“If workmen were fairly treated, and given their due proportion of the product of their labor, there would be no strikes, and no brickbats, and no torches. Anyway, the idea of workers being awed or shot or bayoneted by the militia into submission to their capitalist employers’ terms, is so abhorrent to me that I don’t want to think of it.”
“There you go again, you wild-eyed anarchist! A fine militiaman you are! Threatening to compound felonies and protect criminals! You’d better——”
“There, now, Aunt Sarah, let’s call quits! We’ll never agree in the world. You come up to the armory to-morrow night and see me in my new uniform, and forget that I’m a bomb-throwing, king-killing anarchist.”
It was true, as Aunt Sarah had said, that there was uneasiness among the workmen employed in the Barriscale plant. The factory had never before been so busy. The company was not engaged directly in the manufacture of munitions for use by the entente allies, but it was engaged in the manufacture of implements and machinery for the making of such munitions. Among the men the rumor was current that the profits of the concern were enormous, and that the Barriscales and their associates were reaping great harvests of gold. They knew of no reason why they, in view of the sharp advance in the general cost of living, should not share in this prosperity. Wages had indeed been advanced twice since the advent of the European War, but these advances were merely a pittance in comparison to what they were entitled to receive if stories of the company’s profits were true.
However, the winter came and brought no strike. Men are not apt, in severe weather, to look complacently on disappearing jobs.
But when the late March days gave promise of an early spring, and new life began to stir the pulses of men as it stirred the heart of nature, the spirit of discontent awoke and crystallized into a demand on the officers of the Barriscale Company for much higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions of labor. The demand was refused. Next in order was an ultimatum to the effect that unless, by the following Tuesday night, the requirements of the men were substantially complied with, not a union man would be found at his post on Wednesday morning.
Benjamin Barriscale, Sr., shut his square jaws together, and told his board of directors that so far as he was concerned he would scrap the entire plant and go out of business before he would be black-jacked into submission to a lot of irresponsible union officials. And since he dominated the board and no one cared to dispute his judgment, the ultimatum was ignored and the strike was declared.
Both sides claimed to be confident of victory, and, as the contest lengthened, there was less talk of compromise, and the farther away appeared to be the day of settlement.
In the fifth week of the struggle a new element entered into the situation. Hitherto the management of the strike had been in the hands of labor union officials. They had held their men well in check, there had been little disorder and no rioting. But, from the inception of the trouble, organizers and leaders of the radical wing of the workers had labored among the idle men, quietly, insidiously, persistently, successfully. Now, having gained a firm foothold, they assumed management of the strike, and dictated to the company their own terms for reëmployment regardless of the demands made by union officials. Not only at the Barriscale works, but throughout the city, they made proselytes, and trouble. The discontented, the unthinking, the reckless, the foreign-born and unnaturalized, gathered under their leadership. Their logic was convincing, their philosophy alluring, their promises glittering; indeed, if they were to be believed, the day of labor’s redemption in Fairweather was at hand. The workers had only to persist in their demands and to block all resumption of work by any one until those demands were met, and victory was sure to rest on their banners.
Into this new, more aggressive, more bitter campaign, Hugo Donatello plunged with all of his accustomed vigor and enthusiasm. He believed in his cause. He did not see the ugly side of his propaganda. He was not at heart a criminal, he was a dreamer. And he dreamed that if the principle of the solidarity of labor, the international brotherhood of all who toiled, the distribution of all wealth to those who earned it by their toil, could once be established in this inland city of America, the benefit and glory of it would spread from this as a center, across the continent, across the ocean to bring peace to war-torn Europe; and the name of Hugo Donatello as chief propagandist of the new-old philosophy would be acclaimed throughout the civilized world.