CHAPTER XII
YETTA'S GOOD-BY
Yetta woke at her accustomed hour. But instead of hearing the vague murmur of awaking life about her, there was a strange silence. She could not even hear any one snoring. She had a panicky feeling that perhaps they had been murdered. So getting out of bed, she tiptoed down the hall to Mabel's open door and was reassured to see her sleeping peacefully. Back in her own room she climbed into bed again. But it did not occur to her to go to sleep, now that it was so light – lighter than her old bedroom had been at noon. For a few minutes she occupied herself looking about, studying the pictures and bibelots. A narrow strip of old tapestry on the wall looked especially strange to her; it was badly faded, the picture in it was hard to make out. It seemed almost uncanny to be in bed after she was awake, so she got up and dressed, noiselessly. She sat down by the window and, pulling aside the curtain, looked out, up the street, to Washington Square. Here and there were blotches of faint green; the early spring had started a few buds. Yetta had seen very little green that was not painted. And the swelling buds of the little park seemed to typify all the strangenesses of the new world which was opening before her.
It made her sad. She was not of this world. She could never be like Mabel. Her instinctive common sense showed her the great gulf which separated her from the life of her new friends.
In an uncertain way she was beginning to form a conception of Beauty and the graciousness of luxury. Eleanor's gown, her daffodils, the way she stood when she played the violin, all suggested to Yetta an idea of personal adornment much more intricate than her former ideal of a hat and white shoes. The dinner had shown her that eating might be something more than the mere satisfying of hunger. Mabel had changed her street clothes for a dinner gown. Evidently she thought of clothing as something more than necessary covering. Even the room where she was sitting was more than a place to sleep. All this "moreness" – this surplus over necessity – this luxury, was what separated her life from this new world. It did not seem possible that she could ever cross that chasm.
The reverse of the proposition came to her with equal force. Could Mabel cross? Could she really become a part of the world of work, the world of less? It seemed just as improbable. Yetta felt lonely and out of place. An inevitable wave of resentment came over her against these two favored women. Was not all this beauty and easy grace – this luxury – what she and her kind, Rachel and the other girls, were starving for? She felt herself in the enemy's country.
There was a light knock on her door, and Mabel, wrapped in her dressing-gown, came in.
"Oh, you're up already," she smiled.
All of Yetta's hostility melted before her frank greeting and morning kiss. Eleanor, it seemed, never got up before nine, so they must be quiet. In a few minutes Mabel reappeared in her street clothes, and closing the dining-room door, so as not to disturb the sleeper, they had their breakfast. This meal, even more than the dinner, amazed Yetta. There were coffee and rich cream and eggs and toast and marmalade. She had known, of course, that people dine in state, but that any one ever drank his morning coffee leisurely had never occurred to her. As Mabel read the newspaper, Yetta had much time to think, and once more the feeling of hostility returned. For more than an hour now her people had been bent over the life-destroying machines, and Mabel sipped her coffee slowly and read the news. Yetta wanted to be up and doing.
But once out on the street she was amazed and humbled at the sight of Mabel's efficiency. Yetta would not have known what to do first. Mabel had the whole day's work planned out.
First they went to the "girl who knew all about strikes" and from her got the addresses of the other women in Jake Goldfogle's shop. It developed that the bovine Mrs. Levy and the tell-tale Mrs. Levine had gone back that morning. But there was no work for only two, and Jake had sent them home with a promise to let them know as soon as he began again. He expected to start the next morning, he had told them. To Mrs. Levine he had given a dollar and whispered instructions to join the strikers and keep him informed.
The minute Mabel saw Mrs. Cohen she hurried out to a drug-store and called up Dr. Liebovitz. "It will have to be a sanitarium," Yetta overheard her say. "And at that I'm afraid it's too late. Whatever is necessary put on my account." Then Mabel arranged that the Cohen babies should be boarded by two of the poorest strikers and so out of her own pocket assured a little income to these families. Above all, Yetta wondered at Mabel's ability to spread confidence. Most of the women were helpless when they arrived, were hoping that Jake would forgive them and take them back. With a few words Mabel had banished all doubt. Ten of the dozen women – the exceptions were the bovine Mrs. Levy and Mrs. Levine, the spy – were soon convinced that victory was assured. And all except Mrs. Levy promised to come up to the Woman's Trade Union League at four o'clock and organize.
