The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out. But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to trial.

I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the full penalty for their crimes!

In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee, the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades and big mass meetings of labor.

Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I took it to my editor.

"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad."

"It's the truth," I remarked.

"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer, we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want to see you stand for this—in our magazine or anywhere else—it means too much to you as a writer. Look out, my boy," he added, with a return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter spoiled."

I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd, an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs.

"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it.

"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the other side. All these bouquets to efficiency and all this about the weak points of the crowd. The average stoker reading this would think that the revolution won't come till we are all white-haired."

"I don't believe it will," I said.

"I know you don't. That's why you're no good to us," he said. "We want our stuff written by men who are sure that a big revolution is just ahead, men who are certain that a strike, to take in half the civilized world, is coming in the next ten years."

"I don't believe that."

"I know. You can't. You're still too soaked in the point of view of your efficiency father-in-law."

"So you don't feel you can sign this?"

"No."

That day I sent my story to a small magazine in New England, which from the time of the Civil War had retained its traditions of breadth of view. Within a week the editor wrote that he would be glad to publish it. "Our modest honorarium will follow shortly," he said at the end. The modest honorarium did. Meanwhile I had sent him a sketch of Nora Ganey which I had written just after the strike. I received a letter equally kind, and another honorarium. I began to see a future of modest honoraria.

In the meantime, to meet our expenses at home, I had borrowed money and given my note. And the note would soon fall due. Those were far from pleasant days. On the one side Joe in his cell waiting to be tried for his life; on the other, Eleanore at home waiting for a new life to be born. By a lucky chance for me, Joe's trial was again postponed, so I could return to my own affairs. I had to have some money quick. I went back to my magazine editor and asked for a job in his office.

"I'm ready now to be sane," I said.

"Glad to hear it," he replied. "I'll give you a steady routine job where you can grind till you get yourself right."

"Till I get back where I was, you mean?"

"Yes, if you can," he answered.

I went for a walk that afternoon to think over the proposition he'd made.

"I have seen three harbors," I said to myself. "My father's harbor which is now dead, Dillon's harbor of big companies which is very much alive, and Joe Kramer's harbor which is struggling to be born. It's an interesting age to live in. I should like to write the truth as I see it about each kind of harbor. But I need the money—my wife is going to have a child. So I'll take that steady position and try to grind part of the truth away."

"What have you been doing?" Eleanore asked when I came home. "You look like a ghost."

"Not at all," I replied. "I've been getting a job."

"Tell me about it."

I told her part. She went and got her sewing, and settled herself comfortably for a quiet evening's work. Eleanore loved baby clothes.

"Now begin again and tell me all," she ordered. And she persisted until I did.

"It won't do," she said, when I had finished.

"It will do," I replied decidedly. "It's the best thing in sight. It will see us through till the baby is born. After all, it's only for a year."

"It's a mighty important year for you, my love," said Eleanore. She thoughtfully held up and surveyed a tiny infant's nightgown. "If you do this you'll be giving up. It's not writing your best. It's giving up what you think is the truth. And that's a bad habit to get into."

"It's settled now. Please leave it alone."

"Oh very well," she said placidly. "Let's talk of what I've been doing."

"What you've been doing?"

"Precisely. I've taken a little apartment downtown, over by the river. The rent is twenty-eight dollars a month. It's on the top floor and has plenty of air, and there's a nice roof for hot summer evenings. You're to carry two wicker chairs up there each night after supper."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," I rejoined indignantly. "You're going to pack up at once and go to the mountains! And when you come back you're coming right here!"

"Oh no I'm not," she answered.

"Don't be an idiot, Eleanore! Think of moving out of here now! In your condition!"

"It's better than moving out of your work. Dad has kept right on with his, even when they stopped his pay. Well, now they've stopped your pay, that's all, and we've got to do the best we can. We've simply got to live for a while on modest honorariums. Now don't talk, wait till I get through. You've got to work harder than ever before but for much less money. But with less money than before we're going to be happier than we've ever been in all our lives. And you can't do a thing to stop it. If you do take that office work and bring a lot of money home, do you know what I'll do? I'll move to that little flat just the same, and all the extra money you bring will go to Mrs. Bealey."

"Who in God's name is Mrs. Bealey?"

"One of my oldest charity cases. She was here this afternoon. The trouble with you is, my dear," my wife continued smoothly, "that you've been so wrapped up in your own little changes you haven't given a thought to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it all—and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means that quite a number of people—you for instance—have got to tell the truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for moving.

"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago, and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies, I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer—and their mothers aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move this week."

We moved that week.