In the next few months Yetta learned a new meaning for the word "work." In the sweat-shop, day after day, she had sat before the machine, her mind a blank, three-quarters of her muscles lifeless, the rest speeding through a dizzying routine. Only when a thread broke had there been any thought to it. In the new work there was no repetition, none of this dead monotony. Every act, every word she spoke, was the result of a consciousness vividly alive. In the keen, exhilarating thrill of it she had little time to mope over Walter's absence.

It is a strange paradox of our life that, while no other social phenomenon touches us at so many intimate points as the organization of labor, while very few are of more importance, most of us know nothing at all about the details of this great industrial struggle. Our clothes bear the "union label" or are "scab." In either case they are an issue in the conflict. Heads have been broken over the question of whether this page, from which you are reading, should be printed in a "closed" or "open shop." Around our cigarettes, the boxes in which they are packed, the matches with which we light them, the easy-chairs in which we smoke them, and the carpets on which we carelessly spill the ashes, a tragic battle is raging. Nine out of every ten people we meet are concerned in it. The man who takes our nickel in the Subway, the waiter who serves our lunch, the guests at dinner, the unseen person who pulls up the curtain at the theatre, the taxicab chauffeur who takes us home, are all fighting for or against "unionism."

From the human point of view there is no vaster, more passionate drama. Intense convictions, bitter, senseless prejudices, the dogged heroism of hunger, comfort-loving cynicism, black treachery, and wholehearted idealism are among the motives which inspire the actors. The stage—which is our Fatherland—is crossed by hired thugs from the "detective agencies" and by dynamiters. In the troupe are such people as Jane Addams and Mr. Pinkerton, shedders of blood and preachers of peace. There are hardly any of us who do not at some time step upon the stage and act our parts.

From the viewpoint of politics, the conflict has a deeper significance. What is the statesmanlike attitude to the growing unrest of those who do the work of the world—an unrest which is steadily and rapidly organizing? Close to two million of our citizens pay dues to the unions, their number grows by a quarter of a million a year. This is a momentous fact in politics. What is to be done about it? No one who thinks of such things can deny that sooner or later we—as a nation—must answer that question.

Profound in its political significance, rich in human color, the organization of labor touches us on every hand. But very few of us have any idea of the life of those men and women who devote themselves to this imposing, threatening movement. What, for instance, is the daily work of the secretary of the Gasfitters' Union in our town? What is an "agitator"? What are his duties? How does he spend his time? Why?

It was into this little-known life that Yetta was plunged. First of all she was "Business Agent"—or as we more generally say "the Walking Delegate"—of her Vest-Makers' Union. She had to attend to all business between the organization and the bosses.

When a complaint reached her that some employer was violating the contract he had signed with the union, she had to investigate. If the charge was justified, she could call the girls out until the offending boss decided to observe his agreement.

It is just as hard for a labor organization to find a satisfactory "business agent," as it is for a mercantile concern. One will be too aggressive, another too yielding. One will be always irritating the employers and causing unnecessary friction. The next will make friends with the bosses and be twisted about their fingers. Once in a while a "business agent" sells out, betrays his constituents for a bribe, just as some of our political representatives have done.

Even in trades where the union has existed for a long time and somewhat stable relations have grown up between it and the employers, the position of "business agent" calls for a degree of tact and force which is rare. It is impossible for the delegate of the men to reach a cordial understanding with the bosses. He has at heart the interest of the entire trade, men working in different places under varied conditions, while the boss thinks only of his own shop. One is trying to enforce general rules, the other is seeking exceptions. The employer may be friendly with the union and in some sudden rush ask a favor which the men themselves would like to grant. But the walking delegate, knowing that all bosses are not so well disposed, that he may not grant to one what he refuses to others, cannot make exception, even if it seems reasonable to him.

