"Humph," the stenographer snorted, "skirt-finisher?"
"No. I ain't a skirt-finisher. I work bei vests. It's a new strike. Miss Train'll want to know about it right away."
"What do you think?" the stenographer asked her companion. "Can't disturb the Advisory Council, can I?"
The two girls cross-questioned Yetta severely, but at last gave in to her insistence. One of them knocked at the double doors. They were opened from the inside a couple of inches and Mabel looked out.
"We've struck," Yetta cried, rushing towards her.
Mabel turned towards the occupants of the inner room and asked to be excused a moment.
"I'm very busy just now," she said as she sat down beside Yetta. "Tell me about it quickly."
The Industrial Conflict is not logical. At least it does not follow any laws of logic known to the so-called "labor leaders." It is connected with, actuated by, a vague something, which for want of a better term we call "human nature." And labor leaders are just as uncertain what "human nature" will do next as the rest of us. They will spend patient years on end organizing a trade, collecting bit by bit a "strike fund," preparing for a battle which never comes off or miserably fizzles out. In the midst of such discouragement, an unprepared strike in an unorganized trade will break out and with no prospect of success will sweep to an inspiring victory. Mabel had seen such surprising things happen a hundred times.
More than once, since her short talk with Yetta at the ball, she had thought over the possibility of organizing the vest-makers. But the project seemed to hold very little promise. The "skirt-finishers" had lost. She, with her hand on the pulse of things, knew it, even if the strikers did not. And here, once more, a new strike had broken out, just as another was collapsing. It might be only a flash in the pan, a quarrel in one shop. It might spread. She listened closely to Yetta.
Her eyes were also busy. She noted the peculiar charm of the young girl, the big deep eyes with their sudden changes from excited hope to melancholy sadness, her cheeks flushed with the impetuous enthusiasm of a new convert.