PART II--THE TEST

I

BEGINNINGS

It was in that red gash of crosstown brick--West Tenth Street--that the

new life began. The neighborhood was quaint and poor, a part of that old

Greenwich Village which at one time was a center of quiet and chaste

respectability, with its winding streets, its old-fashioned low brick

houses, its trees, its general air of detachment and hushed life. Now it

was a scene of slovenliness and dust, of miserable lives huddled thickly

in inadequate houses, of cheap roomers and boarders, of squalid

poverty--a mix of many nations well-sprinkled with saloons.

But the house was quite charming--three stories, red brick, with a stoop

of some ten steps, and long French windows on the first floor. Behind

those French windows was a four-room flat; beneath them, in the

basement, a room with iron-grated windows. Into that flat Joe and his

mother moved.

The invasion was unostentatious. No one could have dreamed that the

tall, homely man, dashing in and out in his shirt-sleeves between the

rooms and the moving-van drawn up at the curb, had come down with the

deliberate purpose of making a neighborhood out of a chaos, of

organizing that jumble of scattered polyglot lives.... In the faded

sunshine of the unusually warm winter afternoon, with its vistas of

gold-dusty air, and its noise of playing children and on-surging

trolleys and trucks and all the minute life of the saloons and the

stores--women hanging out of windows to get the recreation of watching

the confused drama of the streets, neighbors meeting in doorways, young

men laughing and chatting in clusters about lamp-posts--Joe toiled

valiantly and happily. He would rapidly glance at the thickly peopled

street and wonder, with a thrill, how soon he would include these lives

in his own, how soon he would grip and rouse and awaken the careless

multitude....

All was strange, all was new. Everything that was deep in his life--all

the roots he had put down through boyhood, youth, and manhood into the

familiar life of Yorkville--was torn up and transplanted to this fresh

and unfriendly soil.... He felt as if he were in an alien land, under

new skies, in a new clime, and there was all the romance of the

mysterious and all the fear of the untried. Beginnings always have the

double quality of magic and timidity--the dreaded, delicious first

plunge into cold water, the adventurous striking out into unknown

perils.... Did it not at moments seem like madness to dare

single-handed into this vast and careless population? Was he not merely

a modern Don Quixote tilting at windmills? Well, so be it, he thought;

the goal might be unreachable, but the quest was life itself.

He had an inkling of the monstrous size of New York. All his days he had

lived within a half-hour's ride of Greenwich Village, and yet it was a

new world to him. So the whole city was but a conglomeration of nests of

worlds, woven together by a few needs and the day's work, worlds as yet

undiscovered in every direction, huge tracts of peoples of all races

leading strange and unassimilated lives. He felt lost in the crowded

immensity, a helpless, obscure unit in the whirl of life.

He had fallen in love with Greenwich Village from the first day he had

explored it for a promising dwelling-place. Here, he knew, lived Sally

Heffer, and here doubtless he would meet her and she would help shape

his fight, perhaps be the woman to gird on his armor, put sword in his

hand, and send him forth. For he needed her, needed her as a child needs

a teacher, as a recruit needs a disciplined veteran. It was she who had

first revealed the actual world to him; it was she who had first divined

his power and his purpose; it was she who had released him from guilt by

showing him a means of expiation.

And yet, withal, he feared to meet her. There had been something

terrible about her that afternoon at Carnegie Hall, and something that

awed him that evening at the Woman's League. Until she had broken down

and wept, she had hardly seemed a woman--rather a voice crying in the

wilderness, a female Isaiah, the toilers become articulate. And he could

not think of her as a simple, vivacious young woman. How would she greet

him? Would her eyes remember his part in the fire?

At least, so he told himself, he would not seek her out (he had her

address from Fannie Lemick) until he had something to show for his new

life--until, possibly, he had a copy of that magazine which was still a

hypothesis and a chimera. Then he would nerve himself and go to her and

she should judge him as she pleased.

That first supper with his mother had a sweetness new to their lives. He

ran out to the butcher, the grocer, and the delicatessen man, and came

home laden with packages. The stove in the rear kitchen was set alight;

the wooden table in the center was spread with cloth and cutlery; and

they sat down opposite each other, utterly alone ... no boarding--house

flutter and gossip and noise, no unpleasant jarring personalities, no

wholesale cookery. All was quiet and peace--a brooding, tinkling

silence. They both smiled and smiled, their eyes moist, and the food

tasted so good. Blessed bread that they broke together, the cup that

they shared between them! The moment became sacred, human, stirred by

all the old, old miraculousness of home, that deepest need of humanity,

that rich relationship that cuts so much deeper than the light

touch-and-go of the world.

Joe spoke awkwardly.

"So we're here, mother ... and it's ripping, isn't it?"

She could hardly speak, but her eyes seemed to sparkle with a second

youth.

"Yes," she murmured, "it's the first time we've had anything like this

since you were a boy."

They both thought of his father, and the vanished days of the shanty on

the hillside, and his mother thought:

"People must live out their own lives in their own homes."

There was something that fed the roots of her woman-nature to have this

place apart, this quiet shelter where she ruled. It would be a joy to go

marketing, it would be a delight to cook, and it was charming to live so

intimately with her son. They were a family again.

After supper they washed the dishes together, laughing and chatting.

There were a hundred pleasing details to consider--where to place

furniture, what to buy, whether to have a servant or not (Joe insisted

on one), and all the incidents of the day to go over.

And then after the dish-washing they stopped work, and sat down in the

front office amid the packing-cases and the trunks and the litter and

débris. The gas was lighted above them, and the old-fashioned stove

which stood in the center and sprouted up a pipe nearly to the ceiling

and then at right angles into the wall was made red-hot with wood and

coal. Joe smoked and his mother sewed, and a hush seemed to fall on the

city, broken only by the echo of passing footsteps and the mellowed

thunder of the intermittent trolley-cars.

"And they call this a slum," muttered Joe.

In fact, save possibly for less clear air and in the summer a noise of

neighbors, they might have been living in New York's finest

neighborhood--almost a disappointment to two people prepared to plunge

into dirt, danger, and disease.... Later Joe learned that some of the

city's magazine writers had settled in the district on purpose, not

because they were meeting a crisis, but because they liked it, liked its

quaint old flavor, its colorful life, its alien charm, and not least,

its cheaper rents.

But this evening all was unknown save the joy and peace of a real home.

They went to bed early, Joe in the room next the office, his mother in

the adjoining room next the kitchen, but neither slept for a long time.

They lay awake tingling with a strange happiness, a fine freedom, a

freshness of re-created life. Only to the pioneer comes this thrill of a

new-made Eden, only to those who tear themselves from the easy ruts and

cut hazardous clearings in the unventured wilderness. It is like being

made over, like coming with fresh heart and eyes upon the glories of the

earth; it is the only youth of the world.

The night grew late and marvelously hushed, a silence almost oppressive,

where every noise seemed like an invader, and Joe, lying there keenly

awake, seemed to feel the throb of the world, the pauseless pulsations

of that life that beats in every brain and every heart of the earth;

that life that, more intense than human love and thought, burns in the

suns that swing about heaven rolling the globe of earth among them; that

life that enfolds with tremendous purpose the little human creature in

the vastness, that somehow expresses itself and heightens and changes

itself in human lives and all the dreams and doings of men. Joe felt

that life, thrilling to it, opening his heart to it, letting it

surcharge and overflow his being with strength and joy. And he knew then

that he lay as in a warm nest of the toilers and the poor, that crowded

all about him in every direction were sleeping men and women and little

children, all recently born, all soon to die, he himself shortly to be

stricken out of these scenes and these sensations. It was all mystery

unplumbable, unbelievable ... that this breath was not to go on forever,

that this brain was to be stopped off, this heart cease like a run-down

clock, this exultation and sorrow to leave like a mist, scattered in

that life that bore it.... That he, Joe Blaine, was to die!

Surely life was marvelous and sacred; it was not to be always a selfish

scramble, a money rush, a confusion and jumble, but rather something of

harmony and mighty labors and mingled joys. He felt great strength; he

felt equal to his purposes; he was sure he could help in the advancing

processes.... Even as he was part of the divine mystery, so he could

wield that divineness in him to lift life to new levels, while the

breath was in his body, while the glow was in his brain.

And he thought of Myra, his mate in the mystery, and in the night he

yearned for her, hungered through all his being. She had written him a

note; it came to him from the mountains. It ran:

DEAR JOE,--You will be glad to know that I am getting

back to myself. The peace and stillness of the

white winter over the hills is healing me. It seems

good merely to exist, to sleep and eat and exercise and

read. I can't think now how I behaved so unaccountably

those last few weeks, and I wonder if you will

ever understand. I have been reading over and over

again your long letter, trying hard to puzzle out its

meanings, but I fear I am very ignorant. I know nothing

of the crisis you speak of. I know that "ye have

the poor always with you," I know that there is much

suffering in the world--I have suffered myself--but I

cannot see that living among the poor is going to help

vitally. Should we not all live on the highest level

possible? Level up instead of leveling down. Ignorance,

dirt, and sickness do not attract me ... and

now here among the hills the terrible city seems like

a fading nightmare. It would be better if people lived

in the country. I feel that the city is a mistake. But

of one thing I am sure. I understand that you cannot

help doing what you are doing, and I know that it would

have been a wrong if I had interfered with your life.

I would have been a drag on you and defeated your

purposes, and in the end we would both have been very

unhappy. It seems to me most marriages are. Write

me what you are doing, where you are living, and how

you are.

Yours,

MYRA.