Yetta's position was doubly difficult. The boss vest-makers were smarting under their defeat. They regarded the union as an unpleasant innovation, an infringement of their liberty. A visit from Yetta seemed an impertinence. On the other hand the new union was pitifully weak. The treasury was empty. The bosses knew this, knew just how much hunger the strike had meant to their employees. They tried to take advantage of the situation. The Association of Vest Manufacturers, after the disorganization which followed the strike, was getting together again. Their frequent meeting promised a new attack. All the girls felt trouble in the air. There were causes for quarrel in almost every shop. But a new strike—if it failed—would surely wreck the union. Everything was to gain by delaying the new outbreak. Yetta's common sense, supplemented by Mabel's experienced advice, pulled them through many tight places.

The crisis came in about a month at the very Crown Vest Company, before which Yetta had tried to kill Pick-Axe. The boss, Edelstein, was just the kind of man to have employed such a thug. He began the attack by discharging three girls who had been prominent in the strike. A clause in the settlement, which he had signed, had said there should be no discrimination against the unionists. If Edelstein was allowed to violate this agreement, the other bosses would surely follow suit, and one by one the little advantages so dearly won would be lost.

Yetta tried to reason with the man. He tilted his cigar at a pugnacious angle, put his feet on the desk, and insolently hummed a tune while she talked.

"If you think you can run my shop," he said, "you can guess again. The union wants to know why I fired these girls? Well, tell the union I didn't like the way they wore their hair."

"It's nine o'clock now," Yetta said. "If you don't reËmploy those girls by three—that's six hours—or give the union a serious reason for their discharge, I'll call a strike on your shop."

"Go ahead and call it," he said savagely. "My girls have had enough of your dirty union. They won't try striking again."

Although Yetta had managed to deliver her ultimatum with outward calm and a show of confidence, the next six hours were the most unpleasant she had ever spent. Would the girls walk out at her call? If they did not, it would surely kill the union. Edelstein was certainly offering them all sorts of inducements to stay. The other bosses were back of him, urging him on. They wanted to break the union. What had she to offer the girls but hunger and an ideal? There were not ten dollars in the treasury. Most of the girls were still in debt from the first strike; many of them would be dispossessed by their landlords if they struck again.

But Yetta's side was stronger than she realized. The success of the strike had taught the girls the tangible value of loyalty. The break-up of the employers' association had had the opposite effect. Each and every boss had tried to desert his fellows first and so make better terms with the union. Edelstein did not trust—would have been a fool to trust—the other employers. They were using him as a catspaw, and he knew it. If he succeeded in breaking the union, they would gladly profit by it. But, after all, they were his competitors; if he got into trouble single-handed, they would just as gladly profit by that. He consulted his forewomen. They all believed that enough of the force would go out to tie up his shop. So the three girls were reËmployed.

This victory gave Yetta new strength and confidence. She had taken the measure of her opponents and was not afraid any more. She went about her work with a firmer tread, with a greater faith in the eventual triumph of her cause. Her decisive stand with Edelstein had turned the balance. The bosses began to accept the union as an inevitable thing. Yetta did not have to call a strike for many months, not until the girls had recovered their breath and gathered enough strength to demand and win a new increase in wages.

Her work as business agent absorbed only a small amount of her time. Most of it went into efforts to organize the other garment workers. The success of the vest-makers had made a great impression on the sweated trades. The idea of "union" was popular. Sooner or later they were bound to organize—as the inevitable logic of events forces labor to unite everywhere. It was not smooth sailing by any means. But Yetta gradually grew to the stature of her work. Although she was sometimes discouraged at the slowness of her progress, Mabel was always radiant and talked much of her remarkable success.

But in her effort to ally the various garment trades, Yetta was face to face with the thorniest problem of labor organization. In union there is strength, and if we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately. But if you re-read the history of our country during the years between the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution, and recall the various efforts at secession which culminated in the Civil War, you will be impressed by the difficulty of living up to this beautifully simple idea of united action in politics. It is not different in labor organization.

In almost every industry there are small trades of highly skilled men who occupy a favorable strategic position. It is so with "the cutters" in the business of making clothes. Their union was the oldest of all. Practically every man in the country who knew the trade was a member. They could not be replaced by unskilled "scabs." They were in a position to insist that the bosses address them as "Mister." Why should they join forces with these new and penniless unions? What had they to gain by putting their treasury at the disposal of the struggling "buttonhole workers"?

