The Harbor
BOOK III
CHAPTER XVII
Early in the evening I was taken out to the visitor's room, and there I
found Eleanore's father. When he saw me, Dillon smiled.
"Do you know where you are?" he asked. "You're not in the Bastille—or
even Libby Prison. You're in the Jefferson Market Jail."
"It hasn't felt that way," I said.
"Probably not. But it is that way, and there's Eleanore to be thought
of."
"Eleanore will understand."
I saw his features tighten. I noticed now that his face was drawn, as
though he, too, had been through a good deal.
"Yes," he said, "she understands. But it's a bit tough on her, isn't it?
Jail is not quite in her line."
I felt my throat contracting:
"I know all that. I'm sorry enough—on her account——"
"Then let's get out of this," he said. "I've brought you bail. No use
staying in here all night."
"None at all," I agreed. "I want to get back to the waterfront. We're
going to issue an answer to this. They'll need me for the writing."
Dillon watched me a moment.
"You won't be allowed to do that," he said. "They're under martial law
down there."
I looked up at him quickly:
"The troops are here?"
"Yes," he replied, and there was a pause.
"These arrests, this riot," I said a little huskily.[Pg 346] "Weren't they all
framed up ahead? They needed the riot to get in the troops."
"The troops are here."
"Rather damnable. Do you think the people on the docks will just sit
back and take it all?"
"They'll have to," he said gently. "The world's work has been clogged up
a little. It's to go on again now."
On the street outside he took my hand:
"My boy, when this is over we'll get together, you and I."
"All right—when it's over," I said.
The Farm that night again changed to my eyes. It was now an orderly
village of tents, two regiments of militia were here, and their sentries
reached for a mile to the north watching the big companies' docks.
I walked up along the line and had talks with some of the sentries. I
remember one in particular, a thin, nervous little man, a shoe-clerk in
a department store. Every work-day for six years he had fitted shoes on
ladies' feet; he had been doing it all that morning. And now here he was
down on the waterfront with only the stars above him and great shadowy
spaces all around, out of which at any moment he expected rushes by
strikers. These strikers to him were not human, they were "foreigners,"
for the moment gone mad, to be treated very much as mad dogs. And here
he was all by himself, his nerves on edge, with a gun in his hands. The
absurdity of that gun in his hands! And the serious danger.
I went into many tenements, into homes I had come to know in the strike.
And they, too, were different now. Their principal leaders taken away
and their headquarters closed by the police, the disorganization was
complete. That spirit they had relied upon, that strange new spirit of
the mass which they had created by coming together, was now dead—and
each one felt the weakness of being alone, the weakness of his separate
self. Blindly[Pg 347] they fought against their despair. I found them packing
tenement rooms, gathering instinctively in search of their great friend,
the crowd.
But from such gatherings as these, the weaker, the more timid and the
wiser kept away. Rash spirits led these meetings, and here was the same
hot passion that I had felt back in the jail. These people did not want
to think, the time for thinking had gone by. They wanted to act, to do
something quick. Their minds were fiercely set on the "scabs," the
police and the militia.
Their strike was not yet lost. Their friends and sympathizers were
working hard that very night to get their leaders out on bail. In
Washington a House committee was striving still to compel arbitration.
Everywhere the more moderate spirits were drawing together, trying to
work out something safe.
But these people did not know this. They were in their tenements, they
were scattered far apart. They only knew how they had been clubbed, that
three had been killed and many more wounded, and that now the troops
were here. And the more fiery ones among them were feeling only one
thing now, that when you are hit you must hit back, you must show you're
not scared, you must show you're a man.
And so on the next morning, no women and no children but huge, silent
throngs of men drifted out of the tenements down to the docks and moved
slowly along the sentry lines.
The chance to show they were not afraid came late in the afternoon. The
clear, sweet call of a bugle came floating gaily on the air, then the
long, hard roll of drums, and from their camp on the Farm the troops
came on the double-quick up along the waterfront. Now thousands of
strikers were running that way. From the foot of a city street across
the wide open space to a pier the militia formed in two double lines,
each line facing outward.[Pg 348] Then down that street came mounted police and
behind them a score of trucks loaded with freight.
