The subject of their conversation had not lain down, she had curled up in a big chair drawn up before the window, looking out across the Hudson to the setting sun over the Palisades. She was trying desperately to understand the fable of the fox and the grapes after it is turned inside out. The enticing bunch was in easy reach. Were the grapes really sour? It was nearly an hour before they called her, but she had not yet begun to think out what she should say at Carnegie Hall.
There is something grotesque about most large public meetings. Very rarely a speaker gets the feeling, at his first glance over the upturned faces, that there is some cohesion in the assembly, some unity. He realizes that they have come together from their various walks of life, their factories and counting-houses, because of some dominant idea. It is then his easy task, if he is anything of an orator, to catch the keynote of the assembly and carry his hearers where he will.
It was not such an audience which gathered that night at Carnegie Hall. After Walter had given a quick glance from the door of the dressing-room over the mass on the floor, the circle of boxes, and the packed tiers of balconies, he turned to Mabel.
"The people in the boxes," he said, "have come to stare at Yetta, and the rest to stare at them."
"Don't tell her that, for goodness' sake," Mabel said.
But Yetta saw it herself. For the first time she had a sort of stage-fright as she peeked out at them. The people in the boxes irritated her. She had talked to that kind of women before, and they had only given a few dollars. She wondered how many of them had been to Bryn Mawr.
Mabel called Yetta from the doorway to introduce the Rev. Dunham Denning, the rector of Mrs. Van Cleave's church, who was to act as chairman. And then she was presented to an honorable gentleman named Crossman, who had once been a cabinet member and had gray hair, and a wart on his nose. These two elderly gentlemen embarrassed Yetta very much by their courtly attentions. She did not have the slightest idea what to say to them.
When at last the speakers stepped out on the platform, there was a break of polite hand-clapping from the auditorium and a perfect storm of applause from the back of the stage. Yetta turned in surprise to find that banks of seats had been put up and that they were closely packed with her own vest-makers. She had not seen them from the door of the dressing-room. She stopped stock-still with tears in her eyes. Mabel had to pull her sleeve to get her to come forward and acknowledge the greeting of the main audience.
But the noise behind her had shaken Yetta out of the lassitude which the sight of the well-dressed, complacent people of the boxes had given her. She must do her best. She felt herself very small and the thing she wanted to say very big. She pulled her chair close to Mabel's and slipped her hand into that of her friend.
The Rev. Dunham Denning in a very scholarly way reminded the audience of several things which the Christ had said about the neighbors and which he—the reverend gentleman—feared were too often forgot. He introduced the Honorable Mr. Crossman, who was known to all for his distinguished services in the nation's business, his justly famed philanthropies, and his active work in the Civic Federation, which was striving so efficiently to soften the bitterness of the industrial struggle. Mr. Crossman had very little to say, and said it in thundering periods. It took him nearly an hour.
Then it was Mabel's turn. She spoke, as was her wont, in an unimpassioned, businesslike way. She outlined the work of the organization which she represented and spoke of the vest-makers' strike as an example of what the league could do if it had sufficient means.
When she sat down, the chairman began to cast the flowers of his eloquence at Yetta's feet.
"If I may use such an expression," he said, "while Miss Train has been the brains of this strike, which we have gathered here to approve, the next speaker has been its very soul. My own acquaintance with her is of the slightest. But it has been sufficient to convince me past any doubt that the charge on which she was sent to the workhouse was an infamous libel. Who can look at her sweet face and believe her capable of vulgar assault? But you are to have the opportunity to judge for yourself. She will tell us of this victory to which she has so glowingly contributed, and it is my hope, as I am sure it is that of this vast assembly, that she will tell us about her own experiences.—Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Miss Yetta Rayefsky."
Yetta squeezed Mabel's hand and, getting up, walked down to the edge of the platform. She wanted to get near them so they could hear her.
The laughter and the conversation in the boxes stopped for a formal round of applause. But as they clapped their hands and stared at the curiosity, something about her fragile beauty made them clap more heartily. At close range, Yetta looked abundantly healthy. But far away, standing alone on the great platform, she seemed frail and exotic. The two-dollar seats took their cue from the boxes and made as much noise as they could. The gallery and the mass of vest-makers behind her cheered and howled and stamped their feet without thought of the proprieties. And Yetta stood there alone, the blood mounting to her cheeks, looking more and more like an orchid, and waited for the storm to pass.
"I'm not going to talk about this strike," she said when she could make herself heard. "It's over. I want to tell you about the next one—and the next. I wish very much I could make you understand about the strikes that are coming.
"But first I ought to say a few words to you for my union. We're very much obliged to all who have helped us. We couldn't have won without money, and we're thankful to everybody that gave us a dime or a penny.
"It's a wonderful victory for us girls and women. We're very glad. For more than a month we've been out on strike, and now we can go back to the sweat-shop. Because we've been hungry for a month—some of us have got children and it was worse to have them hungry,—because a lot of us have been beaten up by the cops and more than twenty of us have gone to jail, we can go back to the machines now and the bosses can't make us work no more than fifty-six hours a week. That's not much more than nine hours a day, if we have one day off. And the bosses have promised us a little more pay and more air to breathe, and when we've wore ourselves out working for them, they won't throw us out to starve so long as they can find any odd jobs for us to do. We've had to fight hard for this victory, and we're proud we won, and we're thankful to all you who helped us. But better than the shorter hours and everything else is our union. We've got that now, and that's the most important. We won't never be quite so much slaves again like we was before.
"But we've won this strike now, so we've all got to think about the next one. I don't know what trade it will be in. Perhaps you never heard of the paper-box makers, or the artificial-flower makers, or the tassel makers. There's men with families in those trades that never earned as much as I did making vests. And the cigar makers—they're bad too. And if you seen the places where they bake bread, you wouldn't never eat it. It don't matter which way you look, the people that work ain't none of them getting a square deal. They ain't getting a square deal from the bosses. They ain't getting a square deal from the landlords. And the storekeepers sell them rotten things for food. There's going to be strikes right along, till everybody gets a square deal.
"Perhaps there's some of you never thought much about strikes till now. Well. There's been strikes all the time. I don't believe there's ever been a year when there wasn't dozens here in New York. When we began, the skirt-finishers was out. They lost their strike. They went hungry just the way we did, but nobody helped them. And they're worse now than ever. There ain't no difference between one strike and another. Perhaps they are striking for more pay or recognition or closed shops. But the next strike'll be just like ours. It'll be people fighting so they won't be so much slaves like they was before.
"The Chairman said perhaps I'd tell you about my experience. There ain't nothing to tell except everybody has been awful kind to me. It's fine to have people so kind to me. But I'd rather if they'd try to understand what this strike business means to all of us workers—this strike we've won and the ones that are coming. If I tell you how kind one woman wants to be to me, perhaps you'll understand. You see, it would be fine for me, but it wouldn't help the others any.
