Part 64 (1/2)

She started to crowd between the horses, and the policemen thrust her back.

”Karl--Karl,” she cried, ”you come out of there; what would papa say--and you a scab.”

She lifted her arms beseechingly and started toward the youth. A policeman cursed her and felled her with a club.

She lay bleeding on the street, and the strikers stood by and ground their teeth. Laura Van Dorn stooped over the woman, picked her up and helped her to walk home. But as she turned away she saw five men walk out of the ranks of the strike-breakers and join the men on the corner.

A cheer went up, and two more came.

Belgian Hall was filled with workers that night--men and women. In front of the stage at a long table sat the strike committee. Before them sat the delegates from the various ”locals” and the leaders of the sevens. A thousand men and women filled the hall--men and women from every quarter of the globe. That night they had decided to admit the Jews from the Magnus paint works--the Jews whom the Russians scorned, and the Lettish people distrusted. Behind all of the delegates in a solid row around the wall stood the police, watching Grant Adams. He did not sit with the strike committee but worked his way through the crowd, talking to a group here and encouraging a man or woman there--but always restless, always fearing trouble. It was nine o'clock when the meeting opened by singing ”The International.” It was sung in twenty tongues, but the chorus swelled up and men and women wept as they sang.

”Oh, the Brotherhood of men Shall be the human race.”

Then the delegates reported. A Greek woman told how she had been chased by men on horseback through the woods, in the Park. A Polack man showed a torn hand that had come under an ax-handle. A Frenchman told how he had been pursued by a horseman while going for medicine for his sick child. A Portuguese told how he had brought from the ranks of the strike-breakers a big fellow worker whom he knew in New Jersey. The Germans reported that every one of their men in the Valley was out and working in his garden. Over and over young girls told of insults they had received. A mania of brutality seemed to have spread through the officers of the law. A Scotch miner's daughter showed a tear in her dress made by a soldier's bayonet--

”'In fun,' he said, but I could see na joke.”

In all the speeches there was a spirit of camaraderie--of fellows.h.i.+p, of love. ”We are one blood now,” a Danish miner cried, in broken English, ”we are all Americans, and America will be a brotherhood--a brotherhood in the Democracy of Labor, under the Prince of Peace.” A great shout arose and the crowd called:

”Grant--Grant--Brother Grant.”

But he stood by the table and shook his head. After a girl picket and a woman--one a Welsh girl, the other a Manx miner's mother--had told how they were set upon in the Park by the soldiers, up rose a pale, trembling woman from among the Hungarians, her brown, blotched face and her big body made the men look down or away. She spoke in broken, uncertain English.

”We haf send to picket our men and yet our boys, and they beat them down. We haf our girls send, and they come home crying. But I say to G.o.d this evening--Oh, is there nothing for me--for me carrying child, and He whisper yais--these soldiers, he haf wife, he haf mother.” She paused and shook with fear and shame. ”Then I say to you--call home your man--your girl so young, and we go--we women with child--we with big bellies, filled with unborn--we go--O, my G.o.d, He say we go, and this soldier--he haf wife, he haf mother--he will see;--we--we--they will not strike us down. Send us, oh, Grant, Prince of Peace, to the picket line next morning.”

Her voice broke and she sat down covering her head with her skirt and weeping in excitement.

”Let me go,” cried a clear voice, as a brown-eyed Welsh woman rose. ”I know ten others that will go.”

”I also,” cried a German woman. ”Let us organize to-night. We can have two hundred child-bearing women!”

”Yes, men,” spoke up a trim-looking young wife from among the gla.s.sworkers, ”we of old have been sacred--let us see if capital holds us sacred now--before property.”

Grant leaned over to Laura and asked, ”Would it do? Wouldn't they shame us for it?”

The eyes of Laura Van Dorn were filled with tears. They were streaming down her face.

”Oh, yes,” she cried, ”no deeper symbol of peace is in the earth than the child-bearing woman. Let her go.”

Grant Adams rose and addressed the chair: ”Mr. Chairman--I move that all men and all women except those chosen by these who have just spoken, be asked to keep out of the Park to-morrow morning, that all the world may know how sacred we hold this cause and with what weapons of peace we would win it.”

So it was ordered, and the crowd sang the International Hymn again, and then the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and went home dreaming high dreams.

As Grant and Laura walked from the hall, the last to leave the meeting, after the women had finished making out their list of pickets, the streets were empty and they met--or rather failed to meet, Mrs. d.i.c.k Bowman, with Mugs in tow, who crossed the street obviously to avoid Grant and his companion.

Grant and Laura, walking briskly along and planning the next day's work, pa.s.sed the smelters where the soldiers were on sentry duty. They pa.s.sed the shaft houses where Harvey militiamen were bunked and guarded by sentinels. They pa.s.sed the habiliments of war in a score of peaceful places.

”Grant,” cried Laura, ”I really think now we'll win--that the strike of peace will prove all that you have lived for.”