These precautions intensified the anger of the strikers. Strike headquarters, in which we could meet and pass the day in social ways, were opened in vacant stores. Here we came in the morning and stayed through the day, playing cards, checkers, and talking over the strike.
In regard to newspapers, there was a prevailing opinion among us that the Boston Journal alone favored our side, so we bought it to the exclusion of all other dailies. Against the Boston Transcript there was a general antipathy. I liked to read it, but my uncle spoke against it.
“I don’t want anybody under my roof reading the paper that is owned hand and foot by our enemies,” he argued, and I saw that I had given him great offense.
The Boston papers sent their official photographers to take our pictures. I posed, along with several of my friends, before our headquarters, and had the pleasure of seeing the picture in the paper under some such caption as “A group of striking back-boys.”
I did not suffer during the strike. I had a splendid time of it. While the snow was on the ground I obtained a position as a sweeper in one of the theaters, and I spent nearly every day for a while at matinées and evening performances. The strike went on into the early part of May, and, when the snow had gone, I went out with a little wagon—picked coal and gathered junk. Through these activities I really earned more spending money than I ever received for working in the mill. I rather enjoyed the situation, and could not understand at the time how people could say they wanted it to end.
Before it did end, the state police withdrew, and we went on guard once more at the mill gates on watch for “strike-breakers.”
We boys made exciting work of this, encouraged by our elders. I recall one little man and his wife, who did not believe in unions or strikes. They did have a greed for money, and they had plenty of it invested in tenements. They had no children to support. They were, however, among the first to try to break the strike in our mill. Popular antipathy broke with direful menace upon their heads. Every night a horde of neighbors—men, women, boys, and girls—escorted them home from their work, and followed them back to the mill gates every morning. The women among us were the most violent. “Big Emily,” a brawny woman, once brought her fist down on the little man’s head with this malediction: “Curse ye! ye robber o’ hones’ men’s food! Curse ye! and may ye come to want, thief!” The poor man had to take the insult, for the flicker of an eye meant a mobbing. His wife was tripped by boys and mud was plastered on her face. The pettiest and the meanest annoyances were devised and ruthlessly carried into effect, while the strike-breaking couple marched with the set of their faces toward home.
Even the walls of their house could not protect them from the menace of the mob. One of the strikers rented the lower floor of their house, and one night, when we had followed them to the gate, he invited us into the basement, produced an accordion, and started a merry dance, which lasted well into the night.
The return of the swallows brought an end to the strike. We boys resolved to vote against a return, for the May days promised joyous outdoor life. But the men and women were broken in spirit and heavily in debt, and a return was voted. We had fought four long months and lost.