But the main reason why unions would never amount to much here was centered in the race question. Victor told of several cooks' strikes he had been in. What happens? A man stands up and says something, then everybody else says, “Don't listen to him; he's only an Irishman.” Some one else says something, and everyone says, “Don't pay any attention to him; he's only an Italian.” The next man—he's only a Russian, and so on.
Then pretty soon what happens next? Pretty soon a Greek decides he'll go back to work, and then all the Greeks go back; next an Austrian goes back—all his countrymen follow. And, anyhow, says my Italian friend Eusebio, you can't understand nothin' all them foreigners say, anyhow.
I asked him if Monsieur Le Bon Chef after his start as a strike breaker had finally joined a union. “Oh, I guess he's civilized now,” grinned Victor.
Numerous times one person or another about our hotel spoke of the suddenness with which the workers there would be fired. “Bing, you go!” just like that. Kelly, who had been working there over two years, told me that the only way to think of a job was to expect to be fired every day. He claimed he spent his hour's ride in to work every morning preparing himself not to see his time card in the rack, which would mean no more job for him.
I asked Victor one day about the girl who had held my job a year and a half and why she was fired. There was a story for you! Kelly a few days before had told me that he was usually able to “get” anybody. “Take that girl now what had your job. I got her. She was snippy to me two or three times and I won't stand that. It's all right if anybody wants to get good and mad, but I detest snippy folks. So I said to myself, 'I'll get you, young lady,' and within three days I had her!”
Kelly was called away and never finished the story, but Victor did. The girl, it seems, got several slices of ham one day from one of the chefs. She wrapped them carefully in a newspaper and later started up the stairs with the paper folded under her arm, evidently bound for the locker room. Kelly was standing at the foot of the stairs—“Somebody had tipped him off, see?”
“What's the news to-day?” asked Kelly.
“'Ain't had time to read the paper yet,” the girl replied.
“Suppose we read it now together,” said Kelly, whereupon he slipped the paper out from under her arm and exposed the ham to view.
“You're fired!” said Kelly.