"Laughing ain't going to be enough."
Among men on strike there are two kinds of attitudes toward those who take their places. The first is the scorn of the man who is winning. "You are a dirty scab," it says. "You're a Judas to the working class and a thief who is trying to steal my job. But you won't get it, we're bound to win, and you're barely worth kicking out of the way." The second is quite a different feeling. In this is the fear of the man who is losing—and fear, as an English writer has said, is the great mother of violence. "You may keep my job! And if you do I'll be left with nothing to live on!" It is this second attitude which is dreaded by strike leaders, for it leads to a loss of all control, to machine guns and defeat.
With a deepening uneasiness I saw this feeling now appear. Starting in small groups of men, I saw it spread out over the mass with the speed of a prairie fire. I felt it that afternoon on the Farm, changing with a startling speed that sure and mighty giant, the crowd, into a blind disordered throng, a mottled mass of groups of men angrily discussing the news. Threats against "scabs" were shouted out, the word "scab" arose on every side. Bitter things were said against "coons," not only "scabs" but "all of 'em, God damn 'em!" There were hints of violence and open threats of sabotage, things done to dock machinery.
But presently, by slow degrees, as though by a deep instinct groping for the giant spirit that had been its life and soul, I felt the crowd now gather itself. Slowly the cries all died away and all eyes turned to the leader. Facing them with arms upraised, Marsh stood on the speakers' pile, his own face imperturbable, his own voice absolutely sure.
"Boys," he said, when silence had come, "one lonesome ship has gone to sea—so badly loaded, they tell me, that she ain't got even a chance in a storm. She was loaded by scabs."
A savage storm of "booh's" burst forth. He waited until it subsided and then continued quietly:
"We have no use for scabs, black or white. But we have use for strikers, both black and white—our negro brothers are with us still, and we'll show them we know that they are our brothers. We're going to stand together, we won't let the bosses split us apart. And when we read the papers to-morrow we're going to ask if the news is all there—not the little news in big headlines about a ship or two leaving port, but the big news in a little paragraph, that you have so stopped this nation's trade that now its Congress is demanding that your masters come to terms! And as for this lonesome ship that has sailed, if you want to see just how much that means, go down and look at Wall Street. They say down there, 'We're all right now.' But their market prices say, 'We're all wrong!'"
Suddenly out of the multitude there came a high, clear voice:
"You seem to know Wall Street, Brother Marsh. Have you been selling short down there? Who's your private broker?"
Instantly there was a rush toward the questioner, but a group of police formed quickly around him and he was hurried out of the way.