AND OTHER TALES
THE POETS’ STRIKE.
It was just three o’clock on a warm day in August, and the deep silence that prevailed in the Franklin Square Prose and Verse Foundry indicated plainly that something unusual had happened. The great trip-hammer in the basement was silent; there was no whir of machinery on the upper floors; and in the vast, deserted dialect department the busy file was still. It was only in the business office that any signs of life were visible, and there the chiefs of the great establishment were gathered in anxious consultation. Their stern, determined faces indicated that they had taken a stand and had resolved to maintain it, no matter what might happen. From the street came the faint sound of newsboys crying extras. By nightfall the tidings would be carried to the remotest corners of the town.
The poets of the Franklin Square Foundry had been ordered out on strike!
Well might the heads of the various departments look grave, for never before in the history of the factory had there been a strike in its literary department. Down in Pearl Street the poets were congregated in groups, talking over the situation and casting ominous glances at the great window, through which they could faintly distinguish the forms of the men against whose tyranny they had rebelled.