She started away and he cried after her, “Come to Belgian Hall to-night–we may need you there. The strike committee and the leader of each seven will be there. It will be a war council.”
Out to the works went Laura Van Dorn. Mounted policemen or mounted deputies or mounted militiamen stood at every gate. As the strike-breakers came out they were surrounded by the officers of the law, who marched away with the strangers. The strikers followed, calling upon their fellow workers, stretching out pleading arms to them and at corners where the strikers were gathered in any considerable numbers, the guards rode into the crowd waving their whips. At a corner near the Park a woman stepped from the crowd and cried to the officers:
“That’s my boy in there–I’ve got a right to talk to him.”
She started to crowd between the horses, and the policemen thrust her back.
“Karl–Karl,” she cried, “you come out of there; what would papa say–and you a scab.”
She lifted her arms beseechingly and started toward the youth. A policeman cursed her and felled her with a club.
She lay bleeding on the street, and the strikers stood by and ground their teeth. Laura Van Dorn stooped over the woman, picked her up and helped her to walk home. But as she turned away she saw five men walk out of the ranks of the strike-breakers and join the men on the corner. A cheer went up, and two more came.
Belgian Hall was filled with workers that night–men and women. In front of the stage at a long table sat the strike committee. Before them sat the delegates from the 558various “locals” and the leaders of the sevens. A thousand men and women filled the hall–men and women from every quarter of the globe. That night they had decided to admit the Jews from the Magnus paint works–the Jews whom the Russians scorned, and the Lettish people distrusted. Behind all of the delegates in a solid row around the wall stood the police, watching Grant Adams. He did not sit with the strike committee but worked his way through the crowd, talking to a group here and encouraging a man or woman there–but always restless, always fearing trouble. It was nine o’clock when the meeting opened by singing “The International.” It was sung in twenty tongues, but the chorus swelled up and men and women wept as they sang.
“Oh, the Brotherhood of men
Shall be the human race.”
Then the delegates reported. A Greek woman told how she had been chased by men on horseback through the woods, in the Park. A Polack man showed a torn hand that had come under an ax-handle. A Frenchman told how he had been pursued by a horseman while going for medicine for his sick child. A Portuguese told how he had brought from the ranks of the strike-breakers a big fellow worker whom he knew in New Jersey. The Germans reported that every one of their men in the Valley was out and working in his garden. Over and over young girls told of insults they had received. A mania of brutality seemed to have spread through the officers of the law. A Scotch miner’s daughter showed a tear in her dress made by a soldier’s bayonet–