Comrade Yetta

Yetta, having no idea how the powers of darkness were again closing about her, set out to work in the morning in high spirits – her face illumined by her new resolve. But her exaltation was short lived. Mrs. Cohen's lungs were much worse. All through the morning hours she struggled desperately with her cough. Mrs. Levy had seen the same thing so often before that she gave it no attention. But Mrs. Weinstein's merry eyes turned serious. And every cough tore at Yetta's heart. She was partly to blame. During the noon respite she and Mrs. Weinstein took care of the consumptive woman, tried to tempt her to eat with the choicest morsels of their none too savory lunches. Yetta urged her to go home for the afternoon and rest. But that was impossible. Goldfogle would "fire" her if she left, and she needed the job.

So when the short lull was over, the women took their places about the table. Hardly five minutes had passed when a paroxysm of coughing checked Mrs. Cohen's hands, and the work began to pile up. Yetta broke her thread, and by the time she had mended it Mrs. Cohen had caught up. Jake, hearing the stop, came to the door, but, seeing that Yetta was to blame, went back without speaking. Within half an hour Yetta had to break her thread again. But Mrs. Cohen was past the aid of such momentary rests. Before three the crisis came. She let go her work and dropped her head on her hands, horribly shaken by sobs and coughs. Yetta, feeling that she had helped to kill the woman, stopped her machine. Jake rushed out into the shop.

"Wos hat da passiert?" he demanded of Yetta, nervous and angry. "Did your thread break again?"

"No." Yetta stood up. "I stopped."

"Stopped?" he repeated in amazement.

"Yes. I stopped. It's a shame. Mrs. Cohen is sick and can't keep up."

Jake was only too glad to find some one else to vent his vile temper upon. He ran around the table and grabbed Mrs. Cohen roughly by the shoulder.

"You're fired," he shrieked. "I've had too much from you. You're the slowest woman here. Now you stop the whole table. You're fired."

"No, you don't, Mr. Goldfogle," Yetta cried, as excited as he was. "You don't fire her without you fire me too. See? Ain't you got no heart? She's killed herself working for you. You ought to take care of her now she's sick."

"Vot you tink?" he wailed. "Is it a hospital or a factory I'm running?"

"If it's a slaughter-house, Jake Goldfogle, I won't work in it."

The altercation had stopped all the work. The shop was strangely quiet. And Jake, his hope of success, his dream of love, trembling about his ears, could hardly keep back his tears. Suddenly he found voice and turned on the other women.

"Vot for do you stop? Vork! Vork, or I'll fire you."

And then coming up close to Yetta he said: – "You come vid me to my office. I vant to talk vid you."

"Why don't you say it here?" she asked defiantly. "I don't care who hears me talk. You got to treat Mrs. Cohen right or I'll quit. The other girls will quit too if they ain't cowards."

"No, no, no," he said, trying to hush her. "You come vid me, Miss Rayefsky."

She hesitated. She had expected him to rage and threaten her; his cringing manner disconcerted her. Anyhow it would give Mrs. Cohen time to breathe, so she reluctantly followed him into the dingy little office. He carefully closed the door.

"I've got sometin' to tell you. I. Vell – Yetta, you be a good girl und not make no trouble in the shop. Und ven de rush season is over, Yetta – I'll, yes, Yetta, I luf you. I'll marry you. You be a good girl und not make trouble, Yetta, und I'll marry you."

If he had threatened to kill her, Yetta would not have been so surprised. She was dumbfounded. And Jake, nervous, frightened, amorous Jake, took her amazed speechlessness for consent. He thought the magnificent generosity of his offer had overpowered her.

"Yes, Yetta," he drivelled on, "I luv you already since a long while. I vant to tell you, but the contract is zu close. I need you in the shop. You're the best vorker. It's only a few veeks now, Yetta. Ve'll be rich. Rich! I don't care if you ain't got no money. Ven I seed you first, Yetta, I luved you."

He grabbed one of her hands and tried to kiss her. The slap he received dizzied him.

"You come out in the shop, Jake Goldfogle," she cried, pulling open the door. "You tell them what you told me. What do you think the pig said to me?" she asked the surprised women. "You tell them, Jake Goldfogle, or I will. He wants me to marry him – after the rush season. He loves me so much he wants me to go on speeding for him – slave driving – till after the rush season. Oh, the pig! I'd rather be hustling on the street, Jake Goldfogle, than be married to a sweat-shop keeper."

