ship

there is no nation--on the ship there is only work--on the ship there

are only the workers!

"For a ship may be equipped with the most powerful engines to drive

her--she may have the best brains to direct her course--but the ship

can't sail until you go aboard! You're the men who make the ships of

use, you're the men who give value to the stock of all the big ship

companies! You are the ship industry--and to you the ship industry

should belong!

"I want you now to think of a tombstone. Out in the Atlantic, two miles

down they tell me, a big ship is stuck with her bow in the ooze of the

ocean floor and her stern six hundred feet up in the water. In the cold

green light down there she looks like a tombstone--and she is packed

with dead people inside. She is there because where she should have had

lifeboats she had French cafes instead, and sun parlors for the ladies.

Some of these ladies went down with the ship, and we heard a lot about

their screams. But we haven't heard much of the cries for help of the

thousands of men who go down every year in rotten old ships upon the

seas! Nor have we heard of the millions more who are killed on land--on

the railroads, in the mines and mills and stinking slums of cities!

"But now we've decided that cries like these are to be heard all over

the world. For we've only got one life apiece--we're not quite sure of

another. And because we do all the work that is done we want all the

life there is to be had! All the life there is to be had--that's what we

are striking for! That is our share of the life in this world! And until

we get our share this labor war will have no end! Other wars may come

and go--but under them all on land and sea this war of ours will go

steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will swallow up in all your

minds all hatred of your brother men! For you they will be workers all!

With them you will rise--and the world will be free!"

* * * * *

When the long stormy din of cheers had little by little died away Joe

Kramer began the last speech of the day. He had eaten and slept little,

he had lived on coffee and cigarettes, and there was a strained look in

his deep eyes as he rose up lean and gaunt by my side.

"I'm here to-day to speak to the men who work in stokeholes naked," he

said. "I'm here to talk of the lives you lead--the lives that millions

before you have led--for a few brief years--and then they have died. For

lives in stokeholes are not long. And before I begin I propose that we

stand for a moment with uncovered heads." He looked out over the

multitude as though seeing far beyond them, and his voice was as harsh

as the look in his eyes. "As a tribute to all the dead stokers," he

said.

And in a breathless silence the multitude did what he had asked. Joe

broke this silence sharply.

"Now for life and the living," he said. "Why was it that those men all

died? What has the change from sails to steam done to the lives of the

men at sea?

"The old sailor at least had air to breathe. But what you breathe is red

hot gas--I know because I've been there. There is a gong upon the wall,

and when it clangs you heave in coal, and if when it clangs faster you

don't keep quite up to its pace, a white light flashes out of the wall,

and that light is the Chief Engineer's way of saying, 'God damn you,

keep up those fires down there! Time is money! Who are you?'

"The old-time sailor lived on deck. He had the winds, the sun and the

stars. But you live down between steel walls--with only the glare of

electric lights in which you sleep and eat and sweat. You work at all

kinds of irregular hours, for you there is no day or night. You don't

know whether the millionaire and his last and loveliest wife are

drinking champagne before going to bed, in their cabin de luxe above

you, or taking their coffee the next day at noon. You don't know about

anything way up there--unless you go up as I've seen you do, half out of

your senses from the heat, and make a sudden jump for the rail. The cry

is heard--'Man overboard!'--then shrieks and a chorus of 'Oh-my-God's!'

And then somebody says, 'It's only a stoker.'"

He stopped short, and at the sudden roar of the crowd I saw him frown

and quiver. He drew a deep, slow breath and went on:

"They threw off all the good in the ship with sails--but they carefully

kept all that was bad. The old mutiny laws--they kept all that.

Undermanning of crews--they kept all that. The waterfront sharks--they

kept all that. But there was one thing they couldn't keep--the old

sailor's habit of standing all this! He had run away to sea as a boy,

he'd been kicked all his life by the bucko mate into a state where he

couldn't kick back. But with you men it is not so. Among all the

thousands standing here most were on shore a few years ago, and you took

your land views with you on board. You organized seamen's unions. The

one in this country was meek and mild. It did not strike, it went on its

knees to Congress instead, and here's part of the written petition it

made. 'We raise our manacled hands in humble supplication--and we pray

that the nations of the earth issue a decree for our emancipation--restore

us our rights as brother men.' But Congress had no ear for you then.

Sailors are men who have no votes. And so you failed in your pleading.

"But in the labor movement there seems to be no such word as fail! You

have not given up your union--instead you have formed one of a kind more

dangerous to your masters! You have not made smaller your requests--no,

you are now demanding more! And instead of asking for merciful laws you

are saying, 'We are done with your laws, will have none of your laws,

will break your laws when they come in our way!'

"And what do your masters answer? Here are thousands of deserters--every

man here has broken the law by leaving his ship! But have they tried to

arrest you? No! They're afraid to arrest twenty thousand men, they're

afraid of this strike, they're afraid of you! They're so almighty scared

downtown that though we've been only a week on strike they've already

sent their commands to their Congress to give us what merciful laws we

like. They're scared because we've thrown over their laws--because they

know that we now see our power--to stop all their ships and the trade of

their land and send their stock market into a panic!