"Well. I come out of the workhouse to-day, and they tell me this lady wants to give me money to study, she wants to have me go to college like I was a rich girl. It's very kind. I want to study. I ain't been to school none since I was fifteen. I guess I can't even talk English very good. I'd like to go to college. And I used to see pictures in the papers of beautiful rich women, and of course it would be fine to have clothes like them. But being in a strike, seeing all the people suffer, seeing all the cruelty—it makes things look different.
"The Chairman told you something out of the Christian Bible. Well, we Jews have got a story too—perhaps it's in your Bible—about Moses and his people in Egypt. He'd been brought up by a rich Egyptian lady—a princess—just like he was her son. But as long as he tried to be an Egyptian he wasn't no good. And God spoke to him one day out of a bush on fire. I don't remember just the words of the story, but God said: 'Moses, you're a Jew. You ain't got no business with the Egyptians. Take off those fine clothes and go back to your own people and help them escape from bondage.' Well. Of course, I ain't like Moses, and God has never talked to me. But it seems to me sort of as if—during this strike—I'd seen a Blazing Bush. Anyhow I've seen my people in bondage. And I don't want to go to college and be a lady. I guess the kind princess couldn't understand why Moses wanted to be a poor Jew instead of a rich Egyptian. But if you can understand, if you can understand why I'm going to stay with my own people, you'll understand all I've been trying to say.
"We're a people in bondage. There's lots of people who's kind to us. I guess the princess wasn't the only Egyptian lady that was kind to the Jews. But kindness ain't what people want who are in bondage. Kindness won't never make us free. And God don't send any more prophets nowadays. We've got to escape all by ourselves. And when you read in the papers that there's a strike—it don't matter whether it's street-car conductors or lace-makers, whether it's Eyetalians or Polacks or Jews or Americans, whether it's here or in Chicago—it's my People—the People in Bondage who are starting out for the Promised Land."
She stopped a moment, and a strange look came over her face—a look of communication with some distant spirit. When she spoke again, her words were unintelligible to most of the audience. Some of the Jewish vest-makers understood. And the Rev. Dunham Denning, who was a famous scholar, understood. But even those who did not were held spellbound by the swinging sonorous cadence. She stopped abruptly.
"It's Hebrew," she explained. "It's what my father taught me when I was a little girl. It's about the Promised Land—I can't say it in good English—I—"
"Unless I've forgotten my Hebrew," the Reverend Chairman said, stepping forward, "Miss Rayefsky has been repeating God's words to Moses as recorded in the third chapter of Exodus. I think it's the seventh verse:—
"'And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
"'And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
"Yes. That's it," Yetta said. "Well, that's what strikes mean. We're fighting for the old promises."
"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" a blonde lady in Mrs. Van Cleave's box asked her neighbor.
"Not my style," he replied. "Even if you had no other charms, if you were humpbacked and cross-eyed, that hair of yours would do the trick with me. Haven't you a free afternoon next week, so we could get married?"
"I didn't know old Denning was so snappy with his Hebrew," another broke in.
"Which reminds me of a story—"
"Is it fit to listen to?" the blonde lady asked.
"Yes—of course. It's about a Welsh minister—"
But the lady had turned away discouraged, to the boredom of the man who really wanted to marry her.
But perhaps in that crowded auditorium there may have been some who had understood what Yetta had been talking about.
Later in the evening, when she was standing with Longman on the deserted stage, waiting for Mabel, who—to use Eleanor's expression—was "sweeping up," he asked her what she was doing the next day.
"I want you to have dinner with me," he said. "Mabel and Isadore Braun are coming. And if it isn't asking too much, I wish you could give me some of the afternoon before they come. I'd like to talk over a lot of things with you. You know I'm sailing the day after to-morrow. It's my last chance to get really acquainted with you."
"Sure. I'd like to come," Yetta replied. "But where are you going?"
She listened in amazement to his plans. She had thought he was going to marry Mabel. When he had left them at the door of the flat, Yetta asked her with naïve directness if she wasn't engaged to Longman.
"No," Mabel laughed. "Where did you get that idea?"
"Why, all the girls think you are."
"Well, they're all wrong. I'm not."
"And aren't you in love with him?"
"Not a bit. You Little Foolish, can't people be good friends without being in love?"
Yetta went to sleep trying to think out this proposition. She hardly remembered the choice she had made between college and work, nor the strain of the great meeting. It was very hard to believe that Mabel and Walter were not in love.
CHAPTER XVII THE OPERATING ROOM
Walter's study seemed to Yetta an ideal room. There was no appearance of luxury about it—nothing to remind one by contrast of the hungry people outside. There were no "decorations," except two portraits of his grandparents and a small reproduction of one of the great cow-faced gods of the Haktites which stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The rest of the room was made up of comfortable chairs, a well-padded window-seat, and books. The cases were full and so was the table and so were some of the chairs and there were books on the floor. Knowledge was a goal which her father had set before Yetta as almost synonymous with "goodness" and "happiness." It was a thing she had forgotten about in the sweat-shop, but for which her recent experience had given her an all-consuming hunger. No one who has been "sent to college," who has had an education thrust upon him, can realize how much she venerated books. When Longman brought her to his room, it seemed to her as if she had entered the home of her dreams.
The greatest thing that had come to Yetta in the new life was the gift of friends. In the days since her father's death, with the exception of the few weeks when Rachel had given her confidences, she had had only loveless relatives and shopmates. And now she could hardly count her friends. From the very first she had given Longman the niche of honor in this gallery. The reason was something more subtle than his dramatic entrance into her life. She seldom thought of him as her rescuer. But she felt that his regard for her was more personal and direct than that of the others. She could not have explained it coherently to herself, but she felt it no less keenly. Mrs. Van Cleave was fond of her because she had eyes like those of the long-dead daughter. Mrs. Karner was attracted to her because she typified her own lost youth. Isadore Braun and Mabel valued her because of her flaming spirit of revolt.
Over on "the Island," the warden's little three-year-old son, in spite of her prison dress, in spite of the jealousy of his own nurse, had run into her arms at first sight. Instinctively she felt that Walter liked her in a similar fashion. If, during the strike, she had sold out, turned "scab," Braun and Mabel would no longer have been her friends. But Longman would have come to her in his gentle, lumbering way and asked her about it. He might have been disappointed, even angry, but still he would have been her friend.
Yetta wanted to begin at once with some questions about Socialism.
"You'd better save them till Isadore and Mabel come," Longman laughed. "He's got all the answers down by heart—the orthodox ones. And Mabel isn't a Socialist. I'm neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It will start a beautiful shindy if you spring those questions to-night."