Why should the opulent province of New York enter into a union with tiny Delaware or far-away Georgia? In the proposed Congress how could representation be justly distributed? The cutters would not listen to any proposal which did not give them an overwhelming voice in the Council. It is against such cold facts as these that the theory of Industrial Unionism, which had sounded so alluring to Yetta as Longman outlined it, has to make headway.

At first Yetta was confused by the conflicting organizations which were struggling for support from the workers. There was the American Federation of Labor, to which Mabel gave her allegiance. Its organizers were practical men, interested first, last, and all the time in shop conditions. Effective in their way, but their cry, "A little less injustice, please," seemed timid to Yetta. Then there was the Socialist party. Their theories were more impressive to her—they went further in their demands and seemed to have a broader vision. But of all the Socialists she knew, Braun was the only one who interested himself actively in the organization of the workers. The rest seemed wholly occupied with political action. There was also the Industrial Workers of the World. They cared very little for either firmly organized unions, which were Mabel's hobby, or for the party in which Isadore put such faith. They placed all their emphasis on the Spirit of Revolt. In a more specific way than the other factions they were out for the Revolution. They appealed strongly to that side of Yetta which was vividly touched by the manifold misery she saw about her, the side of her personality which had struck out blindly at Pick-Axe. She recognized that it had been a blind and dangerous impulse. It was not likely to come again. But this phase of her character, although she feared it, she could not despise. It was not dead, it was only asleep. And she knew that the same thing was present in the hearts of all the down-trodden people—her comrades in the fight for life and liberty.

The triangular debate, which she had heard for the first time at Walter's farewell dinner, she heard repeated on all sides. She felt it no longer as an interesting academic discussion, but as the vital problem of the working-class. It was an issue towards which she would have to take a definite attitude.

The welter of ideas, the perplexing conflict between alluring theories and hard facts, was sharply illustrated to her by a mass meeting at Cooper Union which had been called to raise funds for the Western Federation of Miners. All classes of society were shocked at the news of violence and bloodshed in that spectacular outbreak of social war in Colorado. One thing was clear to all—there was no use preaching peace, no use talking about the harmony of interest between labor and capital, there was nothing the Civic Federation could do. The curtain had been torn aside. It was war.

Few of the workers in the city approved of the violent methods to which the miners had resorted. But in the heat of battle such considerations became insignificant. The working-class of New York wanted to help.

Two or three orderly speeches had been made, when confusion was caused by the miners' delegate. Instead of telling the story of the strike, as had been expected of him, he utilized his time in denunciation of the American Federation of Labor and in chanting the praises of Industrial Unionism. The audience had gathered to express their sympathy for the miners. He insulted the organization to which most of these Easterners belonged.

Yetta had never heard a more forceful piece of oratory. He had led a charge against the State militia, and he was not afraid of a hostile audience. His appearance of immense strength dominated the more puny city dwellers. His mighty voice rang out above the tumult and reduced it.

"The A. F. of L.," he shouted, "is a rotten aristocracy. Everywhere it is holding down the less fortunate workers. More strikes are double-crossed by 'labor leaders' than are lost in a fair fight. Until we smash it there's no hope for the working-class. Out in the mines we've already won a three-fifty day. Not for the skilled trades, but for every man who goes down. We don't have any leaders who go to the Civic Federation and drink champagne with the capitalists.

"Look at the unions you're proud of. You know as well as I do that the Big Six scabbed on the pressmen. Nobody in the printing industry has got a chance. The typographers have pigged it all.

"Nobody's got a look-in with the labor fakirs unless they've got enough money to pay initiation fees.

"You craft unionists have won your house and lot and 'benefits.' But I tell you that the Revolution is coming from the unskilled who can't pay your fees. If you don't get out of the way, you'll get run over with the rest of the aristocrats and grafters.

"Your graft is no good, anyhow. It won't last. It depends on your skill, and machines are killing skill every day. Look at the glass-blowers. That was a fine craft—wasn't it? You couldn't blow glass unless you had served a long apprenticeship. And when you once knew the trade, it was a cinch—a graft for the rest of your life. Sweet, wasn't it? Just the thing 'Old Sell-'em-out' Sam Gompers dreams about. All of a sudden somebody invented a machine. Now the glass-blowers are yelling about the Child Labor Law—a kid of twelve can do more work with a machine than a dozen men by hand.

