She began with the night when she had watched the Settlement dance from her window. With the wonderful cleverness of self-forgetfulness she made them feel how her heart had hungered for a little happiness; how, although she had wanted very much to be good, she had reached out her hands, pleadingly, toward the dream of joy. She made them understand how the deadening barrenness of the sweat-shop had made it easy for her to believe in Harry Klein, how he had come to her singing the Song of Songs—like a Prince in Shining Armor riding forth to rescue her from the Giant Greed. Even the fat Mrs. Van Cleave was crying behind her lorgnette when Yetta told of her first supper with Harry.
"You see," she ended, "it's mostly against things like that that we girls strike. We may think it's for higher wages or shorter hours, but it's because it's so hard for a poor girl to be happy."
Mrs. Karner jumped up and put her arms around Yetta and kissed her and cried against her cheek."Ladies," Mabel struck while the iron was hot, "shall we support this strike? Shall we try to organize the vest workers?"
No formal motion was put, but Mrs. Karner, who was chairman, instructed the secretary to enter on the minutes their unanimous decision to aid the vest-makers. Mrs. Van Cleave nodded her head approvingly and volunteered to head a sub-committee in finance. It was the first time she had ever done anything but sit placidly in her chair. Then the meeting adjourned, and when the last of the ladies had left the room, Mabel gave Yetta a great hug.
"Oh, you darling," she said. "You even made Mrs. Van Cleave cry. It was wonderful."
And then without any reason at all, Yetta began to sob. Mabel installed her in one of the big chairs and sat down at her feet. "There," she said, "you cry as much as you want to. You've got a right to cry a week after a speech like that."
Resting her head against Yetta's knee and holding her hand, she lit a cigarette and began to think out the new campaign. Yetta's sobs wore themselves out quickly, and they began to talk. Mabel's grasp of details, her unexpected knowledge of the vest making, amazed Yetta. Mabel knew things about the trade which she had never dreamed of.
The two stenographers were called in. One was set to work on a volume of Factory Reports, preparing a list of vest shops. And Mabel instructed the other one to call up theForwaertz—the Yiddish Socialist paper.
"What's your address?" she asked Yetta. "I'm going to ask Mr. Braun to come and see you to-night and write up the strike."
The question reminded Yetta of a new complication.
"I forget," she said. "I can't go home. My uncle's fierce against unions. I ain't got no place. I'll have to find one."
"That's all right; you come home with me to-night," Mabel reassured her. And turning to the stenographer, told her to ask Mr. Braun to come to her flat for dinner. She dictated letters to half a dozen different people telling of the new plans and asking them to come to the League rooms on the morrow. It was nearly seven when she and Yetta and the two stenographers left the office.
All the last hour, Harry Klein had stood impatiently in the dark doorway, waiting for Yetta to pass. As the last of the ebb tide flowed by him, he went across the street and told his followers that there was nothing doing. For two more nights he marshalled them, but Yetta did not pass that way any more.
His luck had changed. It was not long before his retainers noticed it. In due time a new president was elected to the James B. O'Rourke Democratic Club. And so he passes out of this story.
Yetta had no clear idea of what fairy-land should be like, but when she passed through the door of Mabel's flat, it seemed that she had entered it.
She had never dreamed of such beautiful rooms. Even a more sophisticated observer would have been impressed with Miss Mead's arrangements. Interior decoration was her profession, and she was more proud of her work in this humble apartment than of anything she had done elsewhere. Most of her commissions were for people who were foolishly rich, who were more anxious to have their rooms appear expensive than beautiful. There was nothing in the apartment simply because it had been high-priced. Nothing pleased Eleanor more than to tell how little it had all cost. She could talk by the hour on the absolute lack of relationship between pure æsthetics and money. One of her lectures was on this subject, and she used the apartment as a demonstration room. But to Yetta the forty dollar flat seemed a miracle of luxury.
The room which impressed her most with its appearance of opulence was the white enamelled, large-mirrored bath-room.
Eleanor herself was a vision of loveliness. Yetta had seen very few women with real blonde hair, andthose few had not known how to wear it. There was a book she had seen as a child with a picture in it like Eleanor, but she had not thought that such women walked the earth. And her dress! It seemed to the little East-sider fit raiment for a queen. She could not imagine how it could shine so unless it was woven of spun gold. But it was not so costly as she imagined. The only real extravagance which Eleanor permitted herself in her quest for the Beautiful was the purchase of early daffodils.
Mabel got out one of her own shirt-waists and hurried Yetta into it. While she was changing her own workaday clothes for a fresh outfit,—hardly less gorgeous than Eleanor's,—they heard the maid admitting Isadore Braun.
He was a product of the Social Settlement Movement. Even as a little boy he had been bitten by the desire to know. The poverty of his family had forced him to go to work, but he had continued his studies in the night classes of a Settlement. His boyish precociousness had attracted attention, and some of the University men of the Settlement, impressed by his eagerness to learn, had helped out his family finances so Isadore could return to school. They had helped him through High School and into the City College.
During his sophomore year Isadore had joined the Socialist party. His conversion had been a deep and stormy spiritual experience to him. He knew it would shock and alienate his supporters. Caution, expediency, every prudent consideration had urged him to postpone the issue—at least till he had finished college. But the new vision of life flamed with an impatient glory. He could not wait.
His new political faith separated him from the friends who had made things easy for him. But it brought him new ones a-plenty who, if poorer, were truer. He had been compelled to leave college. But he had already developed a marked talent for the kind of journalism the East Side appreciates, less "newsy," but decidedly more literary than the output of the English papers. He found a place on theForwaertzwhere, for a bare living wage, he wrote columns about history and science and the drama. It was an afternoon paper, so he had his evenings free to study. He had taken the night course in the New York Law School. It had been a desperate struggle which he could not have won through except for a talent at reducing work to a routine and for one of those marvellous constitutions—like Yetta's—which seem the special heritage of their race, a physical and nervous endurance, which is probably explained by agelong observance of the strict dietary regulations of Moses.
He was not an attractive person to look at. His face was heavily lined and lumpy. His short, stocky body had been twisted by much application to desk work. His right shoulder was noticeably higher than his left.
Nor was his type of mind attractive. It was too utilitarian to admit of any graces. He was twenty-five years old, and, since the days of enthusiasm when he had become a Socialist, he had imposed on himself an iron rule. He had not given himself a vacation, he had not read any book, had not consciously done anything in these five years, which did not seem to him useful. With the same merciless singleness of purpose which had marked Jake Goldfogle's struggle to becomerich, Isadore Braun had driven himself in the acquisition of abilities, which would make him a more forceful weapon in the fight for Socialism.
