“You'd better go and eat your dinner, George May,” she said, in her sweet, shrill voice. “First thing you know the whistle will blow. Here's yours, Ed.” With that she pulled out a leather bag from under the desk, where she had volunteered to place it for warmth and safety against the coil of steam-pipes.
“I don't believe your coffee is very cold, Ed,” said she.
The laster glared from one to the other jealously. Dennison went towards a shelf where he had stored away his luncheon, when he stopped suddenly and listened, as did the others. There came a great uproar of applause from the next room beyond. Then it subsided, and a girl's clear, loud voice was heard.
“What is going on?” cried Nellie Stone. She jumped up and ran to the door, still eating her pie, and the men followed her.
At the end of one of the work-rooms, backed against a snowy window, clung about with shreds of the driving storm, stood Ellen Brewster, with some other girls around her, and a few men on the outskirts, and a steady, curious movement of all the other workmen towards her, as of iron filings towards a magnet, and she was talking.
Her voice was quite audible all over the great room. It was low-pitched, but had a wonderful carrying quality, and there was something marvellous in its absolute confidence.
“If you men will do nothing, and say nothing, it is time for a girl to say and act,” she proclaimed. “I did not dream for a minute that you would yield to this cut in wages. Why should you have your wages cut?”
“The times are pretty hard,” said a doubtful voice among her auditors.
“What if the times are hard? What is that to you? Have you made them hard? It is the great capitalists who have made them hard by shifting the wealth too much to one side. They are the ones who should suffer, not you. What have you done, except come here morning after morning in cold or heat, rain or shine, and work with all your strength? They who have precipitated the hard times are the ones who should bear the brunt of them. Your work is the same now as it was then, the strain on your flesh and blood and muscles is the same, your pay should be the same.”
“That's so,” said Abby Atkins, in a reluctant, surly fashion.