Jake's temper was never very good; it had been torn by too many and desperate worries. To have his heart's dream thus publicly scoffed at, robbed him of his last shred of self-control. Giving tongue to an incoherent burst of rage and filth, he rushed at Yetta. She thought he was going to strike her. But she was too angry herself to be afraid.

"Don't you hit me, you brute," she screamed at him, shaking her own fists in his face. "I ain't working for you no more, Jake Goldfogle. See? I ain't one of your slaves any more. I'm a free woman. I'll have you arrested, if you hit me. And shut your dirty mouth."

Jake was cowed. His fist unclenched.

"You see what kind of a boss we've been working for," Yetta said to the other women. "He ain't a man. He's a pig! Wanted me to marry him – after the rush season. I've quit him and you ought to quit too."

"Shut up," Jake shrieked.

"I won't shut up. See what you've done to Mrs. Cohen. You've killed her, and now you want to throw her out. We ought to strike."

"Don't you talk strike in my shop, you – "

"Yes. We ought to strike. You know the dirty deal we're getting. Rotten wages and speed. It's because we ain't got no union and don't fight. We ought to strike like the skirt-finishers."

"Police! Police!" Jake howled, rushing to the door. "I'll have you arrested, you dirty little – "

"I don't care if he does have me arrested," Yetta went on more quietly after he had gone. "If he was treating us decent, he wouldn't yell for the police, when somebody says 'strike.' I ain't afraid of jail. I'm afraid of staying here on the job and coughing myself to death. I'm going to quit, and you ought to too."

"You're a fool. You're making trouble," the bovine Mrs. Levy said with conviction.

"No. She ain't," Mrs. Weinstein spoke up. "I guess my man belongs to a union. He's told me lots of times that us working people ain't got no other hope. It's the bosses what make trouble by cheating us. I'll strike, if the rest do."

"I'll strike anyhow," Yetta said. "I won't never work for a pig like that, asking me to marry him after the rush season."

"I'll strike vid you, Yetta," the girl said who had been to the ball. "My sister's a skirt-finisher. But the strike ain't no good unless everybody quits."

"I'll strike," another voice chimed in.

"All right," Mrs. Weinstein said. "We'll all strike."

"It's foolishness," Mrs. Levy protested, rubbing her trachoma-eaten eyes.

But the excitement had caught the rest of the women. And when Jake returned, hatless and breathless, with a phlegmatic Irish policeman, he met all his women coming downstairs. In spite of his frenzied pleading, the policeman refused to arrest them, refused even to arrest Yetta.

"I'll take your number. I'll report you, if you don't arrest her. She's been making trouble."

"Aw! Go on, ye dirty little Jew. I'll smack your face, if ye talk back to me. And you women, move on. Don't stand around here making a noise or I'll run you in."

But on the next corner the group of women did stop. Where should they go? What should they do next?

"Nobody'll go back to work," Yetta said, "unless he'll take Mrs. Cohen, too, when she gets rested."

"I won't never get rested," the coughing woman said.

"Oh, yes, you will, sure," Mrs. Weinstein said. But everybody knew she was lying.

The girl whose sister was a skirt-finisher and who knew all about strikes took down the names and addresses of the twelve women. Mrs. Weinstein promised to look after Mrs. Cohen. And Yetta started uptown to the office of the Woman's Trade Union League. And all the long walk her heart was chanting a glad hosanna. She wasn't a speeder any more. She could look free people in the face.

CHAPTER X

THE W. T. U. L

It was near five in the afternoon when Yetta reached the brown-stone front which held the offices of the Woman's Trade Union League. It had once been a comfortable residence. But Business, ever crowding northward on Manhattan Island, had driven homes away. The house seemed dwarfed between two modern buildings of twelve and eighteen stories.

In what had formerly been the "parlor," Yetta found a rather barren, very businesslike office. Two stenographers were industriously hammering their typewriters, but the chair behind the big roll-top desk was empty.

"Hello," one of the girls greeted her, hardly looking up from her notes. "What do you want?" "I want to see Miss Train."

"Sit down. You'll have to wait. Advisory Council."

She jerked her head to one side to indicate the double doors which in more aristocratic days had led to the dining-room. It was anything but a cordial welcome. To be sure the two girls were "organized." Miss Train had persuaded them to form a union. One was president and the other was secretary, and there were about six other members. They had done it to please her, just as they would have done anything to please her. Nevertheless they felt themselves on a very much higher social plane than mere shop girls.

Yetta sat down disconsolate. She had not expected to have to wait. She did not appreciate the overwhelming importance of an Advisory Council. In fact, she did not know what it was. And she did not think that there could be anything more important than the strike in her shop. In a few minutes her impatience overcame her timidity.

