"Fellow workers—I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop—you call another man Coon, Nigger—you call another man a Sheeny! Stop calling names—call men fellow workers! We are on strike—let us not fight each other—let us have peace—let us have a good time! I know a man who has a big boat—and he say now we can have it for nothing—to take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat we will have a good time. I am a musician—I play the violin on a boat till I strike—so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock—we have our own stokers, our own engineers—we have our own pilots—we have all! And it will be easy to steer that boat—for we have made the harbor empty—we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon we have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea—we stop all wars! So now we begin—we stop all our fighting—we take out this boat—all our comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow workers—I tell you the name of our boat! The Internationale!"
The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to put it down. The Internationale made her first trip on the following day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet, "Revolutionary Songs of the Sea," the solos of which he sang on the boat while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a "chanty man" was he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and longings of all the toilers on the sea—while this ship that was run by the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away—and still I sat there wondering.
"We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So now we begin!"
Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep compelling force was here—this curious power of the crowd that had so suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour into music the fire of its world-wide dreams?
I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could not control.
"Comrades—fellow workers." Her voice trembled violently. She paused and set her teeth, went on. "How about the women and babies?" she asked. "I know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We have thousands of kids and old people—sick people too, and cripples and drunks—all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs. They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor 'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does anyone know about that?"
She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in charge.
I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, "Remember, dear, I want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself"—I thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would be good at this, she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey, though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two became fast friends.
Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes, looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food. She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed as though she had jumped to another world.
Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt myself drawn to these men who called me "Bill," when alone with each one I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense, heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would find only chaos.