LETTER XIV
IN WHICH I GO ON A STRIKE
Dear Mom:
I have not saw Mr. Edgerton for three days and I am just as glad because it has give me time to think things over and get your letter. You are right I suppose if we cannot get what we want in this world we have got to make out with what we have. I know that you would not of chose to live in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey if you could of had your own way nor would I maybe of had so many brothers and sisters.
Well Mr. Edgerton did not call up. I have noticed that gentlemen likes to have you pretty and cheerful and if you take things too serious and worry them with questions they do not call up so often. But all the same I had to get over my shock of hearing him say that the work he does for the Spokesman up there in the big white house is only a sort of a play and that I have got to get used to the idea of not telling the truth about the Spokesman. And then too I am wondering what Mr. Edgerton’s wife is doing and if she is going to tell on him and me and I am sore because she should think that because I am a manicure girl I cannot be fit to know her husband and help him with his politics.
P. S. Well he has called again and we have went to dinner and a movie and it was a lovely sweet story called “Heart’s Athrob” and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “There now you see Miss Riggs are we not better and purer and sweeter for having saw such a lovely story about great souls and pitiful sufferings?” And of course I cannot deny that we arefor I have got tears in my eyes and he says, “Just such a beautful picture as that I wish to make for the American people to look upon and I have got to make it out of that poor little Man that lives up there in the big white house and you have got to help me,” he says, “and we will be the greatest pair of showmen in the whole of creation.”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton I am going to try my best but it seems to me that all the inspiration goes out of me when I have been told that it is not the truth. I don’t understand how it can of happened and I want you to tell me more about this game of politics how it come about that a Man like what you say the Spokesman is can of got in such a high office.”
He says, “It was a series of strange accidents Miss Riggs like what you would see in a melodrama. To begin with this little Man was a sort of political Office-boy for the rich men in his state that put him into office because He would always do what they said. It is a state with a lot of Catholics in it and so if you are going to get elected to anything you have got to learn to walk like you had broken bottles under your feet and He was the best bottle-walker of them all so He come to be Governor but then He had a crisis to deal with there was a strike in the city of the policemen—”
“Policemen?” I says. “But I thought that policemen was to put down strikes!”
“So it is supposed to be but this time the policemen went on a strike themselves.”
“Well,” I says, “but that must of been the Reds!”
“So the papers said but the policemen said it was because they couldn’t live on their wages. You know that policemen is mostly Irish Catholics that don’t usually go Bolshiviki but always vote the Democratic ticket and it happened that the mayor of the city was a Democrat and he fixed it up with them to give them a raise in wages and the strike was to be called off. But the bankers and the business men don’t like no wage-raises because it sets a bad example and so they went to the Governor and they says, ‘Governor you was elected on a program of strict economy and law and order and here this Irish Catholic Democratic son-of-a-sea-cook is going to get all the votes away from you.’ So they say for the Governor to break up the settlement and He does it because the Governor is bigger than the mayor you see. He goes to the city and Him and the mayor has a meeting in a hotel-room and the mayor pastes Him one in the eye and knocks Him down.”
“But I thought you said the Governor was bigger!” I says.
“I mean bigger legally. He has got more power.”
“Well then but why didn’t he put the mayor in jail?”
“Well Miss Riggs I will tell you the Spokesman, that was the Governor He has always been a deeply religious man you have perhaps noticed in His speeches He tells the people that the solution of their problems must be found in spirituality.”
“Yes I have saw that,” I says, “and I think it is very beautiful of Him to say.”
“Well just so Miss Riggs and so when the mayor pastes Him one in the eye He turns the other eye to him and so through the rest of the strike He is shut up in His hotel room. But that don’t matter because the bankers and the business men take charge and they gets out the college-boys and smashes the strike with clubs and brick-bats and law and order is safe. And when the Governor sees that it is all over He gets out a rousing proclamation in which He says that He is determined to put down law-breakers and of course that tickles the newspapers they spread it all over the front page and the public that don’t know it is over they goes wild because you know how it was Miss Riggs a few years ago we was in the middle of smashing the Reds and shipping them back to the country where they come from seeing they don’t like this one. And of course the plain people was scared out of their wits to realize that the Bolshivikis had been so clever because if Irish Catholic policemen goes Red who would there be left to stay white?”
“I remember reading about it,” I says, “now that you tell me and I know I was scared myself.”