"You craft unionists ought to go out and look at a machine—an automatic that's knocked Hell out of some other trade. You'd see what's coming to you and your A. F. of L.

"My father was a 'grainer,' painted the graining on wainscoting and bureaus—fine trade it was, too. He had a nice little house with a garden to it; the old woman had a servant. Some aristocrats we were. He was going to send me to college—he was. Then they invented a machine. He hit the trail to Colorado, and I went down in the mine when I was thirteen.

"Just think about that machine a minute. It could do the work better than men, so it put the 'grainers' out of business. It ain't got no feet, so it don't use shoes. Kind of hard on the cobblers. It ain't got no head, so it don't wear out three hats a year like my old man did. Kind of hard on the hat makers. The machine ain't got no belly, it don't eat nothing. That's a jolt for the butcher and baker—and the farmer too. The machine don't get sick. No use for a doctor. The machine"—he paused for his climax—"the machine has no soul—it don't even need a minister.

"The machine is killing the craft unions. It's bringing about the day of the unskilled. The answer is—Industrial Unionism."

The audience was too angry at his attack to applaud. The collection, when it was taken up, was not half what had been expected.

"Perfectly insane," was Mabel's comment as they walked home.

"But what he said sounded true to me," Yetta protested.

"True?" Mabel demanded. "What was the true reason he came? To raise money for the striking miners—who need it. He didn't even come here at his own expense. They sent him—to raise funds. He spouts a lot of his crazy ideas and spoils it all. I don't believe we collected enough to pay his railroad fare. Is that your idea of truth?"

Yetta could not find an answer.

But the effort to solve such problems as this was a big factor in her mental development. It gave her added incentive to study. She sought learning not because "culture" is conventionally considered a good thing, but because she had a vital need for a wider knowledge in her daily life.

As Walter had foretold, she found constant temptation to neglect her study. She resisted it bravely. But when the "knee-pant operatives," whom she had organized, went out, she could not find heart for books. She gave all her time to the strike. It was only a three weeks' interruption. But the next year the buttonhole workers were out for two solid months, the hottest of the year—and lost. It was Yetta's first defeat. The last weeks had been a nightmare. Children had died of hunger. Some older women had hanged themselves. When at last it was over, Yetta dragged herself up to the Woman's Trade Union League and wrote out her resignation.

"What on earth do you mean?" Mabel asked.

"Oh! I'm no good. I can't ever go down on the East Side again. I might see one of them. It's all my fault. I called them out. I promised them so much."

The moment Yetta had left the office Mabel telephoned to Mrs. Karner at her country home at Cos-Cob-on-the-Sound.

Yetta had followed Walter's advice in regard to Mrs. Karner, and a real friendship had grown up between them. Mabel did not understand why this blasÉ society woman, with her carefully groomed flippancy, cared for the very serious-minded young Jewess, but she knew that they frequently lunched together. So she told Mrs. Karner over the telephone how Yetta had broken down.

On the window-seat of her room, Yetta cried herself to sleep,—the troubled, haunted sleep of pure exhaustion. She was waked at last from her nightmare by a pounding on her door. It was Mrs. Karner.

"You poor youngster! I dropped into the office a moment ago to sign some papers for Mabel and she told me about your resignation. I'm so glad! Now you haven't any excuse not to visit me. I'm lonely out at Cos-Cob. The motor's at the door. Put on your hat."

Before Yetta knew what was happening to her she was in the motor. In fifteen minutes they were out of the city, and Mrs. Karner put her arm about her.

"It was such a very little they asked for," Yetta muttered. "Not so much as we vest-makers demanded."

Mrs. Karner did not see fit to reply, and Yetta fell back into a sort of doze. At last they turned through a stone gateway into the Karners' place. She got only a hurried glance at the well-watered lawn and the open stretch of the Sound. She was rushed upstairs and to bed. In the morning Mrs. Karner would not let her get up. It was the first time Yetta had spent a day in bed.