This attended to, Mabel, with Yetta at her heels, jumped into an uptown car, and hurried to the office of the Central Federated Union to ask for a charter for the new union. Mr. Casey, the secretary, was a hale and hearty Irishman of near forty. For twenty years he had been an expert typesetter, and he never talked with any one twenty minutes without telling how he had set up some of the Standard Dictionary – "the most compli-cated page iver printed."
"Gawd," he remarked at sight of Mabel, "here comes some more trouble. Can't ye give a body any peace, Miss Train? Ye know there be two or three men in the world besides yer blessed women."
The other men in the room got up and offered their chairs. Once more Yetta was amazed at the ease with which Mabel stated her case. With her straightforward way of looking at things, she had come to know and understand these men. She knew the personal history of most of them, their carefully hidden virtues as well as their vices. And whether she knew them to be "grafters" or "straight" she had a knack of winning her point.
"Sure," Casey said. "You can have the charter. That ain't no trouble. But don't ask me nothing else now. The Devil himself won't be no more busy on the Resurrection Day than I be."
"We're all busy," Mabel replied. "And I really want you to come round at four and help them organize."
Casey waved his hands and pounded the table and swore – occasionally asking pardon for his "damned profanity" – but Mabel hung on. She had already won the other men in the room, and they laughingly urged him to go.
Having gained his promise to come, Mabel did not waste a minute more of his time. She rushed Yetta over to the Woman's Trade Union League and plunged into her morning's correspondence.
All those things which had seemed to Yetta of overwhelming importance began to look very small. There were some of the "skirt-finishers" in the office. Their strike involved several hundred women. There were only twelve in Goldfogle's shop. While Mabel was busy at other things Yetta picked up a copy of The American Federationist, the monthly organ of the national federation of labor unions. How infinitesimal was her part in this great industrial conflict! She read of thousands of miners striking in the anthracite fields, of a hundred woollen mills which had locked out their operatives. The street-car men were out in a Western city. A strike referendum was being taken by the printers of half a dozen Southern States. A great revolt had tied up the Chicago stock-yards. And here in New York there were five different strikes in progress. At one moment her pride swelled at the thought that she was a part of this vast army of workers who were fighting for a larger share of sunshine and Freedom. At the next it was borne in on her with a rush how insignificant was the case of the vest-makers.
She had read almost every word in that month's issue of The Federationist before Mabel called her and they went downstairs to the working-girls' restaurant for lunch. They found an empty table, and Yetta had just commenced on her long list of questions, when two excited "skirt-finishers" came in, and seeing Mabel, rushed up to their table. Once more Yetta felt herself pushed back into a second place. That morning the strike had reached its crisis, the women of two shops had gone back to work on a compromise which ignored the union; a general stampede was imminent.
About two o'clock, the women of Goldfogle's shop began to appear, and sharp at four, Mabel tore herself away from the "skirt-finishers" and came into the back room where the vest-makers were assembled. The Forwaertz had come off the press an hour before, and the women who could read Yiddish had read aloud Braun's glowing account of their exploits. It had given them a new sense of importance, the feeling that there was sympathy and power back of them. And this feeling was strengthened by Mr. Casey's jovial and inspiring speech. When they had elected officers, – Mrs. Weinstein, president; "the girl who knew all about unions," treasurer, and Yetta, secretary and business agent, – he handed them over a charter printed in three colors which seemed to them a sort of magic promise of victory. They agreed as a matter of course on the set of demands which Braun had already printed in the Forwaertz.