"Say," she said, getting up and coming over to the girl who had spoken to her. "You tell Miss Train that I'm here. It's important – about a strike."

"Humph," the stenographer snorted, "skirt-finisher?"

"No. I ain't a skirt-finisher. I work bei vests. It's a new strike. Miss Train'll want to know about it right away."

"What do you think?" the stenographer asked her companion. "Can't disturb the Advisory Council, can I?"

The two girls cross-questioned Yetta severely, but at last gave in to her insistence. One of them knocked at the double doors. They were opened from the inside a couple of inches and Mabel looked out.

"We've struck," Yetta cried, rushing towards her.

Mabel turned towards the occupants of the inner room and asked to be excused a moment.

"I'm very busy just now," she said as she sat down beside Yetta. "Tell me about it quickly."

The Industrial Conflict is not logical. At least it does not follow any laws of logic known to the so-called "labor leaders." It is connected with, actuated by, a vague something, which for want of a better term we call "human nature." And labor leaders are just as uncertain what "human nature" will do next as the rest of us. They will spend patient years on end organizing a trade, collecting bit by bit a "strike fund," preparing for a battle which never comes off or miserably fizzles out. In the midst of such discouragement, an unprepared strike in an unorganized trade will break out and with no prospect of success will sweep to an inspiring victory. Mabel had seen such surprising things happen a hundred times.

More than once, since her short talk with Yetta at the ball, she had thought over the possibility of organizing the vest-makers. But the project seemed to hold very little promise. The "skirt-finishers" had lost. She, with her hand on the pulse of things, knew it, even if the strikers did not. And here, once more, a new strike had broken out, just as another was collapsing. It might be only a flash in the pan, a quarrel in one shop. It might spread. She listened closely to Yetta.

Her eyes were also busy. She noted the peculiar charm of the young girl, the big deep eyes with their sudden changes from excited hope to melancholy sadness, her cheeks flushed with the impetuous enthusiasm of a new convert.

Mabel thought of the group of well-to-do women in the other room. She had small respect for most of them, none at all for some. It would have been a very complicated matter to analyze the reasons which caused these "ladies" to interest themselves in the cause of working girls. Some few of them had similar – if less forceful – motives to those which had led Mabel to give her life to the work. Some of them liked to be thought odd, and found in labor unions a piquant fad. Two were suffragists and were seriously interested in all organizations of women. There was one at least whose morbid instincts were tickled by the stories of desperate misery which circulated in the League.

Probably all of them had been somewhat influenced to seek election by the fact that Mrs. Van Cleave was on the Board – she might invite them to one of her functions.

She was a mystery to Mabel. She was very fat and very rich and a leader of the inner circle of "Society." She attended the meetings regularly, and never seemed to take the slightest interest in anything. Every January first she mailed a check for ten dollars. Mabel had never succeeded in getting any other money from her. But her social prestige was of unquestioned value – otherwise she was absolute dead-wood.

Mrs. Karner, the wife of a millionnaire newspaper owner, was the only one of them all who really helped Mabel. She was an intelligent woman and rendered efficient service along many lines.

It was a hard group to work with. The sincere ones were occupied with many other activities. It was difficult to get any enthusiasm into them. But the League could not exist without their financial support. Now that the "skirt-finishers" strike was ending in disaster, how could she keep up their interest, how could she persuade them further to open their pocket-books? Yetta's radiant face gave her a suggestion.

"Wait a minute," she interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. "There are some other people who ought to hear about this. Come along."

She led Yetta through the double doors into the committee-room. It was one of Eleanor Mead's achievements. The room had been extended to the back of the house. Along the sides were piles of cheap folding chairs. When they were put up, they would accommodate about two hundred. By the windows in the back there was a large flat-topped table and ten easy chairs in which the Advisory Council were comfortably installed. Above the table hung a great mezzatone photograph of the Rouen statue of Jeanne d'Arc. The room, all in brown tones, harmonized with it and the half-dozen similar portraits of famous women.

"Ladies," Mabel said, "this is Yetta Rayefsky. She has just come to tell me of a new strike in her trade – vests. We've finished to-day's business. And if you can spare the time, I am sure you will be interested in her story. Begin at the beginning, Yetta," she went on as the ladies nodded assent, "and tell us all about it."

Yetta was utterly confused. She had never seen so much fine raiment nor so many jewels. No one had ever stared at her through lorgnettes in the insolent way that Mrs. Van Cleave did.

"They are all friends, Yetta," Mabel encouraged her. "And if the strike is to succeed, we will need all the help we can get."