He told her about his projected book on Philosophy, and how he would like to add her credo to his collection. The big scope of the idea caught her fancy, and she said she was willing.
It was slow work at first. The earlier questions on his list led her into unfamiliar fields. She had never troubled her mind over metaphysics. She was not sure what kind of a god she believed in—nor whether It really ought to be called "God." She had given no thought to the question whether this is the best or worst possible world. The prophecies, which her father had loved so much, inclined her strongly to the idea that it might be made a better one. But she had never even tried to determine whether the Universe is an elaborate and precise mechanical instrument, a personally conducted puppet show, or a roulette wheel. Her inability to answer these questions—and the way he put them made them seem very important—shamed her. He seemed to be sounding the depths of her ignorance. Did she believe in a future life? She threw up her hands.
"I don't know."
"Nobody knows. It's a question of belief. You loved your father very much, and when you were a little girl he died. Was that the end of him?"
She shook her head. He waited patiently for words.
"No. It wasn't the end of him. Anyhow the memory lasts."
"Do you ever talk to him now?"
"Sometimes. I pretend to."
"Is it as good as if he was really here?"
"Almost—sometimes."
"Well. After you die do you think you'll meet him?"
Yetta curled herself up a little tighter on the window-seat, her forehead puckered into deep wrinkles.
"Yes," she said after a while. "I think—once, anyhow—I'll have a chance to talk to him—tell him everything and ask him what was right and wrong—and he'll tell me."
"How will he look?"
"I don't know. But I'll know it's him."
The ordeal became easier as the questions began to deal with more mundane problems. But before long they got into deep water again.
"Do you believe that honesty is the best policy?"
That took a lot of thinking and brought back the wrinkles.
"Honesty—telling the truth," she said at last. "I guess it's the best something, but it ain't always the best policy. If I hadn't perjured myself, we wouldn't have won this strike."
"What?"
"I don't mind telling you. I lied in court. I swore I didn't hit Pick-Axe; but I tried to kill him."
Longman whistled softly.
"Tell me about it."
When she had told him all,—what Pick-Axe had said and done, how suddenly blind rage had overcome her, how at length Braun had persuaded her to lie,—she asked him if he thought honesty would have been the best policy in this case.
"I'm asking questions this afternoon, not answering them," he said gravely. "This interests me a lot. So you think it's sometimes right to lie in a good cause."
"No," she said quickly. "I don't think it's never right to lie. But I guess sometimes you've just got to. If I'd told the truth, they'd have sent me to prison, instead of the workhouse. I wouldn't have cared. It ain't nice to lie, and like Mr. Thoreau says, there's worse things than being in the worst prison. But it would have been awful for the others. Just because I told the truth all the papers would have lied and said all the girls were murderers. We'd have lost the strike. I'd have felt better if I'd told the truth. But there's more than two thousand girls in our trade.
"It's like this, I think. If you make up your mind that something is good, you got to fight for it; you can't be afraid of getting beat up, or arrested, or killed, and you can't be afraid of hurting your conscience either. Mr. Thoreau has got an essay about John Brown and how he fought to free the black slaves. Well, suppose somebody'd come to him and told him how he could do it, if he'd commit a big sin himself. I guess he'd have done it. If he'd said, 'You can beat me or put me in prison or hang me for those black men, but I won't sin for them,' he'd have been a coward. I'd rather go to prison than tell a lie like I done. But I ain't afraid to do both."
She had sat up stiffly on the window-seat while she was trying to say all this. Again she curled up. She watched Walter, as he sat there in deep thought, absent-mindedly drumming on the table with his pencil. She could not have talked like this to any one else in the world. She had expressed herself poorly; in her intensity she had slipped back into her old ways of speech, but she knew he did not care about doubled negatives, nor "ain't's." She knew he had understood. And just when she had found this wonderful friend, she was losing him. He was going away in the morning for years and years. Central Asia sounded far away and dangerous. Something might happen to him and he never come back. She was afraid she would cry if she kept silence any longer.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I was wondering if you are afraid of anything."
"Oh, yes. Lots of things."
"For instance?"
"Well, I'm afraid of the Yetta Rayefsky who tried to kill Pick-Axe. And I'm afraid of myself for not blaming her for it. And I'm afraid of being useless. I'm afraid of waste. I'm afraid—more than anything else—of ignorance." She sat up again. "Yes. That's the worst thing the bosses do to us—they keep us ignorant. I don't think even you can understand that. You've had books all your life. You've been to school and college, you're a professor,"—the awe grew in Yetta's voice,—"your room is full of books. I sit here and look at them and try to think what it must mean to know all that's in so many books and I want to get down on my knees, I'm so ignorant."
"Good God! Yetta," he said savagely, jumping up. "Don't talk like that. I'm not worth your stepping on."
He came over and took her hand and surprised her by kissing it humbly.
"I'm going away to-morrow—for a very long while—and I want to tell you, before I go, that you're a saint, a heroine. Did books mean so much to you? And you decided to work instead of going to college? Books?" He grabbed one from the table and hurled it violently across the room. "Books? They are only paper and ink and dead men's thoughts. Truth and wisdom don't come from books. They can't teach you those things in college. Yes. I've had books all my life. I live with them." He stamped up and down and shook his fists at the unoffending shelves. "If I know anything Real, if I've got the smallest grain of wisdom, I didn't get it from them. There's only one teacher—that's Life, and before you can learn you've got to suffer. I don't know much because things have been easy for me. How old are you? Nineteen? Well, I'm over thirty. You talk about getting down on your knees to me! Good God! I've ten years start and every advantage, but I don't know—Capital K-N-O-W—as much as you. And good? I ought to ask your pardon for kissing your hands. I'm no good! God! I want to break something!"
He looked around savagely for something which would make a great noise. But he suddenly changed his mind, and pulling up a chair to the window-seat, where Yetta was sitting bolt upright, he began again in a quieter tone.
"Yetta, I'm a lazy, self-indulgent imbecile. I've never done anything in all my life that I didn't want to do. I've never sacrificed anything for any cause, not my easy-chairs, nor my pipe, nor my good meals, nothing. Nothing but automobiles and yachts which I didn't want. God gave me a brain which I am too lazy to use. And besides my general uselessness and selfish waste, I'm a coward. Why am I going off to Persia? Is it because I think it will ever do anybody any good, ever make life sweeter or finer for any one, to have me decipher the picture puzzles of the people who worshipped that stupid-faced cow on the mantelpiece? No. I'm not that foolish. Is it because I don't know what I might do, if I was as wise as you are—wise enough to know that we must give our lives to win our souls? No! I know that just as well as you do, Yetta. But I'm a coward. I'm running away, because I'm afraid of life."
He jumped up again and began to pace the room.