Mabel pulled them down from their enthusiasm to talk details. She explained that their one hope of success lay in persuading the other vest shops to join the strike. Alone they were helpless. Each one of them was to think of all the vest workers she knew and persuade them to start a strike in their shop. She read the list of vest shops and checked off every one where some of the women had acquaintances. Then she gave them great sheaves of the Forwaertz and assigned them two by two to the principal vest shops. They were to stand at the door and distribute papers to every one who came out. In the evening they were to call on their friends in the trade and be on the job again in the morning with copies of the Forwaertz at other factory doors. She and Yetta, their business agent, would go down and interview Goldfogle. Of course he would not give in at once, but it was best to show him they were not afraid. And then with some words of encouragement about how the Forwaertz was helping them, and the Central Federated Union and the Socialists, and of course the Woman's Trade Union League, she dismissed them.
Without Mabel beside her, Yetta would hardly have found the courage to perform her first duty as business agent of the union. Some of the old terror of a boss's arbitrary power still clung about Jake Goldfogle. In a moment of excitement she had dared to defy him. But it was a different thing to seek an interview with him in cold blood. But to Mabel it was all in the day's work. And she did most of the talking.
Jake received them nervously. He could not, like the big employers, afford to sit back cynically and wait for his workers to starve. A week's tie-up meant certain ruin for him, and with equal certainty it meant ruin for him to grant his women anything like decent conditions. Sorely exploited by bigger capitalists, his one hope of success lay in a miracle of more cruel exploitation. He had been busy all day with employment agencies. They could furnish him with plenty of raw hands, but he needed skilled labor. It would be much better if he could get his old force back. And so he greeted them with some decency. But the sight of Mabel, this unknown businesslike American woman, disconcerted him. He had expected to have dealings only with his employees. He saw at once that he could not fool nor browbeat this stranger.
He hardly listened to what she said, but grabbed at the typewritten sheet of "demands." Before he was halfway through, all hope vanished.
"Vot you tink?" he wailed. "Am I a millionnaire? How you expect me to make my contract?"
"We don't expect you to make your contract, Mr. Goldfogle," Mabel replied calmly. "We expect you not to take any contract that you can't fill decently. You don't care how your workpeople live on the wages you give, and we don't care for your contract. If you can give your people fair conditions, they'll be back at work in the morning. If you can't, it's a strike."
"Go avay! Get out," he cried, jumping up. "To-morrow I vill start with new hands. I'll never take none of the old ones back."
Mabel smiled at him undismayed.
"Scabs," she said, "will break your machines. It will be cheaper to keep shut than to work with greenhorns."
Jake knew that this was only too true. But he thought that a bold attitude might scare his old employees into coming back.
"You tink so? Vell. I'll show you. Get out!"
It was getting towards closing time, so Mabel and Yetta, with arms full of the afternoon's Forwaertz, stationed themselves before one of the big vest shops and handed out copies to every one who would take one, talked to all who would listen. They had supper in an East Side restaurant and then went out again to call on some vest-makers whose addresses they knew.
Once, as they were hurrying along the street, Yetta suddenly stopped.
"I forgot," she said. "I've got to go to my aunt's and get some things."
"That's so," Mabel said. "They must be worrying about you. You tell them you are going to live with me for a while."
"No," Yetta said. "It don't matter what I tell them; they'll think I've gone wrong. But there are some things I want to get before they sell them."
They were not very far from her doorway, and when they got there, Mabel asked if she should come up.
"No," Yetta said, "you wait. It won't take me a minute."
She did not want her new friend to see the place where she had lived. Her uncle might be at home and drunk. But when she reached the door of the Goldstein flat, her heart suddenly failed her. Perhaps he was home, perhaps he would curse her the way he had Rachel, perhaps he would strike her. If it had been only her few clothes, the new hat and the white shoes, she would have slunk downstairs afraid. But there were the three volumes of Les Miserables. So she went in.
Only her aunt and her cousin Rosa were in the room.
"I've come to get my things," she said, not wishing to give them time to formulate any accusations. "There's a strike in my shop. I won't be earning any money now for a while, so you wouldn't want me here. I'm going to live with a friend."
She went into the bedroom and began wrapping up the books and shoes in her extra shirt-waist and skirt. Rosa stood in the doorway and watched her.
"Who's your friend?" she asked.
"Her name's Miss Train."
"Oh. It's a woman, is it?" Rosa sneered.
