James Oppenheim

“ At such moments Joe walked in a rarer air, he stepped on a fairer earth than ordinarily obtains. It was the beauty and loveliness of simple human camaraderie, of warm human touch. And at such times Joe had no doubt of his life-work. It lay in exquisite places, in chambers of jolly grandeur, in the invisible halls and palaces of the human spirit. He was one with the toilers of earth, one with the crowded underworld. It was that these lives might grow richer in knowledge, richer in art, richer in health, richer in festival, richer in opportunity, that Joe had dedicated his life. ”

“ Lissner had made an overstatement, and yet he had thrown a new light on the strike, and he had reminded Joe of his long-forgotten guilt. And suddenly Joe knew. All are guilty; all share in the corruption of the world—the laborer anxious for mass-tyranny and distrustful of genius, the aristocrat afraid of soiling his hands, the capitalist intent on power and wealth, the artist neglectful of all but a narrow artifice, each one limited by excess or want, by intellect or passion, by vanity or lust, and all struggling with one another to wrest some special gift for himself. ”

“ A new kind of woman! Joe remembered the phrase, and in the end admitted that it was true. Sally was of the new breed; she represented the new emancipation; the exodus of woman from the home to the battle-fields of the world; the willingness to fight in the open, shoulder to shoulder with men; the advance of a sex that now demanded a broader, freer life, a new health, a home built up on comradeship and economic freedom. In all of these things she contrasted sharply with Myra, and Joe always thought of the two together. ”

“ Joe understood not a word, but the burden of the speech was:
"Why should we strike? What for? For the cloak-makers? What have we to do with cloak-makers? We have troubles enough of our own. We have our families to support—our wives and children and relations. Shall they starve for some foolish cloak—makers? Comrades, don't listen to such humbug. Do your work—get done with it. You have good jobs—don't lose them. These revolutionists! They would break up the whole world for their nonsense! It's not they who have to suffer; it's us working people. We do the starving, we do the fighting. ”

“ Romance, led by Myra's hand, had entered the dusty printery and Joe began to feel like a youngster who had been blind to life.
Outside the world was blowing away on the gray wings of the twilight, blowing away with eddies of dust that swept the sparkling street-lamps, and the air was sharp with a tang of homesickness and autumn. The afternoon was quietly waning, up—stairs the hat-makers, and here the printers, were toiling in a crowded, satisfying present, and Joe stood there musing, a tall, gaunt man, the upstart tufts of his tousled hair glistening in the light overhead. ”

“ There was even a little hissing when it was announced that a committee of big men would see to the matter.
Joe had a dull sense of some monstrous social cleavage; the world divided into the rulers and the ruled, the drivers and the driven. He felt uncomfortable, and so did the throng. There was a feeling as if the crowd ought to have a throat to give vent to some strange, fierce fact that festered in its heart.
And then toward the end the chairman announced that one of the hat-trimmers, one of the girls who worked—in another hat factory, would address the meeting—Miss Sally Heffer. ”

“ It might be hard to imagine that far to the south in that moving human ocean, a certain Joe Blaine, swallowed in the sea, was yet as real a fact as the city contained—that to himself he was far from being swallowed, that he was, in fact, so real to himself that the rest of the city was rather shadowy and unreal, and that he was immensely concerned in a thousand-flashing torrent of thoughts, in a mix-up of appetite and desires, and in the condition and apparel of his body. ”

“ As he turned it out, Billy rushed it in batches to the compositors, and when finally it all came back in strips of type, it was hurried down to the idlers in the basement. At ten-thirty that chilly, dust-blowing morning, when the sun-stricken air glittered with eddies of motes, Joe, sitting at his desk, had the exquisite rapture of feeling the building tremble.
He rushed to his mother, and exulted.
"Can't you feel the press going? Listen!"
Truly the new life had begun—the vision was beginning to crystallize in daily living.
"We're in the fight now, mother!" he cried. "There's something doing!" ”