He had led his classes in the Law School. He had spurred himself on to immense effort, not because he wanted to sit on the Supreme Bench, but because he saw that the workers were in sore need of competent, sympathetic legal representatives. He believed that the Socialists were the most enlightened element in the great army of industrial revolt. He held that they should be a sort of "general staff," guiding and advising the Labor Unions—the rank and file of the army. His only idea in entering the bar was to act as attorney for the unions. If he had been offered a large retainer to settle a will or draw up a business contract, he would have been surprised and would have refused on the ground that he was too busy. He had volunteered his services as legal adviser to the Woman's Trade Union League.
He still drew his meagre salary from theForwaertz, but he wrote less frequently on general subjects and had specialized on the labor situation. He kept to the newspaper work, not only because it gave him a small income, but even more because it gave him an audience. Almost every Yiddish-speaking workman in the city knew his name. He was a concise and forceful speaker, and now that he no longer attended night school he was on the platform, preaching Socialism, four or five nights a week.
This manner of life had had its inevitable and unwholesome result. For years he had been so intensely occupied with details that he had had no time to think broadly, to criticise, and develop the fundamentals ofhis faith. At twenty he had accepted the philosophy of Socialism; he had not had time to think about it since. He was rapidly becoming a narrow-minded fanatic. It was a strange, but common paradox. Having spent five years in the fight for Socialism, he could not have given a more coherent, a maturer statement of his beliefs than at first. All his associates held the same creed, but they discussed only its detailed application. Like himself they were—with very few exceptions—slaves to, rather than masters of, the Great Idea.
His only non-Socialist friends were Mabel Train and Walter Longman. When he first took up the work of the Woman's Trade Union League, he had had a sweeping contempt for "bourgeois reformers." Gradually Mabel had forced him to abandon his hostility and at last to give her a high degree of respect. He was unable to understand her. But it was equally impossible for him to withhold his admiration for her consistency of purpose, her dogged persistence in a far from pleasurable career, her great ability, and her strong, straight intellect. He knew no other woman who was more steadfast than Mabel. But why? What were her motives? She was not a Socialist. She explained casually that she did not have time for more than Labor Unions. He could understand devotion to a great philosophical principle, but he could discover no coherent system of thought back of Mabel's unquestioned devotion.
He was a frequent visitor at the flat. But it never occurred to him to make a social call. For Eleanor he had no manner of use, a feeling which she entirely reciprocated. While he tried to pretend to a politeinterest in "interior decoration," she made no pretence at all of caring for Socialism. And as soon as the business, which had caused him to come, was finished he found himself ill at ease, even with Mabel. On the basis of their common work, the organization of labor and the conduct of strikes, they had a delightfully frank and free friendship. But on any other ground he felt constraint. He never discussed Socialism with her, and this was strange, as he was an ardent proselyter. Back of her offhand explanation that she was too busy to occupy herself with the party, he felt the existence of a point of view entirely different from his own. In reality he was afraid to open this subject with her; he was afraid of her brilliant vision and her incisive, railing style of argument. He had gotten out of the habit of discussing the broad foundations of Socialism; he would be off his accustomed ground. He told himself that she was a woman, and if she got the better of him in repartee, she would think that she had demolished Socialism.
Through Mabel, he had met Longman, and if she did not fit into his theory of life, Walter was an even greater exception. His easy-going, rather lazy brilliance was always startling Isadore and making him angry. Here was an exceptionally able man, who was keenly alive to the rottenness of the present order, but who took only a languid interest in righting it. What a power he might be! Instead he spent his time on the deadest of dead pasts and in an inconsequential way dallied—"diddled," Isadore called it—with philosophy. He could not think of Longman's manner of life without raging; it was such despicable waste.He ought to have despised him, but he could not help liking him. Having no bond of common work with Longman, as he had with Mabel, he found himself more often in his rooms than in her flat.
Yetta, somewhat abashed by the glorious clothes of her hostesses, found Isadore's unkempt appearance a decided relief. His hair, black, curly, wiry, looked as if it had not been brushed for a decade. The spotless linen, the gilt shades of the candles, the bewildering assortment of forks and spoons, the white-aproned French maid, all rather dizzied her. It was indeed comforting now and then to glance up at the familiar East Side face across the table.
Eleanor, after a few formal politenesses from the head of the table, fell silent, and Mabel began to tell Isadore about the new strike. Once in a while they asked Yetta a question. When the table was cleared and the maid brought coffee—tiny, tiny cups of black coffee—Eleanor went into the parlor and arranged herself with a book beside a green-shaded lamp. And Isadore, taking out some rough sheets of copy paper, began scribbling notes for the article which should tell the East Side on the morrow that a gigantic, rapidly spreading, and surely victorious revolt had broken out in the vest trade. Once Yetta protested that her shop—twelve women—was the only one which had struck. But they laughed aside her objection. At least it was necessary to make it sound big, perhaps it would grow. Then they began drawing up a set of demands for the strikers to submit to their employers. First of all came the "recognition of the Union," and then a long list of shop reforms. About the only one which would be intelligible to those not familiar with thetrade was that for a higher rate of pay per piece; the rest involved such technical considerations as the regulation of speed, ventilation, etc. Yetta wanted them to put in a clause demanding the reinstatement of Mrs. Cohen. But Mabel explained that there would be no sense to the demands unless other shops joined the strike, so they could not put in anything which applied only to one.
"But," Yetta insisted, "I guess there's a Mrs. Cohen in every shop."
They argued against her that the unions could not try to right individual wrongs, they could only hope to win conditions which would stop the production of Mrs. Cohens. Although she was unconvinced, Yetta gave in. Isadore hurried off to a meeting.
Eleanor gave him a perfunctory good night without looking up from her book, and Mabel walked down the hallway with him. Yetta felt suddenly forlorn. Eleanor went on reading, ignoring her existence, and Mabel lingered to talk with Isadore at the door.
When Mabel came back, Eleanor looked up from her book and spoke querulously in French.
"I should think you might at least say you are sorry for spoiling our evening."
"It isn't spoilt yet," Mabel replied. "It's only begun."
"Not spoilt for you, perhaps. You never think of me. You solemnly promised to keep this evening free for some music. And at six your stenographer casually calls me up to say that there will be people for dinner. You can't even find time to telephone yourself."
"Now, Nell, don't be cross. If you listened to our talk, you must have seen how important—"
"Oh, everything is more important than I."
"We'll have our music all right. I'll send the little one to bed."
And then changing into English, Mabel told Yetta that she must be very tired after so much excitement, that they had a hard day before them, and that she had best take a piping-hot bath to make her sleep and turn in at once. Yetta did not understand French, but from Eleanor's tone she had guessed the meaning of "de trop." She wanted very much to stay up and talk with Miss Train, but with a pang in her heart, she followed her docilely into a bedroom, watched her lay out a nightgown and bath-robe, and as docilely followed her into the dazzling bath-room.
"Take it just as hot as you can stand it, and then jump right into bed," Mabel said, and kissed her good night.