Yetta flushed angrily but held her tongue, and when she had gathered together her meagre belongings, she looked once more about the dismal bedroom and came out into the kitchen where Mrs. Goldstein was sitting in silence, sewing away at a frayed underskirt of Rosa's.
A sudden tenderness came to Yetta for this hard old woman who had mistreated her.
"Good-by, Aunt Martha," she said.
For a moment she stitched on without apparently noticing her niece's presence. And then she spoke to Rosa.
"It isn't so bad," she said, "as when Rachel went. She was my own daughter."
"But I'm not going where Rachel did," Yetta protested. The old woman did not reply.
"Auntie," Yetta went on, "I ain't going wrong. If you ever want to know about me, or if you ever need anything, you ask at the Woman's Trade Union League. Here. I'll write down the address. They'll know where to find me."
She tore off a piece of the paper from her bundle and scribbled the address. As her aunt was not looking up, she left it on the table.
"Good-by, Rosa," she said. "Good-by, Aunt Martha."
Out in the hall she felt faint and dizzy. She had not loved the place nor its inmates. Why did it hurt to go? She leaned against the wall for a moment to regain command of herself. Her little glimpse into the new world had not given her the feeling that she would ever be at home there. Even Columbus had misgivings about his enterprise into the unknown sea. But presently she felt the sharp corner of Les Miserables digging into her side. She had been hugging her little bundle as if it had been a life-preserver. And she found courage to go on down the dark stairs and to meet Mabel and the New Life with something of a smile.
BOOK III
CHAPTER XIII
THE STRIKE
It was near midnight when Mabel and Yetta at last turned homeward. They had talked to vest workers from a dozen shops. The article in the Forwaertz had been a stirring one, and probably ninety per cent of the trade had heard of the outbreak in Goldfogle's shop and Braun's prophecy of large consequences. Yetta could not see that much had been accomplished, but Mabel, more accustomed to judging such things, was jubilant.
"Yetta, dear," she said, as she kissed her good night, "there's a beautiful French song called 'Ça ira' – which being interpreted means, 'There'll be something doing'!"
All day long the conviction had grown on her that there was promise of big development to the insignificant quarrel between Yetta and her boss. More often than not strikes break out at the most inopportune times for the workers. Sometimes a sudden provocation will drive the men into a premature revolt. Again there will be rumbles of trouble for a long time before the crisis, and when the men walk out, they find the bosses have had ample time to make provision for the fight. But a careful study of the vest-making industry could not have discovered a more favorable moment. The rush season was just drawing to a close. On the one hand, the bosses were straining every nerve to finish their contracts on time. On the other hand, many of the workers would be laid off anyhow when the rush was over. By striking, the less skilled, poorest paid workers risked only a few weeks' pay. And surely they had enough cause to revolt. All those to whom she had talked had told of intolerable speed, pitiful pay, and arbitrary fines, indecent conditions. There was good reason to hope that the whole trade would become involved. And so at bedtime she sang the "Ça ira" to Yetta.
Her forecast proved true. Before two o'clock every one knew that the strike had "caught." Half a dozen shops, including one of the biggest, walked out during the morning. And after the noon hour not a quarter of the vest-makers were at work.
While it might have been possible for Jake Goldfogle to find twelve skilled workers for his small shop, it was not possible to find enough for the whole trade quickly. It settled down into an endurance fight. Both sides "organized." The strikers rented a hall in the sweat-shop district for headquarters and a committee sat there en permanence, making out union cards for the strikers, and a card catalogue of their names and addresses, arranging for the distribution in "strike benefits" of all the money that could be raised. In this detail work, of immense importance to the successful conduct of a strike, Mabel was a tower of strength. She had been through it all a hundred times before, and she never got flurried. Everything seemed like a chaos, but through it her cool-headed generalship kept an effective order.
In a Broadway office the bosses organized "The Association of Vest Manufacturers." Their headquarters were less noisy than those of the Union. But quiet does not always mean a higher standard of ethics. As the Woman's Trade Union League was helping the strikers, so trained men were lent to the bosses by the Employers' Association. In a few days skilled vest makers from other cities began to flow into New York. Some of the shops were able to begin work again at about half their normal capacity. The press agents of the Association of Vest Manufacturers sent out announcements to the newspapers that the strike was over.