When she was allowed to get up, she found the estate a strange country to be explored. The greenhouses, the tame deer, the spotless stables, the dairy, the kennels, the boat-house, all were endlessly interesting to her. Interesting enough to make her forget for a while the horrors of New York. It was the third day that she made friends with the gardener, and after that she got up with the sun to help him harvest the poppies.

On Friday Mr. Karner appeared, with a man and his wife, whose name Yetta never troubled herself to remember, and they all went off for a week-end cruise. Most of the time the older people played bridge. Yetta made friends with the sea and a gray-haired old sailor from the Azores, who could speak nothing but Portuguese. Once while at anchor he helped her catch a fish. She would have enjoyed the cruise more if they had let her eat in the forecastle with the crew. She liked Mrs. Karner very much when they were alone together, but it was unpleasant to see her with these others.

In time the color returned to Yetta's cheeks, and hearing that Mabel had torn up her resignation, she went back to Washington Square and to work.

Except for such crises, Yetta followed rigorously the course of reading which Walter had mapped out for her. The afternoons and evenings belonged to the work of the League, to the very busy life of the real world. The mornings belonged to Walter. Her first thought was always of him. While the coffee was heating, she attended to his mail. After breakfast, with his prospectus spread out before her, she settled herself in one of his chairs and took up one of his books. Following his suggestion she made copious notes, and, when a book was finished, she wrote a thousand words or so on the main ideas she had gained from it. She carefully saved all these notes. When he returned he would see how thoroughly she had followed his directions.

On the other side of the world from Yetta, Longman was leading a rough, exciting tent-life among dangerously fanatic natives. It would have been hard to imagine two more sharply contrasting environments. He never dreamed of the loving devotion which was being offered him, so many thousand miles away. He did not suspect how his occasional letters, in reply to her weekly ones, fanned this flame. He was wholly occupied in racing against time and difficulties to complete his work.

The expedition was not having an easy time of it. The ruins about which they were digging were regarded by the natives with superstitious veneration. The little group of scientists had only a score of unreliable soldiers for defence, so the real men—Le Marquis d'Hauteville, Chef de l'expÉdition, a wiry, gray-haired veteran of the Algerian Wars; Delanoue, a dandified-looking Parisian, who had carved his name as an explorer in all sorts of outlandish places; Vibert, the photographer, and Walter—had their hands full. They were the rampart, behind which the half-dozen querulous, rather old-maidish specialists measured skulls, gathered fragments of pottery, took rubbings of inscriptions, and collected folk-lore.

It is very much easier to love a person who is absent than to live amicably at close quarters with his daily faults and foibles. As the months passed, Walter Longman—or rather the ghost which Yetta conjured up to that name—took on new graces, was endowed with ever more brilliant characteristics. Yetta hardly knew the real man. In their half-dozen meetings she had seen certain charming traits. He came to typify the kind of life she would like to lead. A life of cleanliness and comfort, but free from the shame of luxury. A life of books, but so close and sympathetic to the struggling mass of humanity as to escape the reproach of pedantry.

Her dreams of him—thanks to his absence—could not be contradicted. If an act in the life about her seemed good, she did not doubt that Walter could and would have done it better. Of the unpleasant pettinesses which she saw among her associates, she was sure that he was free. The authors she read seemed to her very wise, but their attainments could not be compared to Walter's mystic wisdom. It is very easy to laugh at such folly—and so much easier to cry.

The idolatrous incense which she burned at the altar of the Absent One was a great incentive to her study. Knowledge was not only the road to power, but also to his approbation. But his greatest contribution was the memory of his scorn for intellectual ruts, for cut-and-dried formulÆ. "You can't crowd life into a definition," he had said. "Beware of simple explanations. Living is a complex business."

Such phrases—sticking in her memory like illuminated mottoes—held her back from joining the Socialist party. Sooner or later it was inevitable that she should do so. She was a logical Socialist, with the logic of events. It would have been difficult to erect any other structure on the foundations life had laid for her. She was a machine worker who had revolted before the grinding monotony had killed her faith and vision. She could still hope. She had the insight to see beyond the personal pettiness of squabbling dogmatists to the great principles of Justice and Brotherhood, which their heated advocacy sometimes obscures. Her life would have been poorer in any other setting.

