The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-01-30
The Damned Agitator

SeN6uJu IL
be a bitter ash in the mouths of the men. For
funds were at an ebb scabs were coming in
like a locust plague, the company officials were
growing more and more militant in their self
righteousness, and the strikers themselves
were drifting into settled state of depression
and dangerous self-distrust Their solidarity
was beginning to show assures and aching
cracks.
All these woefu conditions beat in like a
winter sea on the tired brain of Kurelovitch
with the bleak morning light that walked him,
He lifted his throbbing head from the pillow,
looked about the dingy bedroom with his bleary
sleep-gazed eyes, and heaved long, troubled
sigh out of his pain.
At a meeting of company executives once
Kurelovitch had been denounced as danger
GUS agitator, whose pathological thirst for vio-
lence had created and sustained the strike.
"The man is a menace mad dog, whose
career ought to be stopped before he does
more mischief" said one venerable director, his
kind blue eyes developing pinkish glare that
would have Mortified the women folk of his
family.
''The scoundreps probably pocketing half of
the strike funds" declared another director
with plump rosy gills and full bald head
that glittered like sunset cloud, as he stunned
the long table with blow of his balled fist.
But Kurelovitch was not mad dog, and he
was not waxing fat with industrial spoils as so
many of the directors had He was really
TALL tragic, rough-hewn Pole, who had been
suddenly hammered into leadership by the
crisis of the strike, by reason of his unquench-
able integrity and social fire. He had Deep
blue burning eyes, rugged nose and NOUS
taches and his hands and form were ungainly,
work-twisted symbols of the life of drudgery
he had led.
Now he was thinking YEARLY of all the
thorny problems that would be heaped upon
him that day in the course of the strike. AS
he extricated himself from the bedclothes and
sat up to dress, the problems writhed and clam
Ored in his jaded brain for solution. For seven
weeks now he had risen almost at dawn and
had labored till midnight at the Titan task of
wringing fifteen per cent increase out of cap
italism for his fellow workers. He had grown
gaunt and somber and wise in the process;
skeptical of man and of god. He had seen
plans collapse, heads broken unjustly SEN
fences inflicted by corrupt judges, babies and
women starving. He had heard himself as
sailed as a monster by the other group, and as
weakling and tool by the more embittered Of
his own side.
His wife heard him sigh, and she called from
the kitchen, where she was already stirring.
There amt no coffee for you this morning,
Stanislaw she announced in sullen voice, in
which there was also anger and scorn., "And
there amt no nOthn else to eat only a few
hunks of old bread"
Kurelovitch stumbled YEARLY to his feet and
entered the malodorous kitchen. Greasy pans
and platters and sour garbage were strewn
about, and in an apaque cloud of smoke his
wife was lowering over the stove, their fourth
child mewing in the nest of her arms. She was
heating all the milk she had for the infant, and
when her husband came in she turned on him
with swift virulence.
mo, not taste of food in the house, damn
you," she spat. "And the kids went to bed
last night without hardly any supper"
"But it's not my fault, now, is it. Annie?"
the big man returned humbly as he went over
to her and put an arm over her shoulder She
cast it off with fierce contempt, and stood him
off with volley of words that were like poison
ed arrows, each piercing straight to his vital