The Union retaliated by a campaign of "picketing." Isadore Braun took this work in hand. He marshalled the volunteer "pickets" every morning, assigned them to their posts, and carefully explained to them their legal rights. They were free to stand anywhere on the street and to talk to any one who would listen, so long as they did not attract a crowd which impeded traffic. They must not detain any one by force, nor threaten violence, nor use insulting language.
Recently a justice of the Supreme Court of New York has handed down a decision that "peaceful picketing" is a contradiction in terms. From his point of view all picketing is inherently violent. As a legal maxim it is idiotic. The great majority of labor pickets are peaceful. But in any large and long-continued industrial conflict some of the strikers are starving, many have hungry children at home. They cannot be expected to love the "scabs," who are taking their jobs. And it is desperately hard for the leaders of a strike – no matter how sincerely they try – to prevent sporadic acts of violence. Braun, himself a lawyer and a Socialist, was a firm believer in legality. Again and again he impressed on the strikers the urgent desirability of keeping within the letter of the law.
The first day Mabel and Yetta picketed together. They stood on the sidewalk before the largest of the vest shops and tried to talk to every one who went in. Mabel did most of it. She used the old, time-worn arguments of the unionists. The only chance for the workers was in standing together. If the scabs took the strikers' jobs, they were helping the boss more than themselves. After a strike is settled the bosses always fire the scabs and take back their old force. If they did get steady work sooner or later, somebody would scab on them. If they joined the union they would get enough strike benefits to live on, and with a strong organization the trade would be a good one. And after all it is dirty business stealing jobs from your brother workers. Most of the scabs hurriedly passed them, a few listened sullenly, one or two replied with insults. To an outsider, picketing looks hopeless. You very rarely see any one quit work. But long experience has taught the unions that it does pay. It is not so much the rare cases where a dozen scabs stop at once as the regular drain of those who are ashamed to face the pickets and who do not come back to work again.
Mabel was too busy to picket very often. She had her hands full trying to save what she could out of the wreckage of the skirt-finishers' strike. And there were a thousand and one things to do for the vest-makers, arranging meetings, trying to interest the newspapers, spurring on the Advisory Council to raise money. They had collected a good deal, but the poverty of the vest-makers was appalling; "strike benefits" kept the treasury always empty. She had to see to replenishing it daily. Yetta, however, was on picket duty every day.
Gradually it became evident that the "picket" was successful. Most of the imported vest-makers, the skilled operatives, had joined the union. Only a few of the shops were running at all and at great expense on account of the uneconomy of raw hands. The smaller bosses were going into bankruptcy. Jake Goldfogle had been the first to fall. Five days had cleaned him out. The next day two more went under. Credit was beginning to tighten for even the biggest bosses.
The Association of Vest Manufacturers saw that it was necessary to break the picket at any cost. There were a number of secret conferences with city politicians. The police magistrate who was sitting at Essex Market Court was transferred to an uptown jurisdiction, and his place was taken by a magistrate named Cornett, notorious for his outspoken hostility to unionism. The police also got their orders.
Busy days began for Isadore Braun. Pickets were arrested on all sides. At first he seemed to get the better of the legal battle in the dingy Essex Market Courthouse. He had the law on his side, and a forceful way of expressing it. The early batches of pickets were discharged with a warning. But in a few days the police got the hang of the kind of testimony which was expected of them. The court began to impose fines, which of course meant imprisonment, as the girls had no money.
It is an educational maxim of Froebel that we learn by doing. Like most concise sayings, it is not entirely true. Yetta, for instance, had been making vests for four years, but she learned more about vest-making in the first four weeks of the strike than she had in her years of labor.