"Oh, well!" he groaned. "Enough heroics for one afternoon. But don't let books hypnotize you, Yetta. Schopenhauer said once that the learning of the West crumples up against the wisdom of the East like a leaden bullet against a stone wall. There's nothing in books but 'learning.' And you've got some of the Eastern wisdom, Yetta. It's part of your Semitic heritage. Treasure it. Don't ever let books come between you and your intimacy with life. One pulse beat of a live heart is worth all the printed words in a thousand books. I—"
But he interrupted himself and sat down gloomily and looked out over Yetta—who had curled up once more—at the budding green tree tops of Washington Square.
His tirade had disturbed Yetta much more than he dreamed. It was not until long afterwards that she was to bring out his words from the treasure-house of her memory and come to understand what he meant by all his talk of Knowledge and Wisdom. She would never think as lightly of book learning as he did. She even less appreciated his ardently expressed admiration of her, and his self-condemnation. It was his pain which impressed her. He had fallen from his godlike majesty. He was no longer a calm-browed Olympian, who deigned to let her drink from the fountain of his wisdom. He was just a simple man, who suffered. And so Yetta began to love him.
In the wonder of it she forgot that he was going away.
"Yetta," he said abruptly. "Where are you planning to live? Are you going to stay on with Mabel and Miss Mead?"
"Why, no," she rushed dizzily down through the cold spaces which separate Dreamland from New York City. "I—I don't suppose so. I'll find a room somewhere. On the East Side, I guess."
"That's not a good plan," he said in a businesslike tone, for in spite of all he had been saying about heartbeats, he did not suspect the disturbing rate of Yetta's pulse. "The intellectual life on the East Side is too feverish. You'll get into their very bad habit of all-night discussions, which lead only to brain-fag. And besides you'd be living too near your work. You're going to study, and you'll need a place where you'll be undisturbed. I've got a suggestion. I think it would be good for you; it certainly would be a favor for me. Why not live here? I've got a long lease on the place. I wouldn't want to give it up, even if I could. I'd been planning to leave the key with Mrs. Rocco and have her come in once a month to air the rooms and chase the moths. Then I was going to pay one of the stenographers up at the University to attend to my mail. There are a few bills coming in every month, and the letters must be forwarded to me. Not half an hour's work a week, but somebody's got to do it. If you would care to, it would save me a little expense, and you'd save room rent. It's a good place to study—better than the East Side. And some of the books are worth reading. What's the matter?"
"Everybody's so kind to me," Yetta said, blinking her eyes to drive away the tears.
"This isn't kindness," he protested. "It will save me about ten dollars a month."
Taking her silence for consent, he went on to explain to her how she was to open the letters and mail a printed card explaining his absence to the writer and every week forward the bundle of mail to the French Legation in Teheran. And then he explained the money matters, how she was to pay the rent and his subscriptions to various learned and philanthropic societies and so forth.
All the while, Yetta, curled up on the window-seat, was trying to realize how very empty her life would be after he left. It would at least be some comfort to live here in his room with his ghost.
While he was still explaining the details about his mail and the bank account he would open in her name, a couple of waiters arrived laden with linen and dishes. They were from the Lafayette, where Walter was a regular patron. He knew the chef and the garçons by their first names and they had laid themselves out to make his farewell dinner memorable. The books and papers on the table were piled on the floor. And just as one waiter was giving a last pat to the cloth and the other was lighting the candles, Mabel and Isadore arrived.
CHAPTER XVIII WALTER'S FAREWELL
Mabel had come to the dinner with some reluctance. She feared that the farewell might take too personal a line for pleasure. Walter's heart was so full of bitterness that he was glad when things went to the other extreme and turned into a celebration of the strike victory.
When at last the waiters had removed the débris of the feast, and Walter was nursing the coffee urn, Mabel and Isadore began to discuss Yetta's plans. They had a great deal to say about her work in trying to ally the garment trades. But Walter, when he had distributed the coffee, broke into the conversation abruptly.
"You people seem to think," he challenged them, "that Yetta's principal job is to organize the garment workers."
"Well, isn't it?" Mabel asked.
"No! And I hope she won't let you two bluff her into thinking it is. Her main job for the next few years is study. The garment workers will be organized and reorganized fifty times before they get a definite formation. She's only one opportunity to form her intellect. It must last her all her life. It's more important than this work you talk about because it's to be the basis of the bigger jobs to come. All the time she's going to be torn by what looks like conflicting duties. Every day she'll wake up with the feeling that there's something she can do which would or might help in this immediate campaign. The temptation to give all her time to the union work is the worst one she'll have to face. If she yields to it, she'll regret it all her life. Three years hence the work she did in the mornings will look very small indeed and the study she neglected will look very, very big.
"When you talk about 'sweat-shops,' Mabel, you curse the bosses for robbing the girls of leisure and all chance of culture. Watch out that you don't 'sweat' Yetta, that you don't let her 'sweat' herself. It's criminal nonsense to talk work, work, work. Plenty of people will be saying that to her. I think she's got sense enough to keep her head, but you who are her friends ought to be telling her study, study, study."
"You're right, Walter," Mabel said with unusual humility.
"What we ought to do," he went on, "is to outline a course of study for her. What do you suggest, Isadore?"
"We've just published a new pamphlet which outlines a course of reading," he said. "It's called 'What to read on Socialism.'"
"That's a fine idea of a liberal education." Mabel snorted. "She isn't going to be a Socialist spellbinder. Her job's with the unions. The Webbs' Industrial Democracy would help her a lot more than your Socialist tracts."
"It's just as iniquitous to sweat her intellect as her body," Longman groaned. "Can't you two blithering idiots realize that before you read any of these books you read hundreds of others, studied for years? I hope she won't specialize—in her study—on Socialism or trade-unions, either, for several years. She needs to keep her mind open and absorb a background. She ought to read Westermarck's History of Human Marriage before she tackles Bebel's Woman. She ought to read Lecky and Gibbon and John Fiske and Michelet and a lot of astronomy and geology and physics and biology—a person's an ignoramus to-day who hasn't a broad knowledge of biology—and she ought to know something about psychology before she tackles the Webbs. She ought to put in some time on pure literature. You people are thinking about Yetta Rayefsky, the labor organizer of the next few years. Well, I hope she's going to live still three score years and more than ten. It's going to do her more good to read Marcus Aurelius than Marx and Engels. She wants to know something of the traditions of the race, the great men of the past, Homer and Shakespeare and Rabelais and Swift. And above all she needs to know the ideas of our own times, Ibsen and Tolstoi, Shaw and Anatole France. She'll pick up the Socialist and trade-union dope as she goes along. It's the background we, her friends, can give her."
