Comrade Yetta Part 41

"Vell. Ve must send a delegate to der komitat von education. Nowadays they meet three times a veek. That vill be a start. Und alzo ve commence soon mit the hauz to hauz mit tracts--for the campaign. That is much vork. Poor leetle girl. I guess ve can most kill her. Vork is gut medicine."

And Isadore, having stolen half a morning from his regular work, rushed downtown to the office.

CHAPTER XXVI

_THE CLARION_

Yetta found the strike of the paper-box makers more serious than she had expected. The conditions of the trade were appalling. The half dozen factories were only the centre of a widespread sweating system. More than half of the work was done in the tenements of the districts where the Child Labor Law could be evaded and where women could be driven to work incredibly long hours beyond the reach of the Factory Inspectors.

The strikers were not only isolated--lost in a backwater district of Brooklyn, out of touch with labor organizations, ignorant of the laws and of their rights--they were also weakened by the division of languages. All were "greenhorn" immigrants, who had not yet learned English. They belonged to diverse and hostile races--a disunited medley of Slovaks, Poles, Italians, and Jews. The bosses have been quick to discover how serious an impediment to organization is a mixture of races.

Yetta came to them in the same way that Mabel, three and a half years before, had come to the striking vest-makers--bringing detailed, practical knowledge of how to manage a strike. As soon as she had telephoned in a first story to _The Clarion_, she took up the work of bringing order and hope into the despairing chaos of the struggle. She called on the police captain, and her threat of publicity made him change his mind in regard to the right of the strikers to hold meetings.

Before supper-time the effect of the _Clarion_ story was evident. Half a dozen labor organizers and Socialist speakers turned up. With this outside help the paper-box makers were able to organize their picket, arrange meetings, and start plans for money-raising. A Socialist lawyer took up the cases of the dozen odd strikers who had been arrested.

By ten o'clock the situation was immensely improved. Yetta escaped to a typewriter to get out her big "follow-up" for the next day's paper. She went at it with a peculiar thrill. She was realizing for the first time what a power in the fight a working-man's paper might be.

While she was working out her story, the semi-annual stockholders'

meeting of the Cooperative Newspaper Publis.h.i.+ng Company was called to order in one of the halls of the Labor Temple on East Eighty-fourth Street.

Walter had spoken of _The Clarion_ as "Isadore's paper." In reality it was a cooperative enterprise. In the days when the working-men nearly elected Henry George as Mayor of New York, they had started to raise money to found a newspaper which would represent the interests of their cla.s.s. It was decided that fifty thousand dollars was necessary, and a committee had been formed. In the first enthusiasm they had collected five thousand. Fresh efforts had been made intermittently, and the sum had grown to eight thousand.

When Isadore had returned from his vacation with the Pauldings, he had decided to centre his efforts on this project. He had studied the ways and means carefully, he had infused new life into the committee, and at last he had succeeded in organizing this cooperative publis.h.i.+ng company.

At their first meeting they had decided that fifty thousand was hopeless, and that they could begin with twenty-five. But after straining every nerve for six months, arranging b.a.l.l.s and picnics and fairs, they had raised only twelve thousand. _The Clarion_ was started on that amount. Every one who knew anything about modern journalism told Isadore he was a fool.

At first the paper ran on its capital. But after a few months the income from circulation, advertis.e.m.e.nts, and job-printing reduced the weekly deficit to about five hundred dollars. This was met in part by the Maintenance Pledge Fund. About two thousand people, mostly members of the Socialist party, had pledged weekly contributions ranging from ten cents to a few dollars. The remaining deficit was met by pure and simple begging and by rebates from the wages. Never was a paper run on a more strenuous and flimsy basis. The lack of economy of such poverty-stricken operation would have shocked any business man, would have caused apoplexy to an "efficiency expert." The cost of every process was twice or thrice what it would have been if they had had more money.

But financial worries were only a small part of what Isadore and his little band of enthusiastic helpers had to contend with. _The Clarion_ was the property of the democratically organized shareholders, who elected an Executive Committee of five to manage it. Of all phases of public life, Democracy has shown itself least prepared to deal sanely with this business of newspapers. As a whole the stockholders of the company were deeply dissatisfied with the regular newspapers and ardently desired one which would truly represent their cla.s.s. But although they were making great sacrifices, were putting up an amazingly large share of their earnings to support _The Clarion_, their idea of what to expect from it was very vague. They knew nothing at all of the technical problems of journalism.

The Executive Committee had stated meetings every week, and seemed to Isadore to be holding special meetings every ten minutes. More of his time went to educating this board of managers, teaching them what could and what could not be done with their limited resources, than in actual work on the paper.

When the meeting of the shareholders had been called to order, Rheinhardt, the chairman of the Executive Committee, read his report.

The circulation had reached twelve thousand. The weekly deficit had been reduced to $400. The Maintenance Pledge Fund had brought in $310. Gifts to the amount of $66.50 had been received. The office force had receipted for $23.50 which they had not received. For the first time in the history of _The Clarion_ a week had pa.s.sed without increasing the indebtedness.

Then the meeting fell into its regular routine of useless criticism. One desperately earnest Socialist vehemently objected to some of the advertis.e.m.e.nts which, he said, favored capitalistic enterprise. He was immediately followed by another Comrade who accused the advertising force of rank inefficiency in not securing more of it. A third speaker said it was foolish to waste s.p.a.ce on sporting news. The working-cla.s.s had more serious things to think about. Three or four others at once clamored for the floor. They all told the same story: the men in their shops bought the papers to see how the Giants were coming along in the race for the baseball pennant. They would not buy _The Clarion_ because its athletic news was weak. So it went on as usual--every suggestion was combated by a counterproposal--and so it would have gone on till adjournment, if one of the Executive Committee had not lost heart in the face of this futile criticism and resigned.

