Windy McPherson's Son Part 34

"Better lose than win a scab victory," he bellowed.

"Who are you anyway? What grafter sent you here?" he demanded, turning to Sam.

He launched into a speech. "I have been watching this fellow, I know him. He has a scheme to break down the union and is being paid by the capitalists."

Sam waited to hear no more. Getting up he pulled on his canvas jacket and started for the door. He saw that already he had involved himself in a dozen violations of the unionist code and the idea of trying to convince Harrigan of his disinterestedness did not occur to him.

"Do not mind me," he said, "I am going."

He walked between the rows of frightened, white-faced girls and unbolted the door, the Jewish girl following. At the head of the stairway leading to the street he stopped and pointed back into the room.

"Go back," he said, handing her a roll of bills. "Carry on the work if you can. Get other machines and new printing. I will help you in secret."

Turning he ran down the stairs, hurried through the curious crowd standing at the foot, and walked rapidly along in front of the lighted stores. A cold rain, half snow, was falling. Beside him walked a young man with a brown pointed beard, one of the newspaper reporters who had interviewed him the day before.

"Did Harrigan trim you?" asked the young man, and then added, laughing, "He told us he intended to throw you down stairs."

Sam walked on in silence, filled with wrath. He turned into a side street and stopped when his companion put a hand upon his arm.

"This is our dump," said the young man, pointing to a long low frame building facing the side street. "Come in and let us have your story. It should be a good one."

Inside the newspaper office another young man sat with his head lying on a flat-top desk. He was clad in a strikingly flashy plaid coat, had a little wizened, good-natured face and seemed to have been drinking. The young man with the beard explained Sam's ident.i.ty, taking the sleeping man by the shoulder and shaking him vigorously.

"Wake up, Skipper! There's a good story here!" he shouted. "The union has thrown out the mail-order strike leader!"

The Skipper got to his feet and began shaking his head.

"Of course, of course, Old Top, they would throw you out. You've got some brains. No man with brains can lead a strike. It's against the laws of Nature. Something was bound to hit you. Did Roughneck come out from Pittsburgh?" he asked, turning to the young man of the brown beard.

Then reaching above his head and taking a cap that matched his plaid coat from a nail on the wall, he winked at Sam. "Come on, Old Top. I've got to get a drink."

The two men went through a side door and down a dark alley, going in at the back door of a saloon. Mud lay deep in the alley and The Skipper sloshed through it, splattering Sam's clothes and face. In the saloon at a table facing Sam, with a bottle of French wine between them, he began explaining.

"I've a note coming due at the bank in the morning and no money to pay it," he said. "When I have a note coming due I always have no money and I always get drunk. Then next morning I pay the note. I don't know how I do it, but I always come out all right. It's a system--Now about this strike." He plunged into a discussion of the strike while men came in and out, laughing and drinking. At ten o'clock the proprietor locked the front door, drew the curtain, and coming to the back of the room sat down at the table with Sam and The Skipper, bringing another bottle of the French wine from which the two men continued drinking.

"That man from Pittsburgh busted up your place, eh?" he said, turning to Sam. "A man came in here to-night and told me. He sent for the typewriter people and made them take away the machines."

When they were ready to leave, Sam took money from his pocket and offered to pay for the bottle of French wine ordered by The Skipper, who arose and stood unsteadily on his feet.

"Do you mean to insult me?" he demanded indignantly, throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the table. The proprietor gave him back only fourteen dollars.

"I might as well wipe off the slate while you're flush," he observed, winking at Sam.

The Skipper sat down again, taking a pencil and pad of paper from his pocket, and throwing them on the table.

"I want an editorial on the strike for the Old Rag," he said to Sam. "Do one for me. Do something strong. Get a punch into it. I want to talk to my friend here."

Putting the pad of paper on the table Sam began writing his newspaper editorial. His head seemed wonderfully clear, his command of words unusually good. He called the attention of the public to the situation, the struggles of the striking girls and the intelligent fight they had been making to win a just cause, following this with paragraphs pointing out how the effectiveness of the work done had been annulled by the position taken by the labour and socialist leaders.

