“Have they presented a demand?”
“No, signore. It came about in this way at the Ticinese Gate mill: Every Tuesday I make a visit of inspection there. I arrived as usual at 8 o’clock this morning. In the weaving department I noted a strange, brazen-faced fellow going from loom to loom distributing leaflets. I guessed that he was up to some mischief. Quietly I got a look at one of the circulars and saw that the rascal was sowing socialism in our own ground—under our noses, in truth.”
“What was in the circular?”
“Oh, it was a seditious, scurrilous, shameful thing. The heading of it was ‘To the Golden Geese,’ and it asked them how much longer they were going to lay golden eggs for Tarsis and his gang of conspirators against the poor. Tarsis and his gang! Those were the words, signore! Anarchism, rank anarchism!”
“And then?” Tarsis asked, glancing up while Ulrich paused for breath.
“I had the fellow arrested, of course. But not a word of protest had I uttered before. Ha! They all thought I was afraid to speak. While he was distributing the papers I telephoned to the Questura of Police. Quickly two Civil Guards came and nabbed him. Then what happened? Red Errico, foreman of a group of the weavers, began to cry out against me. He called me a slave, a tyrant, a jackal, all in the same breath. Think of it, signore. What ingratitude! You yourself will remember that it was I who appeared before the Board of Directors and asked that the wages of the children be advanced from twelve to fifteen soldi a day. And now they call me tyrant! The whole crew of them did it, and to my teeth, signore, to my teeth!”
“And then?” asked Tarsis.
“The ringleader and the men near him began squawking like geese and hissing. The whole room took it up. Red Errico started a cry of ‘No more golden eggs for Tarsis and his gang!’ and joining in this every man left his loom and made for the door. Most of them did not wait to stop their machines. They rushed down-stairs and at each floor called to the others to follow. Every man, woman, and child of them ran pell-mell into the yard as if the mill were on fire. All the time they hissed and shouted, ‘No more golden eggs!’ The rabble of the quarter came up, joined the strikers, and before I knew it every window was smashed. It was a taste of what we may expect from that man Forza’s preaching.”
Signor Ulrich perceived, not without a feeling of triumph, that his recital had moved Tarsis at last.
“I have heard enough!” he exclaimed, springing to his feet. “The Government is to blame. It has been too soft with these Parliamentary mischief-makers. As to the strike,” he went on, “come to me to-morrow, and I shall have some plan. Should the unions send a committee meantime, refuse them audience. Until to-morrow, then, Signor Ulrich.”