The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1920-12-31
Things Heard in the
Employment Bureau
lRv MARY HEATON NORSEN

"a
America on East Tenth Street, New
York, groups of women gather every
morning. There are bare headed
women, and smart, well dressed
women, who look as if they had just
stepped off Fifth Avenue. In the
same room Sicilian peasants meet and
talk with advanced workers of Tuscan
descent.
Labor contests are lost and won in
such little groups. Put a dozen of
them together and you have the tenn
per of the people. 1t is not what
people shout for in big meetings that
always counts most, it's what they
say at homes or among themselves in
slack moments on gray, rainy morn
ings, waiting in the employment
bureau.
Out of the murmur and talk a
voice cuts with corroding sharpness
children! l haven't any children!
Children break strikes. The work.
er's children make it easy for the en-
ployers to tramp US. The workers
are afraid because they are afraid for
their children. Look at our Sicilian
women who haveIa baby every year.
How terrible a strike is for them!
Babies are scab makers and strike
breakers for a worker! I'll not have
babies to live wretched like me! Let
the rich people have the children Let
the employers children do the work."
The revolt in this woman was
hot blue flame. 1t never went out
1t was a spirit like this that had
taken the factories in Italy. With
that example before her, what
scorn she had for the American
workers.
"The people in this country lie
down for the bosses to walk on. My
husband he's just back from Italy.
The workers here make me ashamed
when a policeman waves a club at
crowd they run; there it takes so
guards to capture 80 workers"
Three comedy pleasant looking girls
were standing together and she chal-
lenged them.
"How's your shop standing. What
are You going to do?"
We've will do what the union
says" they answered. They had no
initiative. They were not fighters.
They were good solid union girls
though.
"Do what the union says If
thought anyone should go back on the
union in my shop-if ! thought that
but they won't"
A slender girl in black had been
sitting by herself. She was straight
as a lance with distinction in every
line of her. She Joined US now.
"a strike is no new thing for me-"
she said. "We have been on strike
for nine months in my shop" Then
she added as if it were on after
thought. "My husband is sick and
I am supporting him and my two
children"
GLOW do you make QUIZ"
ooh, get odd jobs here and there.
We have to go through such things,
you see, to hold what we have won,"
she explained.
Behind her quiet there was an in
tensity of conviction that carried
further than emphasis. "You know
what we used to make?" She ap-
pealed to the bare headed woman sit
ting by the wall. Little by little
they'll try to get us back to the old
wages. If we don't stand solid now"
The three peasant women nodded.
"The union has made things bet
ter" they said gravely.
They sat against the wall in at
titudes of immemorial patience. Their
faces were wrinkled and their sad
eyes looked ahead at nothing. There
was i'll them no revolt, only the age
old acquiescence of the doWn-trodden
to things as they are.
The young girl with them was as
patient as the older women. America
had not touched her. She, like the
older ones, was bare-headed She had
a gentle and submissive air, as of
woman who has never asked herself
disquieting questions about life on
it's eternal injustice.
These were the women on whom
the lockout presses heaviest; they're
most easily bullied, the most defense
less. They knew little about Amer
lea. A civilization separated them
from the fiery woman from the north
who talked of Russia and looked for
ward to an Italy that was industr;ally
free. But they knew one thing and
that was what the Amalgamated had
done for them.
1t is in meeting like this that the
Amalgamated spirit-in other words
lidarity-shows itself. Here in this
intimate gossip you hear the real
spirit of the workers. Here at
o'clock in the morning they are led
away by no oratory; the stark real
tiles stare them in the face, here they
voice daily their unalterable decision:
eve will never go back to the old
slavery"