And the mayor granted a permit.
The next afternoon the Fifth Avenue shops all closed their doors, and over the rich displays in their windows heavy steel shutters were rolled down. The long procession of motors and cabs with their gaily dressed shoppers had disappeared, and in their place was another procession, men, women and children, old and young. All around me as I marched I heard an unending torrent of voices speaking many languages, uniting in strange cheers and songs brought from all over the ocean world. Bright-colored turbans bobbed up here and there, for there was no separation of races, all walked together in dense crowds, the whole strike family was here. And listening and watching I felt myself a member now. Behind me came a long line of trucks packed with sick or crippled men. At their head was a black banner on which was painted, "Our Wounded." Behind the wagons a small cheap band came blaring forth a funeral dirge, and behind the band, upon men's shoulders, came eleven coffins, in which were those dock victims who had died in the last few days. This section had its banner too, and it was marked, "Our Dead."
But at one point, late in the afternoon, some marcher just ahead of me suddenly started to laugh. At first I thought he was simply in fun. But he kept on. Those near him then caught the look on his face and they all began to laugh with him. Each moment louder, uglier, it swept up the Avenue. And as it swelled in volume, like the menace of some furious beast, the uncontrollable passion I heard filled me again with a sharp foreboding of violence in the crisis ahead.
"Why are you here?" I asked myself. "You can't join in a laugh like that—you're no real member of this crowd—their world is not where you belong!"
But from somewhere deep inside me a voice rose up in answer:
"If the crowd is growing blind—is this the time to leave it? Wait."
CHAPTER XVI
Five more vessels sailed that day. And in the evening Eleanore said:
"The women who came to our station to-day kept asking, 'Why can't they close up the saloons? They're just the places for trouble to start.'"