All day long the conviction had grown on her that there was promise of big development to the insignificant quarrel between Yetta and her boss. More often than not strikes break out at the most inopportune times for the workers. Sometimes a sudden provocation will drive the men into a premature revolt. Again there will be rumbles of trouble for a long time before the crisis, and when the men walk out, they find the bosses have had ample time to make provision for the fight. But a careful study of the vest-making industry could not have discovered a more favorable moment. The rush season was just drawing to a close. On the one hand, the bosses were straining every nerve to finish their contracts on time. On the other hand, many of the workers would be laid off anyhow when the rush was over. By striking, the less skilled, poorest paid workers risked only a few weeks' pay. And surely they had enough cause to revolt. All those to whom she had talked had told of intolerable speed, pitiful pay, and arbitrary fines, indecent conditions. There was good reason to hope that the whole trade would become involved. And so at bedtime she sang the "Ça ira" to Yetta.
Her forecast proved true. Before two o'clock every one knew that the strike had "caught." Half a dozen shops, including one of the biggest, walked out during the morning. And after the noon hour not a quarter of the vest-makers were at work.
While it might have been possible for Jake Goldfogle to find twelve skilled workers for his small shop, it was not possible to find enough for the whole trade quickly. It settled down into an endurance fight. Both sides "organized." The strikers rented a hall in the sweat-shop district for headquarters and a committee sat there en permanence, making out union cards for the strikers, and a card catalogue of their names and addresses, arranging for the distribution in "strike benefits" of all the money that could be raised. In this detail work, of immense importance to the successful conduct of a strike, Mabel was a tower of strength. She had been through it all a hundred times before, and she never got flurried. Everything seemed like a chaos, but through it her cool-headed generalship kept an effective order.
In a Broadway office the bosses organized "The Association of Vest Manufacturers." Their headquarters were less noisy than those of the Union. But quiet does not always mean a higher standard of ethics. As the Woman's Trade Union League was helping the strikers, so trained men were lent to the bosses by the Employers' Association. In a few days skilled vest makers from other cities began to flow into New York. Some of the shops were able to begin work again at about half their normal capacity. The press agents of the Association of Vest Manufacturers sent out announcements to the newspapers that the strike was over.
The Union retaliated by a campaign of "picketing." Isadore Braun took this work in hand. He marshalled the volunteer "pickets" every morning, assigned them to their posts, and carefully explained to them their legal rights. They were free to stand anywhere on the street and to talk to any one who would listen, so long as they did not attract a crowd which impeded traffic. They must not detain any one by force, nor threaten violence, nor use insulting language.
Recently a justice of the Supreme Court of New York has handed down a decision that "peaceful picketing" is a contradiction in terms. From his point of view all picketing is inherently violent. As a legal maxim it is idiotic. The great majority of labor pickets are peaceful. But in any large and long-continued industrial conflict some of the strikers are starving, many have hungry children at home. They cannot be expected to love the "scabs," who are taking their jobs. And it is desperately hard for the leaders of a strike—no matter how sincerely they try—to prevent sporadic acts of violence. Braun, himself a lawyer and a Socialist, was a firm believer in legality. Again and again he impressed on the strikers the urgent desirability of keeping within the letter of the law.
The first day Mabel and Yetta picketed together. They stood on the sidewalk before the largest of the vest shops and tried to talk to every one who went in. Mabel did most of it. She used the old, time-worn arguments of the unionists. The only chance for the workers was in standing together. If the scabs took the strikers' jobs, they were helping the boss more than themselves. After a strike is settled the bosses always fire the scabs and take back their old force. If they did get steady work sooner or later, somebody would scab on them. If they joined the union they would get enough strike benefits to live on, and with a strong organization the trade would be a good one. And after all it is dirty business stealing jobs from your brother workers. Most of the scabs hurriedly passed them, a few listened sullenly, one or two replied with insults. To an outsider, picketing looks hopeless. You very rarely see any one quit work. But long experience has taught the unions that it does pay. It is not so much the rare cases where a dozen scabs stop at once as the regular drain of those who are ashamed to face the pickets and who do not come back to work again.
Mabel was too busy to picket very often. She had her hands full trying to save what she could out of the wreckage of the skirt-finishers' strike. And there were a thousand and one things to do for the vest-makers, arranging meetings, trying to interest the newspapers, spurring on the Advisory Council to raise money. They had collected a good deal, but the poverty of the vest-makers was appalling; "strike benefits" kept the treasury always empty. She had to see to replenishing it daily. Yetta, however, was on picket duty every day.
Gradually it became evident that the "picket" was successful. Most of the imported vest-makers, the skilled operatives, had joined the union. Only a few of the shops were running at all and at great expense on account of the uneconomy of raw hands. The smaller bosses were going into bankruptcy. Jake Goldfogle had been the first to fall. Five days had cleaned him out. The next day two more went under. Credit was beginning to tighten for even the biggest bosses.
The Association of Vest Manufacturers saw that it was necessary to break the picket at any cost. There were a number of secret conferences with city politicians. The police magistrate who was sitting at Essex Market Court was transferred to an uptown jurisdiction, and his place was taken by a magistrate named Cornett, notorious for his outspoken hostility to unionism. The police also got their orders.