"They want to fight like hell. They'll stop the scabs."
"Got to be careful there. That sort of thing is dynamite; it blows both ways. Company won't hear the committee?"
"Young Judson's father's the reason. Says he won't allow a union man in his shop hereafter. No committees, nor nothing."
"Let's see the place."
They walked from the end of the car line. The roads through the property had been made city streets, when Hillcrest Addition was thrown open to the public, and the party could not be stopped. Dawson paused to shake hands with the groups of pickets on the various cross roads. He had a personal word for each, and a concentrated way of getting the details he needed out of the incoherent members of the working body.
Joined by Ben Wilson and several of the pickets, they passed into the company estate, and by the entrances to the gap drifts and the second ramp. Only a few negroes were at work in the gap; it was not until the second big slope that the white workers appeared. Dawson looked a question at stocky Wilson, hardly up to his vest pocket.
"Convicts. Almost three hundred of them."
"Any niggers go out?"
"Half a dozen. You met one, Ed Cole, picketing by Thirtieth Street."
A red-faced Irishman walked out of a knot of workers and greeted the tall organizer. "Hello, Dawson. Remember me?"