When the long stormy din of cheers had little by little died away Joe Kramer began the last speech of the day. He had eaten and slept little, he had lived on coffee and cigarettes, and there was a strained look in his deep eyes as he rose up lean and gaunt by my side.
"I'm here to-day to speak to the men who work in stokeholes naked," he said. "I'm here to talk of the lives you lead—the lives that millions before you have led—for a few brief years—and then they have died. For lives in stokeholes are not long. And before I begin I propose that we stand for a moment with uncovered heads." He looked out over the multitude as though seeing far beyond them, and his voice was as harsh as the look in his eyes. "As a tribute to all the dead stokers," he said.
And in a breathless silence the multitude did what he had asked. Joe broke this silence sharply.
"Now for life and the living," he said. "Why was it that those men all died? What has the change from sails to steam done to the lives of the men at sea?
"The old sailor at least had air to breathe. But what you breathe is red hot gas—I know because I've been there. There is a gong upon the wall, and when it clangs you heave in coal, and if when it clangs faster you don't keep quite up to its pace, a white light flashes out of the wall, and that light is the Chief Engineer's way of saying, 'God damn you, keep up those fires down there! Time is money! Who are you?'
"The old-time sailor lived on deck. He had the winds, the sun and the stars. But you live down between steel walls—with only the glare of electric lights in which you sleep and eat and sweat. You work at all kinds of irregular hours, for you there is no day or night. You don't know whether the millionaire and his last and loveliest wife are drinking champagne before going to bed, in their cabin de luxe above you, or taking their coffee the next day at noon. You don't know about anything way up there—unless you go up as I've seen you do, half out of your senses from the heat, and make a sudden jump for the rail. The cry is heard—'Man overboard!'—then shrieks and a chorus of 'Oh-my-God's!' And then somebody says, 'It's only a stoker.'"
He stopped short, and at the sudden roar of the crowd I saw him frown and quiver. He drew a deep, slow breath and went on:
"They threw off all the good in the ship with sails—but they carefully kept all that was bad. The old mutiny laws—they kept all that. Undermanning of crews—they kept all that. The waterfront sharks—they kept all that. But there was one thing they couldn't keep—the old sailor's habit of standing all this! He had run away to sea as a boy, he'd been kicked all his life by the bucko mate into a state where he couldn't kick back. But with you men it is not so. Among all the thousands standing here most were on shore a few years ago, and you took your land views with you on board. You organized seamen's unions. The one in this country was meek and mild. It did not strike, it went on its knees to Congress instead, and here's part of the written petition it made. 'We raise our manacled hands in humble supplication—and we pray that the nations of the earth issue a decree for our emancipation—restore us our rights as brother men.' But Congress had no ear for you then. Sailors are men who have no votes. And so you failed in your pleading.
"But in the labor movement there seems to be no such word as fail! You have not given up your union—instead you have formed one of a kind more dangerous to your masters! You have not made smaller your requests—no, you are now demanding more! And instead of asking for merciful laws you are saying, 'We are done with your laws, will have none of your laws, will break your laws when they come in our way!'
"And what do your masters answer? Here are thousands of deserters—every man here has broken the law by leaving his ship! But have they tried to arrest you? No! They're afraid to arrest twenty thousand men, they're afraid of this strike, they're afraid of you! They're so almighty scared downtown that though we've been only a week on strike they've already sent their commands to their Congress to give us what merciful laws we like. They're scared because we've thrown over their laws—because they know that we now see our power—to stop all their ships and the trade of their land and send their stock market into a panic!