He had smiled over some of the phrases in this letter, particularly, "I

feel that the city is a mistake." Would Myra ever know that her very

personality and all of her life were interwoven inextricably with the

industrial city--that the clothes she wore, the food she ate, the books

she studied, the letter she wrote him, even down to ink, pen, and paper,

the education and advantages she enjoyed, were all wrought in the mills,

the mines, the offices, and by the interchange and inweaving and mighty

labors of industrialism? The city teacher is paid by taxes levied on the

commerce and labors of men, and the very farmer cannot heighten his life

without exchange with the city.

And so her letter made him smile. Yet at the same time it stirred him

mightily. All through it he could read renunciation; she was giving him

up; she was loosening her hold over him; she was nobly sacrificing her

love to his life-work. And she announced herself as teachable and

receptive. She could not yet understand, but understanding might come in

time.

So in the night he tried to send his thought over the hills, flash his

spirit into hers, in the great hope that she would thrill with a new

comprehension, a new awakening.... In a world so mysterious, in an

existence so strange, so impossible, so unbelievable, might such a

miracle be stranger than the breath he breathed and the passions he

felt?

And so in that hope, that great wild hope, he fell asleep in the

uneventful beginnings of the battle. And all through those unconscious

hours forces were shaping about him and within him to bear his life

through strange ways and among strange people. His theories, so easy as

he drank them out of books, were to be tested in the living world of men

and women, in that reality that hits back when we strike it, and that

batters us about like driftwood in the whirlpool.

II

THE NINE-TENTHS

Standing on Washington Heights--that hump on northwestern Manhattan

Island--gazing, say, from a window of the City College whose gray and

quaint cluster fronts the morn as on a cliff above the city--one sees,

at seven of a sharp morning, a low-hung sun in the eastern skies, a vast

circle and lift of mild blue heavens, and at one's feet, down below, the

whole sweep of New York from the wooded ridges of the Bronx to the

Fifty-ninth Street bridge and the golden tip of the Metropolitan Tower.

It is a flood of roofs sweeping south to that golden, flashing minaret,

a flood bearing innumerable high mill chimneys, church steeples, school

spires, and the skeleton frames of gas-works. Far in the east the Harlem

River lies like a sheet of dazzling silver, dotted with boats; every

skylight, every point of glass or metal on the roofs, flashes in the

sun, and, gazing down from that corner in the sky, one sees the visible

morning hymn of the city--a drift from thousands of house chimneys of

delicate unraveling skeins of white-blue smoke lifting from those human

dwellings like aerial spirits. It is the song of humanity rising, the

song of the ritual of breaking bread together, of preparation for the

day of toil, the song of the mothers sending the men to work, the song

of the mothers kissing and packing to school the rosy, laughing

children.

It might be hard to imagine that far to the south in that moving human

ocean, a certain Joe Blaine, swallowed in the sea, was yet as real a

fact as the city contained--that to himself he was far from being

swallowed, that he was, in fact, so real to himself that the rest of the

city was rather shadowy and unreal, and that he was immensely concerned

in a thousand-flashing torrent of thoughts, in a mix-up of appetite and

desires, and in the condition and apparel of his body. That as he sat at

his desk, for instance, it was important to him to discover how he could

break himself of a new habit of biting the end of his pen-holder.

And yet, under that flood of roofs, Joe was struggling with that crucial

problem. He finally settled it by deciding to smoke lots of cigars, and

proceeded to light one as a beginning. He smoked one, then a second,

then a third--which was certainly bad for his health. He was in the

throes of a violent reaction.

Several days of relentless activity had followed the moving in. There

was much to do. The four rooms became immaculately clean--sweetened up

with soap and water, with neat wallpaper, with paint and furniture.

Even the dark inner bedrooms contrived to look cozy and warm and

inviting. Joe's mother was a true New England housekeeper, which meant

scrupulous order, cleanliness, and brightness. The one room exempt from

her rule was Joe's. After the first clean-up, his mother did not even

try to begin on it.

"You're hopeless, Joe," she laughed, "and you'll ruin faster than I can

set right."

And so that editorial office soon became a nest of confusion. The walls

were lined with bookshelves and a quaint assortment of books, old and

new, populated not only these, but the floor, the two tables, the

roll-top desk, and here and there a chair. White paper began to heap up

in the corners. Magazines--"my contemporaries," said the proud

editor--began their limitless flood. And the matting on the floor was

soon worn through by Joe's perpetual pacing.

The whole home, however, began to have atmosphere--personality. There

was something open, hospitable, warm about it--something comfortable and

livable.

Among the first things Joe did was to procure two assistants. One was

the bookkeeper, Nathan Slate, a lean and dangling individual, who

collapsed over his high desk in the corner like a many-bladed penknife.

He was thin and cadaverous, and spoke in a meek and melancholy voice,

studied and slow. He dressed in black and tried to suppress his thin

height by stooping low and hanging his head. The other addition was

Billy, the office-boy, a sharp, bright youth with red hair and brilliant

blue eyes.

There was much else to do. For instance, there were the money affairs to

get in shape. Joe secured a five-per-cent mortgage with his capital.

Marty Briggs paid down two thousand cash and was to pay two thousand a

year and interest. So Joe could figure his income at somewhat over six

thousand dollars, and, as he hoped that he and his mother would use not

more than fifteen hundred a year, or, at the most, two thousand, he felt

he had plenty to throw into his enterprise.

Among the first things that Joe discovered was a gift of his own

temperament. He was a born crowd-man, a "mixer." He found he could

instantly assume the level of the man he talked with, and that his

tongue knew no hindrance. Thought flowed easily into speech. This gave

him a freedom among men, a sense of belonging anywhere, and singled him

out from the rest. It gave him, too, the joy of expression--the joy of

throwing out his thought and getting its immediate reaction in other

lives. Yet he understood perfectly the man who seemed shy and recluse,

who was choked-off before strangers, and who yet burned to be a

democrat, to give and take, to share alien lives, to be of the moving

throng of life. Such a man was the victim either of a wrong education,

an education of repression that discouraged any personal display, or he

had a twist in his temperament. Joe, who began to be well aware of his

gift, used it without stint and found that it had a contagious

quality--it loosened other people up; it unfolded their shy and secret

petals like sun heat on a bud; it made the desert of personality blossom

like the rose. He warmed the life about him because he could express

himself.

So it was not hard for Joe to shift to this new neighborhood and become

absorbed in its existence. Tradespeople, idlers, roomers and landlady in

the house accepted him at once and felt as if they had known him all

their lives. By a power almost of intuition he probed their obscure

histories and entered into their destinies.

However, in spite of these activities and all the bustle and stir of

fresh beginnings, Joe, that sunny morning, was suffering a sharp

reaction. In the presence of Nathan Slate and Billy he was pretending to

work, but his brain was as dry as a soda-cracker. It was that natural

revulsion of the idealist following the first glow. Here he was, up

against a reality, and yet with no definite plan, not even a name for

his paper, and he had not even begun to penetrate the life about him.

The throbbing moment had arrived when he must set his theories into

motion, drive them out into the lives of the people, and get reactions.

But how? In what way? His brain refused to think, and he felt nothing

save a misery and poverty of the spirit that were unendurable.

It seemed to him suddenly as if he had hastily embarked on a search for

the fountain of eternal youth--a voyage that followed mirages, and was

hollow and illusory. Beginnings, after the first flush, always have this

quality of fake, and Joe was standing in the shadow-land between two

lives. The old life was receding in the past; the new life had not yet

appeared. Without training, without experience, without definite

knowledge of the need to be met, with only a strong desire and a mixed

ideal, and almost without his own volition, he found himself now sitting

at a desk in West Tenth Street, with two employees, and nothing to do.

How out of this emptiness was he to create something vital?

This naturally brought a pang he might have anticipated. He had a sudden

powerful hankering for the old life. That at least was man-size--his job

had been man's work. He looked back at those fruitful laborious days,

with their rich interest and absorbing details, their human

companionships, and had an almost irrepressible desire to rush out, take

the elevated train, go down East Eighty-first Street, ascend the

elevator, ring the bell, and enter his dominion of trembling, thundering

presses. He could smell the old smells, he could see the presses and the

men, he could hear the noise. That was where he belonged. Voluntarily he

had exiled himself from happiness and use. He wanted to go back--wanted

it hard, almost groaned with homesickness.

Such struggles are death throes or birth throes. They are as real as two

men wrestling. Joe could sit still no longer, could mask no longer the

combat within him. So he rose hastily and went out and wandered about

the shabby, unfriendly neighborhood. He had a mad desire, almost

realized, to take the car straight to Eighty-first Street, and only the

thought of Marty Briggs in actual possession held him back. Finally he

went back and took lunch, and again tried the vain task of pretending to

work.

It was three o'clock when he surrendered. He strode in to his mother.

"Mother," he said, "isn't there something we can do together?"

"In what way?"

"Any way. I've been idling all day and I'm half dead." He laughed

strangely. "I believe I'm getting nerves, mother."

"Nerves!" She looked at him sharply. "What is it, Joe?"

"Oh! It's in-betweenness."

"I see." She smiled. "Well, there's some shopping to do--"

"Thank Heaven!"

So they went out together and took the Sixth Avenue car to Thirty-fourth

Street. Their shopping took them to Fifth Avenue, and then, later, up

Broadway to Forty-second Street. It was a different New York they

saw--in fact, the New York best known to the stranger. The gorgeous

palaces of trade glittered and sparkled, shimmered and flashed, with

jewels and silver, with silks and knick-knacks. The immense and rich

plenty of earth, the products of factories and mills, were lavishly

poured here, gathered in isles, about which a swarming sea of

well-dressed women pushed and crowded. The high ceilings were hung with

glowing moons of light; the atmosphere was magic with confused talk,

shuffling footsteps, and all the hum and stir of a human hive. Up and

down Fifth Avenue swept a black thick stream of motors and carriages in

which women and men lounged and stared. The great hotels sucked in and

poured out tides of jeweled and lace-wrapped creatures, and in the

lighted interiors of restaurants were rouged cheeks and kindled eyes.

