The Shadow Part 28

"It ain't so bad here," she announced. "There's lots worse shops in New York, Sophie, if you don't know it."

"That's right, Annie," one of her companions chimed in, "I got a lady friend works in a b.u.m shop. You can smell the place before you come up the stairs."

"Sure," echoed another, "this ain't a bad shop; the boss is good to us."

"Good?" Sophie cried indignantly, "I do not call it good. We work and the boss pays us as small as he can."

"Listen!" Annie put down the pickle she was eating and proceeded to instruct the foreigner. "You don't know as much about America as I do, Sophie; you come from Russia where people are slaves. Yes, I read about it in the Sunday paper. But here in the United States every one is free.

We don't need unions. If I don't like this shop I can up and go to another. There's nothing to stop me, and if you don't like it you can go, too."

"And if the boss don't like it he can fire us all!"

"Ain't he the right? He pays us. But sure he won't fire us if we stand by him. My father's worked for thirty years with the same house. You bet he don't get fired, and he don't belong to no union either."

Annie was very much in earnest. In her heart she felt intense disdain for these foreigners who came to her country and tried to lead her and other girls into a betrayal of their employer's trust.

Sophie had no idea of being worsted, but her position was difficult. She must try to convert the ignorant mind that felt itself superior to her, and she must do it with an imperfect knowledge of the tongue in which she spoke.

She made a brave attempt. In a torrent of broken English she explained the cla.s.s struggle and the necessity for organization. She put before the girls the helplessness of the individual worker and her inability to bargain. The whim of a foreman or forelady, a day's sickness, a slackening in the trade, and she might be thrown out on the street. She made them all remember the uncertainty of obtaining work, the days of going from shop to shop, the long hours waiting on the chance of being taken on, only at last to return home disconsolate! She pictured the boss living in luxury while the girls who created his wealth were without proper clothes or food; and yet when they demanded a further share in his prosperity, that but for them could never have existed, he sneered as though they came for charity. Then came her picture of organization: the individual impotent, the ma.s.s of individuals, each helping one another, a mighty power that could grapple with the employer and force from him a generous wage. She told them of their trade as it had been in the past, of the battles that the workers had fought to secure for them their present measure of freedom. She decried Annie's free America. If America were free it was because there had been brave men who had overthrown England's tyranny and other brave men who had fought to free the slaves. And with her queer little accent she quoted, "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow."

Unquestionably she overawed her audience. Annie and her companions found her knowledge embarra.s.sing and a little humiliating. They had all been to grammar school, Annie herself had recited a poem once before her cla.s.s, but she had never looked upon knowledge with much zest and she found it difficult to follow Sophie's arguments. But when one of her companions asked, rather sheepishly, what it meant to join the union she was on safe ground.

"It means twenty cents a week of good pay out of your envelope," she declared with emphasis, "that's what it means, and you can bet your life you'll never get a penny of it back!"

For the next few days the girls marshaled their forces at noon and debated the union shop; at least, the Jewish girls debated while Annie and her friends gave that answer, so exasperating to the serious thinker, the retort irrelevant. Nothing so hurt the earnest supporters of organized industry as the way the Americans made a joke of it. "Of course Sophie wants us to join," Annie remarked once, not ill-humoredly, "it's up to her to bring in members. Didn't I see her going away last night with the organizer, an _all-rightniker_, sure enough?"

Sophie was enraged at the personal motive ascribed to her, but still more at having a devoted and unselfish union man called by a name used to describe self-seeking climbers. "He's not like that," she said indignantly, "he would to help us. I only talk with him to learn what to do."

"Well, find me a good looking man who can speak English," Annie went on, "and who'll take me to the theayter, and I'll go out on your strike,"

and she turned to receive rea.s.suring smiles at her repartee and to start on a new piece of chewing gum, for there was little time when Annie was not in some fas.h.i.+on exercising her jaws.

Watching the two girls, one wondered whether in another generation Sophie would resemble Annie; there seemed little reason to believe that Annie would ever resemble Sophie. Annie was a loosely put together girl, with nondescript features and an air of good-humored carelessness. An unkind critic would have described her as common. She meant to have a good time when she was young and perhaps to marry later when the good time was over; that is, if marriage would a.s.sure her an easier life than the one she now led--otherwise she would have nothing of it. She had seen her mother burdened with many children and she did not mean to follow her mother's example. Long hours were disagreeable, but it would be more serious if the moving picture show across the way from where she lived were to close its doors; that indeed would have aroused her righteous wrath. Under her father's tutelage she had grown to believe that an organization of girls was unfeminine, and she enjoyed ridiculing Sophie's serious arguments and her picture of the coming day when the worker should own the product of his toil. If the Jewish girl, however, had made a personal appeal, if she had begged her to join the union not for a principle but as a favor to herself, Annie would have walked to headquarters and have put down her twenty cents; for she was a spendthrift by nature and cared less for twenty cents than Sophie did for one.

