“Hum!” remarked Pap Brown, as he walked away.
That night there was a conference at the labor headquarters of the Executive Committee of the Federated Trades, and Delegate Brown was called upon to report.
“I find,” said he, “that these ten men have all worked at their trades somewhere, and our watchers say that they are good workmen; but clearly they have been hired more as fighters than as hod carriers or masons. I jedge, from what I hear, that there is an organized force behind them. They sleep and take their meals in old French’s building on Market Street, and don’t go out to the saloons, and we can’t very well get at them. Old French is as cunning as Satan, and he has fixed the job upon us, and put these men to work to bring things to a point. There is a big force of Pinkerton’s men in the city all ready to be sworn in as deputy sheriffs in case of a row, and I reckon it is put up to call in the soldiers at the Presidio and from Alcatraz in case of trouble, for the post-office building, where the men are working, is government property.”
“What action do you suggest we should take, Mr. Brown?” said the chairman.
Pap Brown rolled his quid from one cheek to the other, and then solemnly deposited it in the cuspidor.
“It won’t do,” he replied, “to monkey with Uncle Sam; my jedgment is to jist let them ten men alone.”
“But,” interposed a member of the committee, “old French will never stop there. Those ten men are merely the small end of a wedge with which he intends to split our labor unions to pieces. He will not give us the sympathy of the people by lowering wages, but he will put on scabs, a dozen at a time, and discharge our members, until the city is filled with new workmen, the unions broken up, and we can all emigrate to Massachusetts or China.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Pap Brown, “but violence to them ten men would simply be playin’ into old French’s hand. He has figgered for a fight, but we mustn’t give it to him.”
“We will carry out,” said the Chairman, “in a peaceful way, the resolution adopted by the Congress of Federated Trades.”
“That,” said Pap Brown, “means a gineral strike and an all-around tie-up, that’s what it means, jest at the beginnin’ of the buildin’ season, with our union treasuries mostly empty, and our brethren East in no fix to help us, for the coke strikes and the shettin’ down of the cotton factories and iron foundries this winter have dreened them all. I was agin that resolution of the Federated Trades at the time, and I’m mighty doubtful about it’s workin’ any good to us now. It was well enough for a bluff, but if we are called down we haven’t got a thing in our hands, that’s a fact.”