And so for an hour or more they squabbled over a large sheet of paper and at last evolved a course of reading for her. There were to be two mornings a week to natural science, two to history, two to social science and psychology, and one to literature. Yetta sat back and listened to it all, very much impressed by the way these three intellectual giants hurled at each other's heads the titles of books of which she had never heard. There was indeed very much for her to learn. Mabel generally concurred in Walter's suggestions, but Isadore doggedly insisted that more Socialist matter should be included. He was especially rabid on the question of history.
"What's the use of learning a lot of rot you've got to unlearn? Why read Michelet and Carlyle on the French Revolution? These old idealists did the best they knew how. Carlyle really thought Mirabeau made the Revolution and Michelet thought it was Danton. But nobody, not even the antisocialists, believes in the 'great man theory' any more. All our history has got to be rewritten from the modern point of view. It hasn't been done yet, and the only way to get things straight is to saturate yourself in the social idea, get it into your head that this is a world of economic classes, not individuals, then you can read anything without danger—you know how to discount it.
"You talk about 'background'—well, that's what I'm insisting on. Let's get it right. It's the lack of a deeply social background that makes so many of our well-intentioned modern reformers sterile. People still believe that great changes can be made by strong individuals. A lot of peace advocates believe that Mr. Carnegie is going to abolish war. But most seem to think that things can be reformed piecemeal. This crusade against infant mortality is a good example. Its ideal is fine. But it tries to isolate it from all the rest of the social problem and cure it alone. It can't be done. It's tied up with rotten tenements and landlordism, with bad milk and commercialism, with poor wages and industrialism. Just like war, it is a natural, inevitable part of capitalism.
"It's the same thing with the trade-unions. They try to separate their economic struggle with their bosses from the political aspect of the social problem, and it can't be done. The unionists make a pitiful showing just because they are still slaves to the old culture; they lack broad insight. The actual things they try to do are good, but they're barren because their background is wrong."
"Thanks," Mabel said sarcastically. "I'm so glad to know what's wrong with us."
"Now, Yetta," Longman said, with the gesture of a circus man introducing his curiosities, "the show is about to commence. On your right you see the 'pure,' the hidebound, the uncompromising Socialist, Isadore Braun. To your left you see the 'suspect,' the 'bourgeoise,' step-by-step reformer, Miss Mabel Train. They are about to engage in a bloody combat."
"But," interposed Yetta, "what are you?"
"Yes," Braun echoed. "What are you?"
"That's an uninteresting detail. I'm only the referee of this bout."
"He can poke fun at a serious position," Braun said. "But he's afraid to or can't define his own."
"I'll tell you what he is, Yetta," Mabel volunteered. "He's a—"
"No, I'll tell her myself," Walter interrupted. "If you want it in one word, I'm a syndicaliste. We haven't any English word for it."
"He believes in a general strike," Mabel explained, "although not one trade strike in ten really succeeds."
"Exactly and because," Walter assented emphatically.
"He believes," Braun supplemented, "that although the working people haven't enough class consciousness to vote together we can ask them to fight together."
"Exactly and once more exactly! I hate to talk, Yetta, because—as I confessed to you before these two noble examples of self-sacrifice came in—I haven't the nerve to practise my beliefs. I hate to talk, and I've never done anything else. But I've got just as definite a creed as Isadore.
"A general strike has more hope of success than a dozen little strikes, because it's a strike for liberty—and that's the only thing that interests all the working class. The trade strikes are for a few extra pennies. And when one of them does succeed, it's because of some bigger enthusiasm than was written in their demands. You went right to the heart of the matter last night when you said you had been striking so as not to be slaves. I'll bet you've seen it when you talked to the other unions. Which of your demands interested them most? Dollars to doughnuts it was 'recognition of the union.' They all have demands of their own about wages and hours. But when you say 'union' to them, you're saying liberty. You're appealing to something bigger than considerations of pay—to their very love of life.
"The basis of a General Strike must be an ideal which is shared by every working-man. The simon-pure unionists, the A. F. of L., the Woman's Trade Union League, are fighting for little shop improvements, different in every trade. Sometimes—often—one set of demands is in conflict with another. The one thing that holds the movement of the workers closer together is this brilliant idea of union. And the leaders are busily preaching disunion.
"Read any history of labor and you'll see. First it was every man for himself. Then shop unions and each shop for itself. Then all the workmen of one town. Now, its national trade-unions. To-morrow it will be industrial unions. The change has already begun. We already have the Allied Building Trades. Mabel's keen on allying the various branches of garment workers. The miners have gone further. They have a real industrial union. That's the next step. We'll have the typesetters, pressmen, folders, newsboys, all in one big newspaper union. Engineers, switchmen, firemen, conductors, roundhouse and repair-shop men all in a big brotherhood of railroad men. Twenty gigantic industrial unions in place of the hundreds of impotent little trade organizations. No one can look the facts in the face and deny either the need of the change or the actual progress towards it.
"Braun shudders at the thought because the men who are now urging this change—the Industrial Workers of the World—are displeasing to him. They are not good party socialists. Mabel don't like them because they tell unpleasant truths about the crooks in her organization. I don't like them personally, either, because they are just as narrow-minded as Isadore, and I guess some of them are as crooked as any of the trade-union leaders. But the idea is bigger than personalities. You mark my words, Yetta, industrial unionism is going to be a bigger issue every year with the working-men. It's going to win. And the outcome of industrial unionism is the General Strike and Insurrection.
"Isadore pooh-poohs the idea of bloodshed. The social revolution is going to be a kid-glove affair. He will admit the possibility of sporadic riots. But the great victory is to be won at the voting booths. Justice is to be enthroned by ward caucuses and party conventions. Victor Berger instead of Dick Croker. The central committee instead of Tammany Hall. He really believes this, but it is based on two suppositions, both of which seem to me very uncertain. First, reason is to conquer the earth and the great majority is to vote reasonably—that is, the Socialist ticket. Second, the grafters and all the contented, well-fed, complaisant people are going to resign without a struggle.
"I don't think they will. They may not have the courage to defend their privileges themselves. But bravery, the fighting kind, is one of the cheapest things on the human market. Our government buys perfectly good soldiers for $13.50 a month. The privileged class always has hired mercenaries to defend their graft and I think they will in the future. They've already begun to do it with their State Constabulary in Pennsylvania. Read about how the French capitalists massacred our comrades after the Paris Commune. That was only thirty years ago. I don't see any reason to hope for a very startling change in their natures.
"And then is reason going to rule the world—the cold intellectual convictions that Isadore means? I doubt it. The great movements in the world's history have come from passionate enthusiasms. Take the Reformation, or the English Commonwealth, or the French Revolution. Not one man in ten of all the actors in those crises were what Isadore would call reasonable. Reason is powerless unless it is backed by a great enthusiasm. And if we have that, we can turn the trick quicker with a general strike and insurrection than we could by voting.