Before she was half through with her bath, she began to hear the sound of music. And when she had put on the nightgown and wrapped herself in the bath-robe,—her skin had never felt such soft fabrics,—she opened the door noiselessly and stood a moment unobserved in the hallway. In the front room Mabel was sitting at the piano and Eleanor stood beside her, with closed eyes, a violin tucked lovingly under her chin, and swayed gently to the rhythm of the music. It was one of Chopin's Nocturnes. Yetta did not know what a Nocturne was; the best music she had ever heard had been the cheap orchestras at the Settlement and at the Skirt-Finishers' Ball. Neither Eleanor nor Mabel were great musicians; it would have seemed a commonplace performance to most of us, but to the girl in the bath-robe it sounded beautiful beyondwords, the most wondrous thing of all the wonderful new world she had so suddenly entered.
She listened a moment and then tiptoed down the hall to her bedroom. She carefully closed the window, which Mabel had as carefully opened, left her door ajar, so she could hear the music, and climbed in between the soft white sheets. She was very tired, the hot bath had quieted her nerves, and it was while they were playing the third piece, something by Grieg, that she fell asleep. Her last conscious thought was a dreamy, wistful wonder if she could ever become a part, have a real share in so gorgeous a life.
For more than an hour they kept at their music. The people who wondered why two so different personalities lived together had never seen them as they played. Neither of them was expert enough to perform in public, but they both passionately loved to make music. Eleanor's ridiculous posing, her querulous jealousy, very often jarred on Mabel's nerves. She sometimes thought of breaking up the household. But there were precious moments when their differences melted away and they enjoyed a rare and perfect harmony. Now and then Mabel escaped from her manifold engagements, and they went together to a concert or the Opera. Even more intense became their intimacy of emotion on the more frequent occasions when—as this evening—they played together. Such moments more than compensated for the daily frictions. To the jealous Eleanor they meant that Mabel's mind was cleansed of all preoccupations, when no one, no fancied duty came between them, when they could forget everything—everything—and be together. To Mabel such intimacies meant escape from all theheart-breaking routine of misery and struggle which was her daily life; they were interludes of unalloyed happiness, white moments in the sad business of living. Somehow the magic of the music soothed and lulled to sleep the great ache of social consciousness. She knew no other way to win forgetfulness from the overwhelming melancholy of Life.
"Nell," Mabel said, putting her arms around Eleanor when at last they were going to bed, "do you want to be nice to me? Try to like this little Yetta. She interests me. And I'd like to have her stay here for a while, if you don't mind."
"At least," Eleanor replied, "she's more decorative than most of your protégées."
Yetta woke at her accustomed hour. But instead of hearing the vague murmur of awaking life about her, there was a strange silence. She could not even hear any one snoring. She had a panicky feeling that perhaps they had been murdered. So getting out of bed, she tiptoed down the hall to Mabel's open door and was reassured to see her sleeping peacefully. Back in her own room she climbed into bed again. But it did not occur to her to go to sleep, now that it was so light—lighter than her old bedroom had been at noon. For a few minutes she occupied herself looking about, studying the pictures andbibelots. A narrow strip of old tapestry on the wall looked especially strange to her; it was badly faded, the picture in it was hard to make out. It seemed almost uncanny to be in bed after she was awake, so she got up and dressed, noiselessly. She sat down by the window and, pulling aside the curtain, looked out, up the street, to Washington Square. Here and there were blotches of faint green; the early spring had started a few buds. Yetta had seen very little green that was not painted. And the swelling buds of the little park seemed to typify all the strangenesses of the new world which was opening before her.
It made her sad. She was not of this world. She could never be like Mabel. Her instinctive common sense showed her the great gulf which separated her from the life of her new friends.
In an uncertain way she was beginning to form a conception of Beauty and the graciousness of luxury. Eleanor's gown, her daffodils, the way she stood when she played the violin, all suggested to Yetta an idea of personal adornment much more intricate than her former ideal of a hat and white shoes. The dinner had shown her that eating might be something more than the mere satisfying of hunger. Mabel had changed her street clothes for a dinner gown. Evidently she thought of clothing as something more than necessary covering. Even the room where she was sitting was more than a place to sleep. All this "moreness"—this surplus over necessity—this luxury, was what separated her life from this new world. It did not seem possible that she could ever cross that chasm.
The reverse of the proposition came to her with equal force. Could Mabel cross? Could she really become a part of the world of work, the world of less? It seemed just as improbable. Yetta felt lonely and out of place. An inevitable wave of resentment came over her against these two favored women. Was not all this beauty and easy grace—this luxury—what she and her kind, Rachel and the other girls, were starving for? She felt herself in the enemy's country.
There was a light knock on her door, and Mabel, wrapped in her dressing-gown, came in.
"Oh, you're up already," she smiled.
All of Yetta's hostility melted before her frankgreeting and morning kiss. Eleanor, it seemed, never got up before nine, so they must be quiet. In a few minutes Mabel reappeared in her street clothes, and closing the dining-room door, so as not to disturb the sleeper, they had their breakfast. This meal, even more than the dinner, amazed Yetta. There were coffee and rich cream and eggs and toast and marmalade. She had known, of course, that people dine in state, but that any one ever drank his morning coffee leisurely had never occurred to her. As Mabel read the newspaper, Yetta had much time to think, and once more the feeling of hostility returned. For more than an hour now her people had been bent over the life-destroying machines, and Mabel sipped her coffee slowly and read the news. Yetta wanted to be up and doing.
But once out on the street she was amazed and humbled at the sight of Mabel's efficiency. Yetta would not have known what to do first. Mabel had the whole day's work planned out.
First they went to the "girl who knew all about strikes" and from her got the addresses of the other women in Jake Goldfogle's shop. It developed that the bovine Mrs. Levy and the tell-tale Mrs. Levine had gone back that morning. But there was no work for only two, and Jake had sent them home with a promise to let them know as soon as he began again. He expected to start the next morning, he had told them. To Mrs. Levine he had given a dollar and whispered instructions to join the strikers and keep him informed.
The minute Mabel saw Mrs. Cohen she hurried out to a drug-store and called up Dr. Liebovitz. "It willhave to be a sanitarium," Yetta overheard her say. "And at that I'm afraid it's too late. Whatever is necessary put on my account." Then Mabel arranged that the Cohen babies should be boarded by two of the poorest strikers and so out of her own pocket assured a little income to these families. Above all, Yetta wondered at Mabel's ability to spread confidence. Most of the women were helpless when they arrived, were hoping that Jake would forgive them and take them back. With a few words Mabel had banished all doubt. Ten of the dozen women—the exceptions were the bovine Mrs. Levy and Mrs. Levine, the spy—were soon convinced that victory was assured. And all except Mrs. Levy promised to come up to the Woman's Trade Union League at four o'clock and organize.
