"Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English," somebody said.
"He don't have to shut up." The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. "Everyone gets a hearing here," he said. "We've got nine nationalities, but each one checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?"
There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely.
"The first thing he wants to say," said the interpreter at the end of the torrent, "is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians."
Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached often on Sundays.
"Yes, brothers," he boomed, "let us stop our fights. Let us desist—let us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last speaker came from Norway—he came from way up there in the North. My father came from Africa——"
"He must have come last Monday," said a dry, thin voice from the back of the hall, and there was a laugh.
"Brothers," cried the black man, "I come here from the colored race. At my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?"
"It ain't your color, it's your scabbing," a sharp voice interrupted. "They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in boats from the South. And you scabbed—you scabbed yourself! Didn't you? You did! You —— of a nigger!"
A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie: