In forming this harsh estimate of the world of luxury she had Mabel beside her as a standard of comparison. Why were the other women different from Mabel? They were no more beautiful, no better educated, no more refined. But Mabel was the "real thing." Yetta was ashamed of her first envy and distrust. Day by day she saw more fully the broad scope of Mabel's activities—of which this vest-makers' strike was only one—and her admiring wonder grew. Mabel gave not only her time, but she was not afraid of what the girls called "dirty work"; she carried a banner in the street on the day of the parade, she did her turn at picketing, her share of addressing and sealing envelopes. And she carried very much more than her share of the heavier responsibilities. Yetta found it hard to understand how other women, who also knew the facts of misery, could act so differently. Yet, day after day she told them the facts, and they were content to give five or ten dollars. No. Yetta did not want to be a "lady."
Almost every day some of the pickets were arrested and sent to the workhouse. But others always volunteered to take their places. There is no surer lesson to be learned from history than that persecution is like oil to the flame of enthusiasm. Instead of breaking, as the bosses—with the fatuousness of Nero—had hoped, the picket became more intense and more effective. The bosses decided that "something decisive must be done." There were several conferences—very quiet and orderly they were—with the expert strike-breakers who had been loaned to them by the Employers' Association. A long statement was prepared, which informed the public that the vest manufacturers, feeling that they were not getting sufficient assistance from the city police, had employed a private detective agency to protect their property and the lives of their faithful employees from the outrages of the strikers. All the English papers published this statement without any inquiry as to whether life and property needed special protection. The more complaisant ones published the stories which the "press agent" of the association furnished on the "outrages." So the impression was spread abroad that the striking vest-makers were smoky-haired furies, who brawled in the streets and tore the clothes off respectable women.
But there was hardly any one who had ever been involved in a strike, employer or employed, hardly a cub-reporter in the city, who did not know what this announcement meant. The bosses had failed to break the strike by "legal" means. The "private detectives" had been called in to do it by intimidation and brutality. Girls began coming into the strike headquarters with bleeding faces, with black and blue bruises from kicks.
No justice of the Supreme Court has handed down a decision on the probability of the public peace being disturbed by the use of thugs, calling themselves "private detectives," in labor disputes.
Mabel, realizing Yetta's special usefulness as a speaker and money-raiser, tried to persuade her that this other work was more important than picketing.
"No," Yetta said. "If I didn't spend the morning with the girls, I would not have anything to say at night."
Mabel did not urge her further; she no longer called her la petite when she spoke of her to Eleanor. Every one who came in contact with her during these weeks knew that she was growing very rapidly into womanhood.
Yetta expected to get arrested. Why should she not? In a way she had started all the trouble. Why should the other girls be knocked about by the ruffian private detectives and she escape? Day after day she took her post before one or another of the vest shops and did her duty as she saw it, as the other women were doing it. There were always two pickets at each post, and it was in these morning watches that Yetta got her deepest insight into the lives of her comrades.
She was having a very easy time of it. She had a pleasant place to sleep. She had her one sure meal a day. There were no children crying to her for food. The other women were faring worse than she. Some were sick, almost all were hungry and insufficiently clad. And while Yetta was often called away to the less fatiguing work of the office, or to some uptown tea, these women, used to sitting all day before a machine, were standing hour after hour before their posts. But it was not the sight of them, pitiful spectacles as many of them were, which hurt Yetta most. It was their stories—unintentionally told for the most part. The words dropped by chance, which called up visions of sick husbands and the hungry babies. Some of the pickets were gray-haired and bent, some were younger than Yetta, and they all seemed to be suffering more for the strike than she. And the hungry babies! Her sleep was troubled at night by dreams of their cries.
That she had been spared by the police and thugs seemed to Yetta the most unjust thing of all the injustice she saw about her. A week on "the Island" would mean little to her; she had no one dependent on her. But always they picked some widow, who had no one to care for her children while she was in prison. Yetta felt herself strong and healthy. Why did the thugs always beat up some old woman or some frail consumptive girl? Although she had escaped trouble so long, she quietly and without excitement expected it. Whenever she met any of the girls who had been in the workhouse, she asked about it—in the same way that we, if we were expecting to winter in Paris, would inquire from friends who had been there about the rents and shops and so forth.