At first I had hopes that the mass would not move. But out of the
silence came angry shouts and those behind pushed forward. Those in
front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded
savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin
lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and
angry cries—no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all
sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of
the mass. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I
saw an excited young officer shout at his men and wave his sword. I saw
long rows of guns make quick rhythmic movements, then level straight
out, and there were two long flashes of fire.
Disordered throngs were running now. Only a few men here and there
turned to fire their pistols or to shout back frenzied, quivering oaths.
Behind them a few soldiers were still shooting without orders. Near the
sand-pile on which I stood I saw a young militia man enough like that
little shoe-clerk to have been his brother. His face was white and his
eyes wild, he was panting, pumping his lever and blindly firing shot
after shot.
"God damn 'em, slaughter 'em, slaughter 'em!"
An officer knocked up his gun.
That night the waterfront was still. Only the long, slow moving line of
the figures of sentries was to be seen. The troops were back in their
camp on the Farm. Bivouac fires were burning down there, but up here was
only a dark, empty space.
Here scattered about on the pavement, after the firing had ceased, I had
seen the dark inert bodies of men. Most of them had begun to move, until
fully half were crawling about. They had been picked up and counted.[Pg 349]
Thirty-nine wounded, fourteen dead. These, too, had all been taken away.
From the high steel docksheds there came a deep, harsh murmur made up of
faint whistles, the rattle of winches, the shouts of the foremen, the
heavy jar and crash of crates. A tug puffed smoothly into a slip with
three barges in her wake. I walked slowly out that way. The tugmen and
the bargemen talked in quiet voices as they made fast their craft to the
pier. Below them the water was lapping and slapping.
"The world's work has been clogged up a little. It's to go on again
now."
The next day three heavy battleships steamed sluggishly through the
Narrows and came to anchor in the bay. When interviewed by reporters,
their commanders were vastly amused. No, they said, the United States
Navy was not governed as to its movements by strikes. They simply
happened to be here through orders issued weeks ago. But their coming
was featured in headlines.
I saw something else in the papers that night, a force greater than all
battleships. As a week before I had felt a whole country in revolt, I
felt now a country of law and order, a whole nation of angry tradesmen
impatiently demanding an end to all this "foreign anarchy."
"We want no more of your strikes," it said. "None of your new crowd
spirit, none of your wild talk and dreams! We want no change in this
country of ours!"
The authorities obeyed this will. Bail was denied to Marsh, Vasca and
Joe, and for them a speedy trial was urged. The press now held them
responsible not only for that first negro's death, but for all the
deaths since their arrest. Let them pay the full penalty! Let them be
made an example of! Let this business of anarchy be dealt with and
settled once and for all!
The work of crushing the strike went on. More troops were brought to the
harbor. On the docks there were not[Pg 350] only negroes now, thousands of
immigrant laborers were brought from Ellis Island and put to work at
double pay, and on every incoming vessel the stokers were all kept on
board. Among the strikers there was a break that swiftly spread and
became a stampede. And in the following week the work of the harbor went
on as before, with its regular commonplace weekly toll of a hundred
killed and injured. Peace had come again at last.
On Saturday morning of that week I stood on the deck of a ferryboat
packed with little commuters who waved and cheered a huge ocean liner
bound for Europe. Lying deep in the water, her hold laden heavy with the
products of this teeming land, her decks thronged with travelers with
money in their pockets, her band playing, her flags streaming out, and
over all on the captain's bridge the officers up there in command—she
was a mighty symbol of order and prosperity and of that Efficiency which
to me had been a religion for so many years. We all followed the great
ship with our eyes as, gathering headway, she steamed out past the
Statue of Liberty toward the battleships beyond.
"Well," said an amused little man close by me, "I guess that'll be about
all from the strikers."
"Oh my smiling little citizen—you've only seen the beginning," I
thought.
What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking
soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves
powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around
the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all
this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a
crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they
never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The
harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with
a rush, and all its heavy labor was[Pg 351] weighing down upon them—"like a
million tons of brick on their chests." I remembered what Joe Kramer had
said: "It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking."
Was the defeat of this one strike the end?
The grim battleships answered, "Yes, it is the end."
But the restless harbor answered, "No."
What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I
was sure. The last of my gods, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on
mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men
at the top, had now come tottering crashing down. And in its place a
huge new god, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were
all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with
one deep voice, with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of
mankind.