She began to realize that her "trade" was more than a routine of flying fingers. Braun at one of the meetings had traced out the complicated process of industry. Outside of her shop there had been men who were "cutters," men who prepared the pieces of cloth on which she worked. Back of them were the people who wove the cloth and spun the yarn, and further back still were the shepherds who grew the sheep and clipped the wool. And when the vests had left her shop, they had gone to "finishers." From them to dealers who were buying coats and trousers of the same cloth, and at last the complete suits were sold to wearers by the retailer. And all these thousands of people, who were her co-workers, had to eat. Some one had to bake their bread. The bakers were really part of the vest trade. And so were the cobblers who made shoes for the workers, and the coal miners who tore fuel for them from the bowels of the earth, and the steel workers who made their machines and their needles. It was hard to think of any worker who did not in some way contribute to the making of vests.
Braun had said that all the people of the process were equally exploited by the same unjust system. They were all "wage-slaves." And in her daily intercourse with the strikers, sometimes on picket duty, sometimes at meetings, sometimes at headquarters attending to the clerical work of distributing "benefits," she came to realize as she never could have done from her own experience alone, what "wage-slavery" means. The tragedy of Mrs. Cohen's life was being repeated on every side.
She had never made the acquaintance of hunger – the great Slave Driver – before. And even now, she only saw it. She at least got a good breakfast at Mabel's flat. And sometimes she got a lunch or supper. Mabel, in her immense preoccupation with the details of the strike, did not realize how often Yetta went through the day on the one meal. But the flat was twenty minutes' walk from the strike headquarters. Yetta had no money for car fare and could rarely spend the time to walk there for lunch or dinner. When there were meetings in the evening and she walked home with Mabel and Longman, they generally had a cold supper. But she was of course earning no wages and had taken nothing from the Goldstein flat which she could pawn. The need of the other strikers was so much more appalling than her own that she could not find heart to ask for "strike benefits."
Mabel, having at once realized Yetta's remarkable power of appeal, was carefully engineering the limelight. With disconcerting frequency Yetta found herself in its glare. The half-dozen newspaper men who had tried to get a story out of this sweat-shop revolt had been steered up to Yetta. And they had all sent around their staff photographers to get her picture. The papers with a large circulation among the working classes had made her face familiar to millions. One of them had the enterprise to get a snapshot of her, arguing with a scab, before the Sure-fit Vest Company. Even the man who signed himself "The Amused Onlooker" in the Evening Standard, wrote a psychological sketch of this East Side firebrand. His tone was railing as usual, but he tried to be complimentary towards the close by comparing her to Jeanne D'Arc.
Whenever there was a chance, Mabel pushed Yetta on to the platform. The various women of the Advisory Council arranged afternoon teas for her to address. To Yetta such begging speeches were much more unpleasant work than picketing. But it was not hard for her to talk to these small gatherings. She spoke to them very simply. She did not again tell her own story – in the rush of events she had almost forgotten it. Every day brought to her notice new and more bitter tragedies. On the whole the money raised was not much – ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty-five dollars. But every cent was needed. Mabel, from much experience of her own in similar circumstances, knew that Yetta was surprisingly successful. But there was hardly ever a woman present at these uptown teas whose cheapest ring was not worth many times the amount collected. Yetta, seeing the jewels and knowing the intense need of her people, counted over the few dollars and thought herself a failure.
But if these excursions into polite society did not bring the monetary returns for which she wished, they at least made Yetta's face, her great sad eyes, and gentle voice, familiar to many women of social prominence – a result which was to bear fruit in the future.
It also cured her of the envy which had cast a shadow of bitterness over her first morning in Mabel's apartment. She came to realize even more clearly the gulf which separated her people from the world of luxury. She no longer wanted to cross the gulf. The strange country into which she got these occasional glimpses seemed a very hard-hearted place. It was always a shock to her to see such laughing, light-hearted indifference. Sometimes she went on a similar errand to the headquarters of other unions. There she found her own people and sure sympathy. She spoke one evening in a barren, ill-lit room, where the "pastry cooks" held their meetings. They were most of them foreigners, French and German, just coming out of a disastrous strike, and were very poor. They had no money in their treasury, but some of them went down in their pockets, and she got a handful of nickels and dimes. It was not as much as she had secured from some "ladies" in the afternoon, but it was more inspiring. She felt very keenly that in some mystic way their gift, which they could so ill afford, would be of greater use to the Cause than the dollars from uptown.