View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
Sam spat in the road. “I’ll tell you what I done. I was in ’Frisco on Bloody Thursday. I smacked a cop right off a horse. I was one of the guys that went in and got them night sticks from a carpenters’ shop that the cops was gettin’ made. Got one of ’em right now, for a souvenir.”
“Tha’s a damn lie. You ain’t no longshoreman; you’re a lousy fruit tramp.”
“Sure I’m a fruit tramp. Know why? ’Cause I’m blacklisted with every shippin’ company in the whole damn country, that’s why.” He spoke with pride. A silence met his assertion. He went on, “I seen more trouble than you can-heat bindle-stiffs ever seen.” His contempt subjugated them. “Now keep your eyes down them rows, and cut out all this talk.” They marched along a while.
“They’ll just beat you up worse, Al. I’m tellin’ you straight. They’ll knock hell out of you.”
“Well, I won’t care then, because I’ll be fightin’ ’em, see? But there I was, just runnin’ a little lunch wagon, an’ givin’ bums a handout now an’ then——” His voice choked and tears squeezed out of his eyes.
Dr. Burton touched him gently on the cheek. “Don’t talk any more, Al.”
“I’ll see you get an application card,” Mac said. And he continued, “By God, it’s funny. Guy after guy gets knocked into our side by a cop’s night stick. Every time they maul hell out of a bunch of men, we get a flock of applications. Why, there’s a Red Squad cop in Los Angeles that sends us more members than a dozen of our organizers. An’ the damn fools haven’t got sense enough to realize it. O.K., Al. You’ll get your application. I don’t know whether it’ll go through, but it will if I can push it through.” He patted Al’s good arm. “I hope it goes through. You’re a good guy, Al. Don’t blame me for your wagon.”
<3
Mac said harshly, “We can’t help it, Doc. He happens to be the one that’s sacrificed for the men. Somebody has to break if the whole bunch is going to get out of the slaughter-house. We can’t think about the hurts of one man. It’s necessary, Doc.”
“I wasn’t questioning your motives, nor your ends. I was just sorry for the poor old man. His self-respect is down. That’s a bitter thing to him, don’t you think so, Mac?”
“I can’t take time to think about the feelings of one man?” Mac said sharply. “I’m too busy with big bunches of men.”
“Yes,” said Mac. “That’s the trouble. It won’t do no good to show him. He looks so comfortable all the guys’ll want to get right in with him.” The doctor moved close and looked down at the coffin for a moment, and then he walked to a box and sat down. His big, plaintive eyes fastened on Mac’s face. Mac still stared at Joy. “He was such a good little guy,” he said. “He didn’t want nothing for himself. Y’see, he wasn’t very bright. But some way he got it into his head something was wrong. He didn’t see why food had to be dumped and left to rot when people were starving. Poor little fool, he could never understand that. And he got the notion he might help to stop it. I wonder how much he helped? It’s awful hard to say. Maybe not at all—maybe a lot. You can’t tell.” Mac’s voice had become unsteady. The doctor’s eyes stayed on his face, and the doctor’s mouth was smiling a curious half-sardonic, half-kindly smile.
Dr. Burton fell in beside Mac when he was clear of the bunched people. “You surely know how to work them, Mac,” he said quietly. “No preacher ever brought people to the mourners’ bench quicker. Why didn’t you keep it up awhile? You’d’ve had them talking in tongues and holy-rolling in a minute.”
Mac said irritably, “Quit sniping at me, Doc. I’ve got a job to do, and I’ve got to use every means to do it.”
“But where did you learn it, Mac?”
“Learn what?”
“All those tricks.”
Mac said tiredly, “Don’t try to see so much, Doc. I wanted them mad. Well, they’re mad. What do you care how it’s done?”
“I know how it’s done,” said Burton. “I just wondered how you learned. By the way, old Dan’s satisfied not to go. He decided when we lifted him.”
“This truck’s got me,” Albert complained. “The God-damned truck’s just about two-bitted me to death.” He looked sadly ahead. His lips scarcely moved when he talked. “When I’m workin’ and I get three dollars to the good and I get set to look me up a floozy, somethin’ on this buggy busts and costs three dollars. Never fails. God damn truck’s worse’n a wife.”
Jim said earnestly, “In any good system, you’d have a good truck.”
“Yeah? In any good system I’d have a floozy. I ain’t Dakin. If Dakin’s truck could of cooked, he wouldn’t of wanted nothing else.”
lol
At last the smile had faded from Bolter’s face. He said gravely, “The American nation has become great because everybody pitched in and helped. American labor is the best labor in the world, and the highest paid.”
London broke in angrily, “S’pose a Chink does get half a cent a day, if he can eat on it? What the hell do we care how much we get, if we got to go hungry?”
Bolter said hurriedly, “We don’t know anything about any vigilantes. But if the outraged citizens band together to keep the peace, that’s their affair. The Association knows nothing about that.” He smiled again. “Can’t you men see that if you attack our homes and our children we have to protect them? Wouldn’t you protect your own children?”
“What the hell do you think we’re doin’?” London cried. “We’re trying to protect ’em from starving. We’re usin’ the only way a workin’ stiff’s got. Don’t you go talkin’ about no children, or we’ll show you something.”
Bolter stood where he was. “I hoped you would listen to reason,” he said. “We have information that you’re being influenced by radicals, sent here by red organizations. They are misleading you, telling you lies. They only want to stir up trouble. They’re professional trouble-makers, paid to cause strikes.”
Mac stood up from his haunches. “Well, the dirty rats,” he said. “Misleadin’ American workin’ men, are they? Prob’ly gettin’ paid by Russia, don’t you think, Mr. Bolter?”
lol
[inspo for pano redbaiting in later sections]
London set a match to the tin lantern and hung it on the tent pole, where it cast a pale, steady light. Mac took up a position in front of Bolter, and his muscled face broke into a derisive grin. “All right, Sonny Boy,” he said. “You been talkin’ big, but I know you been wettin’ your pants the whole time. I admit you can do all the things you say you can, but look what happens after. Your health service burned the tents in Washington. And that was one of the reasons that Hoover lost the labor vote. You called out guardsmen in ’Frisco, and damn near the whole city went over to the strikers. Y’ had to have the cops stop food from comin’ in to turn public opinion against the strike. I’m not talkin’ right an’ wrong now, mister. I’m tellin’ you what happens.” Mac stepped back a pace. “Where do you think we’re gettin’ food and blankets an’ medicine an’ money? You know damn well where we’re gettin’ ’em. Your valley’s lousy with sympathizers. Your ‘outraged citizens’ are a little bit outraged at you babies, and you know it. And you know, if you get too tough, the unions ’ll go out. Truck drivers and restaurant men and field hands, everybody. And just because you do know it, you try to throw a bluff. Well, it don’t work. This camp’s cleaner’n the lousy bunk houses you keep for us on your ranches. You come here to try to scare us, an’ it don’t work.”