He faced them unflinchingly. "It is true. I can explain——"
The hooting and jeering broke with savage, almost bestial fury. Doggedly Pelham kept to his feet, in spite of the efforts of Serrano and others to drag him down. "This is terrible, comrade," whispered Serrano. "You'd better leave——"
At length Bowden got the eye of the chair again. "I move that we give five minutes to Mr. Judson to 'explain', as he calls it, his scabbing."
In simple language Pelham told of his training in a home dedicated to the fight against labor; of his acts at New Haven, while a college student; of his conversion to socialism and the cause of labor. He did not mention what it had cost him; a few remembered this. When he came to his New Haven experiences, the hissing began, swelled in volume. All of the chair's entreaties could not stop it.
"If you think, comrades, that my usefulness on this committee is over, I hereby resign. But I can assure you that nothing will shake my efforts in the cause for which I have fought, am fighting, and will continue to fight."
No eloquence could have moved them. The mass psychology of the meeting demanded a victim; here was one before them. The shrivelling strike months of turmoil and undernourishment had thrown them back into a lower, more barbarous state; their sense of justice was perverted from ultimate social equality and order into a primitive condemnation of the accursed thing that had brought them into this predicament. They were only too ready to throw a Jonah to the deep, as an expiatory sacrifice to the omnipotent god who doled out bi-weekly pay-envelopes. They were in a starving panic to get back to the skimpy flesh-pots of a darker Egypt.
It was moved and seconded that the resignation be accepted. An earburst of "ayes" were for the proposition; one or two scattering voices registered weak negatives.
"The motion is carried."
The sudden blow had crushed all opposition. The resolutions to end the strike were accepted without debate.
Jack Bowden, highly satisfied with the night's work, went over to the state office with Bob Bivens and John Pooley. "Reckon I better destroy that?" he grinned, handing a letter out to the big State president.