Nobody’l
l share his slightest care,
He classes with thugs and crooks.
Thriftiness has become a crime,
So spend everything you earn;
We’re living now in a funny time,
When money is made to burn.”
M
ary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable
signals of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying
on an apron, washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher
of steaming beer from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked
and talked about the coming strike.
“It oughta come years ago,” was Bert’s dictum. “It can’t come any
too quick now to suit me, but it’s too late. We’re beaten thumbs
donn. Here’s where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the
neck, ker-whop!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely,
began to counsel. “Organized labor’s gettin’ stronger every day.
Why, I can remember when there wasn’t any unions in California,
Look at us now–wages, an’ hours, an’ everything.”
“You talk like an organizer,” Bert sneered, “shovin’ the bull con
on the boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won’t
buy as much now as unorganized wages used to buy. They’ve got us
whipsawed. Look at Frisco, the labor leaders doin’ dirtier
polities than the old parties, pawin’ an’ squabblin’ over graft,
an’ goin’ to San Quentin, while–what are the Frisco carpenters
doin’? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown, if you listen to all
you hear you’ll hear that every Frisco carpenter is union an’
gettin’ full union wages. Do you believe it? It’s a damn lie.
There ain’t a carpenter that don’t rebate his wages Saturday
night to the contractor. An’ that’s your buildin’ trades in San
Francisco, while the leaders are makin’ trips to Europe on the
earnings of the tenderloin–when they ain’t coughing it up to the
lawyers to get out of wearin’ stripes.”
“That’s all right,” Tom concurred. “Nobody’s denyin’ it. The
trouble is labor ain’t quite got its eyes open. It ought to play
politics, but the politics ought to be the right kind.”
“S
ocialism, eh?” Bert caught him up with scorn. “Wouldn’t they
sell us out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?”
“Get men that are honest,” Billy said. “That’s the whole trouble.
Not that I stand for socialism. I don’t. All our folks was a long
time in America, an’ I for one won’t stand for a lot of fat
Germans an’ greasy Russian Jews tellin’ me how to run my country
when they can’t speak English yet.”
“Your country!” Bert cried. “Why, you bonehead, you ain’t got a
country. That’s a fairy story the grafters shove at you every
time they want to rob you some more.”
“But don’t vote for the grafters,” Billy contended. “If we
selected honest men we’d get honest treatment.”
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