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"It's not right, I tell you," little Hanover said; and from his

tone I was sure that he had already said it a number of times.
"Now that's going too far, Hanover," Bertie replied. "You fellows

make me tired. You're all open-shop men. You've eroded my
eardrums with your endless gabble for the open shop and the right

of a man to work. You've harangued along those lines for years.
Labour is doing nothing wrong in going out on this general strike.

It is violating no law of God nor man. Don't you talk, Hanover.
You've been ringing the changes too long on the God-given right to

work . . . or not to work; you can't escape the corollary. It's a
dirty little sordid scrap, that's all the whole thing is. You've

got labour down and gouged it, and now labour's got you down and is
gouging you, that's all, and you're squealing."

Every man in the group broke out in indignant denials that labour
had ever been gouged.

"No, sir!" Garfield was shouting. "We've done the best for labour.
Instead of gouging it, we've given it a chance to live. We've made

work for it. Where would labour be if it hadn't been for us?"
"A whole lot better off," Bertie sneered. "You've got labour down

and gouged it every time you got a chance, and you went out of your
way to make chances."

"No! No!" were the cries.
"There was the teamsters' strike, right here in San Francisco,"

Bertie went on imperturbably. "The Employers' Association
precipitated that strike. You know that. And you know I know it,

too, for I've sat in these very rooms and heard the inside talk and
news of the fight. First you precipitated the strike, then you

bought the Mayor and the Chief of Police and broke the strike. A
pretty spectacle, you philanthropists getting the teamsters down

and gouging them.
"Hold on, I'm not through with you. It's only last year that the

labour ticket of Colorado elected a governor. He was never seated.
You know why. You know how your brother philanthropists and

capitalists of Colorado worked it. It was a case of getting labour
down and gouging it. You kept the president of the South-western

Amalgamated Association of Miners in jail for three years on
trumped-up murder charges, and with him out of the way you broke up

the association. That was gouging labour, you'll admit. The third
time the graduated income tax was declared unconstitutional was a

gouge. So was the eight-hour Bill you killed in the last Congress.
"And of all unmitigated immoral gouges, your destruction of the

closed-shop principle was the limit. You know how it was done. You
bought out Farburg, the last president of the old American

Federation of Labour. He was your creature - or the creature of
all the trusts and employers' associations, which is the same

thing. You precipitated the big closed-shop strike. Farburg
betrayed that strike. You won, and the old American Federation of

Labour crumbled to pieces. You follows destroyed it, and by so
doing undid yourselves; for right on top of it began the

organization of the I.L.W. - the biggest and solidest organization
of labour the United States has ever seen, and you are responsible

for its existence and for the present general strike. You smashed
all the old federations and drove labour into the I.L.W., and the

I.L.W. called the general strike - still fighting for the closed
shop. And then you have the effrontery to stand here face to face

and tell me that you never got labour down and gouged it. Bah!"
This time there were no denials. Garfield broke out in self-

defence -
"We've done nothing we were not compelled to do, if we were to

win."
"I'm not saying anything about that," Bertie answered. "What I am

complaining about is your squealing now that you're getting a taste
of your own medicine. How many strikes have you won by starving

labour into submission? Well, labour's worked out a scheme whereby
to starve you into submission. It wants the closed shop, and, if

it can get it by starving you, why, starve you shall."
"I notice that you have profited in the past by those very labour

gouges you mention," insinuated Brentwood, one of the wiliest and
most astute of our corporation lawyers. "The receiver is as bad as

the thief," he sneered. "You had no hand in the gouging, but you
took your whack out of the gouge."

"That is quite beside the question, Brentwood," Bertie drawled.
"You're as bad as Hanover, intruding the moral element. I haven't

said that anything is right or wrong. It's all a rotten game, I
know; and my sole kick is that you fellows are squealing now that

you're down and labour's taking a gouge out of you. Of course I've
taken the profits from the gouging and, thanks to you, gentlemen,

without having personally to do the dirty work. You did that for
me - oh, believe me, not because I am more virtuous than you, but

because my good father and his various brothers left me a lot of
money with which to pay for the dirty work."

"If you mean to insinuate - " Brentwood began hotly.
"Hold on, don't get all-ruffled up," Bertie interposed insolently.

"There's no use in playing hypocrites in this thieves' den. The
high and lofty is all right for the newspapers, boys' clubs, and

Sunday schools - that's part of the game; but for heaven's sake
don't let's play it on one another. You know, and you know that I

know just what jobbery was done in the building trades' strike last
fall, who put up the money, who did the work, and who profited by

it." (Brentwood flushed darkly.) "But we are all tarred with the
same brush, and the best thing for us to do is to leave morality

out of it. Again I repeat, play the game, play it to the last
finish, but for goodness' sake don't squeal when you get hurt."

When I left the group Bertie was off on a new tack tormenting them
with the more serious aspects of the situation, pointing out the

shortage of supplies that was already making itself felt, and
asking them what they were going to do about it. A little later I

met him in the cloak-room, leaving, and gave him a lift home in my
machine.