As Joe and his mother reached Forty-second Street, that whirlpool of

theaters released its matinee crowds, a flood of youth, beauty,

brightness, and luxury.

And it seemed to Joe, seeing all this life from a Tenth Street

viewpoint, that here was a great city of wealth and idleness. Evidently

a large population had nothing to do save shop and motor, eat and idle.

How could he from shabby Tenth Street send out a sheet of paper that

would compete with these flashing avenues?

The sight depressed him. He said as much to his mother.

"This is New York," he said, "barbaric, powerful, luxuriant. These

people are the power of the city--the mighty few--these are the owners.

What can we do with them?"

His mother sensed then the struggle in his mind.

"Joe," she cried, "isn't there any place where we can see--the other

people?"

There was. They took the car down to Eighth Street, they walked east,

and entered little Washington Park, with its monumental arch, and its

shadowy trees, its wide and curving walks--its general sense of being a

green breathing-space in the sweep of streets. As they walked through

the sharp wintry air in the closing sunlight, what time the blue

electric lights gleamed out among the almost naked boughs, the

six-o'clock whistles began blowing from factories all about them--a glad

shriek that jumped from street to street over the city--and at once

across the eastern plaza of the park streamed the strange torrent of the

workers--a mighty, swift march of girls and boys, women and men,

homeward bound, the day's work ended--a human stream, in the gray light,

steeped in an atmosphere of accomplishment, sweet peace, solution. All

life seemed to touch a moment of harvest.

Joe's mother was thrilled, and in spite of himself Joe felt his heart

clutched, as it were, in a vise. He felt the strange, strong, human

grip. It was a marvelous spectacle, though common, daily, and cheap as

life.

Joe's mother whispered, in a low voice:

"Joe, this is the real New York!"

And then again:

"Those others are only a fraction--these are the people."

"Yes," murmured Joe, his blood surging to his cheeks, "these are the

nine-tenths."

They went closer to that mighty marching host--they saw the cheap

garments--baggy trousers, torn shoes, worn shirts; they saw the earnest,

tired faces, the white and toil-shrunk countenances, the poverty, the

reality of pain and work, all pressing on in an atmosphere of serious

progress, as if they knew what fires roared, what sinews ached down in

the foundations of the world where the future is created. And Joe

realized, as never before, that upon these people and their captains,

their teachers and interpreters, rested the burdens of civilization;

that the mighty city was wrought by their hands and those who dreamed

with them, that the foam and sparkle of Broadway and Fifth Avenue

bubbled up from that strong liquor beneath. And he believed that the

second-generation idlers had somehow expropriated the toilers and were

living like drones in the hive, and he felt that this could not be

forever, and he was seized by the conviction that a change could only

come through the toilers themselves. Could these pale people but know

their power, know their standing, know the facts of this strange double

life, and then use their might wisely and well, constructively,

creatively, to build up a better and fairer world, a finer justice, a

more splendid day's work, a happier night's home! These that created a

great city could, if trained, create a higher life in that city!

Surely the next few ages of the future had their work cut out for

them--the most stupendous task the race had ever undertaken.

Then, after all, he was right. All who could must be dedicated to the

work of sowing enlightenment, of yeasting the crowds with knowledge and

love and light--all who could. Then he, too, could do his share; he,

too, could reach this crowd. And these people--they were reachable. No

theaters and restaurants competed with him here. Their hearts and minds

were open. He could step in and share their lives. He had done so in his

shop, and these were of the same human nature.

Power returned to him.

"Mother," he said, his eyes flashing, "it's all right. Now I'm ready to

begin! I'm for the nine-tenths."

They turned, walking home in silence, and as they went the phrase

"nine-tenths," which Joe must have picked up in some book on socialism

or some sociological study, kept haunting his mind. The new power

released in him made his brain work like lightning--creatively. Thoughts

crowded, combinations sprung up; he began to actively dream and scheme.

"I've got it!" he cried. "Why not call my paper _The Nine-Tenths_?"

"Good!"

He began to plan aloud as the quick thoughts flashed.

"An eight-page paper--weekly. An editorial, giving some of the plain

facts about civilization--simple stuff to teach the people what industry

means, what their work means, what they ought to be doing. Then

news--news about all movements toward freedom--labor, strikes, reform,

new laws, schools--news of all the forces working for betterment--a

concrete statement of where the world stands to-day and what it is

doing. But a fair sheet, mother. No railing, no bitterness, no

bomb-throwing. Plenty of horse sense, plenty of banking the fires, of

delaying wisely. No setting class against class. No under-rating of

leaders and captains. Justice, but plenty of mercy. Facts, but plenty of

philosophy to cool 'em off. Progress all the time, but no French

revolutions. And when sides must be taken, no dishonest compromises, no

cowardly broad--mindedness--but always with the weakest, the under dog,

whenever their cause is good. That's my programme; that's _The

Nine-Tenths_."

"Of course," said his mother, "you'll see things clearer as you do them.

There'll be changes."

"Surely!" His mind was already miles ahead. "Mother, I've got it now,

for sure!"

"What now?" She laughed, enthusiastically.

"Isn't this a whopper? No _ads_."

"But why not, Joe? That would support the paper."

"No, not a line. I don't expect the paper to pay. That's where our money

comes in. We mustn't carry a line. Don't you see? There's hardly a

paper in the land that is free. They're influenced by their

advertising--that's their bread and butter. And even if they're not

influenced, people suspect they are. We must be free even of that

suspicion. We can be free--utterly so--say what we please--speak our

minds out--and nothing to hinder us. That will be unique--that will be

something new in magazines. We'll go the limit, mother."

His mother laughed.

"I guess you're right, Joe. It's worth trying. But how are you going to

circulate the paper?"

"How?" Again his mind jumped forward. "House-to-house canvass--labor

unions--street corners. I'm going to dig in now, get acquainted with the

people round about, spread it any old way. And I'm going to start with

the idea of a big future--twenty thousand copies finally. You see, it'll

be a sort of underground newspaper--no publicity--but spreading from

group to group among the workers. Broadway and up-town will never see a

copy."

So the new life started, started in full swing. Joe worked late that

very night putting his plans on paper, and the next morning there was

plenty of activity for everybody. Joe bought a rebuilt cylinder press

for fifteen hundred dollars and had it installed in the basement. Then

he had the basement wired, and got an electric motor to furnish the

power. John Rann and his family were moved down to a flat farther west

on Tenth Street, and a feeder, a compositor, and a make-up man were

hired along with him. In the press-room (the basement) was placed a

stone--a marble-top table--whereon the make-up man could take the strips

of type as they came from the compositors, arrange them into pages, and

"lock them up" in the forms, ready to put on the presses.

Then Joe arranged with a printery to set up the type weekly; with a

bindery to bind, fold, bundle, and address the papers; and with Patrick

Flynn, truckman, to distribute the papers to newsdealers.

Next Joe made a tour of the neighborhood, spoke with the newsdealers,

told them that all they would have to do was to deliver the papers to

the addresses printed upon them. He found them willing to thus add to

their income.

Thus he made ready. But he was not yet prepared to get subscriptions

(one dollar a year or twenty-five cents a quarter), feeling that first

he must have a sample paper to show.

The labor on that first number was a joy to him. He would jump up in the

middle of the night, rush into the office, light the gas, and get to

work in his nightgown. He was at it at all hours. And it proved to be an

enormous task. Eight pages eight by twelve do not read like a lot, but

they write like a very great deal. There was an editorial, "Greetings to

You," in which Joe set forth in plain words the ideas and ideals of the

paper, and in which he made clear the meaning of the phrase

"nine-tenths." Then he found that there were two great strikes in

progress in the city. This amazed him, as there was no visible sign of

such a condition. The newspapers said nothing of it, and peace seemed to

brood over the city's millions. Yet there were thousands of cloak-makers

out, and over in Brooklyn the toilers in the sugar refineries were

having little pitched battles with strike-breakers in the streets. Three

men had been killed and a score wounded.

Joe dug into these strikes, called at the union headquarters, spoke with

the men, even called on some of the cloak-makers' bosses and learned

their grievances. Then he wrote accounts of the strike without taking

sides, merely reporting the facts as fairly as he could.

In this way, and with the aid of clippings, and by printing that poem by

Lowell which was his mother's favorite, wherein was the couplet already

quoted,

"They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three,"

he made up a hodge-podge of a magazine.

Up in the corner of the editorial page he ran the following, subject to

change:

THE NINE-TENTHS

A WEEKLY WORD ABOUT MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN

* * * * *

MY MOTTO

I ACCEPT LIFE LARGELY, BUT NOT IN DETAILS

* * * * *

SOME OF THE DETAILS NOT ACCEPTED

ARE

Anything that prevents a child from being well born

and from fulfilling its possibilities.

Anything that prevents a woman or man from using

every good side of her or his nature.

ABOUT THESE DETAILS NO DOUBT:

DISEASE

EXCESS

WANT

OVERWORK

CHILD LABOR

And let's avoid jealousy, quarrels, ridicule, meanness,

and the rest of the mosquito things.

Otherwise: what a glorious world.

This didn't please him altogether, but he wanted to be definite and

simple, and he wanted to show that he wasn't a narrow partisan.

Thus the first number came to be. As he turned it out, Billy rushed it

in batches to the compositors, and when finally it all came back in

strips of type, it was hurried down to the idlers in the basement. At

ten-thirty that chilly, dust-blowing morning, when the sun-stricken air

glittered with eddies of motes, Joe, sitting at his desk, had the

exquisite rapture of feeling the building tremble.

He rushed to his mother, and exulted.

"Can't you feel the press going? Listen!"

Truly the new life had begun--the vision was beginning to crystallize in

daily living.

"We're in the fight now, mother!" he cried. "There's something doing!"