"And now do you know what I want you to do? I want you to look at their

ships, at their docks, at their harbor, men--and laugh--laugh! Don't you

see there's no need of violence? Laugh! In old times the people built

barricades. You don't need barricades nor any guns--all you've got to do

is to stand here and laugh! Look at all you have done to your

bosses--and laugh! To this town, to this nation--and laugh, laugh!

Look--and think--of what you _can_ do--all you--and you--and you--and

you--by just folding your arms! Think of all you _will_ do! And

laugh--laugh! Laugh! Laugh!"

He broke off with both arms raised, and there followed one moment

without a sound. Then suddenly, quick and hard and clear, from a corner

of this human ocean, I heard a single peal of laughter. In an instant

scores joined in. Rising in outbursts here and there, deepening, rushing

out over the Farm, it gathered and rolled in wave on wave, rising,

always rising. And it swelled into such a laugh that I saw the police

feel for their clubs. Reporters scrambled for high places, turned their

kodaks on it all. Women snatched up their babies in terror and ran.

Marsh stepped forward, caught Joe by the arm and jerked him back to

where I was standing. I gripped Joe's hand, it was icy cold.

Marsh shouted to the chairman, and the piercing whistle for order was

heard. But it took a long time for that laugh to die. Long after the

meeting had broken up I saw groups gather together, and presently they

would begin to laugh, and their laughter would take on again that same

convulsive tensity. I heard small clusters laughing, and dense throngs

in hot saloons where the low rooms would echo and double the roar.

Late at night out on the waterfront, under the bow of that Morgan ship,

I found two strikers smoking their pipes, and I sat down and lighted

mine. One was a Lascar, the other a Pole. In the strike these wanderers

over the earth had met on the waterfront under a wagon where each had

come to sleep the night. Since then they had become good friends. Each

spoke a little English, each one had caught bits here and there from the

speeches made that afternoon--and they had been trying to pool what

they'd heard, trying to find why it was they had laughed. As now I tried

to give them the gist of what Joe Kramer had said, from time to time

they would glance up at the big ship they had paralyzed and chuckle

softly to themselves.

Then I went on to Marsh's speech. And out there in the darkness I could

feel their rough faces, one white and one brown, grow deeply, eagerly

intent, as these strike brothers listened to the voice that had spoken

the dream of the crowd:

"Other wars may come and go--but under them all on land and sea this war

of ours will go steadily on--will swallow up all other wars--will

swallow up in all your minds all hatred of your brother men. For you

they will be workers all. With them you will rise--and the world will be

free."

CHAPTER XV

To all this, from the buildings far downtown that loomed like tall grim

shadows, the big companies said nothing.

But that same night, while I sat talking to those two men, we heard a

sharp excited cry. We saw a man behind us running along the line of

saloons. From these and from the tenements came pouring angry throngs of

men. And out of the hubbub I caught the words,

"They're bringing in the scabs! By boat!"

Past a watchman that I knew I ran into a dockshed and out to the open

end of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty

harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro

laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats

throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories,

from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!"

One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk

inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were

"scabs" that night. Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had

taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of

police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food

and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of

winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping

up into the ship--and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble

ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun.

I heard a quick voice at my elbow:

"Say. What the hell are _you_ doing here!" I turned to the Pinkerton man

by my side:

"I'm reporting this strike."

"No you're not, you're in here to report what you see to the strikers.

Now don't let's have any words, my friend, we've seen you in their

meeting-hall and we've all got your number. Go on out where you belong!"

So I went out where I belonged.

I went out to the crowd--but I found it changed, split up into furious

swarms of men, I found the beginning of chaos here. And the world that I

had left behind, the old world of order and rule from above, which I had

all but forgotten of late, now sharply made its presence felt. For the

god I had once known so well was neither dead nor sleeping. Behind

closed doors, the doors that had flown open once to show me every

courtesy, it had been silently laying plans and sending forth orders or

"requests" to all those in its service.

The next day the newspapers changed their tone. Until now they had given

us half the front page. Every statement I had written had been printed

word for word. The reporters had been free to dig columns of "human

interest stuff" out of the rich mine of color here, and they had gone at

it hungrily, many with real sympathy. You would have thought the entire

press was on the side of the strikers, at times it had almost seemed to

me as though the entire country had risen in revolt. But now all this

was suddenly stopped, and in its place the front pages were filled with

news of a very different kind. "Big Companies Move at Last," were the

headlines, "Work of Breaking Strike Begun." The first ship would sail

that evening, three more would be ready to start the next day, and

within a week the big companies hoped to resume the regular service.

They regretted the loss to shippers of all the perishable produce which

to the value of millions of dollars had been rotting away at the docks.

They deplored the inconvenience and ruin which had been brought on the

innocent public by these bodies of rough, irresponsible men who had

openly defied the law. With such men there could be no arbitration, and

in fact there was no need. The port would be open inside of a week.