CHAPTER XXXI
“At parting—Andres—said to Don Quixote, ‘For the love of God, Signor Knight-errant, if ever you meet me again, though you see me beaten to pieces, do not come with your help, but leave me to my fate, which cannot be so bad but that it will be made worse by your worship.’”—Cervantes.
The Tailoress learned her lesson well. She listened to the Anarchist until she was convinced that the hard conditions of her class were due, not as she had always thought, to the will of God, but to the selfishness of man, and that it was her duty to lead her fellow-workers in rebellion.
She was shrinking, timid, sensitive, but she nerved herself to her task.
She began by forming a union in her own shop. It spread rapidly, soon including most of the vest-makers in the city. The few who had good wages joined for the sake of the many who had not.
The Tailoress did the work of organization admirably, and developed powers of generalship of which no one had suspected her. Only a little while after the formation of the union the time for action came. The monetary depression, which had been causing unusual distress among the poor, affected trade so seriously that the wages of garment-makers were cut down everywhere throughout the city. The vest-makers suffered with the rest.
The Tailoress acted as spokeswoman in the committee appointed by her union to wait on the contractors for this kind of work. To each she stated her case of grievances admirably, but no one of them gave her assurance of redress.
Then she led the vest-makers triumphantly out on a strike.
I have not the heart to give the details of the fight that followed. It was a case where the employers won a speedy victory, because of the ease with which this work can be secured. In a few days many of the contractors had filled their shops withnew employés, and the work was going on as usual, while the Tailoress and her followers were adrift. Nothing had been ripe for the revolt except the enthusiasm of the rebels.
I had been sorely puzzled by the problem. The cause I felt was just, but I found it difficult to face the idea of the misery that failure would bring. I was hardly heroic enough to agree with the Altruist and the Anarchist that the defeated strikers would be sufficiently rewarded by the martyr’s consolation of suffering gloriously for their faith. Possibly this was because I was acquainted with some of them.
The battle was lost, and the Tailoress was broken-hearted. Her Jeanne D’Arc courage left her. In her consciousness of the wretchedness she had caused, she forgot that her impulse had been noble. She shrank from the prophetess into a nervous, hysterical woman.
We tried every method of consolation. The practical came first, and we labouredincessantly, seeking employment for the vest-makers thrown out of work. Two shops, after slight intercession, took back their employés, in spite of the prejudice roused by the union. Many of the women were successful in securing new work of a lower grade.
The Altruist, I discovered in an indirect way, sacrificed a large part of his private income in providing for the many who could find no employment. The excitement of the occasion afforded him a kind of painful happiness. The war of liberation had begun. He gave a lecture in his auditorium on “The Defeat that is Success.”
“I am really beginning to sway these young working-men,” he confided to me exultantly afterward. “The labour-movement will lose its chief danger if men who occupy neutral ground between the two parties in the struggle can act as mediators. It is full of noble impulse that often acts irrationally, and needs judicious guidance. The labourer fails in presentinghis claims in the right way because he cannot think logically or speak efficiently. I am coming to think that my mission is to interpret the mind of the working-man.”
The Doctor, though she breathed out many imprecations against the strike, helped a score of its stranded victims.
“Do you think that this kind of protest against injustice is always wrong?” I asked, rather deprecatingly, one day.
“Yes, when it is stirred up by outsiders,” she answered with emphasis. “With the labour-movement itself, in spite of its terrible mistakes, I feel deep sympathy. In any demand so persistent, so universal, there must be a certain justice, a certain right.”
But her next remarks were not so agreeable.
“I cannot understand how employers fail to see the trend of all this agitation, and to realize that great concessions must be made to the working-men. The peace of the country is menaced, yet the questionat issue is left, in times of outbreak to the military, in times of quiet to professional agitators, a class of vagrants who represent neither labour nor capital, and understand the position of neither employer nor employé. The burden of responsibility which the business men of the country refuse to shoulder is taken up by men like our friends the Anarchist and the Young Reformer. The greatest danger lies there.”
I smiled, thinking that possibly many of the agitators were, like the Anarchist, not so dangerous as they tried to be.
The news of the relief for her companions in revolt affected the Tailoress but slightly. She shut herself up in her garret room with her remorse. We visited her, and attempted consolation, but to no effect.
At last she softened a little. One day the Altruist came to me with a grieved look.
“Will you ask the Doctor to go and talk with the Tailoress?” he said gently. “I think the Doctor might reach her as noneof the rest can. I seem to have lost all influence over her.”
I promised to fulfil the request.
“I do not understand,” said the Altruist wistfully, “why I cannot touch people at times like this. Before this grief came, the Tailoress hung on every word I said. I sometimes feel a sense of lack, as if I cannot get near simple human moods. It is much easier for me to cope with intellectual difficulties.”