Part 53 (1/2)

The chance to show they were not afraid came late in the afternoon. The clear, sweet call of a bugle came floating gaily on the air, then the long, hard roll of drums, and from their camp on the Farm the troops came on the double-quick up along the waterfront. Now thousands of strikers were running that way. From the foot of a city street across the wide open s.p.a.ce to a pier the militia formed in two double lines, each line facing outward. Then down that street came mounted police and behind them a score of trucks loaded with freight.

At first I had hopes that the ma.s.s would not move. But out of the silence came angry shouts and those behind pushed forward. Those in front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and angry cries--no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of the ma.s.s. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I saw an excited young officer shout at his men and wave his sword. I saw long rows of guns make quick rhythmic movements, then level straight out, and there were two long flashes of fire.

Disordered throngs were running now. Only a few men here and there turned to fire their pistols or to shout back frenzied, quivering oaths.

Behind them a few soldiers were still shooting without orders. Near the sand-pile on which I stood I saw a young militia man enough like that little shoe-clerk to have been his brother. His face was white and his eyes wild, he was panting, pumping his lever and blindly firing shot after shot.

”G.o.d d.a.m.n 'em, slaughter 'em, slaughter 'em!”

An officer knocked up his gun.

That night the waterfront was still. Only the long, slow moving line of the figures of sentries was to be seen. The troops were back in their camp on the Farm. Bivouac fires were burning down there, but up here was only a dark, empty s.p.a.ce.

Here scattered about on the pavement, after the firing had ceased, I had seen the dark inert bodies of men. Most of them had begun to move, until fully half were crawling about. They had been picked up and counted.

Thirty-nine wounded, fourteen dead. These, too, had all been taken away.

From the high steel docksheds there came a deep, harsh murmur made up of faint whistles, the rattle of winches, the shouts of the foremen, the heavy jar and crash of crates. A tug puffed smoothly into a slip with three barges in her wake. I walked slowly out that way. The tugmen and the bargemen talked in quiet voices as they made fast their craft to the pier. Below them the water was lapping and slapping.

”The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again now.”

The next day three heavy battles.h.i.+ps steamed sluggishly through the Narrows and came to anchor in the bay. When interviewed by reporters, their commanders were vastly amused. No, they said, the United States Navy was not governed as to its movements by strikes. They simply happened to be here through orders issued weeks ago. But their coming was featured in headlines.

I saw something else in the papers that night, a force greater than all battles.h.i.+ps. As a week before I had felt a whole country in revolt, I felt now a country of law and order, a whole nation of angry tradesmen impatiently demanding an end to all this ”foreign anarchy.”

”We want no more of your strikes,” it said. ”None of your new crowd spirit, none of your wild talk and dreams! We want no change in this country of ours!”

The authorities obeyed this will. Bail was denied to Marsh, Vasca and Joe, and for them a speedy trial was urged. The press now held them responsible not only for that first negro's death, but for all the deaths since their arrest. Let them pay the full penalty! Let them be made an example of! Let this business of anarchy be dealt with and settled once and for all!

The work of crus.h.i.+ng the strike went on. More troops were brought to the harbor. On the docks there were not only negroes now, thousands of immigrant laborers were brought from Ellis Island and put to work at double pay, and on every incoming vessel the stokers were all kept on board. Among the strikers there was a break that swiftly spread and became a stampede. And in the following week the work of the harbor went on as before, with its regular commonplace weekly toll of a hundred killed and injured. Peace had come again at last.

On Sat.u.r.day morning of that week I stood on the deck of a ferryboat packed with little commuters who waved and cheered a huge ocean liner bound for Europe. Lying deep in the water, her hold laden heavy with the products of this teeming land, her decks thronged with travelers with money in their pockets, her band playing, her flags streaming out, and over all on the captain's bridge the officers up there in command--she was a mighty symbol of order and prosperity and of that Efficiency which to me had been a religion for so many years. We all followed the great s.h.i.+p with our eyes as, gathering headway, she steamed out past the Statue of Liberty toward the battles.h.i.+ps beyond.

”Well,” said an amused little man close by me, ”I guess that'll be about all from the strikers.”

”Oh my smiling little citizen--you've only seen the beginning,” I thought.

What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with a rush, and all its heavy labor was weighing down upon them--”like a million tons of brick on their chests.” I remembered what Joe Kramer had said: ”It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking.”

Was the defeat of this one strike the end?

The grim battles.h.i.+ps answered, ”Yes, it is the end.”

But the restless harbor answered, ”No.”

What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I was sure. The last of my G.o.ds, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men at the top, had now come tottering cras.h.i.+ng down. And in its place a huge new G.o.d, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with one deep voice, with one tremendous burning pa.s.sion for the freedom of mankind.