And later, when Joe stood at the back of the press and that first

complete sheet came through, he picked it up as if it were a new-born

child, as indeed it was, wet, drippy, forlorn, and weird, and yet a

wonder and a miracle. Joe looked on his own creation--the little

sheets--the big, black _The Nine-Tenths_--the clear, good type. He was

awed and reduced almost to tears.

He mailed a copy to Myra with a brief note:

DEAR MYRA,--Here's the answer to your question.

I'm doing the inclosed, and doing it in West Tenth

Street. Do you know the neighborhood? Old Greenwich

Village, red, shabby, shoddy, common, and vulgar.

Mother and I are as happy as children. How are you?

Your letter is splendid. I am sure you will come to

understand. When are you returning to New York?

As ever,

JOE BLAINE.

And he thought, "Now I have something to show Sally Heffer!"

III

OTHERS: AND SALLY HEFFER

Joe filled a stiff cloth portfolio with a batch of 9/10s (abbreviation

for home use), pulled his gray hat over his bushy hair, and went over

and tapped the collapsible Slate on the shoulder.

"Yes, Mr. Joe."

"Nathan," cried Joe, excitedly, "if there's a rush of subscribers while

I'm gone, make 'em stand in line, and each wait his turn. But don't let

them block the car tracks--string 'em around the corner."

Nathan gazed at Joe like a lost soul.

"But I think, Mr. Joe," he said, slowly, "you place your hopes too high.

I don't like to be too gloomy, Mr. Joe, but I have my doubts about a

rush."

"Slate," cried Joe, slapping the tragic bookkeeper a whack, "you're

inspiring!"

And he swung out to the street in the brilliant morning sunshine, ready

to begin his canvass.

"Next door," he mused, "is the place to start."

There was a woman sitting on the stoop, a two-year-old girl in her

arms. Joe paused and looked at the baby.

"Hello, you."

The baby looked at him a little doubtfully, and then laughed.

"Girl or boy?" asked Joe of the mother.

"Girl."

"How old?"

"Two."

"She's a darling! What's her name?"

"Name's Annie."

"Named after you?"

"Sure!"

"You wouldn't mind if I gave her a peppermint to suck?"

"Would you mind some candy, Annie?"

"_Candy_!" shrieked the child.

Joe dove into his bulging pocket and produced a good hard white one.

Annie snatched it up and sucked joyously.

"Thank the man, Annie."

"Thank you."

"Is this your only one, Mrs.--"

"Cassidy's my name! No, I've buried two others."

"From this house?"

"No, we keep movin'--" Mrs. Cassidy laughed a little.

Joe made a grim face.

"Jump your rent, eh?"

Mrs. Cassidy shrugged her shoulders.

"What can poor people do?"

"But hasn't Mr. Cassidy a job?"

"He has when he has it--but it's bum work. Slave like a nigger and then

laid off for six months, maybe."

"What kind of work is that?"

"'Longshore--he's a 'longshoreman."

"And when he's unemployed you have a hard time, don't you?"

"Hard?" Mrs. Cassidy's voice broke. "What can we do? There's the

insurance every week--fifteen cents for my man, ten cents for me, and

five cents for Annie. We couldn't let that go; it's buryin'-money, and

there ain't a Cassidy isn't going to have as swell a funeral as any in

the ward. And then we've got to live. I've found one thing in this

world--the harder you work the less you get."

Joe spoke emphatically.

"Mrs. Cassidy, when your husband's out of work, through no fault of his

own, he ought to get a weekly allowance to keep you going."

"And who's to give it to him?"

"Who? Do you know what they do in Germany?"

"What do they do in Germany?"

"They have insurance for the unemployed, and when a man's out he gets

so-and-so-much a week. We ought to have it in America."

"How can we get it? Who listens to the poor?"

"Your man belongs to a union, doesn't he?"

"Sure!"

"Well, the trouble is our people here don't know these things. If they

knew them, they'd get together and make the bosses come round. It's

ignorance holding us all back."

"I've often told Tim he ought to study something. There's grand lectures

in the schools every Tuesday and Thursday night. But Tim don't put stock

in learning. He says learning never bought a glass of beer."

Joe laughed.

"Mrs. Cassidy, that's not what I mean. Listen. I'm a neighbor of

yours--live next door--"

"Sure! Didn't I see you move in? When my friend, Mrs. Leupp, seen your

iron beds, she up and went to Macy's and bought one herself. What yer

doing in there, anyway, with that printing-press? It gives me the

trembles."

Joe laughed heartily.

"You feel the press in this house?"

"First time, I thought it was an earthquake, Mr. Blaine."

Joe was abashed.

"How'd you know my name?"

"Ast it off your landlady."

"Well, you're wrong--I'm Mr. Joe."

Mrs. Cassidy was hugely amused.

"You're one grand fellow, let me tell you. But, oh, that black, thin

one--he's creepy, Mr. Joe. But your mother--she's all right. I was

telling Mrs. Rann so myself."

Joe sighed tragically.

"I suppose the whole neighborhood knows all my family secrets."

"Pretty near," laughed Mrs. Cassidy.

"Well, there's one thing you didn't know."

"What's that?"

"About my newspaper."

"What about it?"

"What paper do you take?"

Mrs. Cassidy mentioned a daily penny paper.

"Let's see," said Joe, "that's eleven cents a week, isn't it? Will you

spend two cents more, and take _The Nine-Tenths_?"

"_Yours_?"

"It's a paper that tells about the rich and the poor, and what the poor

ought to do to get more out of life. Here, take this copy, keep it; make

Tim read it."

Mrs. Cassidy was handed a neat little sheet, eight by twelve inches,

clearly printed. There was something homely and inviting about it,

something hospitable and honest. The woman fingered it curiously.

"Ain't it cute?" she cried.

"It's all written for just such people as you, and I want you to take

it."

"How much is it?"

"Well, you pay twenty-five cents and get it for three months, once a

week, and let Tim read it out loud. Say, don't you think Annie'd like

to see the printing-press?"

"'Deed she would!"

And then Joe did the one thing that won. He seized up little Annie

himself, and bore her down to the press-room, Mrs. Cassidy following,

and mentally concluding that there was no one in the ward like Mr. Joe.

Result: first subscription, and Joe elated with victory. All of which

shows, it must be confessed, that Joe was considerable of a politician,

and did not hesitate to adopt the methods of Tammany Hall.

It was the next day, at a street corner, that, quite accidentally, Joe

met Michael Dunan, truckman.

"I've got a cigar," said Joe, "but I haven't a match."

"I've got a match," said Michael, easily, "but I haven't a cigar."

"My name's Joe Blaine," said Joe, handing over a panetela.

"Mine's Mike Dunan," said Michael, passing a match.

They lit up together.

"The drinks are on me," murmured Michael.

They stepped into the saloon at the corner--a bright, mirrory place,

whose tiled floor was covered with sawdust, and whose bar shone like

mahogany.

"Two beers, Donovan."

"Dark or light, Mike?"

"Dark."

They drank. Michael pounded the bar.

"Joe Blaine, the times are hard."

"How so, Michael?"

"The rich are too rich, and the poor too poor. I'm tired of it!"

"Then look this over."

Michael looked it over, and bubbled with joy.

"That's great. Did you spiel it out? Did you say this little piece? Joe,

I want to join your union!"

Joe laughed; he sized up the little man, with his sparkling eyes, his

open face, his fiery, musical voice, his golden hair. And he had an

inspiration.

"Mike," he said, "I'm getting out this paper up the street. Have a press

there and an office. Run in and see my mother. If you like her, tell me,

and you can join the Stove Circle."

"And what may the Stove Circle be?"

"The get-together club--my advisory board."

"I'm on."

"See here, you," said a blunt, biting, deep-chested voice at their side.

"Let me get a look."

Joe turned and met Oscar Heming, delicatessen man, stumpy, bull-necked,

with fierce bristling mustache, and clothes much too big for him. He was

made a member at once of the Stove Circle.

That same evening Joe went down three steps into a little, low, cigar

store, whose gas-blazing atmosphere reeked with raw and damp tobacco. He

stepped up to the dusty counter.

"What's your best?"

The proprietor, a wise little owl of a man, with thin black hair, and

untidy spade beard, and big round glasses enlarging his big brown eyes,

placed a box before him.

"My own make--Underdogs--clear Havana--six cents apiece."

"I like the name. Give me ten. But explain!"

"Well"--Nathan Latsky (for so he proved to be) shrugged his

shoulders--"I'm one myself. But--what's in a name?"

"He's a red revolutionist!" said a voice, and Joe, turning, noticed two

men leaning beside him at the counter; one, a fine and fiery Jew,

handsome, dark, young; the other, a large and gentle Italian, with

pallid features, dark hair sprinkled with gray, and a general air of

largeness and leadership about him. The Jew had spoken.

"Why a red?" asked Joe.

"Oh," said Latsky, quietly, "I come from Russia, you know!"

"Well, I'm a revolutionist myself," said Joe. "But I haven't any color

yet."

"Union man?" asked the Italian.

"Not exactly. I run a radical newspaper."

"What's the name of it?" asked the Jew.

"_The Nine-Tenths_."

The words worked magic. They were all eagerness, and exchanged names.

Thus Joe came to know Jacob Izon and Salvatore Giotto and Nathan Latsky.

He was greatly interested in Izon, the facts of whose life he soon came

to know. Izon was a designer, working at Marrin's, the shirtwaist

manufacturer; he made thirty dollars a week, had a wife and two

children, and was studying engineering in a night school. He and his

wife had come from Russia, where they had been revolutionists.

The three men examined the paper closely.

"That's what we need," said Izon. "You must let us help to spread it!"

Joe added the three to the Stove Circle.

