Harbor (9781101565681) (42 page)

Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first “strike feeling”—diffused, shifting and uncertain—was condensing as in a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of that mass thought and passion which swelling later into full life was to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great spirit of the crowd was born.

For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few moments, then sat down and were lost to sight—some to rise later again and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had made them rise and speak.

On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was no committeeman but simply a member of the throng.

“Yo' sand a spickair to my dock,” he said. “Pier feefty-two—East Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out.” He sat down breathing heavily.

“You don't need any speaker, go yourself,” an Irishman called from across the hall.

“I no spick,” said the Pole emphatically.

“You're spicking now, ain't you?” There was a burst of laughter, and the big man's face grew red. “You don't need to talk,” the voice went on. “Just go into your dock and yell ‘Strike!' You've got chest enough, you Pollock.”

The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of the hall.

“I want to say I strike my dock,” he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him, it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a glow of pride.

A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was so wonderful that no one could understand.

“Shut up, you big Swede, go and learn English,” somebody said.

“He don't have to shut up.” The voice of Marsh cut in, and the mass backed up his curt rebuke by a murmur of approval. He had risen and come forward, and now waited till there was absolute silence. “Everyone gets a hearing here,” he said. “We've got nine nationalities, but each one checks his race at the door. Every man is to have a fair show. What we need is an interpreter. Where's someone who can help this Swede?”

There was a quick stirring in the mass and then a man was shoved out of it. He went over to the speaker, who at once began talking intensely.

“The first thing he wants to say,” said the interpreter at the end of the torrent, “is that he'd rather be dead than a Swede. He says he's a Norwegian. His second point is that all bad feeling between nationalities ought to be stopped if the strike's to be won. He says he's seen fights already between Irish and Eyetalians.”

Up leaped an enormous negro docker who sounded as though he preached often on Sundays.

“Yes, brothers,” he boomed, “let us stop our fights. Let us desist—let us refrain. We are men from all countries, black and white. The last speaker came from Norway—he came from way up there in the North. My father came from Africa——”

“He must have come last Monday,” said a dry, thin voice from the back of the hall, and there was a laugh.

“Brothers,” cried the black man, “I come here from the colored race. At my dock I got over sixty negroes to walk out. Is there no place for us in this strike? If my father was a slave, is my color so against me?”

“It ain't your color, it's your scabbing,” a sharp voice interrupted. “They broke the last strike with coons like you. They brought you up in boats from the South. And you scabbed—you scabbed yourself! Didn't you? You did! You——of a nigger!”

A little Italian sprang up in reply. He did not look like a docker. He was gaily dressed in a neat blue suit with a bright red tie:

“Fellow workers—I am Italian man! You call me Guinney, Dago, Wop—you call another man Coon, Nigger—you call another man a Sheeny! Stop calling names—call men fellow workers! We are on strike—let us not fight each other—let us have peace—let us have a good time! I know a man who has a big boat—and he say now we can have it for nothing—to take our wives and children and make excursions every day. On the boat we will have a good time. I am a musician—I play the violin on a boat till I strike—so now I will get you the music. And we shall run that boat ourselves! We have our own dockers to start it from dock—we have our own stokers, our own engineers—we have our own pilots—we have all! And it will be easy to steer that boat—for we have made the harbor empty—we shall have the whole place to ourselves! Some day maybe soon we have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea—we stop all wars! So now we begin—we stop all our fighting—we take out this boat—all our comrades on board! No coons, no niggers, no sheenies, no wops! Fellow workers—I tell you the name of our boat!
The Internationale !
”

The little man's speech was greeted with a sudden roar of applause. For the crowd had seen at once this danger of race hatred and was eager to put it down.
The Internationale
made her first trip on the following day, and after that her daily cruise became the gala event of the strike. Both decks of the clumsy craft were packed with strikers, their wives and their children, and all up and down the harbor she went. The little Italian and his friends had had printed a red pamphlet, “Revolutionary Songs of the Sea,” the solos of which he sang on the boat while the rest came in on the chorus. A new kind of a “chanty man” was he, voicing the wrongs and the fierce revolt and the surging hopes and longings of all the toilers on the sea—while this ship that was run by the workers themselves plowed over a strange new harbor. I watched it one day from the end of a pier. It approached with a swelling volume of song. It drew so near I could see the flushed faces of those who were singing, some with their eyes on their leader's face, others singing out over the water as though they were spreading far and wide the exultant prophecy of that song. It passed, the singing died away—and still I sat there wondering.

“We shall have all the boats in the world for ourselves—and we shall be free! All battle boats we shall sink in the sea! We stop all wars! So now we begin!”

