“Are you talking of your projected strike?” she asked, shortly.
Not one of them spoke, but she knew by their assenting looks that they were.
“It’s a lovely time for a strike,” she said, dryly; “winter just coming on, and your wives and children needing extra supplies.”
The men surveyed her indulgently. Not one of them would discuss their proposed course of action with her, but not one resented her knowledge of it, or interference with them.
“You men don’t suffer,” she said, and as she spoke she pulled up the collar of her jacket, and took a few steps down the lane to avoid the chilly wind. “See, here you stand without overcoats, and some of you with nothing but woollen shirts on. It’s the women and children that feel the cold.”
One of the men thoughtfully turned a piece of tobacco in his mouth, and said, “That’s true.”
“What do you strike for, anyway?” she asked.
One of the stevedores who trundled the drums of codfish along the wharves for West Indian shipment, said, amiably, “A strike is usually for higher wages and shorter hours, miss.”
“Oh, I have no patience with you,” exclaimed Berty, bursting into sudden wrath. “You are so unreasonable. You bear all things, suffer like martyrs, then all at once you flare up and do some idiotic thing that turns the sympathy of the public against you. Now in this case, you ought to have the public with you. I know your wages are small, your hours too long, but you are not taking the right way to improve your condition. Because the Greenport wharf labourers have struck, you think you must do the same. A strike among you will mean lawlessness and violence, and you strikers will blink at this same lawlessness and violence because you say it is in a good cause. Then we, the long-suffering public, hate you for your illegality. There’s the strong arm of the law held equally over employers and employed. Why don’t you appeal to that? If you are right, that arm will strike your oppressors. You can keep in the background.”
“There’s a machine back of that arm,” said a red-haired man, gloomily, “and, anyway, there ain’t a law standing to cover our case.”