"These fellows at bottom care nothing for results," he wrote. "They are not thinking of the unemployed women with families to support, they are thinking only of themselves and their puny leaders.h.i.+p which they fear is threatened. Now we shall have the usual exhibition of all the old things, struggle, and hatred and defeat."

When he had finished The Skipper and Sam went back through the alley to the newspaper office. The Skipper sloshed again through the mud and carried in his hand a bottle of red gin. At his desk he took the editorial from Sam's hands and read it.

"Perfect! Perfect to the thousandth part of an inch, Old Top," he said, pounding Sam on the shoulder. "Just what the Old Rag wanted to say about the strike." Then climbing upon the desk and putting the plaid coat under his head he went peacefully to sleep, and Sam, sitting beside the desk in a shaky office chair, slept also. At daybreak a black man with a broom in his hand woke them, and going into a long low room filled with presses The Skipper put his head under a water tap and came back waving a soiled towel and with water dripping from his hair.

"Now for the day and the labours thereof," he said, grinning at Sam and taking a long drink out of the gin bottle.

After breakfast he and Sam took up their stand in front of the barber shop opposite the stairway leading to the s.h.i.+rtwaist factory. Sam's girl with the pamphlets was gone as was also the soft-eyed Jewish girl, and in their places Frank and the Pittsburgh leader named Harrigan walked up and down. Again carriages and automobiles stood by the curb, and again a well-dressed woman got out of a machine and went toward three striking girls approaching along the sidewalk. The woman was met by Harrigan, shaking his fist and shouting, and getting back into the machine she drove off. From the stairway the flas.h.i.+ly-dressed Hebrew looked at the crowd and laughed.

"Where is the new strike leader--the mail-order strike leader?" he called to Frank.

With the words, a working man with a dinner pail on his arm ran out of the crowd and knocked the Jew back into the stairway.

"Punch him! Punch the dirty scab leader!" yelled Frank, dancing up and down on the sidewalk.

Two policemen running forward began leading the workingman up the street, his dinner pail still clutched in one hand.

"I know something," The Skipper shouted, pounding Sam on the shoulder.

"I know who will sign that note with me. The woman Harrigan drove back into her machine is the richest woman in town. I will show her your editorial. She will think I wrote it and it will get her. You'll see."

He ran off up the street, shouting back over his shoulder, "Come over to the dump, I want to see you again."

Sam returned to the newspaper office and sat down waiting for The Skipper who, after a time, came in, took off his coat and began writing furiously. From time to time he took long drinks out of the bottle of red gin, and after silently offering it to Sam, continued reeling off sheet after sheet of loosely-written matter.

"I got her to sign the note," he called over his shoulder to Sam. "She was furious at Harrigan and when I told her we were going to attack him and defend you she fell for it quick. I won out by following my system.

I always get drunk and it always wins."

At ten o'clock the newspaper office was in a ferment. The little man with the brown pointed beard, and another, kept running to The Skipper asking advice, laying typewritten sheets before him, talking as he wrote.

"Give me a lead. I want one more front page lead," The Skipper kept bawling at them, working like mad.

At ten thirty the door opened and Harrigan, accompanied by Frank, came in. Seeing Sam they stopped, looking at him uncertainly, and at the man at work at the desk.

"Well, speak up. This is no ladies' reception room. What do you fellows want?" snapped The Skipper, glaring at them.

Frank, coming forward, laid a typewritten sheet on the desk, which the newspaper man read hurriedly.

"Will you use it?" asked Frank.

The Skipper laughed.

"Wouldn't change a word of it," he shouted. "Sure I'll use it. It's what I wanted to make my point. You fellows watch me."

Frank and Harrigan went out and The Skipper, rus.h.i.+ng to the door, began yelling into the room beyond.

"Hey, you Shorty and Tom, I've got that last lead."

Coming back to his desk he began writing again, grinning as he worked.

To Sam he handed the typewritten sheet prepared by Frank.