The Walking Delegate Part 32

"Wonderful, ain't it, how quick news travels?"

Mr. Baxter disregarded Foley's look of mock surprise. "You seem to have failed utterly to keep your promise that there would be no strike," he said coldly.

"It was Keating stirred it up," Foley returned, calmly biting a bit off his cigar and blowing it out upon the deep red rug.

"You also failed to stop Mr. Keating," Mr. Baxter pursued.

"Mr. Baxter, even the best of us makes our mistakes. I bet even youse ain't cheated every man youse've counted on cheatin'."

Mr. Baxter gave another little start, as when Foley had slapped his shoulder. "Furthermore, I understand you, yourself, made the motion to strike."

"The way youse talk sometimes, Baxter, makes me think youse must 'a'

been born about minute before last," Foley returned blandly. "As an amachure diplomat, youse've got Mayor Low skinned to death. Sure I made the motion. An' why did I make the motion? If I hadn't 'a' made it, but had opposed it, where'd I 'a' been? About a thousand miles outside the outskirts o' nowhere,--n.o.body in the union, an' consequently worth about as much to youse as a hair in a bowl o' soup. I stood to lose both. I still got the union."

"What do you propose that we do?" Mr. Baxter held himself in, for the reason that he supposed the old relation would merely give place to a new.

"Well, there's goin' to be strike. The union'll make a demand, an' I rather guess youse'll not give up without a fight."

"We shall certainly fight," Mr. Baxter a.s.sured him.

"Well," he drawled, "since I've got to lead the union in a strike an'

youse're goin' to fight the strike, it seems like everything'd have to be off between us, don't it?"

Mr. Baxter did not reply at once, and then did not answer the question.

"What are you going to do?"

"To tell youse, that is just what I came here for." In a flash Foley's manner changed from the playful to the vindictive, and he leaned slowly forward in his chair. "I'm goin' to fight youse, Baxter, an' fight youse like h.e.l.l!" he said, between barely parted teeth. And his gray eyes, suddenly hard, gazed maliciously into Mr. Baxter's face.

"I'm goin' to fight like h.e.l.l!" he went on. "For two years I've been standin' your d.a.m.ned manicured manners. Youse've acted like I wasn't fit to touch. Why d'youse s'pose I've stood it? Because it was money to me.

Now that there's no money in it, d'youse s'pose I'm goin' to stand it any longer? Not much, by G.o.d! And d'youse think I've forgotten the past--your high-nosed, aristocratic ways? Well, youse'll remember 'em too! My chance's come, an' I'm goin' to fight youse like h.e.l.l!"

At the last Foley's clenched fist was under Mr. Baxter's nose. The contractor did not stir the breadth of a hair. "Mr. Foley," he said in his cold, even voice, "I think you know the shortest way out of this office."

"I do," said Foley. "An' it's a d.a.m.ned sight too long!"

He gave Mr. Baxter a long look, full of defiant hate, contemptuously flipped his half-smoked cigar on Mr. Baxter's spotless desk, and strode out.

Chapter XIX

FOLEY TASTES REVENGE

Foley's threat that, under cover of the strike, he was going to make Mr.

Baxter suffer, was anything save empty bl.u.s.ter. But twenty years of fighting had made him something of a connoisseur of vengeance. He knew, for instance, that a moment usually presented itself when revenge was most effective and when it tasted sweetest. So he now waited for time to bring him that moment; and he waited all the more patiently because a month must elapse ere the beginning of the strike would afford him his chance.

The month pa.s.sed dully. Buck had spoken from certain knowledge when he had remarked to Mr. Baxter that the contractors would not yield without a fight. During April there were no less than half a dozen meetings between the union's committee and the Executive Committee of the employers' a.s.sociation in a formal attempt at peaceful settlement. The public att.i.tude of Foley and Baxter toward each other for the past two years had been openly hostile. That att.i.tude was not changed, but it was now sincere. In these meetings the unionists presented their case; the employers gave their side; every point, pro and con, was gone over again and again. On the thirtieth of April the situation was just as it had been on the first: "We're goin' to get all we're askin' for," said Foley; "We can concede nothing," said Mr. Baxter. On the first of May not a man was at work on an iron job in New York City.