When the crash came it was a dramatic one. The "Parisian" girls had been out for two weeks, the strikers demanding better pay, while the employers tried to carry on their business with unskilled hands. Sophie reported the situation each day at noon, and urged upon the "Imperial"

girls to stand by their striking sisters. Save with her own small group, this argument missed fire. Nevertheless, the most of them were interested in the struggle at the "Parisian" shop and watched hopefully for the triumph of the strikers. On a Thursday morning in February, as the girls began their work, the keener ones noted that there was a difference in the stock. To Hertha it meant nothing, but to Sophie it was portentous; and at noon, contrary to her custom, she rushed out into the street. A few minutes before the noon hour was over she was back again.

"Girls," she cried, hurrying into the room, "see, they give us scabs'

work!"

Standing by her machine, she waved her unfinished s.h.i.+rtwaist as though it were an enemy banner. "It's 'Parisian,'" she cried, "there were not enough scabs to do it in their own shop and so they sent it here! We are breaking their strike, their strike for better pay!"

She spoke in Yiddish and the Jewish girls followed her excitedly, expressing indignation at her news.

"We will strike, Sophie," her friend, Rachel, said. "We cannot do work like this; it would be wicked."

Sophie again waved her enemy banner. "Will you be scabs?" she called out, this time in English. "Do you not see? This is not our waist; it is the 'Parisian.' I see the girls; they are downstairs, and they ask us to stop, to stand by them as sisters."

"What's all this noise?" cried the foreman sternly as he entered the room. And then without waiting for a response, though it was a few minutes too soon, he threw on the power.

Sophie, Rachel, and a dozen other Jewish girls stood excitedly in the aisle, failing to go to their seats.

"Get to work!" the foreman called above the din. Then thinking it advisable to consult with a higher authority, he left the room.

In a moment Sophie had thrown off the power.

"Sisters," she cried, "down below are the 'Parisian' girls, waiting for us. Will you be scabs? Will you take their work?"

"We'll pull down the shop," came from her adherents.

"No, you don't," came from Annie Black. "Those 'Parisian' sheenies can stay out if they want for all me. I stop here."

"Oh!" Sophie cried. "Shame!"

She was a little figure, thin, underfed, but with the soul of the fanatic gleaming from her deep eyes. Having known oppression in the land of her birth, she recognized it in the land of her adoption. Poverty was not something to accept as the beggar accepted his dole, nor was it something to struggle against alone. It was a grievous disease that the body politic might cure if only those who suffered courageously battled for health. Before her was the vision of a world set free, and for the moment at least there was to her no sacrifice in accepting hunger and cold if such privation might bring a step nearer the freedom that she wors.h.i.+ped. Only a few of the girls understood her call, but none doubted her sincerity.

"See!" she said, drawing an imaginary line with her foot upon the floor.

"All who will not be scabs, all who will not take bread from the mouths of others, come to me, cross the line!"

A number of the Jewish girls rose and walked to Sophie's side. Some went with heads erect, eyes s.h.i.+ning, exultant, as though drawing the fine breath of freedom. Others moved slowly, hesitatingly, sometimes casting angry looks at Sophie as though they wished to disobey her call and yet dared not stand out against her. "You go?" asked the girl at Hertha's right.

The call had been so sudden that Hertha, accustomed to taking her time before making any decision, had not moved. The voice at her side aroused her to do her part. Sophie was looking entreatingly in her direction; and with the realization that her choice one way or the other was of little personal moment, she rose from her chair and, saying quietly to her seatmate, "I think we ought to go," crossed the line.

Her stand, little as she appreciated it, had its influence. She had represented the aristocracy of the workroom. Had she been arrogant she would have been hated, but her uniform gentleness coupled with her refined face and graceful carriage, had made her a romantic character about whom one might weave tales of former greatness or unrequited love.

That she should join the labor movement, linking herself with the despised foreigner, made a dozen of the doubtful follow in her lead.

"You come, too?" called Sophie to the few remaining Jews and the group of Americans.

"No!" cried Annie, "we ain't no dirty sheenies. We stand by the boss!"

"Scabs! Scabs!" Sophie hissed the word between her teeth. "Dirty scabs!"

and with a swift movement she flung the power on again. "Keep on, you dirty scabs," she yelled, and, gathering her followers about her, rushed from the room.

Below stood the "Parisian" girls, and as the strikers appeared, hastily wrapped in their outer clothing, some with hats awry, others with coats flung over their arms, they gave cheer after cheer.

"We knew you'd pull down the shop, Sophie," a big, handsome Jewess cried, grasping the fragile strike-breaker by the arm. "We knew you'd never let the boss keep you working at our leavings."

"Girls," called out another of the leaders, "this is the fourth shop to go out this week. We'll win. Hurrah for the 'Imperial!' We'll win."

"Move on!" a policeman said sharply, pus.h.i.+ng his way into the crowd.

"What are you doing blocking the street this way? You girls should be at work!"

"We're on a strike," Sophie replied, "we go to Union Hall."

The officer watched them as they moved from the factory building, muttering to himself that they were sure to make trouble striking at the height of the season.

Hertha, though she tried to slip away, found herself caught up by the crowd. She was embarra.s.sed and conscious that they were all the source of amused comment on the part of the spectators. Talking excitedly in Yiddish, the "Imperials" swung into line with their "Parisian" sisters and all started a triumphant progress down the avenue.

"Sure, you was fine," Sophie said to Hertha.