During the morning he went into the grocery store on the corner, a saloon in the neighbourhood, and returned to the barber shop talking to men of the strike. He ate his lunch alone, still thinking of the three girls patiently walking up and down before the stairway. Their ceaseless walking seemed to him a useless waste of energy.
“They should be doing something more definite,” he thought.
After lunch he joined the soft-eyed Jewish girl and together they walked along the street talking of the strike.
“You cannot win this strike by just calling nasty names,” he said. “I do not like that ‘dirty scab’ sticker Frank had in his pocket. It cannot help you and only antagonises the girls who have taken your places. Here in this part of town the people want to see you win. I have talked to the men who come into the saloon and the barber shop across the street and you already have their sympathy. You want to get the sympathy of the girls who have taken your places. Calling them dirty scabs only makes martyrs of them. Did the yellow-haired girl call you a name this morning?”
The Jewish girl looked at Sam and laughed bitterly.
“Rather; she called me a loud-mouthed street walker.”
They continued their walk along the street, across the railroad track and a bridge, and into a quiet residence street. Carriages stood at the curb before the houses, and pointing to these and to the well-kept houses Sam said, “Men have bought these things for their women.”
A shadow fell across the girl’s face.
“I suppose all of us want what these women have,” she answered. “We do not really want to fight and to stand on our own feet, not when we know the world. What a woman really wants is a man,” she added shortly.
Sam began talking and told her of a plan that had come into his mind. He had remembered how Jack Prince and Morrison used to talk about the appeal of the direct personal letter and how effectively it was used by mail order houses.