"This question of violence or peace is a thorny one. We've got to separate what we would like to see from what seems probable. Bloodshed is abhorrent. But it is pretty closely associated with the history of human progress. Before the great Revolution the mass of the French people were in the very blackest ignorance. They've had a century of revolution and bloodshed, and to-day they are the most cultured nation in the world. The same thing is happening to-day in Russia. We read in the papers of assassinations and executions and insurrections. It means that the intellect of a great people is coming to life. And the mind of our nation has got to be shaken into wakefulness, too. We've got to learn new and deeper meanings to the old words justice and liberty. I'd like to believe we could learn them in school, by reading socialist pamphlets. But all the race has ever learned about them so far has been in battle-fields and behind barricades. I hate and fear bloodshed. I believe it's wrong. Just as you said you thought it was wrong to lie. But I love liberty more.
"And there's one other point: Until we learn these lessons, we've got to see our strong men and women cut down by tuberculosis, we've got to stand by and watch a slaughter of innocent babies that makes Herod's little massacre look like a schoolboy's naughtiness. The socialists don't like the word 'violence.' The reality is in the air we breathe. The landlord wracks rent out of the poor by violence—no amount of legal drivel can hide the fact that every injustice of our present society is put through by the aid—on the treat—of police. The whole force of the state is back of the grafters. It's violence that drives people into the sweat-shops, that drives the boys to crime and the girls to prostitution. And all this deadly injustice will go on until we've learned the lessons of justice and liberty. Let us learn them as peacefully and legally as possible, but we must learn them. Blood isn't a nice thing to look at, but it isn't as unspeakably horrible as the sputum of tuberculosis."
"What you are saying is rank anarchy," Braun protested.
"I've told you a hundred times you can't scare me by calling names. 'Anarchy' is just as much a word of progress as 'Socialism.' I think you've got the best of it when it comes to a description and analysis of society and industrial development. But the Anarchists have got you backed off the map in the understanding of human motives and social impulses.
"I'm an optimist, Yetta, about this social conflict. I don't think it matters much what form people give to their activity. The important thing is not to be neutral. The thing that is needed is a passion for righteousness. Once a person sees—really sees—the conflict between greed and justice, and enlists in the revolution, it doesn't matter much whether he goes into the infantry or cavalry or artillery. I see in society a ruling class growing fat off injustice, a great, lethargic mass, indifferent through ignorance, and a constantly growing army of revolt. Anybody who doubts the outcome is a fool. History does not record a single year which did not bring some victory for Justice. But a person's equally a fool—I mean you, Isadore—who tries to prophesy just how the war will be conducted. There isn't any omniscient general back of us, directing the campaign. The progress towards victory is the result of myriad efforts, uncoordinated, often conflicting. It is entirely irrational—just like evolution. The anthropoidal ape, sitting under a prehistoric palm tree and picking fleas off his better half, did not know how—through the ages—his offspring were going to become men. Even with our superior intellects, our ability to study the records of the past and guess into the future, we cannot presage the steps of the progress. The directing force is the instinctive common sense of life. It's a more mysterious force than any theological God. It's always on the job, always pushing life through new experiments, through 'variations' to the better form.
"All evolution has been a history of life struggling for liberty. It was a momentous revolution, when the first tiny animalcule tore itself loose from immobility, when it conquered the ability to move about in quest of food and a larger life. And so one after another life conquered new abilities. It's abilities, not rights, that constitute liberty. Think how many fake experiments life made before it turned out a man. The same process is going on to-day. You can't crowd life into a definition. Justice is being approximated, not because of one formula. The victory will come not because the people accept one theory, but because of thousands and thousands of experiments. And the ones that fail are just as much a part of the process.
"Gradually this common sense of life is awaking the minds of the lethargic mass. This is sure progress. It matters not at all whether the mind of the individual come to life in the trade-union, the Socialist party, or the Anarchist Group—or the Salvation Army. The important thing is that a new person has conquered the ability to think for himself. It doesn't even matter whether the words that woke him to life were true or not.
"Life isn't logical. And socialism seems to me to have almost smothered its soul-stirring ideal in a wordy effort to seem logical. The trade-unions are illogical enough. At least you can say that for them. But it's only once in a while—by accident—that they sound the tocsin."
This kind of talk disturbed Isadore. From first to last it ran contrary to his manner of thinking. But in an illusive way it seemed to have a semblance of truth—a certain persuasiveness. The error—if error there was—was subtle and hard to nail down. As he listened he knew he was expected to answer it. He must defend his colors before Yetta. It was not an easy thing to do. His whole life was built on an abiding faith that the hope of his people lay in the activities of the Socialist party. There was no cant nor insincerity about him. He felt that the spread of such ideas as Longman's would render doubly difficult the work of his party. It vexed him not to be able at once to demolish his friend's heresies. But he was used to arguing with opponents who thought any change was unnecessary or impossible. Walter admitted all this and went further. Isadore was off his accustomed field.
"You're a hard person to argue with," he said, "because your ideas are so unusual. I don't mean to say you're wrong just because you are in a minority of one. But it's hard to reason against oratory. I wish you would put your position down on paper, so I could give it serious thought."
"Maeterlinck has come pretty close to it in Notre devoir social," Walter replied.
"Oh, that!" Isadore said contemptuously. "That isn't an argument, it's a sort of fairy story."
"Still calling names! There's truth in some fairytales—a whole lot of truth you can't express in your dialectics."
"That!" Isadore said, jumping at a point of attack, "is, I guess, the fundamental difference between us. You're a sort of mediævalist, living in a realm of romance and fairy stories—ruled over by your instinctive sense of life. You forget that we live in the age of reason. You said liberty consisted in abilities. Well, I believe that abilities bring obligations. Instead of jeering at reason and dialectics, I think it's our preëminent ability. We, reasoning animals, have a duty to use and perfect—and trust—our intellects. And the Socialist theory is the biggest triumph of the human mind. The theory of evolution is the only thing to compare with it. But Darwin had only to fight a superstition. It wasn't much of a feat to convince thinking people that it took more than one hundred and forty-four hours to create the world—then his case was practically won. Marx had to fight not only such theological nonsense, but the entire opposition of the ruling class. Socialism had always been proscribed. A college professor who taught it frankly would lose his job. But it has never had a set-back. It has gathered about it as brilliant a group of intellects as has Darwinism. It's growing steadily.
"Having no trust in reason, you are driven back to violence. But I do believe in intelligence. I don't want to hang my hope of the future on such illogical things as dynamite and flying bullets.
"If you don't respect intellect and logic, of course you don't sympathize with Socialism. But you can't ask me to give up the results of my own reasoning, backed as they are by the best brains of our times, to accept your imaginings."
"I don't ask you to give up Socialism," Walter laughed. "On the contrary, as long as it seems truth to you, give up all the rest. Your ability seems to find its right setting in the party—just as Mabel's does in the trade-unions—just as I'd be ill at ease and useless in either.