This attended to, Mabel, with Yetta at her heels, jumped into an uptown car, and hurried to the office of the Central Federated Union to ask for a charter for the new union. Mr. Casey, the secretary, was a hale and hearty Irishman of near forty. For twenty years he had been an expert typesetter, and he never talked with any one twenty minutes without telling how he had set up some of the Standard Dictionary—"the most compli-cated page iver printed."
"Gawd," he remarked at sight of Mabel, "here comes some more trouble. Can't ye give a body any peace, Miss Train? Ye know there be two or three men in the world besides yer blessed women."
The other men in the room got up and offered their chairs. Once more Yetta was amazed at the ease with which Mabel stated her case. With her straightforward way of looking at things, she had come to know andunderstand these men. She knew the personal history of most of them, their carefully hidden virtues as well as their vices. And whether she knew them to be "grafters" or "straight" she had a knack of winning her point.
"Sure," Casey said. "You can have the charter. That ain't no trouble. But don't ask me nothing else now. The Devil himself won't be no more busy on the Resurrection Day than I be."
"We're all busy," Mabel replied. "And I really want you to come round at four and help them organize."
Casey waved his hands and pounded the table and swore—occasionally asking pardon for his "damned profanity"—but Mabel hung on. She had already won the other men in the room, and they laughingly urged him to go.
Having gained his promise to come, Mabel did not waste a minute more of his time. She rushed Yetta over to the Woman's Trade Union League and plunged into her morning's correspondence.
All those things which had seemed to Yetta of overwhelming importance began to look very small. There were some of the "skirt-finishers" in the office. Their strike involved several hundred women. There were only twelve in Goldfogle's shop. While Mabel was busy at other things Yetta picked up a copy ofThe American Federationist, the monthly organ of the national federation of labor unions. How infinitesimal was her part in this great industrial conflict! She read of thousands of miners striking in the anthracite fields, of a hundred woollen mills which had locked out their operatives. The street-car men were out in a Westerncity. A strike referendum was being taken by the printers of half a dozen Southern States. A great revolt had tied up the Chicago stock-yards. And here in New York there were five different strikes in progress. At one moment her pride swelled at the thought that she was a part of this vast army of workers who were fighting for a larger share of sunshine and Freedom. At the next it was borne in on her with a rush how insignificant was the case of the vest-makers.
She had read almost every word in that month's issue ofThe Federationistbefore Mabel called her and they went downstairs to the working-girls' restaurant for lunch. They found an empty table, and Yetta had just commenced on her long list of questions, when two excited "skirt-finishers" came in, and seeing Mabel, rushed up to their table. Once more Yetta felt herself pushed back into a second place. That morning the strike had reached its crisis, the women of two shops had gone back to work on a compromise which ignored the union; a general stampede was imminent.
About two o'clock, the women of Goldfogle's shop began to appear, and sharp at four, Mabel tore herself away from the "skirt-finishers" and came into the back room where the vest-makers were assembled. TheForwaertzhad come off the press an hour before, and the women who could read Yiddish had read aloud Braun's glowing account of their exploits. It had given them a new sense of importance, the feeling that there was sympathy and power back of them. And this feeling was strengthened by Mr. Casey's jovial and inspiring speech. When they had elected officers,—Mrs. Weinstein, president; "the girl who knew all about unions," treasurer, and Yetta, secretaryand business agent,—he handed them over a charter printed in three colors which seemed to them a sort of magic promise of victory. They agreed as a matter of course on the set of demands which Braun had already printed in theForwaertz.
Mabel pulled them down from their enthusiasm to talk details. She explained that their one hope of success lay in persuading the other vest shops to join the strike. Alone they were helpless. Each one of them was to think of all the vest workers she knew and persuade them to start a strike in their shop. She read the list of vest shops and checked off every one where some of the women had acquaintances. Then she gave them great sheaves of theForwaertzand assigned them two by two to the principal vest shops. They were to stand at the door and distribute papers to every one who came out. In the evening they were to call on their friends in the trade and be on the job again in the morning with copies of theForwaertzat other factory doors. She and Yetta, their business agent, would go down and interview Goldfogle. Of course he would not give in at once, but it was best to show him they were not afraid. And then with some words of encouragement about how theForwaertzwas helping them, and the Central Federated Union and the Socialists, and of course the Woman's Trade Union League, she dismissed them.
Without Mabel beside her, Yetta would hardly have found the courage to perform her first duty as business agent of the union. Some of the old terror of a boss's arbitrary power still clung about Jake Goldfogle. In a moment of excitement she had dared to defy him. But it was a different thing to seek aninterview with him in cold blood. But to Mabel it was all in the day's work. And she did most of the talking.
Jake received them nervously. He could not, like the big employers, afford to sit back cynically and wait for his workers to starve. A week's tie-up meant certain ruin for him, and with equal certainty it meant ruin for him to grant his women anything like decent conditions. Sorely exploited by bigger capitalists, his one hope of success lay in a miracle of more cruel exploitation. He had been busy all day with employment agencies. They could furnish him with plenty of raw hands, but he needed skilled labor. It would be much better if he could get his old force back. And so he greeted them with some decency. But the sight of Mabel, this unknown businesslike American woman, disconcerted him. He had expected to have dealings only with his employees. He saw at once that he could not fool nor browbeat this stranger.
He hardly listened to what she said, but grabbed at the typewritten sheet of "demands." Before he was halfway through, all hope vanished.
"Vot you tink?" he wailed. "Am I a millionnaire? How you expect me to make my contract?"
"We don't expect you to make your contract, Mr. Goldfogle," Mabel replied calmly. "We expect you not to take any contract that you can't fill decently. You don't care how your workpeople live on the wages you give, and we don't care for your contract. If you can give your people fair conditions, they'll be back at work in the morning. If you can't, it's a strike."
"Go avay! Get out," he cried, jumping up. "To-morrow I vill start with new hands. I'll never take none of the old ones back."
Mabel smiled at him undismayed.
"Scabs," she said, "will break your machines. It will be cheaper to keep shut than to work with greenhorns."
Jake knew that this was only too true. But he thought that a bold attitude might scare his old employees into coming back.
"You tink so? Vell. I'll show you. Get out!"
It was getting towards closing time, so Mabel and Yetta, with arms full of the afternoon'sForwaertz, stationed themselves before one of the big vest shops and handed out copies to every one who would take one, talked to all who would listen. They had supper in an East Side restaurant and then went out again to call on some vest-makers whose addresses they knew.
Once, as they were hurrying along the street, Yetta suddenly stopped.
"I forgot," she said. "I've got to go to my aunt's and get some things."
"That's so," Mabel said. "They must be worrying about you. You tell them you are going to live with me for a while."
"No," Yetta said. "It don't matter what I tell them; they'll think I've gone wrong. But there are some things I want to get before they sell them."