He went to Giotto's house with him, up to the sixth floor of a tenement,

and met the Italian's neat, dark-eyed wife, and looked in on the three

sleeping children. Then under the blazing gas in the crowded room, with

its cheap, frail, shiny furniture, its crayons on the wall, its crockery

and cheap clocks, and with the noise of the city's night rising all

about them, the two big men talked together. Joe was immensely

interested. The Italian was large-hearted, open-minded, big in body and

soul, and spoke quaintly, but thoughtfully.

"Tell me about yourself," said Joe.

Giotto spread out the palms of his hands.

"What to tell? I get a good education in the old country--but not much

spik English--better read, better write it. I try hard to learn. Come

over here, and education no good. Nobody want Italian educated man. So

worked on Italian paper--go round and see the poor--many tragedies,

many--like the theater. Write a novel, a romance, about the poor. Wish I

could write it in English."

"Good work," cried Joe. "Then what did you do?"

Giotto laughed.

"Imported the wine--got broke--open the saloon. Toughs come there,

thieves, to swindle the immigrants. Awfully slick. No good to warn

immigrants--they lose all their money. Come in crying. What can I do? I

get after the bums and they say, 'Giotto no good; we will kill him.'

Then I get broke again. Go to West Virginia and work in the

coal-mine--break my leg. And that was the baddest place in the world."

"The mine?"

"And the town. Laborers--Italian, nigger; saloons and politics--Jews;

bosses all Irish--nothing but the saloons and the women to spenda the

money. Company own everything--stores, saloons, women. Pay you the money

and get it all back. Every day a man killed. Hell!"

"Then where did you go?"

"Chicago--printing--anything to do I could get. Sometimes make forty

cents a day. Little. Have to feed and work for wife and three children.

I try and try. Hod-carrier"--Giotto laughed at the memory--"press

coats--anything. Then come back here."

"And what are you doing now?"

"I try to make labor union with Italians. Hard work. Italians live like

pigs--ignorant--not--not _social_. Down-stairs live a Calabria man,

makes ice-cream--got four rooms--in the four rooms man, wife, mother,

five children, fifteen boarders--"

"Go on!" cried Joe. "Why do you stop?"

Giotto laughed.

"So maybe your paper help. Many Italians read English. I make them read

your paper, Mr. Joe."

* * * * *

It was not until nearly the end of the week that Joe sought out Sally

Heffer. Though every day he meditated stepping down that narrow red side

street, each time he had felt unprepared, throbbingly incapable; but

this evening as he finished his work and was on the way home it seemed

that beyond his own volition he suddenly swerved at her corner, hurried

down the lamp-lit pave, searched out the faded number in the meager

light, mounted the stoop, and pushed open the unlocked door.

He was very weary--heart-sick and foot-sore--as he climbed the dark

steps of the three-story house. He felt pent in the vast pulsations of

life about him--a feeling of impossibility, of a task greater than he

could bear. He simply had to see the young woman who was responsible for

sending him here. He had a vivid mental image of her tragic loveliness,

of how she had stepped back and forth before him and suddenly put her

hands to her face and wept, of how she had divined his suffering, and

impulsively seized his hand, and whispered, "I have faith in you." He

expected a sort of self-illumined Joan of Arc with eyes that saw

visions, with spirit flaming. And even in the dark top-floor hallway he

was awed, and almost afraid.

Then in the blackness, his eyes on the thread of light beneath the rear

door, he advanced, reached up his hand, and knocked.

There came, somehow surprising him, a definite, clear-edged voice:

"Come in!"

He opened the door, which swung just free of the narrow cot. Just

beyond, Sally Heffer was writing at a little table, and the globed gas

burned above her, lighting the thin gold of her sparse hair. She turned

her face to him quite casually, the same pallid, rounded face, the same

broad forehead and gray eyes, of remarkable clarity--eyes that were as

clear windows allowing one to peer in. And she was dressed in a white

shirtwaist and the same brown skirt, and over a hook, behind her, hung

the same brown coat. Yet Joe was shocked. This was not the Sally Heffer

of his dreams--but rather a refreshing, forceful, dynamic young woman,

brimming over with the joy of life. And even in that flash of

strangeness he sensed the fact that at the time he had met her she was

merely the voice of a vast insurgent spirit, merely the instrument of a

great event. This was the everyday Sally, a quite livable, lovable human

being, healthy, free in her actions, pulsing with the life about her.

The very words she used were of a different order.

And as she casually glanced around she began to stare, her eyes lit with

wonder, and she arose, exclaiming:

"Mr.--_Blaine_!"

At the sound of her voice the tension snapped within him; he felt common

and homely again; he felt comfortable and warm; and he smiled wearily.

"Yes," he said, "I'm here."

She came close to him, more and more incredulous, and the air became

electric.

"But what brings you here?"

"I live here--West Tenth."

"_Live_ here? Why?"

Her eyes seemed to search through his.

"You made me," he murmured.

She smiled strangely.

"_That night_?"

"Yes."

Impulsively her hand went out, and he clasped it ... her hand seemed

almost frozen. Tears of humility sprang to her eyes.

"I was high and mighty that night,... but I couldn't help it.... But

you ... do you realize what a wonderful thing you've done?"

He laughed awkwardly.

"Yes, here's what I've done"--he handed her a copy of _The

Nine-Tenths_--"and it's very wonderful."

She gave a strange, short laugh again--excitement, exultation--and held

the paper as if it were a living thing.

"This ... _The Nine-Tenths_ ... oh!... for the working people.... Let me

see!"

She went to the light, spread the paper and eagerly read. Then she

glanced back a moment and saw his worn face and the weary droop of his

back.

"Say--you're dead tired. Sit down. You don't mind the bed, do you?"

He smiled softly.

"I don't! I am pretty much done up." And he sank down, and let his hands

droop between his knees.

Sally read, and then suddenly turned to him.

"This editorial is--it's just a ripper."

The author felt the thrill of a creator. She went on:

"I wish every working-girl in New York could read this."

"So do I."

She turned and looked at him, more and more excited.

"So _this_ is what you're doing. I must pinch myself--it's all a dream!

Too good to be true."

Suddenly there seemed to be a reversal in their relationships. Before,

his end of the beam was down, hers up. But subtly in her voice he felt

the swing to the other extreme. She had set him in a realm above

herself.

"Tell me," she said, "just how you came to go into this."

He told her a little, and as he spoke he became thoroughly at his ease

with her, as if she were a man, and in the pleasure of their swift

comradeship they could laugh at each other.

"Mr. Blaine," she said, suddenly, "if I got you into this, it's up to me

to help you win. I'm going to turn into an agent for you--I'll make 'em

subscribe right and left."

Joe laughed at her.

"Lordy, if you knew how good it is to hear this--after tramping up three

miles of stairs and more and nabbing a tawdry twenty subscriptions."

"Is that all you got?"

"People don't understand."

"We'll _make_ them!" cried Sally, clenching her fist.

Joe laughed warmly; he was delighted with her.

"Are you working here?" he asked.

"Yes--you know I used to be in Newark--I was the president of the

Newark Hat-Trimmers' Union."

"And now?"

"I'm trying to organize the girls here."

"Well," he muttered, grimly. "I wouldn't like to be your boss, Miss

Heffer."

She laughed in her low voice.

"Let me tell you what sort I am!" And she sat down, crossed her legs,

and clasped her hands on her raised knee. "I was working in that Newark

factory, and the girls told me to ask the boss, Mr. Plump, for a half

holiday. So I went into his office and said: 'Mr. Plump, the girls want

a half holiday.' He was very angry. He said: 'You won't get it. Mind

your own business.' So I said, quietly: 'All right, Mr. Plump, we'll

take a _whole_ holiday. We won't show up Monday.' Then he said to me,

'Sally Heffer, go to hell!' He was the first man to say such a thing to

my face. Well, one of the girls found me in the hall drying my eyes, and

when she got the facts she went back and told the others, and the bunch

walked out, leaving this message: 'Mr. Plump, we won't come back till

you apologize to Sally.' Well, we were out a week, and what do you

think?" Sally laughed with quiet joy. "Plump took it to the

Manufacturers Association, and they--backed him? Not a bit! _Made him

apologize_!"

Joe chuckled.

"Great! Great!"

"Oh, I'm doing things all the time," said Sally. "Organized the Jewish

hat-trimmers in Newark, and all my friends went back on me for sticking

up for the Jews. Did I care? Ten years ago every time the men got a

raise through their union, the girls had their salaries cut. Different

now. We've enough sense to give the easy jobs to the old ladies--and

there's lots of old ones trimming hats."

"What's trimming hats?"

Sally plucked up Joe's gray hat, and then looked at Joe, her eyes

twinkling.

"It's a little hard to show you on this. But see the sweat-band? It has

a lot of needle holes in it, and the trimmer has to stitch through those

holes and then sew the band on to the hat, and all the odds and ends. It

kills eyes. What do you think?" she went on. "The girls used to drink

beer--bosses let 'em do it to keep them stimulated--and it's ruined

lots. I stopped that."

Joe looked at Sally. And he had a wild impulse then, a crazy thought.

"How much do you get a week?"

"Fifteen."

"Well," said Joe, "I want a woman's department in the paper. Will you

handle it for fifteen a week?"

"But you don't know me!"

"Well," said Joe, "I'm willing to gamble on you."

Sally's low voice loosed exultation.

"You're a wonder, Mr. Blaine. I'll _do it_! But we're both plumb crazy."

"I know it," said Joe, "and I like it!"

They shook hands.

"Come over to-morrow and meet my mother!" He gave her the address.

"Good-by," she said. "And let me tell you, I'm simply primed for woman

stuff. It is the women"--she repeated the phrase slowly--"it is the

women, as you'll find, who bear the burden of the world! Good-by!"

"Good-by!"

He went down into the open air exulting.