"The point I want to insist on is my faith that, back of your reasoning and activity and back of my speculations and laziness, this instinctive sense of life is working out its own purpose. Only future generations will be able to know which—if either of us—is right."
This argument thrilled and fascinated Yetta. In the years that were to follow she was to hear such debates repeated endlessly. The new circle of friends she was to make were as passionately interested in such questions of social philosophy and ethics as are the art students of Paris in the relative value of line and color or the concept of pure beauty. In time talking would lose its charm; she was to realize that—as Walter had said—it often leads to brain-fag. But this, her first experience, was an immense event.
The two men leaned back in their chairs, their faces relaxed. They seemed to have talked themselves out. Yetta turned to Mabel, who sat beside her on the window-seat.
"You're not a Socialist?" she asked.
"No." Mabel replied. Such discussions bored her. "Nor an Anarchist either. I happen to be living in the year of grace 1903. I'm not interested in Isadore's logical deductions nor Walter's imaginings. They both know that if the working people want enough butter for their bread,—let alone Utopia,—they've got to organize. Cold experience shows that they can be organized on economic step-by-step demands, and that we can build up stable, practical unions along these lines—which every day are bringing to the working class a great spirit of unity. And cold experience also shows that the labor organizations which ask for the earth don't last. There have been dozens just like the Industrial Workers of the World before, and where are they now? Those people haven't enough practical sense to organize a picnic.
"If I were a theorist, instead of a rather busy person, I would have nothing against Industrial Unionism. It's on the cards, and I am working for it. But I haven't any time for these fanatical dreamers. I haven't anything against the Socialist idea of the working people going in for political representation. Whenever I get a chance I put in a word for it. But once more I've no time for people who don't do any real work and spend their time writing pamphlets about nothing at all and quarrelling over party intrigue. They're very wonderful, no doubt, with their reason and their imaginations—master-builders, the architects of the future, and all that. I'm quite content to be a little coral insect, adding my share to the very necessary foundations, which they forget about. Anyhow, to-night isn't 'Le Grand Soir'—and as dreaming isn't my job, I can't afford to sleep late. Come on."
In the doorway, as the four were going out, Mabel called Isadore, who was pairing off with Yetta, and asked him about the injunction in the cigar-makers' case. Walter dropped behind with Yetta. He was almost glad that Mabel had denied him these last few minutes of tête-a-tête with her. He had been looking forward to it all the evening. But there was not anything for him to say to her. So he talked to Yetta, as they crossed the Square.
"There's one thing I almost forgot. Mrs. Karner has taken a great fancy to you. I know she'd appreciate it if you went up to see her every once in a while. Don't let her know I suggested it, but something she said the other day made me see how much she likes you. She tries very hard to pretend not to care about anything, but at bottom she's serious—and good. In the League work you'll have to play around a good deal with some of the swells, and she's a good one to practice on.
"Well, here we are. I'll send the keys over by Mrs. Rocco when I go. You can move in any time you want to."
Mabel went up the steps and fitted her latch-key into the door. She reached down to shake hands with Walter.
"So long," she said with an even voice. "Good luck."
"About once in every long while," he said, "we'll get mail. I'd like to hear from you now and then."
"I'm not much of a letter-writer," she said, "but I won't forget you."
For the first time, Yetta really believed that Mabel did not love him.
"Good-by, Mr. Longman," she said. "We'll all be waiting for you to get back."
"Thanks! And I hope you'll write too—give me the news when you send me my mail. And the good chance to you. Good-by, Mabel."
"Good-by, Walter," she called back over her shoulder.
"Isadore," Walter said, as the door shut behind the girls, "come on over to the Lafayette and have a drink."
Braun looked at his watch.
"Oh, damn the time. Come on. I want somebody to talk to me."
BOOK IV
CHAPTER XIX YETTA'S WORK
In the next few months Yetta learned a new meaning for the word "work." In the sweat-shop, day after day, she had sat before the machine, her mind a blank, three-quarters of her muscles lifeless, the rest speeding through a dizzying routine. Only when a thread broke had there been any thought to it. In the new work there was no repetition, none of this dead monotony. Every act, every word she spoke, was the result of a consciousness vividly alive. In the keen, exhilarating thrill of it she had little time to mope over Walter's absence.
It is a strange paradox of our life that, while no other social phenomenon touches us at so many intimate points as the organization of labor, while very few are of more importance, most of us know nothing at all about the details of this great industrial struggle. Our clothes bear the "union label" or are "scab." In either case they are an issue in the conflict. Heads have been broken over the question of whether this page, from which you are reading, should be printed in a "closed" or "open shop." Around our cigarettes, the boxes in which they are packed, the matches with which we light them, the easy-chairs in which we smoke them, and the carpets on which we carelessly spill the ashes, a tragic battle is raging. Nine out of every ten people we meet are concerned in it. The man who takes our nickel in the Subway, the waiter who serves our lunch, the guests at dinner, the unseen person who pulls up the curtain at the theatre, the taxicab chauffeur who takes us home, are all fighting for or against "unionism."
From the human point of view there is no vaster, more passionate drama. Intense convictions, bitter, senseless prejudices, the dogged heroism of hunger, comfort-loving cynicism, black treachery, and wholehearted idealism are among the motives which inspire the actors. The stage—which is our Fatherland—is crossed by hired thugs from the "detective agencies" and by dynamiters. In the troupe are such people as Jane Addams and Mr. Pinkerton, shedders of blood and preachers of peace. There are hardly any of us who do not at some time step upon the stage and act our parts.
From the viewpoint of politics, the conflict has a deeper significance. What is the statesmanlike attitude to the growing unrest of those who do the work of the world—an unrest which is steadily and rapidly organizing? Close to two million of our citizens pay dues to the unions, their number grows by a quarter of a million a year. This is a momentous fact in politics. What is to be done about it? No one who thinks of such things can deny that sooner or later we—as a nation—must answer that question.
Profound in its political significance, rich in human color, the organization of labor touches us on every hand. But very few of us have any idea of the life of those men and women who devote themselves to this imposing, threatening movement. What, for instance, is the daily work of the secretary of the Gasfitters' Union in our town? What is an "agitator"? What are his duties? How does he spend his time? Why?
It was into this little-known life that Yetta was plunged. First of all she was "Business Agent"—or as we more generally say "the Walking Delegate"—of her Vest-Makers' Union. She had to attend to all business between the organization and the bosses.
When a complaint reached her that some employer was violating the contract he had signed with the union, she had to investigate. If the charge was justified, she could call the girls out until the offending boss decided to observe his agreement.
