Part 37 (2/2)
”Brothers and sisters, are you going to sit by your machines and see a fellow-worker used this way?”
The machines stopped: the hundreds of girls and the handful of men marched out simultaneously. Then, swiftly the sedition had spread about the city until a great night in Cooper Union, when, after speeches of peace and conciliation, one of the girls had risen, demanded and secured the floor, and moved a general strike. Her motion was unanimously carried, and when the chairman cried, in Yiddish: ”Do you mean faith?
Will you take the old Jewish oath?” up went two thousand hands, with one great chorus:
”If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise.”
By this oath Rhona was bound. And so were thirty thousand others--Americans, Italians, Jews--and with them were some of the up-town women, some of the women of wealth, some of the big lawyers and the labor-leaders and reformers.
”Some of the up-town women!” thought Myra. She was amazed to find herself so interested, so wrought up. And she felt as if she had stumbled upon great issues and great struggles; she realized, dimly, that first moment, that this strike was involved in something larger, something vaster--swallowed up in the advance of democracy, in the advance of woman. All the woman in her responded to the call to arms.
And she was discovering now what Joe had meant by his ”crisis”--what he had meant by his fight for ”more democracy; a better and richer life; a superber people on earth. It was a real thing. She burned now to help Joe--she burned to do for him--to enter into his tragic struggle--to be of use to him.
”What are you going to do now?” she asked Rhona.
”Now? Now I must go picketing.”
”What's picketing?”
”March up and down in front of a factory and try to keep scabs out.”
”What are scabs?” asked ignorant Myra.
Rhona was amazed.
”You don't even know that? Why, a scab's a girl who tries to take a striker's job and so ruin the strike. She takes the bread out of our mouths.”
”But how can you stop her?”
”Talk to her! We're not allowed to use violence.”
”How do you do it?”
Rhona looked at the eager face, the luminous gray eyes.
”Would you like to see it?”
”Yes, I would.”
”But it's dangerous.”
”How so?”
”Police and thugs, b.u.ms hanging around.”
”And you girls aren't afraid?”
Rhona smiled.
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