Was it indeed a beginning? Was this the opening measure of music that would be heard round the world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep compelling force was here—this curious power of the crowd that had so suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour into music the fire of its worldwide dreams?

I saw it seize on others. One day a young girl rose up in the hall. A stenographer on one of the docks, she was neatly, rather sprucely dressed, but her face was white and scared. She had never made a speech before. She was speaking now as though impelled by something she could not control.

“Comrades—fellow workers.” Her voice trembled violently. She paused and set her teeth, went on. “How about the women and babies?” she asked. “I know of one who was born last night. And that's only one of a lot. We have thousands of kids and old people—sick people too, and cripples and drunks—all that these lovely jobs of ours have left on our backs. They've got to be carried. Who's to take care of 'em, feed 'em, doctor 'em? If we're going to run the earth let's begin at home. What does anyone know about that?”

She sat down with a kind of a gasp of relief. Her seat was close to the platform, and I could see her bright excited eyes as she listened to what she had started here. For the crowd, as though it had only been waiting for this girl to speak its thought, now seized upon her question. Sharp voices were heard all over the hall. Some said they could get doctors, others knew of empty stores that could be had for nothing and used as free food stations. An assistant cook from an ocean liner told where his chief bought wholesale supplies. And the girl who had roused this discussion, her nervousness forgotten now, rose up again and again with so many quick, eager suggestions, that when the first relief station was opened that evening she was one of those placed in charge.

I saw her grow amazingly, for now I came to know her well. Her name was Nora Ganey. At home that night when Eleanore said, “Remember, dear, I want something to do that will let me see the strike for myself”—I thought at once of this work of relief. Eleanore would be good at this, she had trained herself in just such work. And it appealed to her at once. She went down with me the next morning, and she and Nora Ganey, though their lives had been so different, yet proved at once to be kindred souls. Eleanore gave half her time to the work, and these two became fast friends.

Before the strike Nora had sat all day in an office pounding a typewriter, several nights a week she had gone to dances in public halls, and that had made her entire life. In the strike she was at her food station all day, and each evening till late she visited homes, looking into appeals for aid and if need be issuing tickets for food. She heard the bitterest stories from wives of harbor victims, and she began telling these stories in speeches. Soon she was sent out over the city to speak at meetings and ask for aid. With Eleanore I went one night to hear this young stenographer speak to twenty thousand in Madison Square Garden. And the strike leader who made that speech was not the girl of two weeks before. Her life had been as utterly changed as though she had jumped to another world.

Through Marsh and Joe, in those tense days, I was fast making striker friends. With some I had long intimate talks, I ate many kitchen suppers and spent many evenings in tenement homes. But though by degrees I felt myself drawn to these men who called me “Bill,” when alone with each one I felt little or none of that passion born of the crowd as a whole. With a sharp drop, a sudden reaction, I would feel this new world gone. Its strength and its wide vision would seem like mere illusions now. What could we little pigmies do with the world? Its guidance was for Dillon and all the big men I had known. Often in those days of groping, knotty problems all unsolved, with a sickening hunger I would think of those men at the top, of their keen minds so thoroughly trained, their vast experience in affairs. I would feel myself in a hopeless mob, a dense, heavy jungle of ignorant minds. And groping for a foothold here I would find only chaos.

But back we would go into the crowd, and there in a twinkling we would be changed. Once more we were members of the whole and took on its huge personality. And again the vision came to me, the dream of a weary world set free, a world where poverty and pain and all the bitterness they bring might in the end be swept away by this awakening giant here—which day by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of mankind.

Was this another god of mine?

The great voice of the crowd—incessant, demanding of me and of all within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new free world regardless of all risk to ourselves—grew clear to me now.

I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the night—slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the habit of asking:

“How much can
we
do? How sane and vigilant can
we
be to keep clear of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?”

In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold meetings out on “the Farm.” There are many “farms” on the waterfront, for a “farm” is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as “the Farm,” and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by—in one of those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on.

From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the end of a soft April day, I saw the whole Farm massed solid with people. This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity over the piles of brick and sand and of crates and barrels dumped by the trucks, and out over the water they covered the barges and the tugs, and there were even hundreds upon the roofs of docksheds. The yelp of a dog was heard now and then and the faint cries of children. But the mass as a whole stood motionless, without a sound. They had stood thus since two o'clock, and now the sun was setting. To the west the harbor was empty, no smoke from ships obscured the sun, and it shone with radiant clearness upon eleven races of men, upon Italians, Germans, French, on English, Poles and Russians, on Negroes and Norwegians, Lascars, Malays, Coolies, on figures burly, figures puny, faces white and faces swarthy, yellow, brown and black. The sun shone upon all alike—except where that Morgan liner, still lying unloaded at her dock, threw a long dark creeping shadow out across the throng.