Part 51 (1/2)

Up went the hands by thousands, the crowd was all together now and again it spoke in one great roar. And with a sudden rush of hope I told myself, ”It's still alive! This fight has only just begun!”

”That is our answer to Congress,” said Marsh, when again quiet had been restored. ”That is the law which we have enacted. This strike is to be fought through to the end. We are not to be scared by Wall Street or worked upon by their hired thugs and so resort to violence. I am not afraid of violence,” he continued sharply, ”I am here to preach it. But the only violence I preach is the violence of folded arms. You have folded your arms and their s.h.i.+ps are dead. No other kind is so deadly as that. Only hold to this kind of violence, and though they may send out a s.h.i.+p here and there, this great port of New York will stay closed--bringing ruin all over the land--till the nation turns to Wall Street and says, 'We cannot wait! You will have to give in!'”

As he ended his speech, it seemed to me as though he were reaching far out, gripping that throng and holding it in. But for how long could he hold them?

Every paper that they read had suddenly turned against them and prophesied their swift defeat. Two more s.h.i.+ps sailed that night. And as Marsh had foretold, their sailing was played up in pictures and huge headlines, while the statement that I wrote was cut to one small paragraph and put upon the second page.

That night, with the eager aid of strikers of five nationalities, I wrote a message to the crowd, translated it into German and French, Spanish, Italian and Polish. A socialist paper loaned us their press, and by noon our message was scattered in leaflets all up and down the waterfront. This message went out daily now. For the greater part of each night I sat in strike headquarters and wrote direct to the tenements.

The next day Marsh proposed a parade, and the Farm took it up with prompt acclaim. He challenged the mayor of the city to stop it. To friends who came to him later he said:

”You tell the mayor that I'm doing my best to give these men something peaceful to do. If he wants to help me, all well and good. If he don't, let him try to stop this parade.”

And the mayor granted a permit.

The next afternoon the Fifth Avenue shops all closed their doors, and over the rich displays in their windows heavy steel shutters were rolled down. The long procession of motors and cabs with their gaily dressed shoppers had disappeared, and in their place was another procession, men, women and children, old and young. All around me as I marched I heard an unending torrent of voices speaking many languages, uniting in strange cheers and songs brought from all over the ocean world.

Bright-colored turbans bobbed up here and there, for there was no separation of races, all walked together in dense crowds, the whole strike family was here. And listening and watching I felt myself a member now. Behind me came a long line of trucks packed with sick or crippled men. At their head was a black banner on which was painted, ”Our Wounded.” Behind the wagons a small cheap band came blaring forth a funeral dirge, and behind the band, upon men's shoulders, came eleven coffins, in which were those dock victims who had died in the last few days. This section had its banner too, and it was marked, ”Our Dead.”

But at one point, late in the afternoon, some marcher just ahead of me suddenly started to laugh. At first I thought he was simply in fun. But he kept on. Those near him then caught the look on his face and they all began to laugh with him. Each moment louder, uglier, it swept up the Avenue. And as it swelled in volume, like the menace of some furious beast, the uncontrollable pa.s.sion I heard filled me again with a sharp foreboding of violence in the crisis ahead.

”Why are you here?” I asked myself. ”You can't join in a laugh like that--you're no real member of this crowd--their world is not where you belong!”

But from somewhere deep inside me a voice rose up in answer:

”If the crowd is growing blind--is this the time to leave it? Wait.”

CHAPTER XVI

Five more vessels sailed that day. And in the evening Eleanore said:

”The women who came to our station to-day kept asking, 'Why can't they close up the saloons? They're just the places for trouble to start.'”

”We'll try,” I said, and that same night Marsh sent word through a friend to the mayor asking him to close all barrooms on the waterfront during the strike. The mayor sent back a refusal. He said he had no power.

Late that night I went down the line and found each barroom packed with men who were talking of those s.h.i.+ps that had sailed. And they talked of ”scabs.” Speakers I had not heard before were now shouting and pounding the bar with their fists. The papers the next morning ran lurid accounts of these saloons and the open threats of violence there. They censured the mayor for his weakness and called for the militia. Why wait for mobs and bloodshed?

To that challenge I heard the reply of the crowd, on the Farm that afternoon, in their applause of the fiery speech of a swarthy little Spaniard. Francesco Vasca was his name.

”They are sending hired murderers who will come here to shoot us down!

But when they come,” he shouted, ”I want you to remember this! A jail cell is no smaller than our holes in the bottoms of their s.h.i.+ps, the food is no worse than the scouse we shall eat if we give in and go back to our jobs! And so we shall not be driven back! When the militia come against us, armed with guns and bayonets, then let us go to meet them armed----”

He stopped short, and from one end to the other of that motionless ma.s.s of men there fell a death-like silence. Then he grimly ended his speech:

”Armed with patience, courage and a deep belief in our cause.”

In the sudden storm of cheers and ”booh's” I leaned over to Joe at my side:

”Why did you let that man speak?”