The laughter and the conversation in the boxes stopped for a formal round of applause. But as they clapped their hands and stared at the curiosity, something about her fragile beauty made them clap more heartily. At close range, Yetta looked abundantly healthy. But far away, standing alone on the great platform, she seemed frail and exotic. The two-dollar seats took their cue from the boxes and made as much noise as they could. The gallery and the mass of vest-makers behind her cheered and howled and stamped their feet without thought of the proprieties. And Yetta stood there alone, the blood mounting to her cheeks, looking more and more like an orchid, and waited for the storm to pass.
"I'm not going to talk about this strike," she said when she could make herself heard. "It's over. I want to tell you about the next one—and the next. I wish very much I could make you understand about the strikes that are coming.
"But first I ought to say a few words to you for my union. We're very much obliged to all who have helped us. We couldn't have won without money, and we're thankful to everybody that gave us a dime or a penny.
"It's a wonderful victory for us girls and women. We're very glad. For more than a month we've been out on strike, and now we can go back to the sweat-shop. Because we've been hungry for a month—some of us have got children and it was worse to have them hungry,—because a lot of us have been beaten up by the cops and more than twenty of us have gone to jail, we can go back to the machines now and the bosses can't make us work no more than fifty-six hours a week. That's not much more than nine hours a day, if we have one day off. And the bosses have promised us a little more pay and more air to breathe, and when we've wore ourselves out working for them, they won't throw us out to starve so long as they can find any odd jobs for us to do. We've had to fight hard for this victory, and we're proud we won, and we're thankful to all you who helped us. But better than the shorter hours and everything else is our union. We've got that now, and that's the most important. We won't never be quite so much slaves again like we was before.
"But we've won this strike now, so we've all got to think about the next one. I don't know what trade it will be in. Perhaps you never heard of the paper-box makers, or the artificial-flower makers, or the tassel makers. There's men with families in those trades that never earned as much as I did making vests. And the cigar makers—they're bad too. And if you seen the places where they bake bread, you wouldn't never eat it. It don't matter which way you look, the people that work ain't none of them getting a square deal. They ain't getting a square deal from the bosses. They ain't getting a square deal from the landlords. And the storekeepers sell them rotten things for food. There's going to be strikes right along, till everybody gets a square deal.
"Perhaps there's some of you never thought much about strikes till now. Well. There's been strikes all the time. I don't believe there's ever been a year when there wasn't dozens here in New York. When we began, the skirt-finishers was out. They lost their strike. They went hungry just the way we did, but nobody helped them. And they're worse now than ever. There ain't no difference between one strike and another. Perhaps they are striking for more pay or recognition or closed shops. But the next strike'll be just like ours. It'll be people fighting so they won't be so much slaves like they was before.
"The Chairman said perhaps I'd tell you about my experience. There ain't nothing to tell except everybody has been awful kind to me. It's fine to have people so kind to me. But I'd rather if they'd try to understand what this strike business means to all of us workers—this strike we've won and the ones that are coming. If I tell you how kind one woman wants to be to me, perhaps you'll understand. You see, it would be fine for me, but it wouldn't help the others any.
"Well. I come out of the workhouse to-day, and they tell me this lady wants to give me money to study, she wants to have me go to college like I was a rich girl. It's very kind. I want to study. I ain't been to school none since I was fifteen. I guess I can't even talk English very good. I'd like to go to college. And I used to see pictures in the papers of beautiful rich women, and of course it would be fine to have clothes like them. But being in a strike, seeing all the people suffer, seeing all the cruelty—it makes things look different.
"The Chairman told you something out of the Christian Bible. Well, we Jews have got a story too—perhaps it's in your Bible—about Moses and his people in Egypt. He'd been brought up by a rich Egyptian lady—a princess—just like he was her son. But as long as he tried to be an Egyptian he wasn't no good. And God spoke to him one day out of a bush on fire. I don't remember just the words of the story, but God said: 'Moses, you're a Jew. You ain't got no business with the Egyptians. Take off those fine clothes and go back to your own people and help them escape from bondage.' Well. Of course, I ain't like Moses, and God has never talked to me. But it seems to me sort of as if—during this strike—I'd seen a Blazing Bush. Anyhow I've seen my people in bondage. And I don't want to go to college and be a lady. I guess the kind princess couldn't understand why Moses wanted to be a poor Jew instead of a rich Egyptian. But if you can understand, if you can understand why I'm going to stay with my own people, you'll understand all I've been trying to say.
"We're a people in bondage. There's lots of people who's kind to us. I guess the princess wasn't the only Egyptian lady that was kind to the Jews. But kindness ain't what people want who are in bondage. Kindness won't never make us free. And God don't send any more prophets nowadays. We've got to escape all by ourselves. And when you read in the papers that there's a strike—it don't matter whether it's street-car conductors or lace-makers, whether it's Eyetalians or Polacks or Jews or Americans, whether it's here or in Chicago—it's my People—the People in Bondage who are starting out for the Promised Land."