"Not quit.... But start a newer fight, with some chance of winning it."
One violent industrial unionist demanded the floor, and pounded out that the strike must continue, with a general tie-up of every trade, organized and unorganized, in Adamsville.
"One big union!" he continued to shout, even after the ready ushers had pushed him into his seat.
"That's the sort of fool advice," Jack Bowden said, "that's lost this strike. For it is lost; and I'll tell you who's lost it. Not the company, nor Paul Judson's money, not his murdering gunmen; but——" and his lean arm pointed straight to Pelham, "but crazy radicals in and out of the union movement; lounge Socialists, lemonade trade-unionists, men who claim to be with us, but were born with scab hearts. It's them and their kind have led to this smash-up. And the sooner we reckernize it, the better!"
There was a tossing roar of applause at this. The crowd, Pelham grasped at once, was ready to quit, and only wanted someone to blame for the failure.
Nils Jensen, still under bond pending the decision of his case by the Supreme Court, answered the charge at once. "Men, brothers," his voice rang out, "I've been a miner, and a member of this local, for thirteen years. I don't know who is to blame, but I know who isn't—and that's the Socialists among us. We've fought, in the union and at the polls, day in, day out, while your old-fashioned unionists have been pulling down fat jobs under Democratic sheriffs,——" a hit at Pooley, who had been first deputy under the previous official. "I'm not in favor of going on now, if the crowd's ready to stop. I can get work, here or somewhere else, in or out of jail,——" There was a friendly smile at this. "I know that the war between our class and the Paul Judson class will go on until classes are ended. If you're to blame anybody, blame ignorant laborers, who can't see that scabbing against their fellows cuts their own throats, and betrays their wives and children. Blame the labor fakers, the crooked bunch who 'lead' you so that their pockets are lined for delivering your votes to the old parties, while you get nothing. And when Jack Bowden says that Comrade Pelham Judson, as good a socialist as any one of us, is a lounging lemonade socialist, with a scab heart, he lies, and he knows he lies!"
The chair's rappings were lost in the outcries. "Order!" "Order!" broke all over the hall. An uproar circled around Jensen and also Bowden; for a minute the meeting threatened to break into a riot.
Jack Bowden jumped up to the platform, a document waving over his head. "Brothers!... Brothers!... Let me answer him!" He paused, while they quieted. "I'll answer him. When I moved that the committee be discharged without thanks, I knew what I was doing. When I charged that 'Mister'" (with an ugly sneer) "Pelham Judson, son of the vice-president of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Iron and Steel Company, was born with a scab heart, I knew what I was doing!"
Cries of "Shame!" "Shame!" "Throw him out!"
He kept his place. As he waved the mysterious document before their faces, the cries weakened; curiosity hushed them.