During these four weeks Foley regained popularity with an astounding rapidity. He was again the Foley of four or five years ago, the Foley that had won the enthusiastic admiration of the union, fierce-tongued in his denunciation of the employers at union meetings, grimly impudent to members of the employers' Executive Committee and matching their every argument,--at all times witty, resourceful, terribly determined, fairly hurling into others a confidence in himself. He was feeling with almost its first freshness the joy of being in, and master of, a great fight.

Men that for years had spoken of him only in hate, now cheered him. And even Tom himself had to yield to this new Foley a reluctant admiration, he was so tireless, so aggressive, so equal to the occasion.

Tom had become, by the first of May, a figure of no importance. True, he was a member of the strike committee, but Foley gave him no chance to speak; and, anyhow, the walking delegate said what there was to be said so pointedly, albeit with a virulence that antagonized the employers all the more, that there was no reason for his saying aught. And as for his position as president, that had become pathetically ludicrous. As though in opposite pans of a balance, the higher Foley went in the union's estimation, the lower went he. Even his own friends, while not abandoning him, fell in behind Foley. He was that pitiable anomaly, a leader without a following and without a cause. Foley had stolen both.

He tried to console himself with the knowledge that the walking delegate was managing the strike for the union's good; but only the millionth man has so little personal ambition that he is content to see the work he would do being well done by another.... And yet, though fallen, he hung obstinately on and waited--blindly.

Tom was now in little danger from the entertainment committee, for Foley's disquiet over his influence had been dissipated by his rapid decline. And after the first of May Tom gave Foley even less concern, for he had finally secured work in the shipping department of a wholesale grocer, so could no longer show himself by day among the union men.

During April the contractors had prepared for the coming fight by locating non-union ironworkers, and during the first part of May they rushed these into the city and set them to work, guarded by Pinkerton detectives, upon the most pressing jobs. The union, in its turn, picketed every building on which there was an attempt to continue work, and against the scabs the pickets waged a more or less pacific warfare.

Foley was of himself as much as all the pickets. He talked to the non-union men as they came up to their work, as they left their work, as they rode away on street cars, as they sat in saloons. Some he reached by his preachment of the principles of trade unionism. And some he reached by such brief speech as this: "This strike'll be settled soon.

Our men'll all go back to work. What'll happen to youse about then? The bosses'll kick youse out. If youse're wise youse'll join the union and help us in the strike." This argument was made more effective by the temporary lifting of the initiation fee of twenty-five dollars, by which act scabs were made union men without price. There was also a third method, which Foley called "transmittin' unionism to the brain by the fist," and he reached many this way, for his fist was heavy and had a strong arm behind it.

The contractors, in order to retain the non-union men, raised their wages to fifty cents a day more than the union demanded, but even then they were able to hold only enough workers to keep a few jobs going in half-hearted fashion. There were many accidents and delays on these buildings, for the workers were boilermakers, and men who but half knew the trade, and men who did not know the trade at all. As Pete remarked, after watching, from a neighboring roof, the gang finishing up the work on the St. Etienne Hotel, "The shadder of an ironworker would do more'n three o' them snakes." The contractors themselves realized perfectly what poor work they were getting for so extravagant a price, and would have discharged their non-union gangs had this not been a tacit admission of partial defeat.

From the first of May there of course had been several hot-heads who favored violent handling of the scabs. Tom opposed these with the remnant of his influence, for he knew the sympathy of the public has its part in the settlement of strikes, and public sympathy goes not to the side guilty of outrage. The most rabid of all these advocates of violence was Johnson, who, after being summoned to Mr. Baxter's office, began diligently to preach this substance: "If we put a dozen or two o'

them snakes out o' business, an' fix a job or two, the bosses'll come right to time."

"It strikes me, Johnson, that you change your ideas about as often as you ought to change your shirt," Pete remarked one day, after listening to Johnson's inflammatory words. "Not long ago you were all against a strike."

For a moment Johnson was disconcerted. Then he said: "But since there is a strike I'm for measures that'll settle it quick. What you got against smashin' a few scabs?"