He could not overcome his astonishment. She was so different than he had

anticipated, so much more human and simple; so much more easy to fit

into the every-day shake-up of life, and full of that divine allowance

for other people's shortcomings. It was impossible to act the tragedian

before her. And, most wondrous of all, she was a "live wire." He had

gone to her abasing himself; he came away as her employer, subtly

cheered, encouraged, and lifted to new heights of vivid enterprise.

"Sally Heffer!" he kept repeating. "Isn't she a marvel! And, miracle of

miracles, she is going to swing the great work with me!"

And so the Stove Circle was founded with Sally Heffer, Michael Dunan,

Oscar Heming, Nathan Latsky, Salvatore Giotto, and Jacob Izon. Its

members met together a fortnight later on a cold wintry night. The

stove was red-hot, the circle drew about it on their kitchen chairs, and

Joe spent the first meeting in going over his plans for the paper. There

were many invaluable practical comments--especially on how to get news

and what news to get--and each member was delegated to see to one

department. Latsky and Giotto took immigration, Dunan took politics and

the Irish, Heming took the East Side, Izon, foreign news, and Sally

Heffer took workwomen. Thereafter each one in his way visited labor

unions, clubs, and societies and got each group to pledge itself to send

in news. They helped, too, to get subscriptions--both among their

friends and in the unions. In this way Joe founded his paper. He never

repeated the personal struggle of that first week, for he now had an

enthusiastic following to spread the work for him--men and a woman,

every one of whom had access to large bodies of people and was an

authority in his own world.

But that wonderful week was never forgotten by Joe. Each day he had

risen early and gone forth and worked till late at night, making a

canvass in good earnest. House after house he penetrated, knocking at

doors, inquiring for a mythical Mrs. (or Mr.) Parsons (this to hush the

almost universal fear that he had come to collect the rent or the

instalment on the furniture or clothes of the family). In this way he

started conversation. He found first that the immediate neighborhood

knew him already. And he found many other things. He found rooms tidy,

exquisite in their cleanliness and good taste of arrangement; and then

other rooms slovenly and filthy. He found young wives just risen from

bed, chewing gum and reading the department-store advertisements in the

paper, their hair in curl-papers. He found fat women hanging out of

windows, their dishes unwashed, their beds unmade, their floors unswept.

He found men sick in bed, and managed to sit down at their side and give

them an interesting twenty minutes. He found other men, out of work,

smoking and reading. He found one Italian family making "willow plumes"

in two narrow rooms--one a bedroom, the other a kitchen--every one at

work, twisting the strands of feathers to make a swaying plume--every

one, including the grandmother and little dirty tots of four and

six--and every one of them cross-eyed as a result of the terrific work.

He found one dark cellar full of girls twisting flowers; and one attic

where, in foul, steaming air, a Jewish family were "finishing"

garments--the whole place stacked with huge bundles which had been given

out to them by the manufacturer. He found one home where an Italian

"count" was the husband of an Irish girl, and the girl told him how she

had been led into the marriage by the man's promise of title and castle

in Venice, only to bring her from Chicago to New York and confess that

he was a poor laborer.

"But I made the best of it," she cried. "I put down my foot, hustled him

out to work, and we've done well ever since. I've been knocking the dago

out of him as hard as I can hit!"

"You're ambitious," said Joe.

"My! I'd give my hands for education!"

Joe prescribed _The Nine-Tenths_.

Everywhere he invited people to call--"drop over"--and see his plant and

meet his mother. Even the strange specimen of white woman who had

married a negro and was proud of it.

"Daniel's black outside, but there's many stuck-up women I know whose

white man is black _inside_."

Absorbingly interesting was the quest--opening up one vista of life

after another. Joe gained a moving-picture knowledge of life--saw

flashed before him dramatic scene after scene, destiny after

destiny--squalor, ignorance, crime, neatness, ambition, thrift,

respectability. He never forgot the shabby dark back room where under

gas-light a frail, fine woman was sewing ceaselessly, one child sick in

a tumble-down bed, and two others playing on the floor.

"I'm all alone in the world," she said. "And all I make is two hundred

and fifty dollars a year--less than five dollars a week--to keep four

people."

Joe put her on the free list.

He learned many facts, vital elements in his history.

For instance, that on less than eight hundred dollars a year no family

of five (the average family) could live decently, and that nearly half

the people he met had less, and the rest not much more. That, as a rule,

there were three rooms for five people; and many of the families

gathered their fuel on the street; that many had no gas--used oil and

wood; that many families spent about twenty-five cents a day for food;

that few clothes were bought, and these mainly from the instalment man

and second hand at that; that many were recipients of help; and that

recreation and education were everywhere reduced to the lowest terms.

That is, boys and girls were hustled to work at twelve by giving their

age as fourteen, and recreation meant an outing a year to Coney Island,

and beer, and, once in a while, the nickel theater; that there were

practically no savings. And there was one conclusion he could not

evade--namely, that while overcrowding, improvidence, extravagance, and

vice explained the misery of some families, yet there were limits. For

instance:

On Manhattan Island no adequate housing can be obtained at less than

twelve or fourteen dollars a month.

That there is no health in a diet of bread and tea.

That--curious facts!--coal burns up, coats and shoes wear out in spite

of mending.

That the average housewife cannot take time to go bargain-hunting or

experimenting with new food combinations, or in making or mending

garments, and neither has she the ability nor training to do so.

That, in fact, the poor, largely speaking, were between the upper and

nether millstones of low wages and high prices.

Of course there was the vice, but while drink causes poverty, poverty

causes drink. Joe found intemperance among women; he found little

children running to the saloon for cans of beer; he found plenty of men

drunkards. But what things to offset these! The woman who bought three

bushels of coal a week for seventy-five cents, watched her fires, picked

out the half-burned pieces, reused them, and wasted no heat; the

children foraging the streets for kindling-wood; the family in bed to

keep warm; the wife whose husband had pawned her wedding-ring for drink,

and who had bought a ten-cent brass one, "to keep the respect of her

children"; the man working for ten dollars a week, who once had owned

his own saloon, but, so he said, "it was impossible to make money out of

a saloon unless I put in gambling-machines or women, and I wouldn't

stand for it"; the woman whose husband was a drunkard, and who,

therefore, went to the Battery 5 A.M. to 10, then 5 P.M. to 7, every day

to do scrubbing for twenty dollars a month; the wonderful Jewish family

whose income was seven hundred and ninety-seven dollars and who yet

contrived to save one hundred and twenty-three dollars a year to later

send their two boys to Columbia University.

And everywhere he found the miracle of miracles: the spirit of charity

and mutual helpfulness--the poor aiding the poorer; the exquisite

devotion of mothers to children; the courage that braved a terrible

life.

For a week the canvass went on. Joe worked feverishly, and came home

late at night too tired almost to undress himself. Again and again he

exclaimed to his mother:

"I never dreamed of such things! I never dreamed of such poverty! I

never dreamed of such human nature!"

Greenwich Village, hitherto a shabby red clutter of streets, uninviting,

forbidding, dull, squalid, became for Joe the very swarm and drama and

warm-blooded life of humanity. He began to sense the fact that he was in

the center of a human whirlpool, in the center of beauty and ugliness,

love and bitterness, misery and joy. The whole neighborhood began to

palpitate for him; the stone walls seemed bloody with struggling souls;

the pavements stamped with the steps of a battle.

"What can I do," he kept thinking, "with these people?"

And to his amazement he began to see that just as up-town offered the

rivals of luxury, pleasure, and ease, so down-town offered the rivals of

intemperance, grinding poverty, ignorance. His theories were beginning

to meet the shock of facts.

"How move them? How touch them off?" he asked himself.

But the absorbing interest--the faces--the shadowy scenes--the gas-lit

interiors--everywhere human beings, everywhere life, packed, crowded,

evolving.

At the end of the week he stopped, though the fever was still on him. He

had gained two hundred and fifty subscribers; he had distributed twelve

hundred copies of the paper. He now felt that he could delay no longer

in bringing out the next number. So he sat down, and, with Sally

Heffer's words ringing in his mind, he wrote his famous editorial, "It

is the Women":

It is the women who bear the burden of this world--the poor women.

Perhaps they have beauty when they marry. Then they plunge into

drudgery. All day and night they are in dark and damp rooms, scrubbing,

washing, cooking, cleaning, sewing. They wear the cheapest clothes--thin

calico wrappers. They take their husbands' thin pay-envelopes, and

manage the finances. They stint and save--they buy one carrot at a time,

one egg. When rent-week comes--and it comes twice a month--they cut the

food by half to pay for housing. They are underfed, they are denied

everything but toil--save _love_. Child after child they bear. The toil

increases, the stint is sharper, the worry infinite. Now they must

clothe their children, feed them, dress them, wash them, amuse them.

They must endure the heart-sickness of seeing a child underfed. They

must fight the demons of disease. Possibly they must stop a moment in

the speed of their labor and face death. Only for a moment! Need calls

them: mouths ask for food, floors for the broom, and the pay-envelope

for keen reckonings. Possibly then the husband will begin to

drink--possibly he will come home and beat his wife, drag her about the

floor, blacken her eyes, break a rib. The next day the task is taken up

again--the man is fed, the children clothed, the food marketed, the

floor scrubbed, the dress sewn. And then as the family grows there come

hard times. The man is out of work--he wants to work but cannot. Rent

and the butcher and grocer must be paid, but there are no wages brought

home. The woman takes in washing. She goes through the streets to the

more prosperous and drags home a basket of soiled clothes. The burden of

life grows heavier--the husband becomes accustomed to the changed

relationships. Very often he ceases to be a wage-earner and loafs about

saloons. From then on the woman wrestles with worlds of

trouble--unimaginable difficulties. Truly, running a state may be easier

than running a family. And yet the woman toils on; she does not

complain; she sets three meals each day before husband and children; she

sees that they have clothes; she gives the man his drink money; she

endures his cruelty; she plans ambitiously for her children. Or possibly

the man begins to work again, and then one day is killed in an accident.