It is just as hard for a labor organization to find a satisfactory "business agent," as it is for a mercantile concern. One will be too aggressive, another too yielding. One will be always irritating the employers and causing unnecessary friction. The next will make friends with the bosses and be twisted about their fingers. Once in a while a "business agent" sells out, betrays his constituents for a bribe, just as some of our political representatives have done.
Even in trades where the union has existed for a long time and somewhat stable relations have grown up between it and the employers, the position of "business agent" calls for a degree of tact and force which is rare. It is impossible for the delegate of the men to reach a cordial understanding with the bosses. He has at heart the interest of the entire trade, men working in different places under varied conditions, while the boss thinks only of his own shop. One is trying to enforce general rules, the other is seeking exceptions. The employer may be friendly with the union and in some sudden rush ask a favor which the men themselves would like to grant. But the walking delegate, knowing that all bosses are not so well disposed, that he may not grant to one what he refuses to others, cannot make exception, even if it seems reasonable to him.
Yetta's position was doubly difficult. The boss vest-makers were smarting under their defeat. They regarded the union as an unpleasant innovation, an infringement of their liberty. A visit from Yetta seemed an impertinence. On the other hand the new union was pitifully weak. The treasury was empty. The bosses knew this, knew just how much hunger the strike had meant to their employees. They tried to take advantage of the situation. The Association of Vest Manufacturers, after the disorganization which followed the strike, was getting together again. Their frequent meeting promised a new attack. All the girls felt trouble in the air. There were causes for quarrel in almost every shop. But a new strike—if it failed—would surely wreck the union. Everything was to gain by delaying the new outbreak. Yetta's common sense, supplemented by Mabel's experienced advice, pulled them through many tight places.
The crisis came in about a month at the very Crown Vest Company, before which Yetta had tried to kill Pick-Axe. The boss, Edelstein, was just the kind of man to have employed such a thug. He began the attack by discharging three girls who had been prominent in the strike. A clause in the settlement, which he had signed, had said there should be no discrimination against the unionists. If Edelstein was allowed to violate this agreement, the other bosses would surely follow suit, and one by one the little advantages so dearly won would be lost.
Yetta tried to reason with the man. He tilted his cigar at a pugnacious angle, put his feet on the desk, and insolently hummed a tune while she talked.
"If you think you can run my shop," he said, "you can guess again. The union wants to know why I fired these girls? Well, tell the union I didn't like the way they wore their hair."
"It's nine o'clock now," Yetta said. "If you don't reëmploy those girls by three—that's six hours—or give the union a serious reason for their discharge, I'll call a strike on your shop."
"Go ahead and call it," he said savagely. "My girls have had enough of your dirty union. They won't try striking again."
Although Yetta had managed to deliver her ultimatum with outward calm and a show of confidence, the next six hours were the most unpleasant she had ever spent. Would the girls walk out at her call? If they did not, it would surely kill the union. Edelstein was certainly offering them all sorts of inducements to stay. The other bosses were back of him, urging him on. They wanted to break the union. What had she to offer the girls but hunger and an ideal? There were not ten dollars in the treasury. Most of the girls were still in debt from the first strike; many of them would be dispossessed by their landlords if they struck again.
But Yetta's side was stronger than she realized. The success of the strike had taught the girls the tangible value of loyalty. The break-up of the employers' association had had the opposite effect. Each and every boss had tried to desert his fellows first and so make better terms with the union. Edelstein did not trust—would have been a fool to trust—the other employers. They were using him as a catspaw, and he knew it. If he succeeded in breaking the union, they would gladly profit by it. But, after all, they were his competitors; if he got into trouble single-handed, they would just as gladly profit by that. He consulted his forewomen. They all believed that enough of the force would go out to tie up his shop. So the three girls were reëmployed.
This victory gave Yetta new strength and confidence. She had taken the measure of her opponents and was not afraid any more. She went about her work with a firmer tread, with a greater faith in the eventual triumph of her cause. Her decisive stand with Edelstein had turned the balance. The bosses began to accept the union as an inevitable thing. Yetta did not have to call a strike for many months, not until the girls had recovered their breath and gathered enough strength to demand and win a new increase in wages.
Her work as business agent absorbed only a small amount of her time. Most of it went into efforts to organize the other garment workers. The success of the vest-makers had made a great impression on the sweated trades. The idea of "union" was popular. Sooner or later they were bound to organize—as the inevitable logic of events forces labor to unite everywhere. It was not smooth sailing by any means. But Yetta gradually grew to the stature of her work. Although she was sometimes discouraged at the slowness of her progress, Mabel was always radiant and talked much of her remarkable success.
But in her effort to ally the various garment trades, Yetta was face to face with the thorniest problem of labor organization. In union there is strength, and if we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately. But if you re-read the history of our country during the years between the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution, and recall the various efforts at secession which culminated in the Civil War, you will be impressed by the difficulty of living up to this beautifully simple idea of united action in politics. It is not different in labor organization.
In almost every industry there are small trades of highly skilled men who occupy a favorable strategic position. It is so with "the cutters" in the business of making clothes. Their union was the oldest of all. Practically every man in the country who knew the trade was a member. They could not be replaced by unskilled "scabs." They were in a position to insist that the bosses address them as "Mister." Why should they join forces with these new and penniless unions? What had they to gain by putting their treasury at the disposal of the struggling "buttonhole workers"?
Why should the opulent province of New York enter into a union with tiny Delaware or far-away Georgia? In the proposed Congress how could representation be justly distributed? The cutters would not listen to any proposal which did not give them an overwhelming voice in the Council. It is against such cold facts as these that the theory of Industrial Unionism, which had sounded so alluring to Yetta as Longman outlined it, has to make headway.
At first Yetta was confused by the conflicting organizations which were struggling for support from the workers. There was the American Federation of Labor, to which Mabel gave her allegiance. Its organizers were practical men, interested first, last, and all the time in shop conditions. Effective in their way, but their cry, "A little less injustice, please," seemed timid to Yetta. Then there was the Socialist party. Their theories were more impressive to her—they went further in their demands and seemed to have a broader vision. But of all the Socialists she knew, Braun was the only one who interested himself actively in the organization of the workers. The rest seemed wholly occupied with political action. There was also the Industrial Workers of the World. They cared very little for either firmly organized unions, which were Mabel's hobby, or for the party in which Isadore put such faith. They placed all their emphasis on the Spirit of Revolt. In a more specific way than the other factions they were out for the Revolution. They appealed strongly to that side of Yetta which was vividly touched by the manifold misery she saw about her, the side of her personality which had struck out blindly at Pick-Axe. She recognized that it had been a blind and dangerous impulse. It was not likely to come again. But this phase of her character, although she feared it, she could not despise. It was not dead, it was only asleep. And she knew that the same thing was present in the hearts of all the down-trodden people—her comrades in the fight for life and liberty.