Part 30 (1/2)
”I came here because Jacob is so worried. He is afraid you will harm yourself for us.”
Joe laughed softly.
”Tell him not to worry any longer. It's you who are suffering--not I. I?
I am only having fun.”
She was not satisfied.
”We oughtn't to get others mixed up in our troubles.”
”It's hard for you, isn't it?” Joe murmured.
”Yes.” She smiled sadly. ”I suppose it isn't right when you are in the struggle to get married. Not right to the children.”
Joe spoke courageously.
”Never you mind, Mrs. Izon--but just wait. Wait three--four days. We'll see!”
They did wait, and they did see.
VI
A FIGHT IN GOOD EARNEST
Sally hesitated before going into Marrin's that Monday morning. A blinding snow-storm was being released over the city, and the fierce gusts eddied about the corner of Fifth Avenue, blew into drifts, lodged on sill and cornice and lintel, and blotted out the sky and the world.
Through the wild whiteness a few desolate people ploughed their way, buffeted, blown, hanging on to their hats, and quite unable to see ahead. Sally shoved her red little hands into her coat pockets, and stood, a careless soul, in the white welter.
From her shoulder, some hundred feet to the south, ran the plate-gla.s.s of Marrin's, spotted and clotted and stringy with snow and ice, and right before her was the entrance for deliveries and employees. A last consideration held her back. She had been lying awake nights arguing with her conscience. Joe had told her not to do it--that it would only stir up trouble--but Joe was too kindly. In the battles of the working people a time must come for cruelty, blows, and swift victory. Marrin was an out-and-out enemy to be met and overthrown; he had made traitors of the men; he had annihilated Izon; she would fight him with the women.
Nor was this the only reason. Sally felt that her supreme task was to organize the women in industry, to take this trampled cla.s.s and make of it a powerful engine for self-betterment, and no women were more prepared, she felt, than the s.h.i.+rtwaist-makers. She knew that at Marrin's the conditions were fairly good, though, even there, women and young girls worked sometimes twelve hours and more a day, and earned, many of them, but four or five dollars a week. What tempted Sally, however, was the knowledge that a strike at Marrin's would be the spark to set off the city and bring out the women by the thousands. It would be the uprising of the women; the first upward step from sheer wage-slavery; the first advance toward the ideal of that coming woman, who should be a man in her freedom and her strength and her power, and yet woman of woman in her love and her motherhood and wife-hood.
Industry, so Sally knew, was taking the young girls by the million, overworking them, sapping them of body and soul, and casting them out unfit to bear children, untrained to keep house, undisciplined to meet life and to be a comrade of a man. And Sally knew, moreover, what could be done. She knew what she had accomplished with the hat-trimmers.
Nevertheless, she hesitated, not quite sure that the moment had come.
Joe's words detained her in a way no man's words had ever done before.
But she thought: ”I do this for him. I sharpen the edge of his editorial and drive it home. Words could never hurt Marrin--but I can.” She got under the shelter of the doorway and with numb hand pulled a copy of _The Nine-Tenths_ from her pocket, unfolded it, and reread the burning words of: ”Forty-five Treacherous Men.” They roused all her fighting blood; they angered her; they incited her.
”Joe! Joe!” she murmured. ”It's you driving me on--it's you! Here goes!”
It was in some ways a desperate undertaking. Once, in Newark, a rough of an employer had almost thrown her down the stairs, man-handling her, and while Marrin or his men would not do this, yet what method could she use to brave the two hundred and fifty people in the loft? She was quite alone, quite without any weapon save her tongue. To fail would be ridiculous and ignominious. Yet Sally was quite calm; her heart did not seem to miss a beat; her brain was not confused by a rush of blood. She knew what she was doing.
She climbed that first flight of semi-circular stairs without hindrance, secretly hoping that by no mischance either Marrin or one of his sub-bosses might emerge. There was a door at the first landing. She pa.s.sed it quickly and started up the second flight. Then there was a turning of a k.n.o.b, a rustling of skirts, and a voice came sharp:
”Where are you going?”
Sally turned. The forelady stood below her--large, eagle-eyed woman, with square and wrinkled face, quite a mustache on her upper lip. Sally spoke easily.