They were not very far from her doorway, and when they got there, Mabel asked if she should come up.
"No," Yetta said, "you wait. It won't take me a minute."
She did not want her new friend to see the place where she had lived. Her uncle might be at home and drunk. But when she reached the door of theGoldstein flat, her heart suddenly failed her. Perhaps he was home, perhaps he would curse her the way he had Rachel, perhaps he would strike her. If it had been only her few clothes, the new hat and the white shoes, she would have slunk downstairs afraid. But there were the three volumes ofLes Miserables. So she went in.
Only her aunt and her cousin Rosa were in the room.
"I've come to get my things," she said, not wishing to give them time to formulate any accusations. "There's a strike in my shop. I won't be earning any money now for a while, so you wouldn't want me here. I'm going to live with a friend."
She went into the bedroom and began wrapping up the books and shoes in her extra shirt-waist and skirt. Rosa stood in the doorway and watched her.
"Who's your friend?" she asked.
"Her name's Miss Train."
"Oh. It's a woman, is it?" Rosa sneered.
Yetta flushed angrily but held her tongue, and when she had gathered together her meagre belongings, she looked once more about the dismal bedroom and came out into the kitchen where Mrs. Goldstein was sitting in silence, sewing away at a frayed underskirt of Rosa's.
A sudden tenderness came to Yetta for this hard old woman who had mistreated her.
"Good-by, Aunt Martha," she said.
For a moment she stitched on without apparently noticing her niece's presence. And then she spoke to Rosa.
"It isn't so bad," she said, "as when Rachel went. She was my own daughter."
"But I'm not going where Rachel did," Yetta protested. The old woman did not reply.
"Auntie," Yetta went on, "I ain't going wrong. If you ever want to know about me, or if you ever need anything, you ask at the Woman's Trade Union League. Here. I'll write down the address. They'll know where to find me."
She tore off a piece of the paper from her bundle and scribbled the address. As her aunt was not looking up, she left it on the table.
"Good-by, Rosa," she said. "Good-by, Aunt Martha."
Out in the hall she felt faint and dizzy. She had not loved the place nor its inmates. Why did it hurt to go? She leaned against the wall for a moment to regain command of herself. Her little glimpse into the new world had not given her the feeling that she would ever be at home there. Even Columbus had misgivings about his enterprise into the unknown sea. But presently she felt the sharp corner ofLes Miserablesdigging into her side. She had been hugging her little bundle as if it had been a life-preserver. And she found courage to go on down the dark stairs and to meet Mabel and the New Life with something of a smile.
It was near midnight when Mabel and Yetta at last turned homeward. They had talked to vest workers from a dozen shops. The article in theForwaertzhad been a stirring one, and probably ninety per cent of the trade had heard of the outbreak in Goldfogle's shop and Braun's prophecy of large consequences. Yetta could not see that much had been accomplished, but Mabel, more accustomed to judging such things, was jubilant.
"Yetta, dear," she said, as she kissed her good night, "there's a beautiful French song called 'Ça ira'—which being interpreted means, 'There'll be something doing'!"
All day long the conviction had grown on her that there was promise of big development to the insignificant quarrel between Yetta and her boss. More often than not strikes break out at the most inopportune times for the workers. Sometimes a sudden provocation will drive the men into a premature revolt. Again there will be rumbles of trouble for a long time before the crisis, and when the men walk out, they find thebosses have had ample time to make provision for the fight. But a careful study of the vest-making industry could not have discovered a more favorable moment. The rush season was just drawing to a close. On the one hand, the bosses were straining every nerve to finish their contracts on time. On the other hand, many of the workers would be laid off anyhow when the rush was over. By striking, the less skilled, poorest paid workers risked only a few weeks' pay. And surely they had enough cause to revolt. All those to whom she had talked had told of intolerable speed, pitiful pay, and arbitrary fines, indecent conditions. There was good reason to hope that the whole trade would become involved. And so at bedtime she sang the "Ça ira" to Yetta.
Her forecast proved true. Before two o'clock every one knew that the strike had "caught." Half a dozen shops, including one of the biggest, walked out during the morning. And after the noon hour not a quarter of the vest-makers were at work.
While it might have been possible for Jake Goldfogle to find twelve skilled workers for his small shop, it was not possible to find enough for the whole trade quickly. It settled down into an endurance fight. Both sides "organized." The strikers rented a hall in the sweat-shop district for headquarters and a committee sat thereen permanence, making out union cards for the strikers, and a card catalogue of their names and addresses, arranging for the distribution in "strike benefits" of all the money that could be raised. In this detail work, of immense importance to the successful conduct of a strike, Mabel was a tower of strength. She had been through it all a hundred times before, andshe never got flurried. Everything seemed like a chaos, but through it her cool-headed generalship kept an effective order.
In a Broadway office the bosses organized "The Association of Vest Manufacturers." Their headquarters were less noisy than those of the Union. But quiet does not always mean a higher standard of ethics. As the Woman's Trade Union League was helping the strikers, so trained men were lent to the bosses by the Employers' Association. In a few days skilled vest makers from other cities began to flow into New York. Some of the shops were able to begin work again at about half their normal capacity. The press agents of the Association of Vest Manufacturers sent out announcements to the newspapers that the strike was over.
The Union retaliated by a campaign of "picketing." Isadore Braun took this work in hand. He marshalled the volunteer "pickets" every morning, assigned them to their posts, and carefully explained to them their legal rights. They were free to stand anywhere on the street and to talk to any one who would listen, so long as they did not attract a crowd which impeded traffic. They must not detain any one by force, nor threaten violence, nor use insulting language.
Recently a justice of the Supreme Court of New York has handed down a decision that "peaceful picketing" is a contradiction in terms. From his point of view all picketing is inherently violent. As a legal maxim it is idiotic. The great majority of labor pickets are peaceful. But in any large and long-continued industrial conflict some of the strikers are starving, many have hungry children at home. They cannot beexpected to love the "scabs," who are taking their jobs. And it is desperately hard for the leaders of a strike—no matter how sincerely they try—to prevent sporadic acts of violence. Braun, himself a lawyer and a Socialist, was a firm believer in legality. Again and again he impressed on the strikers the urgent desirability of keeping within the letter of the law.
The first day Mabel and Yetta picketed together. They stood on the sidewalk before the largest of the vest shops and tried to talk to every one who went in. Mabel did most of it. She used the old, time-worn arguments of the unionists. The only chance for the workers was in standing together. If the scabs took the strikers' jobs, they were helping the boss more than themselves. After a strike is settled the bosses always fire the scabs and take back their old force. If they did get steady work sooner or later, somebody would scab on them. If they joined the union they would get enough strike benefits to live on, and with a strong organization the trade would be a good one. And after all it is dirty business stealing jobs from your brother workers. Most of the scabs hurriedly passed them, a few listened sullenly, one or two replied with insults. To an outsider, picketing looks hopeless. You very rarely see any one quit work. But long experience has taught the unions that it does pay. It is not so much the rare cases where a dozen scabs stop at once as the regular drain of those who are ashamed to face the pickets and who do not come back to work again.
