"Dad, we must hold together," she said. Her father drew her face down and kissed her silently. "The man who takes you away from me will have to answer with his life," he said.
"There is no one on earth who could," said Eleanor.
XXXVI
THE RIOT AND ITS VICTIM
It is a terrible thing for a man with a wife and children to see them wasting away with sheer starvation, to hear his babes crying for bread and his wife weeping because she cannot get it for them. Some men in such a situation drown their sorrow in drink; others take a bolder course, and defy the law or the rules of their order.
The Railway Company, still being forced to run their cars, undertook to comply with the requirement, even though the protection of the police was withheld. The police were instructed, indeed, to be present and keep the peace, and a few were detailed, but it was known to both sides that no real protection would be granted. Coll McSheen's order to the force bore this plainly on its face—so plainly that the conservative papers roundly denounced him for his hypocrisy, and for the first time began to side decisively with the company.
The offer of increased wages to new men was openly scouted by the strikers generally. But in a few houses the situation was so terrible that the men yielded. One of these was the empty and fireless home of McNeil. The little Scotchman had had a bitter experience and had come through it victorious; but just as he was getting his head above water, the new strike had come—against his wishes and his vote. He had held on as long as he could—had held on till every article had gone—till his wife's poor under raiment and his children's clothes had gone for the few dollars they brought, and now he was face to face with starvation. He walked the streets day after day in company with a sad procession of haggard men hunting for work, but they might as well have hunted on the arctic floes or in the vacant desert. For every stroke of work there were a hundred men. The answer was everywhere the same: "We are laying men off; we are shutting down."
He returned home one night hungry and dejected to find his wife fainting with hunger and his children famished. "I will get you bread," he said to the children, and he turned and went out. I always was glad that he came to me that night, though I did not know till afterward what a strait he was in. I did not have much to lend him, but I lent him some. His face was haggard with want; but it had a resolution in it that impressed me.
"I will pay it back, sir, out of my first wages. I am going to work to-morrow."