The Nine-Tenths Part 30

"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.

"Up-stairs."

"For what?"

"To see one of the girls. Her mother's sick."

The forelady eyed Sally suspiciously.

"Did you get a permit from the office?"

Sally seemed surprised.

"Permit? No! Do you have to get a permit?"

The forelady spoke roughly.

"You get a permit, or you don't go up."

"Where's the office?"

"In here."

"Thanks for telling me!"

Sally came down, and, as she entered the doorway, the forelady proceeded up-stairs. Sally delayed a second, until the forelady disappeared around the bend, and then quickly, quietly she followed, taking the steps two at a time. The forelady had hardly entered the doorway on the next landing when Sally was in with her, and treading softly in her footsteps.

This was the loft, vast, lit by windows east and west, and hung, this snow-darkened morning, with many glittering lights. Through all the s.p.a.ce girls and women, close together, bent over power-machines which seemed to race at intolerable speed. There was such a din and clatter, such a whizzing, thumping racket, that voices or steps would well be lost. Then suddenly, in the very center of the place, the forelady, stopping to speak to a girl, while all the girls of the neighborhood ceased work to listen, thus producing a s.p.a.ce of calm--the forelady, slightly turning and bending, spied Sally.

She came up indignantly.

"Why did you follow me? Go down to the office!"

Many more machines stopped, many more pale faces lifted and watched.

Sally gave a quick glance around, and was a trifle upset by seeing Mr.

Marrin coming straight toward her. He came with his easy, tripping stride, self-satisfied, red-faced, tastefully dressed, an orchid in his b.u.t.tonhole. Sally spoke quickly.

"I was only looking for Mr. Marrin, and here he is!"

As Mr. Marrin came up, more and more machines stopped, as if by contagion, and the place grew strangely hushed.

The forelady turned to her boss.

"This woman's sneaked in here without a permit!"

Marrin spoke sharply.

"What do you want?"