Mabel was too busy to picket very often. She had her hands full trying to save what she could out of the wreckage of the skirt-finishers' strike. And therewere a thousand and one things to do for the vest-makers, arranging meetings, trying to interest the newspapers, spurring on the Advisory Council to raise money. They had collected a good deal, but the poverty of the vest-makers was appalling; "strike benefits" kept the treasury always empty. She had to see to replenishing it daily. Yetta, however, was on picket duty every day.
Gradually it became evident that the "picket" was successful. Most of the imported vest-makers, the skilled operatives, had joined the union. Only a few of the shops were running at all and at great expense on account of the uneconomy of raw hands. The smaller bosses were going into bankruptcy. Jake Goldfogle had been the first to fall. Five days had cleaned him out. The next day two more went under. Credit was beginning to tighten for even the biggest bosses.
The Association of Vest Manufacturers saw that it was necessary to break the picket at any cost. There were a number of secret conferences with city politicians. The police magistrate who was sitting at Essex Market Court was transferred to an uptown jurisdiction, and his place was taken by a magistrate named Cornett, notorious for his outspoken hostility to unionism. The police also got their orders.
Busy days began for Isadore Braun. Pickets were arrested on all sides. At first he seemed to get the better of the legal battle in the dingy Essex Market Courthouse. He had the law on his side, and a forceful way of expressing it. The early batches of pickets were discharged with a warning. But in a few days the police got the hang of the kind of testimony which wasexpected of them. The court began to impose fines, which of course meant imprisonment, as the girls had no money.
It is an educational maxim of Froebel that we learn by doing. Like most concise sayings, it is not entirely true. Yetta, for instance, had been making vests for four years, but she learned more about vest-making in the first four weeks of the strike than she had in her years of labor.
She began to realize that her "trade" was more than a routine of flying fingers. Braun at one of the meetings had traced out the complicated process of industry. Outside of her shop there had been men who were "cutters," men who prepared the pieces of cloth on which she worked. Back of them were the people who wove the cloth and spun the yarn, and further back still were the shepherds who grew the sheep and clipped the wool. And when the vests had left her shop, they had gone to "finishers." From them to dealers who were buying coats and trousers of the same cloth, and at last the complete suits were sold to wearers by the retailer. And all these thousands of people, who were her co-workers, had to eat. Some one had to bake their bread. The bakers were really part of the vest trade. And so were the cobblers who made shoes for the workers, and the coal miners who tore fuel for them from the bowels of the earth, and the steel workers who made their machines and their needles. It was hard to think of any worker who did not in some way contribute to the making of vests.
Braun had said that all the people of the process were equally exploited by the same unjust system. They were all "wage-slaves." And in her daily intercoursewith the strikers, sometimes on picket duty, sometimes at meetings, sometimes at headquarters attending to the clerical work of distributing "benefits," she came to realize as she never could have done from her own experience alone, what "wage-slavery" means. The tragedy of Mrs. Cohen's life was being repeated on every side.
She had never made the acquaintance of hunger—the great Slave Driver—before. And even now, she only saw it. She at least got a good breakfast at Mabel's flat. And sometimes she got a lunch or supper. Mabel, in her immense preoccupation with the details of the strike, did not realize how often Yetta went through the day on the one meal. But the flat was twenty minutes' walk from the strike headquarters. Yetta had no money for car fare and could rarely spend the time to walk there for lunch or dinner. When there were meetings in the evening and she walked home with Mabel and Longman, they generally had a cold supper. But she was of course earning no wages and had taken nothing from the Goldstein flat which she could pawn. The need of the other strikers was so much more appalling than her own that she could not find heart to ask for "strike benefits."
Mabel, having at once realized Yetta's remarkable power of appeal, was carefully engineering the limelight. With disconcerting frequency Yetta found herself in its glare. The half-dozen newspaper men who had tried to get a story out of this sweat-shop revolt had been steered up to Yetta. And they had all sent around their staff photographers to get her picture. The papers with a large circulation among the working classes had made her face familiar to millions.One of them had the enterprise to get a snapshot of her, arguing with a scab, before the Sure-fit Vest Company. Even the man who signed himself "The Amused Onlooker" in theEvening Standard, wrote a psychological sketch of this East Side firebrand. His tone was railing as usual, but he tried to be complimentary towards the close by comparing her to Jeanne D'Arc.
Whenever there was a chance, Mabel pushed Yetta on to the platform. The various women of the Advisory Council arranged afternoon teas for her to address. To Yetta such begging speeches were much more unpleasant work than picketing. But it was not hard for her to talk to these small gatherings. She spoke to them very simply. She did not again tell her own story—in the rush of events she had almost forgotten it. Every day brought to her notice new and more bitter tragedies. On the whole the money raised was not much—ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty-five dollars. But every cent was needed. Mabel, from much experience of her own in similar circumstances, knew that Yetta was surprisingly successful. But there was hardly ever a woman present at these uptown teas whose cheapest ring was not worth many times the amount collected. Yetta, seeing the jewels and knowing the intense need of her people, counted over the few dollars and thought herself a failure.
But if these excursions into polite society did not bring the monetary returns for which she wished, they at least made Yetta's face, her great sad eyes, and gentle voice, familiar to many women of social prominence—a result which was to bear fruit in the future.
It also cured her of the envy which had cast a shadow of bitterness over her first morning in Mabel'sapartment. She came to realize even more clearly the gulf which separated her people from the world of luxury. She no longer wanted to cross the gulf. The strange country into which she got these occasional glimpses seemed a very hard-hearted place. It was always a shock to her to see such laughing, light-hearted indifference. Sometimes she went on a similar errand to the headquarters of other unions. There she found her own people and sure sympathy. She spoke one evening in a barren, ill-lit room, where the "pastry cooks" held their meetings. They were most of them foreigners, French and German, just coming out of a disastrous strike, and were very poor. They had no money in their treasury, but some of them went down in their pockets, and she got a handful of nickels and dimes. It was not as much as she had secured from some "ladies" in the afternoon, but it was more inspiring. She felt very keenly that in some mystic way their gift, which they could so ill afford, would be of greater use to the Cause than the dollars from uptown.
The well-dressed women she met seemed to her of small worth compared to her trade-mates. She was proud of her share in the wonderful heroism of the women who went hungry. The memory of her father was the most brilliant of her mental treasures. If she had been brought up by a more practical man, if her father had taught her to consider elegance, or social success, or wealth, or culture of more virtue than loving kindness—as most of us are taught—her verdict would, of course, have been less severe. But she could not feel that the Golden Rule was taken seriously by the Christian women uptown. Shedoubted if they loved their neighbors as themselves. Certainly their definition of the word did not reach downtown. The diamonds of their useless ornaments threw a cruel light on the misery of her people.
