"Good!" Franz von Rintelen, alias E.V. Gates, hung up the 'phone, then turned to write a scrawling letter which read:
"Say, you shipowners. Either you give us 'longshoremen what we want or you'll get worse than what happened when we turned over those boxcars.
The Committee."
Into a mailbox went the letter, to reach the shipowners by special delivery, just as they were considering the granting of every demand of the 'longshoremen. But that letter changed their attitude entirely.
"Call up Union headquarters and tell them that all negotiations are off," roared the president. "If those 'longshoremen think they can bully us, they're badly mistaken. We'll give them nothing!"
The message reached Union headquarters. And the reply flashed back over the wire:
"We don't know anything about the sinking of your lighter. But if you can't take our word for it——"
"We have your word—the confession that you sank the lighter, signed by the men responsible," was the rejoinder.
There was only one answer for the men at Union Headquarters to make, and they made it.
"Then our only reply must come in the form of a strike. We are sorry."
Then, throughout the city the word radiated, the word that the final breach had been reached between the 'longshoremen and the shipowners that a strike had been called and that within another twenty-four hours, the docks of the east would be silent, the trucks motionless, industry paralyzed! In a private room of the Hohenzollern Club, Von Rintelen, Albert von Papen and Boy-Ed received the information and rose to drink a toast to the success of the strike. Down at the docks, Harrison Grant paled at the news, then sent his men scurrying about in a last effort to gain some information that would give him a positive clue to work on. But there was none.