At the street door he found General Chick who was looking up and down the walk and apparently waiting for him. Chick had been for some months now in Donatello’s employ. He did miscellaneous work about the place, went on errands, washed type, delivered papers, put his hands to almost every task that a boy with a lop-shoulder and a crooked back could be expected to do. He was not overworked. Donatello treated him kindly, paid him living wages, and made a friend of him. All in all it was the best job Chick had ever had.
When he let McCormack in he closed and locked the street door before going with him down the dimly lighted hall to the printing-room. It was in this room that Hal found, in Donatello’s company, two men whom he knew by sight, but whom he had not before personally met. One of them was distinctly a foreigner; big, muscular, shrewd-eyed, with black hair hanging to his shoulders, and a large, loose, black tie floating from his throat down onto his breast. He was introduced simply as Gabriel. The other man, so far as appearance and accent went, was a well-to-do American. His name was given as Kranich. Donatello explained that they had come in from a neighboring city to assist the local leaders in bringing the strike to a successful conclusion. They wanted to know from Lieutenant McCormack what the attitude of the soldiers of the National Guard would be in the event of their being called out on strike duty. More specifically they wanted to know what the attitude of Lieutenant McCormack himself would be, in the not impossible event of his being in command of Company E on such an occasion.
Donatello interrupted the conversation at this point by asking Chick to go and lock the door leading into the hall. This was an important conference, he said, and it was not worth while to run the risk of interruption.
So Chick locked the door, and came back and sat down on a wobbly stool, by a dilapidated case, and listened, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to the discussion.
“You know it is our theory,” explained Kranich, “that the workmen are as much owners of their jobs as the employers are owners of their plants; and that they have as much right to prevent other men from taking those jobs away from them as the mill owners would have to prevent other capitalists from seizing their mills by force. What we want to know is, in case of an attempt by our men to resume their jobs, or to prevent other men from appropriating them, what your personal attitude would be if you were called out, as an officer of the National Guard, to prevent disorder. Would your guns be pointed toward us or toward our enemies?”
“I would,” replied Hal, “obey the orders of my superior officer.”
“Suppose you, yourself, were in command of the company?”
“I would do my duty as a Guardsman.”
“Exactly! And, what would be your duty? to protect honest workmen in their efforts to obtain possession of the tools of their employment, or to bayonet and shoot us at the behest of capitalists and scabs?”