“We will have a mail order strike here,” he said and went on to lay before her the details of his plan. He proposed that she, Frank, and some others of the striking girls, should go about town getting the names and the mail addresses of the girl strikebreakers.
“Get also the names of the keepers of the boarding houses at which these girls live and the names of the men and women who live in the same houses,” he suggested. “Then you get the striking girls and women together and have them tell me their stories. We will write letters day after day to the girl strikebreakers, to the women who keep the boarding houses, and to the people who live in the houses and sit at table with them. We won’t call names. We will tell the story of what being beaten in this fight means to the women in your union, tell it simply and truthfully as you told it to me this morning.”
“It will cost such a lot,” said the Jewish girl, shaking her head.
Sam took a roll of bills from his pocket and showed it to her.
“I will pay,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, looking at him sharply.
“Because I am a man wanting work just as you want work,” he replied, and then went on hurriedly, “It is a long story. I am a rich man wandering about the world seeking Truth. I will not want that known. Take me for granted. You won’t be sorry.”
Within an hour he had engaged a large room, paying a month’s rent in advance, and into the room chairs and table and typewriters had been brought. He put an advertisement in the evening paper for girl stenographers, and a printer, hurried by a promise of extra pay, ran out for him several thousand letter heads across the top of which in bold, black type ran the words, “The Girl Strikers.”
That night Sam held, in the room he had engaged, a meeting of the girl strikers, explaining to them his plan and offering to pay all expenses of the fight he proposed to make for them. They clapped their hands and shouted approvingly, and Sam began laying out his campaign.
One of the girls he told off to stand in front of the factory morning and evening.