Wilhelm Stringer jumped up.

"Ve haf in our branch a comrade who is one gut newspaper lady. She has vorked mit a big yellow journal. I like to see gut Socialist on the komitat, but alzo ve need some gut newspaper man. Und I nominate Comrade Yetta Rayefsky."'

No one sought the nomination, for it was a hard and thankless job, so Yetta was elected by acclamation.

"Ve vill nearly kill her mit vork. Yes?" Stringer said to Isadore as the meeting broke up.

"Do you think she'll accept?" Isadore asked dubiously.

"Sure, she vill. It is a gut girl. I haf not as yet asked her, but now I vill write a letter und tell her."

He gave the note to Isadore to deliver.

Yetta finished her copy about midnight, but finding much detail still needing attention at the strike headquarters, she decided to make a night of it and sleep in Brooklyn with a family of strikers. It was three in the morning before she turned in--too tired to remember with any clearness that her b.u.t.terfly wings had been broken. More than once during the day she had had to fight against her tears--to struggle against the desire to drop all this work and rush back to Manhattan and Walter. But always at the weak moment some one who was weaker had asked her help.

It all had to be fought out again when she woke. She might not have won, if the conviction had not come to her during her sleep that somehow it must all turn out right in the end. When she reached "headquarters" she found so much to do that she had no time to mourn. The first mail brought in more than fifty dollars--the result of her yesterday's story.

But better still was the fact that _The Clarion's_ glaring headlines had forced the attention of the regular papers. The strike was receiving wide publicity. There is no other cla.s.s of evil-doers who so ardently love darkness in their business as "unfair" employers. The bosses had not been much worried by the revolt of their workers, but they did not like to read about it--to have their acquaintances read about it--in their morning papers.

It was ten o'clock before Yetta could get away. Coming across on the elevated, she had her first chance to look at the yesterday's issue of _The Clarion_. It caused a revulsion from her feeling of enthusiasm over a working-man's paper. What a pitiful sheet it was! How different in tone and quality from the one Walter had talked of so glowingly! It was not only unattractive in appearance. There was not a detail which, to Yetta's trained eye, seemed well done. The headlines of her own story, which spread across the top of the front page, were crude. A dozen better ones suggested themselves to her. The mistakes they had made in expanding her telephone message to two columns were ludicrous and vexatious. What else was there in the paper? The rest of the front page was filled with telegrams which had been news several hours before it had gone to press! The second page--it was headed "Labor News"--offended Yetta especially. It was mostly "exchange paragraphs" clipped from trade journals. The original matter was written by some one who did not understand nor sympathize with the Trade-Union Movement, who evidently thought that every worker who was not a party member was mentally defective. The only spark of personality on the last page was Isadore's editorial. It was a bit ponderous and long-drawn-out, but at least it was intense and thoughtful. The cartoon was poorly drawn and required an a.n.a.lytic mind to discover the point. Yetta found it hard to believe that twelve thousand people had been willing to buy so uninteresting a paper when they could get the bright, snappy, sixteen-page _Star_ for the same money.

She was tired and discouraged when she reached the office.

"I'm not a headline writer," she said as she tossed her copy on Levine's table, "but I've ground out some that aren't quite so stupid as those you ran yesterday."

Without waiting for his retort she went on to Isadore's desk.

"Here's a note from Stringer," he said as a greeting.

She tore it open listlessly.

"Well! That's a nervy piece of business," she said, throwing it into the waste-paper basket. "Electing me without asking my consent."

"Won't you serve?"

"No."

Isadore leaned back in his swivel chair and puffed nervously at his cigarette.

"Don't you think the job's worth doing?"

"It's worth doing well--but not like this."

It seemed to Isadore that a word of encouragement from her would have put new life into him. But she--like everybody else--had only criticism.

He had a foolish desire to cry and an equally insane desire to curse. He managed to do neither.

"Well, what would you suggest? To bring it up to your standard of worth-while-ness?"

"It'll never be a newspaper till the front page gets over this day-before-yesterday look--for one thing."

"If you knew what we're up against," he said, laboriously trying to hide the sting her scorn gave him, "I think you'd be proud of our news department--as proud as I am. In the first place, of course, we have to subscribe to the very cheapest News Agency. Until we can afford some more delivery wagons--we've only got two now--we'll have to go to press by one. That means that the telegraphic copy must be in at twelve-thirty. The flimsies don't begin to come in till eleven. We can receive only one hour and a half out of twenty-four. And it's a rotten, unreliable, dirty capitalistic service--the only one we can afford. Half of it has to be rewritten. Harry Moore, who also reports night meetings, clips the labor papers, attends to the make-up, runs the 'Questions and Answers,' and collects jokes and fillers, has to read every despatch and rewrite most of them. Yes, I'm rather proud of our telegraphic department."

"Is the financial side so hopeless?" Yetta asked.

"Well, I don't call it hopeless. You're a member of the Executive Committee--at least till you resign--so you'd best look into the books."

For half an hour they bent their heads over balance-sheets. It was an appalling situation. The debt was out of all proportion to the property.

To be sure much of it was held by sympathizers, who were not likely to foreclose. But there was no immediate hope of decreasing the burden. Any new income would have to go into improvements. The future of the paper depended not only on its ability to carry this dead weight, but on the continuance of the Pledge Fund and on Isadore's success in begging about a hundred dollars a week.