There is danger of the family breaking up. But the woman rises to the

crisis and works miracles. She keeps her head; she takes charge; she

toils late into the night; she goes without food, without sleep. Somehow

she manages. There was a seamstress in Greenwich Village who pulled her

family of three and herself along on two hundred and fifty dollars a

year--less than five dollars a week! If luck is with the woman the

children grow up, go to work, and for a time ease the burden. But then,

what is left? The woman is prematurely old--her hair is gray, her face

drawn and wrinkled, or flabby and soiled, her back bent, her hands raw

and red and big. Beauty has gone, and with the years of drudgery, much

of the over-glory, much of the finer elements of love and joy, have

vanished. Her mind is absorbed by little things--details of the day. She

has ceased to attend church, she has not stepped beyond the street

corner for years, she has not read or played or rested. Much is dead in

her. Love only is left. Love of a man, love of children. She is a fierce

mother and wife, as of old. And she knows the depth of sorrow and the

truth of pain.

He repeated his programme. Perhaps--he afterward thought so

himself--this editorial was a bit too pessimistic. But he had to write

it--had to ease his soul. He set it off, however, by a lovely little

paragraph which he printed boxed. Here it is:

Possibly much of the laughter heard on this planet comes from

the mothers and fathers who are thinking or talking of the children.

In this way, then, Joe entered into the life of the people.

IV

OTHERS: AND THEODORE MARRIN

Joe became a familiar figure in Greenwich Village. As time went on, and

issue after issue of _The Nine-Tenths_ appeared, he became known to the

whole district. Whenever he went out people nodded right and left,

passed the time of day with him, or stopped him for a hand-shake and a

question. He would, when matters were not pressing, pause at a stoop to

speak with mothers, and people in trouble soon began to acquire a habit

of dropping in at his office to talk things over with the "Old Man."

If it was a matter of employment, he turned the case over to some member

of the Stove Circle; if it was a question of honest want, he drew on the

"sinking-fund" and took a note payable in sixty days--a most elastic

note, always secretly renewable; if it was an idle beggar, a vagrant, he

made short work of his visitor. Such a visitor was Lady Hickory. Billy

was at his little table next the door; over in the corner the

still-despondent Slate was still collapsing; at the east window sat

Editor Sally Heffer, digging into a mass of notes; and near the west,

at the roll-top desk, a visitor's chair set out invitingly beside him,

Joe was writing--weird exercise of muttering softly, so as not to

disturb the rest, and then scratching down a sentence.

Billy leaped up to receive her ladyship, who fatly rolled in, her

tarnished hat askew, her torn thrice-dingy silks clutched up in one fat

hand.

Lady Hickory gave one cry:

"There he is!"

She pushed Billy aside and rolled over into the visitor's chair.

"Oh, Mr. Joe!"

Joe turned.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Everything's up--I'm dying, Mr. Joe--I need help--I must get to the

hospital--"

"Sick?"

"Gallopin' consumption!"

Joe sniffed.

"It doesn't smell like consumption," he said with a sigh. "It smells

like rum!"

He hustled her out rather roughly, Nathan Slate regarding him with

mournful round eyes. Twenty minutes later Nathan came over and sat down.

"Mr. Joe."

"Yes, Nathan."

"There's something troubles my conscience, Mr. Joe."

"Let her rip!"

"Mr. Joe--"

"I'm waiting!"

Nathan cleared his throat.

"You say you're a democrat, Mr. Joe, and you're always saying, 'Love thy

neighbor,' Mr. Joe."

"Has _that_ hit you, Nathan?"

Nathan unburdened, evading this thrust.

"Why, then, Mr. Joe, did you turn that woman away?"

Joe was delighted.

"Why? I'll tell you! Suppose that I know that the cucumber is inherently

as good as any other vegetable, does that say I can digest it? Cucumbers

aren't for me, Nathan--especially decayed ones."

Nathan stared at him disconsolately, shook his head, and went back to

puzzle it out. It is doubtful, however, that he ever did so.

Besides such visitors, there were still others who came to him to

arbitrate family disputes--which constituted him a sort of Domestic

Relations Court--and gave him an insight into a condition that surprised

him. Namely, the not uncommon cases of secret polygamy and polyandry.

In short, Joe was busy. His work was established in a flexible

routine--mornings for writing; afternoons for callers, for circulation

work, and for special trips to centers of labor trouble; evenings for

going about with Giotto to see the Italians, or paying a visit, say, to

the Ranns, or some others, or meeting at Latsky's cigar store with a

group of revolutionists who filled the air with their war of the

classes, their socialist state, their dreams of millennium.

He gave time, too, to his mother--evening walks, evening talks, and

old-fashioned quiet hours in the kitchen, his mother at her needlework,

and he reading beside her. One such night, when his mother seemed

somewhat fatigued, he said to her:

"Don't sew any more, mother."

"But it soothes me, Joe."

"Mother!"

"Yes."

Joe spoke awkwardly.

"Are you perfectly satisfied down here? Did we do the right thing?"

His mother's eyes flashed, as of old.

"We did," she cried in her youthful voice. "It's real--it's absorbing.

And I'm very proud of myself."

"Proud? You?"

"Yes, proud!" she laughed. "Joe, when a woman reaches my age she has a

right to be proud if young folks seek her out and talk with her and make

her their confidante. It shows she's not a useless incumbrance, but

young!"

Joe sat up.

"Have they found you out? Do they come to you?"

"They do--especially the young wives with their troubles. All of them

troubled over their husbands and their children. We have the finest

talks together. They're a splendid lot!"

"Who's come, in particular?"

"Well, there's one who isn't married--one of the best of them."

"Not Sally Heffer!"

"The same!"

"I'm dinged!"

"That girl," said Joe's mother, "has all sorts of possibilities--and

she's brave and strong and true. Sally's a wonder! a new kind of woman!"

A new kind of woman! Joe remembered the phrase, and in the end admitted

that it was true. Sally was of the new breed; she represented the new

emancipation; the exodus of woman from the home to the battle-fields of

the world; the willingness to fight in the open, shoulder to shoulder

with men; the advance of a sex that now demanded a broader, freer life,

a new health, a home built up on comradeship and economic freedom. In

all of these things she contrasted sharply with Myra, and Joe always

thought of the two together.

But unconsciously Sally was always the fellow-worker--Myra--what Myra

meant he could feel but not explain; yet these crowded days left little

time for thoughts sweet but often intense with pain. He wrote to her

rarely--mere jottings of business and health; he rarely heard from her.

Her message was invariably the same--the richness and quiet of country

life, the depth and peace of rest, the hope that he was well and happy.

She never mentioned his paper--though she received every number--and

when Joe inquired once whether it came, she answered in a postscript:

"The paper? It's in every Monday's mail." This neglect irritated Joe,

and he would doubly enjoy Sally's heart-and-soul passion for _The

Nine-Tenths_.

Sally was growing into his working life, day by day. Her presence was

stimulating, refreshing. If he felt blue and discouraged, or dried up

and in want of inspiration, he merely called her over, and her quiet

talk, her sane views, her quick thinking, her never-failing good humor

and faith, acted upon him as a tonic.

"Miss Sally," he said once, "what would I ever do without you?"

Sally looked at him with her clear eyes.

"Oh," she said, "I guess you'd manage to stagger along somehow."

But after that she hovered about him like a guardian angel. What

bothered her chiefly, when she thought of Joe's work, was her lack of

education, and she set about to make this up by good reading, and by

attending lectures at night, and by hard study in such time as she could

snatch from her work. She and Joe were comrades in the best sense. They

could always depend upon each other. It was in some ways as if they

were in partnership. And then there was that old tie of the fire to

draw them together.

She was of great help in setting him right about the poor.

"People are happy," she would say--"most people are happy. Human nature

is bigger than environment--it bubbles up through mud. That's almost the

trouble with it. If the poor were only thoroughly unhappy, they'd change

things to-morrow. No, Mr. Joe, it's not a question of happiness; it's a

question of justice, of right, of progress, of developing people's

possibilities. It's all the question of a better life, a richer life.

People are sacred--they mustn't be reduced to animals."

And with her aid he gained a truer perspective of the life about

him--learned better how to touch it, how to "work" it. The paper became

more and more adapted to its audience, and began to spread rapidly. Here

and there a labor union would subscribe for it in bulk for all its

members, and the Stove Circle soon had many a raw recruit drumming up

trade, making house-to-house canvasses. In this way, the circulation

finally reached the five-thousand mark. There were certain unions, such

as that of the cloak-makers, that regarded the paper as their special

oracle--swore by it, used it in their arguments, made it a vital part of

their mental life.

This enlarged circulation brought some curious and unlooked-for results.

Some of the magazine writers in the district got hold of a copy, had a

peep at Joe, heard of his fame, and then took copies up-town to the

respectable editors and others, and spread a rumor of "that idiot, Joe

Blaine, who runs an underground paper down on Tenth Street." As a

passion of the day was slumming, and as nothing could be more piquant

than the West Tenth Street establishment, Joe was amused to find

automobiles drawing up at his door, and the whole neighborhood watching

breathlessly the attack of some flouncy woman or some tailor-made man.

"How perfectly lovely!" one fair visitor announced, while the office

force watched her pose in the center of the room. "Mr. Blaine, how

dreadful it must be to live with the poor!"

"It's pretty hard," said Joe, "to live with any human being for any

length of time."

"Oh, but the poor! They aren't clean, you know; and such manners!"

Sally spoke coldly.

"I guess bad manners aren't monopolized by any particular class."

The flouncy one flounced out.