"Oh, it's always right to smash a scab," Pete agreed. "But you ought to know that just now there's nothin' the bosses'd rather have us do.

They'd pay good money to get us to give the hospitals a chance to practice up on a few snakes."

Johnson looked at Pete searchingly, fearing that Pete suspected. But Pete guessed nothing, and Johnson went about his duty.

There were a number of encounters between the strikers and the strike-breakers, and several of these set-tos had an oral repet.i.tion in the police courts; but nothing occurred so serious as to estrange public sympathy till the explosion in the Avon, a small apartment house Mr.

Baxter was erecting as a private investment. And with this neither Johnson nor the rank and file, on whose excitable feelings he tried to play, had anything to do.

Foley's patience mastered his desire for vengeance easily enough during April, but when May had reached its middle without offering the chance he wanted, his patience weakened and desire demanded its rights. At an utterly futile meeting between the committees of the union and the employers, toward the end of the month, arranged for by the Civic Federation, the desire for vengeance suddenly became the master. This was the first meeting since the strike began, and was the first time Foley had seen Mr. Baxter since then. The contractor did not once look at Foley, and did not once address speech to him; he sat with his back to the walking delegate, and put all his remarks to Brown, the least important member of the strikers' committee. Foley gave as good as he received, for he selected Isaacs, who was nothing more than a fifth man, and addressed him as head of the employers' committee; and rather better, for he made Mr. Baxter the object of a condescending affability that must have been as grateful as salt to raw and living flesh.

But Foley was not appeased. When he and Connelly were clear of the meeting he swore fiercely. "He won't be so cool to-morrow!" he said, and swore again. "An' the same trick'll help bring 'em all to time," he added.

Foley had already had vengeful eyes upon the Avon, which stood on a corner with a vacant lot on one side and an open s.p.a.ce between its rear and the next building. Jake had carefully reconnoitered its premises, with the discovery that one of the two Pinkerton guards was an acquaintance belonging to the days when he himself had been in the service of the Pinkerton agency. That night Jake sauntered by the Avon, chatted awhile with the two guards, and suggested a visit to a nearby saloon. As soon as the three were safely around the corner Kaffir Bill and Arkansas Number Two slipped into the doorway of the Avon, leaving Smoky on watch without. Bill and Arkansas had their trouble: to find their way about in the darkness, to light the fuse--and then they had to cut off an unignitable portion of the fuse; and then in their nervous eagerness to get away their legs met a barrel of cement and they went sprawling behind a part.i.tion. Several moments pa.s.sed ere they found the doorway, the while they could hear the sputtering of the shortened fuse, and during which they heard Smoky cry out, "Come on!" When they did come into the street it was to see the two Pinkertons not twenty paces away.

Before their haste could take them to the opposite sidewalk the pavement jumped under their feet, and the building at their backs roared heavily.

The guards, guessing the whole trick, began shooting at the two. A policeman appeared from around the corner with drawn pistol--and that night Jake, Bill, and Arkansas slept in a cell.

The next morning, after getting on the car that carried him to his work, Tom took up his paper with a leisure that straightway left him, for his eyes were instantly caught by the big headlines sketching the explosion in the Avon. He raced through the three columns. He could see Foley behind the whole outrage, and he thrilled with satisfaction as he foresaw the beginning of Foley's undoing in the police court. There was no work for him that morning. He leaped off the car and took another that brought him near the court where the three men were to have their preliminary hearing.

It was half-past eight when he reached the court. As he entered the almost empty court-room he saw Foley and a black-maned man of lego-theatric appearance standing before a police sergeant, and he heard Foley say: "This is their lawyer; we want to see 'em straight off." Tom preferred to avoid meeting Foley, so he turned quickly back and walked about for half an hour. When he returned the small court-room was crowded, the clerks were in place, the policemen and their prisoners stood in a long queue having its head at the judge's desk and its tail without the iron railing that fenced off the spectators.

Tom had been in the court-room but a few minutes when an officer motioned him within the railing. The court attorney stepped to his side.

"You were pointed out to me as the president of the Iron Workers'

Union," said the attorney.

"Yes."

"And I was told you didn't care particularly for the prisoners in this explosion case."