The Harbor
BOOK III
CHAPTER XIII
What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they
had stilled?
At first only chaos.
As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep
under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I
would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of
angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes
at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some
talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the
streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing
wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And
to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an
appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had
been to hope. The harbor held no miracles.
The strike leaders seemed to have little control. Headquarters were in
the wildest disorder. Into the big bare meeting hall and through the
rooms adjoining drifted multitudes of men. There were no inner private
rooms and Marsh saw everyone who came. He was constantly shaking hands
or drawling casual orders, more like suggestions than commands. I caught
sight of Joe Kramer's face at his desk, where he was signing and giving
out union cards to a changing throng that kept pressing around him.
Joe's face was set and haggard. He had been at that desk all night.
"It's hopeless. They can do nothing," I thought.
But when I came back the next morning I felt a sudden[Pg 314] shock of
surprise. For in some mysterious fashion a crude order had appeared. The
striker throng had poured into the hall, filled all the seats and then
wedged in around the walls. They were silent and attentive now. On the
stage sat Marsh and his fellow leaders. Before them in the first three
rows of seats was the Central Committee, a rough parliament sprung up
over night. Each member, I found, had been elected the night before by
his "district committee." These district bodies had somehow formed in
the last two days and in them leaders had arisen. The leaders were here
to plan together, the mass was here to make sure they planned right. And
watching the deep rough eagerness on all those silent faces, that vague
hope stirred again in my breast.
Presently I caught Joe's eye. At once he left his platform seat and came
to me in the rear of the hall.
"Come on, Bill," he said. "We want you up here." And we made our way up
to the platform. There Marsh reached over and gripped my hand.
"Hello, Bill, glad you're with us," he said. I tingled slightly at his
tone and at a thousand friendly eyes that met mine for an instant. Then
it was over. The work went on.
What they did at first seemed haphazard enough. Reports from the
districts were being read with frequent interruptions, petty corrections
and useless discussions that strayed from the point and made me
impatient. And yet wide vistas opened here. Telegrams by the dozen were
read from labor unions all over the country, from groups of socialists
East and West, there were cables from England, Germany, France, from
Russia, Poland, Norway, from Italy, Spain and even Japan. "Greetings to
our comrades!" came pouring in from all over the earth. What measureless
army of labor was this? All at once the dense mass in the rear would
part to let a new body of men march through. These were new strikers to
swell the ranks, and at their coming all business would[Pg 315] stop, there
would be wild cheers and stamping of feet, shrill whistles, pandemonium!
Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first
"strike feeling"—diffused, shifting and uncertain—was condensing as in
a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly
to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of
that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was
to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the
common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when
they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great
spirit of the crowd was born.
For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown
out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and
thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once
transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in
applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence
in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will
through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few
moments, then sat down and were lost to sight—some to rise later again
and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be
seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had
made them rise and speak.
On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was
no committeeman but simply a member of the throng.
"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two—East
Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing
heavily.
"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from
across the hall.
"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically.
"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst[Pg 316] of laughter, and
the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went
on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough,
you Pollock."
The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light
his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The
next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of
the hall.
"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him,
it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a
glow of pride.
A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was
so wonderful that no one could understand.
"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said.
"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass
backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come
forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets
a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one
checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we
need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?"
There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of
it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely.
"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of
the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a
Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between
nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says
he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians."
Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached
often on Sundays.
"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights.[Pg 317] Let us desist—let
us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last
speaker came from Norway—he came from way up there in the North. My
father came from Africa——"
"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of
the hall, and there was a laugh.
"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At
my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us
in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?"
"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted.
"They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in
boats from the South. And you scabbed—you scabbed yourself! Didn't you?
You did! You —— of a nigger!"
A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He
was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie:
"Fellow workers—I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop—you
call another man Coon, Nigger—you call another man a Sheeny! Stop
calling names—call men fellow workers! We are on strike—let us not
fight each other—let us have peace—let us have a good time! I know a
man who has a big boat—and he say now we can have it for nothing—to
take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat
we will have a good time. I am a musician—I play the violin on a boat
till I strike—so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that
boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock—we have
our own stokers, our own engineers—we have our own pilots—we have all!
And it will be easy to steer that boat—for we have made the harbor
empty—we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon
we have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free!
All battle boats we shall sink in the sea—we stop all wars! So now we
begin—we stop all our fighting—we take out this[Pg 318] boat—all our
comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow
workers—I tell you the name of our boat! The Internationale!"
The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For
the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to
put it down. The Internationale made her first trip on the following
day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the
strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their
wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The
little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet,
"Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat
while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was
he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and
longings of all the toilers on the sea—while this ship that was run by
the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it
one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of
song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were
singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out
over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant
prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away—and still I sat
there wondering.
"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be
free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So
now we begin!"
Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that
would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it
merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep
compelling force was here—this curious power of the crowd that had so
suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on
excursion boats, and in[Pg 319] a few short days and nights had made him pour
into music the fire of its world-wide dreams?
I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A
stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely
dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech
before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could
not control.
"Comrades—fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and
set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I
know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We
have thousands of kids and old people—sick people too, and cripples and
drunks—all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs.
They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor
'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does
anyone know about that?"
She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the
platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to
what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been
waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her
question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they
could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for
nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean
liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who
had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again
and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first
relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in
charge.
I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was
Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I
want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"—I
thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would[Pg 320] be good at this,
she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at
once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey,
though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be
kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two
became fast friends.
Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a
typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public
halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her
food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes,
looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food.
She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she
began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the
city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one
night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in
Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was
not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed
as though she had jumped to another world.
Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker
friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers
and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt
myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one
I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With
a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its
strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What
could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon
and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty
problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those
men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast
experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense,[Pg 321]
heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would
find only chaos.
But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would
be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge
personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world
set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they
bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here—which
day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to
feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And
this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years
I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to
shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his
self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving
day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred
bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse
together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to
me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion
for the freedom of mankind.
Was this another god of mine?[Pg 322]