These visits finally became very obnoxious, though they could not be

stopped. Even a sign, over the door-bell, "No begging; no slumming," was

quite ineffective in shutting out either class.

There were, however, other visitors of a more interesting

type--professional men, even business men, who were drawn by curiosity,

or by social unrest, or by an ardent desire to be convinced. Professor

Harraman, the sociologist, came, and made quite a dispassionate study of

Joe, put him (so he told his mother) on the dissecting-table and

vivisected his social organs. Then there was Blakesly, the corporation

lawyer, who enjoyed the discussion that arose so thoroughly that he

stayed for supper and behaved like a gentleman in the little kitchen,

even insisting on throwing off his coat, rolling up his sleeves, and

helping to dry the dishes.

"You're all wrong," he told Joe when he left, "and some day possibly

we'll hang you or electrocute you; but it's refreshing to rub one's mind

against a going dynamo. I'm coming again. And don't forget that your

mother is the First Lady of the Island! Good-by!"

Then there was, one important day, the great ex-trust man, whose name is

inscribed on granite buildings over half the earth. This man--so the

legend runs--is on the lookout for unusual personalities. The first hint

of a new one puts him on the trail, and he sends out a detective to

gather facts, all of which are card-indexed under the personality's

name. Then, if the report is attractive, this man goes out himself and

meets the oddity face to face. He came in on Joe jovial, happy,

sparkling, and fired a broadside of well-chosen questions. Joe was

delighted, and said anything he pleased, and his visitor shrewdly went

on. In the end Joe was stunned to hear this comment:

"Mr. Blaine, you're on the right track, though you don't know it. You

think you want one thing, but you're after another. Still--keep it up.

The world is coming to wonderful things."

"That's queer talk," said Joe, "coming from a multimillionaire."

The multimillionaire laughed.

"But I'm getting rid of the multi, Mr. Blaine. What more would you have

me do? Each his own way. Besides"--he screwed up his eye shrewdly--"come

now, aren't you hanging on to some capital?"

"Yes--in a way!"

"So are we all! You're a wise man! Keep free, and then you can help

others!"

The most interesting caller, however, judged from the standpoint of

Joe's life, was Theodore Marrin, Izon's boss, manufacturer of high-class

shirtwaists, whose Fifth Avenue store is one of the most luxurious in

New York. He came to Joe while the great cloak-makers' strike was still

on, at a time when families were reduced almost to starvation, and when

the cause seemed quite hopeless.

Theodore Marrin came in a beautiful heavy automobile. He was a short

man, with a stout stomach; his face was a deep red, with large, slightly

bulging black eyes, tiny mustache over his full lips; and he was dressed

immaculately and in good taste--a sort of Parisian-New Yorker,

hail-fellow-well-met, a mixer, a cynic, a man about town. He swung his

cane lightly as he tripped up the steps, sniffed the air, and knocked on

the door of the editorial office.

Billy opened.

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Blaine in?"

"He's busy."

"I should hope he was! There, my boy." He deftly waved Billy aside and

stepped in. "Well! well! Mr. Blaine!"

Joe turned about, and arose, and accepted Mr. Marrin's extended hand.

"Who do you think I am?"

Joe smiled.

"I'm ready for anything."

"Well, Mr. Blaine, I'm the employer of one of your men. You know Jacob

Izon?"

"Oh, you're Mr. Marrin! Sit down."

Marrin gazed about.

"Unique! unique!" He sat down, and pulled off his gloves. "I've been

wanting to meet you for a long time. Izon's been talking, handing me

your paper. It's a delightful little sheet--I enjoy it immensely."

"You agree with its views?"

"Oh no, no, no! I read it the way I read fiction! It's damned

interesting!"

Joe laughed.

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"What can I do for _you_!" corrected Marrin.

"See here, Mr. Blaine, I'm interested. How about taking a little ad.

from me, just for fun, to help the game along?"

"We don't accept ads."

"Oh, I know! But if I contribute handsomely! I'd like to show it around

to my friends a bit. Come, come, don't be unreasonable, Mr. Blaine."

Sally shuffled about, coughed, arose, sat down again, and Joe laughed.

"Can't do it. Not even Rockefeller could buy a line of my paper."

"Do you _mean_ it?"

"Absolutely--flatly."

"Well, what a shame! But never mind. Some other time. Tell me, Mr.

Blaine"--he leaned forward--"what are you? One of these bloody

socialists?"

"No, I'm not a socialist."

"What d'ye call yourself, then--Republican?"

"No."

"Democrat?"

"No."

"Insurgent?"

"No."

Marrin was horror-stricken.

"Not a blooming anarchist?"

Joe laughed.

"No, not an anarchist."

"What are you, then? Nothing?"

"I can tell you what I'm not," said Joe.

"What?"

"I'm not any kind of an _ist_."

"A fine fellow!" cried Marrin. "Why, a man's got to stand for

something."

"I do," said Joe, "I stand for human beings--and sometimes," he

chuckled, "I stand for a whole lot!"

Marrin laughed, so did Sally.

"Clever!" cried Marrin. "Damned clever! You're cleverer than I

thought--hide your scheme up, don't you? Well! well! Let me see your

plant!"

Joe showed him about, and Marrin kept patting him on the back:

"Delightful! Fine! You're my style, Mr. Blaine--everything done to a

nicety, no frills and feathers. Isn't New York a great town? There are

things happening in it you'd never dream of."

And when he left he said:

"Now, if there's anything I can do for you, Mr. Blaine, don't hesitate

to call on me. And say, step up and see my shop. It's the finest this

side of Paris. I'll show you something you've never seen yet! Good-by!"

And he was whisked away, a quite self-satisfied human being.

That very evening Marrin's name came up again. It was closing-up time,

Billy and Slate had already gone, and the room was dark save for the

shaded lights over Joe's desk and Sally's table. The two were working

quietly, and outside a soft fall of snow was muffling the noise of the

city. There only arose the mellowed thunder of a passing car, the far

blowing of a boat-whistle, the thin pulse of voices. Otherwise the city

was lost in the beautiful storm, which went over the gas-lamps like a

black-dotted halo. In the rear room there was a soft clatter of dishes.

The silence was rich and full of thought. Joe scratched on, Sally

puzzled over reports.

Then softly the door opened, and a hoarse voice said:

"Joe? You there?"

Sally and Joe turned around. It was Izon, dark, handsome, fiery, muffled

up to his neck, his hat drawn low on his face, and the thin snow

scattering from his shoulders and sleeves.

"Yes, I'm here," Joe said in a low voice. "What is it?"

Izon came over.

"Joe!"--his voice was passionate--"there's trouble brewing at Marrin's."

"Marrin? Why, he was here only to-day!"

Izon clutched the back of a chair and leaned over.

"Marrin is a dirty scoundrel!"

His voice was hoarse with helplessness and passion.

Joe rose.

"Tell me about this! Put it in a word!"

Tears sprang to Izon's eyes.

"You know the cloak-makers' strike--well! Some manufacturer has asked

Marrin to help him out--to fill an order of cloaks for him."

"And Marrin--" Joe felt himself getting hot.

"Has given the job to us men."

"How many are there?"

"Forty-five."

"And the women?"

"They're busy on shirtwaists."

"And what did the men do?"

"As they were told."

"So you fellows are cutting under the strikers--you're scabs."

Izon clutched the chair harder.

"I told them so--I said, 'For God's sake, be men--strike, if this isn't

stopped.'"

"And what did they say?"

"They'd think it over!"

Sally arose and spoke quietly.

"Make them meet here. _I'll_ talk to them!"

Izon muttered darkly:

"Marrin's a dirty scoundrel!"

Joe smote his hands together.

"We'll fix him. You get the men down here! You just get the men!"

And then Joe understood that his work was not child's play; that the

fight was man-size; that it had its dangers, its perils, its fierce

struggles. He felt a new power rise within him--a warrior strength. He

was ready to plunge in and give battle--ready for a hand-to-hand

conflict. Now he was to be tested in the fires; now he was to meet and

make or be broken by a great moment. An electricity of conflict filled

the air, a foreboding of disaster. His theories at last were to meet the

crucial test of reality, and he realized that up to that moment he had

been hardly more than a dreamer.

V

FORTY-FIVE TREACHEROUS MEN

Out of the white, frosty street the next night, when every lamp up and

down shone like a starry jewel beneath the tingling stars, forty-five

men emerged, crowding, pushing in the hall, wedging through the doorway,

and filling the not-too-large editorial office. Joe had provided

camp-stools, and the room was soon packed with sitting and standing men,

circles of shadowy beings, carelessly clothed, with rough black cheeks

and dark eyes--a bunch of jabbering aliens, excited, unfriendly,

curious, absorbed in their problem--an ill-kempt lot and quite unlovely.

At the center stove, a little way off from its red heart, sat Joe and

Sally and Izon. The men began to smoke cigarettes and little cigars, and

with the rank tobacco smell was mingled the sweaty human odor. The room

grew densely hot, and a window had to be thrown open. A vapor of smoke

filled the atmosphere, shot golden with the lights, and in the smoke the

many heads, bent this way and that, leaning forward or tilted up, showed

strange and a little unreal. Joe could see faces that fascinated him by

their vivid lines, their starting dark eyes and the white eye-balls,

their bulging noses and big mouths. Hands fluttered in lively gestures

and a storm of Yiddish words broke loose.

Joe arose, lifting his hand for silence. Men pulled each other by the

sleeve, and a strident "'Ssh!" ran round the room.

"Silence!" cried Joe. His voice came from the depths of his big chest,

and was masterful, ringing with determination.

An expectant hush followed. And then Joe spoke.

"I want to welcome you to this room. It belongs to you as much as to

anybody, for in this room is published a paper that works for your good.

But I not only want to welcome you: I want to ask your permission to

speak at this meeting."