In forming this harsh estimate of the world of luxury she had Mabel beside her as a standard of comparison. Why were the other women different from Mabel? They were no more beautiful, no better educated, no more refined. But Mabel was the "real thing." Yetta was ashamed of her first envy and distrust. Day by day she saw more fully the broad scope of Mabel's activities—of which this vest-makers' strike was only one—and her admiring wonder grew. Mabel gave not only her time, but she was not afraid of what the girls called "dirty work"; she carried a banner in the street on the day of the parade, she did her turn at picketing, her share of addressing and sealing envelopes. And she carried very much more than her share of the heavier responsibilities. Yetta found it hard to understand how other women, who also knew the facts of misery, could act so differently. Yet, day after day she told them the facts, and they were content to give five or ten dollars. No. Yetta did not want to be a "lady."
Almost every day some of the pickets were arrested and sent to the workhouse. But others always volunteered to take their places. There is no surer lesson to be learned from history than that persecution is like oil to the flame of enthusiasm. Instead of breaking, as the bosses—with the fatuousness of Nero—had hoped, the picket became more intense and more effective. The bosses decided that "something decisive must be done." There were several conferences—very quiet and orderly they were—with the expert strike-breakers who had been loaned to them by the Employers' Association. A long statement was prepared, which informed the public that the vest manufacturers, feeling that they were not getting sufficient assistance from the city police, had employed a private detective agency to protect their property and the lives of their faithful employees from the outrages of the strikers. All the English papers published this statement without any inquiry as to whether life and property needed special protection. The more complaisant ones published the stories which the "press agent" of the association furnished on the "outrages." So the impression was spread abroad that the striking vest-makers were smoky-haired furies, who brawled in the streets and tore the clothes off respectable women.
But there was hardly any one who had ever been involved in a strike, employer or employed, hardly a cub-reporter in the city, who did not know what this announcement meant. The bosses had failed to break the strike by "legal" means. The "private detectives" had been called in to do it by intimidation and brutality. Girls began coming into the strike headquarters with bleeding faces, with black and blue bruises from kicks.
No justice of the Supreme Court has handed down a decision on the probability of the public peace being disturbed by the use of thugs, calling themselves "private detectives," in labor disputes.
Mabel, realizing Yetta's special usefulness as a speaker and money-raiser, tried to persuade her that this other work was more important than picketing.
"No," Yetta said. "If I didn't spend the morningwith the girls, I would not have anything to say at night."
Mabel did not urge her further; she no longer called herla petitewhen she spoke of her to Eleanor. Every one who came in contact with her during these weeks knew that she was growing very rapidly into womanhood.
Yetta expected to get arrested. Why should she not? In a way she had started all the trouble. Why should the other girls be knocked about by the ruffian private detectives and she escape? Day after day she took her post before one or another of the vest shops and did her duty as she saw it, as the other women were doing it. There were always two pickets at each post, and it was in these morning watches that Yetta got her deepest insight into the lives of her comrades.
She was having a very easy time of it. She had a pleasant place to sleep. She had her one sure meal a day. There were no children crying to her for food. The other women were faring worse than she. Some were sick, almost all were hungry and insufficiently clad. And while Yetta was often called away to the less fatiguing work of the office, or to some uptown tea, these women, used to sitting all day before a machine, were standing hour after hour before their posts. But it was not the sight of them, pitiful spectacles as many of them were, which hurt Yetta most. It was their stories—unintentionally told for the most part. The words dropped by chance, which called up visions of sick husbands and the hungry babies. Some of the pickets were gray-haired and bent, some were younger than Yetta, and they all seemed to be suffering more forthe strike than she. And the hungry babies! Her sleep was troubled at night by dreams of their cries.
That she had been spared by the police and thugs seemed to Yetta the most unjust thing of all the injustice she saw about her. A week on "the Island" would mean little to her; she had no one dependent on her. But always they picked some widow, who had no one to care for her children while she was in prison. Yetta felt herself strong and healthy. Why did the thugs always beat up some old woman or some frail consumptive girl? Although she had escaped trouble so long, she quietly and without excitement expected it. Whenever she met any of the girls who had been in the workhouse, she asked about it—in the same way that we, if we were expecting to winter in Paris, would inquire from friends who had been there about the rents and shops and so forth.
But when at last her turn came, it happened in a manner utterly unexpected.
At headquarters on May Day morning Yetta was detailed to the Crown Vest Company. As she was starting out, she met Mabel, whose mackintosh was glistening with rain.
"Oh, Yetta," she said, "don't go out to-day. The weather's so bad, and if you catch cold you can't speak."
But Yetta only smiled. It seemed to Mabel that she had never looked so beautiful before. Her face had begun to hollow a little from the strain, her olive skin was a shade paler, her eyes seemed to have grown bigger. And her shoulders, which had begun to stoop in the sweat-shop, had straightened up with the month on her feet and the new pride of combat. She was wearing the same skirt and waist she had worn to the dance, for she was to speak uptown that afternoon, and she had a warm shawl over her head and shoulders. The soles of her shoes were worn through, but Mabel could not see that.
"I've only got a few hours of it," she said. "There's that Advisory Council again this afternoon."
And she went out into the rain. The Crown Vest Company was on East Fourth Street, just off Washington Square. As Yetta turned the corner fromBroadway she was nearly blown off her feet. All the winds of heaven—the biting, penetrating winds of a late spring storm—were caught in Washington Square as in a funnel, and escaped through the narrow cañon of East Fourth Street. Although Yetta was late, she was surprised to find no other picket before the Crown Vest Company. They were always assigned in couples. Her surprise turned to distress when she recognized the "private detective" in the doorway. His real name nobody knew. He called himself Brennan, but the girls called him "Pick-Axe." He was the one they dreaded more than any other. He thought himself a wit. It was his custom to tilt a chair against the wall by the doorway and, lighting his pipe, amuse himself by trying to make the girls blush. There was no limit to the brutality or nastiness of his tongue.
"Come in out of the rain, Dearie," he said when he saw Yetta. "There's room for two on this chair."
She tried not to hear him and began a sentry-like tread back and forth before the door. At least she was glad it was raining. Sometimes in good weather a crowd of depraved loungers would gather to listen to Pick-Axe's wit.
"It's too bad to have to work on a day like this, Little One," he called as she passed again. "Let's go over to the saloon and have a drink. There are nice warm rooms upstairs."
Yetta felt she would not shiver so hard if it were not for his cold, stinging voice. She decided it would be cowardly to let him drive her out of earshot. That would please him too much. She wondered why the other picket was not there.