“Exactly and this Strong Silent Man He was the One that had put down the revolution so when the next party convention come off and the politicians was looking round for somebody for Vice-Spokesman why here He was and the convention goes wild and He is nominated in a whirlwind. And how is anybody going to know that the Old Spokesman is going to die and leave this scared little Office-boy the job of telling the American people what to think?”
“Well Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I see how it is now of course and I am very much obliged to you for explaining and of course I will do the best I can,” I says, “because whatever happens we have got to hold them Reds down. Of course I have got no use for labor unions that is just a bunch of leaders looking for a chance to wear white collarsand what do they care if they call a strike and the wives and children has got to go hungry at home?”
“That is it exactly,” he says, “your sound common sense as usual and it looks as if there was some more strikes coming and they will try to put them off on the Spokesman, and you will be the little girl that will know what to tell Him to say about it.”
Well we are walking home and I am nearly there and I tell him he had better not go no farther because we don’t know what his wife may be doing and we have got to be careful so we shakes hands and parts and I climb up to my hall-bedroom and I forgot to tell you Mom my landlady has give me an embroidered splasher that has got a red lily on it to hang on my wall and it is a lovely decoration she done that because we have got to be friends since she was there when Mrs. Edgerton come to see me and insulted me. Well it is a good thing to be friends with your landlady because some time when I get stuck for my rent for a few days she will be more polite with me.
P. S. Well Mom it is the next day and I have just got back from the Elite Beauty Parlors and my God I have sure had a time I don’t know if I will ever go back because we have had a strike and who do you think was the leader of it of all people in this world your own Mamie Riggs and what do you know about that? I will tell you the story right off.
It was Florabelle that begun it I call her Floradumbelle but she is got good business sense all the same and she says to Hattie Schoenstein, “My landlady has raised the rent on me a dollar a week and what am I going to do must I go without my lunches?” And Hattie that I have called Hotaire she says, “And the madame has raised the price of a manicuring twenty-five cents but what good does that do us?” And that is no hot air either Mom.
And then Adaire Huggins she says, “Why shouldn’t we get a raise when everything else is being boosted?” And I says, “I am with you girls,” and they asks me will I be the one to do the talking because they seem to think I am good at it because of my political experience which they suspect I have had though of course I have not told them and they have not found out who Mr. Edgerton is.
Well so we go to the private office but it is not so private because Madame Lafferty lets out a yell and she says, “What you ask me for more money and when I am on the vergeof bankruptcy because the landlord is holding me to this lease that was made in war-time?”
“Us girls is got to live too,” I says, “it is war-time for us right now.”
“I can get a plenty to do your work for less,” she says. “And they will be girls that will fix their hair like I tell them to and they will behave like ladies and not be having the telephone ringing all day so that my customers do not know whether I am running a beauty-parlor or a date-ranch.”
Well of course I know that is a slam at me and I am hot and I says, “All right ma’am,” I says, “and you go and find them slave-girls right off because I am a free-born American citizen and I am through,” I says, “and come on girls let’s get out.” And with that we turns into the parlors and there is the customers with their fingers half done and their hair half waved and we shouts to the girls, “It is a strike we’ll have a dollar extra a week or we quit!”
And they all puts down their things and they shout, “Strike! Strike!” And the madame she yells, “Out with you you bunch of hussies!” And we grabs our things and out we troop and there is a customer coming in and we says to him it is a gentleman, “This place is closed but two blocks down the street you will find a beauty parlor where they pays a living wage to their hands,” we says.
And of course he don’t go in so I says, “We will picket the old she-devil,” and we begin walking up and down and out she comes rushing without her hat on and she gets the copper on the corner and brings him up and she says, “Drive these hussies away from my door they are ruining my trade,” she says.
Well the copper he grins kind of good-natured and says, “Move along now girls.” And I ups I and says, “Officer this here is a strike,” I says, “and we are picketing this place.”
“Well you will have to move on because you are drawing a crowd and that is disturbing the peace.”
But I says, “Officer do you mean to tell me that it is the business of the police to break strikes?” I says. “Is this a free country or is it Roossia?” But all he says is, “Move along girls move along,” and he pushes us down the street and when we try to come back he says he will call a patrol-wagon and so there we are it is tyranny and injustice, such as our ancestors rose against but what can we do there is nobody to take the part of poor working-girls on strike and so now I am sitting at home and I don’t know if I have got ajob or not and I shall soon find out whether my landlady is as much friends with me as my splasher seems to show.
Your worried
Mame.