“Oh, I did and I didn’t! I thought maybe—but now this strike,” he went on sharply. “Six months ago there’d have been a general strike in sympathy. Every workman in the city would have downed tools. Not—now! We’re beaten, I tell you! There are thousands of unemployed, winter’s here, coal costs what you know, the men don’t dare. Beaten! You’ve heard what one of the big employers said openly—that pretty soon the men would be eating out of their hands! And here am I fighting for this puny little thing—that men be doled out enough to exist on! And fighting in vain!”
Stacey looked at him with silent sympathy.
“Here!” said Edwards, tearing papers from his pocket. “Here are the figures. Here’s what it costs a family of three to live—Government statistics. Here’s what the men were getting. Here’s what they’re to get now if they yield.” He pushed the papers across the table.
Stacey fingered them, but kept his eyes on his friend. “I know,” he said. “I can imagine without studying them. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Edwards nervously. “I’d thought of two or three things. If you were to print the facts—just the facts—with your name signed to them, in one of the papers. . . .”
Stacey smiled bitterly. “Fat chance! How much of a power in this town do you think I am? Don’t you know that Colin Jeffries, who owns the street-railway, controls the papers?”
“Yes, I know that, damn him!” Edwards burst out. “He’s everywhere! You can’t get out from under his shadow.”
“And even if I could get such an article printed, what would it accomplish? When did the public ever budge? Inert mass of sheep! And all the time the papers harping on the idea that the street-railway company can’t pay its stock-holders even a nominal interest on their investment under current conditions.”
“Well,” Edwards fairly shouted, “and if they can’t! Do you know anything about that company? I do. I’ve looked into it with a lawyer. Way over-capitalized. Three millions of water, Carroll,—three cool millions into private pockets! So men must starve, must they, to pay interest on that stock?”
Stacey’s face was grim. “No,” he said shortly, “I hadn’t looked into it, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ll tell you what I could do,” he said hesitatingly after a moment. “I—er—the only available income I have is what I make here at the office. I could turn over—say two hundred and fifty dollars a month of it to the union. And I might—that is, I don’t know what my sister does with her income—gives most of it away, I fancy—but I dare say she’d put in as much more.”