"You needn't be so proud"—when she was againopposite him. "The first girl this morning tried to be proud. But she got over it. What's the use? Better come and have a drink, same as she did."
Yetta knew it was a lie. And yet—good God, it was cold! She had had her fill of eggs and hot coffee that morning. She wouldn't be hungry till noon, and she was so near home, she could get a good lunch. Some of the girls were always hungry. Few of them had warm clothes for such weather. How could they stand it? She wished she had asked the name of the other girl detailed to the Crown.
"I felt right sorry for her," Pick-Axe went on. "Gawd! she was hungry. You ought to have seen her eat. Pretty little girl, too. Now she's having a good sleep."
Of course it was a lie. But Yetta felt herself getting colder and colder. Pick-Axe got up and came towards her. She tried not to notice him, but she wanted very much to run.
"Come on," he said. "What's the use of being a fool? Nobody's outdoors. They ain't no scabs coming to-day. Let's go over to the saloon and make friends."
Yetta having reached the end of her beat turned mechanically and started back towards where he stood.
"That's a sensible girl," he said.
But she walked on past him as if he were a lamppost.
"Well," he snarled, "I guess I'll have to go over and wake up your friend. It'll take you about half an hour to wish you'd come instead...."
There is no need of printing all that he said.
He walked across the street. Yetta could not help turning her head to watch him as he entered theswinging door. He caught her glance and waved his hand. Her fright disappeared in anger. Of course she did not believe that he had persuaded one of her union girls to go into the saloon with him. But it was even viler to pretend that he had. Some one ought to kill the brute.
Just then Yetta saw one of the strikers—little Mrs. Muscovitz—hurrying up the street. Yetta rushed to meet her.
"Were you detailed here?" she asked eagerly.
Mrs. Muscovitz was coughing and could only nod her head affirmatively. Yetta wanted to shout with joy. So Pick-Axe's story was after all a lie.
"I'm sorry I'm late," little Mrs. Muscovitz said hoarsely, for she was "bad with bronchitis," "but I got a little money this morning and I had to buy some things for the baby."
One glance told Yetta where the money had come from—Mrs. Muscovitz had pawned her shawl. More than once they had picketed together, and Yetta knew the little woman's story. Three years before she had married a young sign painter. Before the honeymoon was over he had begun to cough. He died before the baby was born. And when Mrs. Muscovitz had been able to get about again, all the furniture of their little home had gone for doctor's bills. Her engagement and wedding rings had brought her enough to establish herself in a garret. She took the baby to a day nursery and went to work. Now, she was coughing. It hurts to cough when one also has the bronchitis. Having no shawl, her thin waist was soaked and plastered to her skin. Yetta could see the muscles of her back work convulsively whenever she coughed.
"Look y'ere, Mrs. Muscovitz," she said authoritatively. "You go home. You ain't got no business out on a day like this. You'll catch your death. There ain't nothing doing to-day. I can hold it down alone."
"It's all right for you to talk, Yetta," Mrs. Muscovitz replied. "You can make speeches and you can work in the office and do lots of things for the Union. There ain't nothing I can do but picket. I couldn't pay rent without the 'strike benefits.' I've got to do something."
Pick-Axe came out of the saloon and seeing them together, knowing that it was less sport trying to torment two women than one, pulled his chair well inside of the doorway and cursed the vile weather.
"I tell you what you can do," Yetta went on arguing with Mrs. Muscovitz. "It'll do more good than standing here. You go over to headquarters and make some coffee. You tell Miss Train I said it was so cold she must send coffee out to the girls. You can borrow some pails and cups and Mrs. Weinstein's boy'll carry it round. Hot coffee'll do the girls good, and it'll make the cops sore to see us getting it. Making coffee'll do more good than standing here. Nobody's out; I can hold down this job all right."
"I hate to leave you alone with that snake."
"Oh," Yetta laughed, more light-heartedly than she felt. "Words don't break no bones. You run along."
While Mrs. Muscovitz was hesitating, she caught sight of a scab. "Look," she whispered. A big-boned young woman of about twenty, poorly clad and apparently much frightened, was standing on the opposite curbstone. She looked up at the sign in the window of the Crown Vest Company advertising the need ofworkers. And she looked down at the two women before the door. After a few indecisive minutes she started across the street.
"You run along to headquarters and get that coffee started," Yetta said. "I'll talk to her."
"No," said Mrs. Muscovitz. "Let me do it. And then I'll go. I want to do something."
She started towards the woman. Pick-Axe, bundled up in his overcoat, back in the entryway, did not see the scab approaching. She had probably read in the papers lying stories of how the strike breakers were being attacked. She was very much afraid, and when she saw Mrs. Muscovitz coming towards her, she screamed. Pick-Axe, not having seen what was happening,—if one wishes to find excuses for him,—may have really believed that the little Mrs. Muscovitz had assaulted the husky young scab. At the sound of the scream he jumped out of his chair and rushed at Mrs. Muscovitz. She, thinking that he was going to strike her, held out her hand to guard her face. Pick-Axe grabbed it, and with a vicious wrench, twisted her down on her knees.
"You slut! You—! You—!" he bellowed and swung his heavy-soled boot into her ribs.
Yetta—to use a phrase of melodrama—"saw red." Something happened in her brain. Her rather Platonic conviction of a few minutes before that somebody ought to kill the brute, was changed into a passionate, throbbing desire to do it herself.
Just as his foot found its goal in Mrs. Muscovitz' side, Pick-Axe felt the sudden impact of Yetta's whole weight. It was more of a spring than a rush. As far as she had any idea, she wanted to choke him.The sudden jolt bowled him over—he was standing on one foot—and as he fell his head came down on the stone paving with a sickening thud. If it had not been for his heavy cap, the blow might have cracked his skull. As it was it stunned him. His face turned very white. The scab ran up the street too frightened to look back.
"I hope he's dead," Yetta said with tight-clenched fists.
But Mrs. Muscovitz felt his heart and shook her head.
"Sure?" Yetta asked.
"Yes. His heart's beating. Feel it yourself."
"I wouldn't touch the snake with my foot," Yetta said; "come on."
"Nobody but the scab seen us," Mrs. Muscovitz said.
"Come on," Yetta repeated. "Let's go to headquarters."
Somehow she did not care whether any one had seen her or not. She had tried to kill a man and regretted that she had not succeeded. She had read stories of murderers' remorse. And now she knew they were lies. She would never have been sorry if she had killed that snake.
As they were turning into Broadway, Mrs. Muscovitz, who was always looking back, suddenly gripped Yetta's arm.
"He's getting up," she said. "There's a man helping him."
They both peered back around the corner and saw Pick-Axe, with the aid of the stranger, painfully getting to his feet and rubbing his head in bewilderment.
"Come on," Yetta said. "He'll begin to holler in a minute. I've got a dime. We'll take a car."