But it was a real gain to her that she did not join the party hurriedly. She might have resisted the urgings of Braun longer—even after she had read largely pro and con, even after she had familiarized herself with the traditional theoretical "objections to Socialism," and, weighing them against the facts of life, which she saw about her, the bent and aged women of thirty, the young men smitten with tuberculosis, the thousands of babies that never grow up, had found them light indeed—she might still have held back longer from the personal and entirely illogical reason that Walter had never joined if it had not been for a dramatic meeting with her old boss—Jake Goldfogle.

His shop had failed in her first strike. She had lost all track of him.

About nine o'clock one bitter winter night she was walking home along Canal Street. The row of pushcarts, lit by flaring oil lamps, were doing a scant business. It was too cold for sidewalk bargaining. She was moved by a deep pity for these men and women, who were forced out on such a night, to hawk their wares. It was not only the victims of the sweat-shop who find living a hard matter. Suddenly her notice fell on a dilapidated pedler, who was holding out a meagre tray of notions. He did not have even a pushcart. A heavy black patch hid one side of his face, but she recognized Jake at once. Her first impulse was to hurry past with averted face. But his shivering poverty—he had no overcoat—checked her.

"Hello, Mr. Goldfogle."

He turned his unbandaged eye on her in bewilderment. His frost-bitten face flushed with resentment.

"Come on and have a cup of coffee," she said. "I want to talk with you."

The idea of coffee stopped the curses which were gathering on his tongue, and, ashamed of his lack of spirit, he followed her. They sat down opposite each other at a dingy little tea-room table. Jake remembered Yetta as a frightened shop-girl. The last time she had seen him, he had threatened her with arrest. He had solemnly sworn that he would never give her back her job. And now she was giving him a cup of coffee. He drank it in silence. Once upon a time he had dreamed of marrying her as though it would be a great condescension.

The coffee warmed him so that he told his story. The failure had been complete. He and his sister and brother-in-law had gone back to the machine. The sister had given out first with the East Side commonplace—a cough. For a while the two men had stuck together, once more a little money had begun to pile up. Then a belt broke; the flying end had caught Jake in the face. He lifted up the black patch and showed Yetta the horrible scar where his eye had been. When he had come out of the hospital, his brother-in-law had disappeared. For a while Jake had hoped to get some compensation out of his employer, but he had fallen into the clutches of a "shyster lawyer," who compromised the case out of court for a hundred dollars and kept seventy-five for his fee. This had happened about a month before. Jake had been dragging out a miserable existence, sleeping in the lowest doss-houses, and of the stock he had bought with his twenty-five dollars, the half-filled tray was all that remained. And if Yetta had not started the strike, he would have been a rich man. "Und I vas in luv wit you, Yetta," he ended.

It happened that she had just received her month's pay, so she was able to buy Jake an overcoat and give him a few dollars for meals and lodging. And the next day she found work for him as a night watchman.

But although his gratitude for this job was voluminous it did not ease Yetta's conscience in the matter. There was something sardonically grotesque in the encounter. It convinced her, more surely than books could ever have done, of the Socialist doctrine that all life is knit into one whole; that Jake, just as much as Mrs. Cohen, had been a victim of a vicious system.

"As long as this bitter industrial competition continues," she wrote to Walter, "there are bound to be such pitiful specimens as Jake. You see a lot in the papers nowadays about how the trusts are eliminating competition. The more I think about that the more horrible it seems. They are eliminating competition in the sales departments, in the distribution of the product, because there the waste is in dollars and cents. But in production—where the competitive waste is only human beings—the struggle is as bitter as ever. The high-salaried, 'gentlemanly' managers of the different plants of a trust coÖperate in selling and in buying raw material, but in the actual work of the mills they have to compete to see who can exploit the workers hardest—just as Jake was driven to overwork us girls. I don't see any possible cure except Socialism, and I'm going to join the party."

Many months later, when the courier brought this letter into the camp among the ancient ruins, the exile opened it with feverish hands, ran his fingers down page after page until he came to Mabel's name. It was not until he had read this part several times that he gave any attention to the fact that Yetta had become a Socialist.