"It's a great stroke, this general strike," he said, as we bowled
along through the crowded but orderly streets. "It's a smashing

body-blow. Labour caught us napping and struck at our weakest
place, the stomach. I'm going to get out of San Francisco, Corf.

Take my advice and get out, too. Head for the country, anywhere.
You'll have more chance. Buy up a stock of supplies and get into a

tent or a cabin somewhere. Soon there'll be nothing but starvation
in this city for such as we."

How correct Bertie Messener was I never dreamed. I decided that he
was an alarmist. As for myself, I was content to remain and watch

the fun. After I dropped him, instead of going directly home, I
went on in a hunt for more food. To my surprise, I learned that

the small groceries where I had bought in the morning were sold
out. I extended my search to the Potrero, and by good luck managed

to pick up another box of candles, two sacks of wheat flour, ten
pounds of graham flour (which would do for the servants), a case of

tinned corn, and two cases of tinned tomatoes. It did look as
though there was going to be at least a temporary food shortage,

and I hugged myself over the goodly stock of provisions I had laid
in.

The next morning I had my coffee in bed as usual, and, more than
the cream, I missed the daily paper. It was this absence of

knowledge of what was going on in the world that I found the chief
hardship. Down at the club there was little news. Rider had

crossed from Oakland in his launch, and Halstead had been down to
San Jose and back in his machine. They reported the same

conditions in those places as in San Francisco. Everything was
tied up by the strike. All grocery stocks had been bought out by

the upper classes. And perfect order reigned. But what was
happening over the rest of the country - in Chicago? New York?

Washington? Most probably the same things that were happening with
us, we concluded; but the fact that we did not know with absolute

surety was irritating.
General Folsom had a bit of news. An attempt had been made to

place army telegraphers in the telegraph offices, but the wires had
been cut in every direction. This was, so far, the one unlawful

act committed by labour, and that it was a concerted act he was
fully convinced. He had communicated by wireless with the army

post at Benicia, the telegraph lines were even then being patrolled
by soldiers all the way to Sacramento. Once, for one short

instant, they had got the Sacramento call, then the wires,
somewhere, were cut again. General Folsom reasoned that similar

attempts to open communication were being made by the authorities
all the way across the continent, but he was non-committal as to

whether or not he thought the attempt would succeed. What worried
him was the wire-cutting; he could not but believe that it was an

important part of the deep-laid labour conspiracy. Also, he
regretted that the Government had not long since established its

projected chain of wireless stations.
The days came and went, and for a while it was a humdrum time.

Nothing happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. The
streets were not so crowded. The working class did not come uptown

any more to see how we were taking the strike. And there were not
so many automobiles running around. The repair-shops and garages

were closed, and whenever a machine broke down it went out of
commission. The clutch on mine broke, and neither love nor money

could get it repaired. Like the rest, I was now walking. San
Francisco lay dead, and we did not know what was happening over the

rest of the country. But from the very fact that we did not know
we could conclude only that the rest of the country lay as dead as

San Francisco. From time to time the city was placarded with the
proclamations of organized labour - these had been printed months

before, and evidenced how thoroughly the I.L.W. had prepared for
the strike. Every detail had been worked out long in advance. No

violence had occurred as yet, with the exception of the shooting of
a few wire-cutters by the soldiers, but the people of the slums

were starving and growing ominously restless.
The business men, the millionaires, and the professional class held

meetings and passed resolutions, but there was no way of making the
proclamations public. They could not even get them printed. One

result of these meetings, however, was that General Folsom was
persuaded into taking military possession of the wholesale houses

and of all the flour, grain, and food warehouses. It was high
time, for suffering was becoming acute in the homes of the rich,

and bread-lines were necessary. I knew that my servants were
beginning to draw long faces, and it was amazing - the hole they

made in my stock of provisions. In fact, as I afterward surmised,
each servant was stealing from me and secreting a private stock of

provisions for himself.
But with the formation of the bread-lines came new troubles. There

was only so much of a food reserve in San Francisco, and at the
best it could not last long. Organized labour, we knew, had its

private supplies; nevertheless, the whole working class joined the
bread-lines. As a result, the provisions General Folsom had taken

possession of diminished with perilousrapidity. How were the
soldiers to distinguish between a shabbymiddle-class man, a member

of the I.L.W., or a slum dweller? The first and the last had to be
fed, but the soldiers did not know all the I.L.W. men in the city,

much less the wives and sons and daughters of the I.L.W. men. The
employers helping, a few of the known union men were flung out of

the bread-lines; but that amounted to nothing. To make matters
worse, the Government tugs that had been hauling food from the army

depots on Mare Island to Angel Island found no more food to haul.
The soldiers now received their rations from the confiscated

provisions, and they received them first.
The beginning of the end was in sight. Violence was beginning to

show its face. Law and order were passing away, and passing away,
I must confess, among the slum people and the upper classes.

Organized labour still maintained perfect order. It could well
afford to - it had plenty to eat. I remember the afternoon at the

club when I caught Halstead and Brentwood whispering in a corner.
They took me in on the venture. Brentwood's machine was still in



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