Thus prodded, Yetta began. The many books which she had read to her father as a child had familiarized her with good English. But in the last four years she had fallen into the mixture of Yiddish and slipshod English which is the language of the sweat-shop. Now she felt that she must speak correctly, and the search for words added to her self-consciousness and ruined the effect of her story. Mabel was just beginning to regret that she had brought her in, when in some sudden, inexplicable way all the excitement of the last few days came over Yetta with a rush and stimulated her as the wine had on the night of the ball. She began to speak simply, straight out from her heart. It was not an economic exposition of the industrial conflict; not even a coherent explanation of the strike in her shop. It was a more personal story. She wandered off from her main subject, told them about her father and the book-store. She told them about Rachel and Mrs. Cohen. She told them about Jake Goldfogle and his offer of marriage. Now and then Mabel asked a question about the conditions in her trade. God knows they were bad enough, but to Yetta such things seemed insignificant details; she was concerned with the frightful implications of poverty. Long hours and poor food seemed of small moment to her compared to the miserable meagreness of the life of the girls. To be sure they were hungry, but more awful was the fact that they were starving for sunlight. More than once she came back to Rachel and how she had "wanted to be good." Suddenly she stopped and turned to Mabel.

"Ought I to tell them about Harry Klein?"

The roomful of women – ease-loving, worldly women – also turned to Mabel to catch her answer. They had fallen silent under the spell of Yetta's simple eloquence. Some of them Mabel detested. It seemed almost sacrilegious to let this unsophisticated girl strip her soul naked before them. But she saw that Yetta was moving them more deeply than she ever could.

"It hasn't anything to do with the strike," she said after a slight hesitation. "You don't need to tell it – if you'd rather not."

"Please tell us."

It was Mrs. Karner who had spoken. Yetta had felt that she was the friendliest of all these fine ladies. She had found encouragement in her eyes whenever she had looked at her. So taking a deep breath, she plunged in.

"You see, it was just luck – if it hadn't been for luck, I'd have gone wrong – just like Rachel."

She began with the night when she had watched the Settlement dance from her window. With the wonderful cleverness of self-forgetfulness she made them feel how her heart had hungered for a little happiness; how, although she had wanted very much to be good, she had reached out her hands, pleadingly, toward the dream of joy. She made them understand how the deadening barrenness of the sweat-shop had made it easy for her to believe in Harry Klein, how he had come to her singing the Song of Songs – like a Prince in Shining Armor riding forth to rescue her from the Giant Greed. Even the fat Mrs. Van Cleave was crying behind her lorgnette when Yetta told of her first supper with Harry.

"You see," she ended, "it's mostly against things like that that we girls strike. We may think it's for higher wages or shorter hours, but it's because it's so hard for a poor girl to be happy."

Mrs. Karner jumped up and put her arms around Yetta and kissed her and cried against her cheek. "Ladies," Mabel struck while the iron was hot, "shall we support this strike? Shall we try to organize the vest workers?"

No formal motion was put, but Mrs. Karner, who was chairman, instructed the secretary to enter on the minutes their unanimous decision to aid the vest-makers. Mrs. Van Cleave nodded her head approvingly and volunteered to head a sub-committee in finance. It was the first time she had ever done anything but sit placidly in her chair. Then the meeting adjourned, and when the last of the ladies had left the room, Mabel gave Yetta a great hug.

"Oh, you darling," she said. "You even made Mrs. Van Cleave cry. It was wonderful."

And then without any reason at all, Yetta began to sob. Mabel installed her in one of the big chairs and sat down at her feet. "There," she said, "you cry as much as you want to. You've got a right to cry a week after a speech like that."

Resting her head against Yetta's knee and holding her hand, she lit a cigarette and began to think out the new campaign. Yetta's sobs wore themselves out quickly, and they began to talk. Mabel's grasp of details, her unexpected knowledge of the vest making, amazed Yetta. Mabel knew things about the trade which she had never dreamed of.

The two stenographers were called in. One was set to work on a volume of Factory Reports, preparing a list of vest shops. And Mabel instructed the other one to call up the Forwaertz– the Yiddish Socialist paper.

"What's your address?" she asked Yetta. "I'm going to ask Mr. Braun to come and see you to-night and write up the strike."

The question reminded Yetta of a new complication.

"I forget," she said. "I can't go home. My uncle's fierce against unions. I ain't got no place. I'll have to find one."

"That's all right; you come home with me to-night," Mabel reassured her. And turning to the stenographer, told her to ask Mr. Braun to come to her flat for dinner. She dictated letters to half a dozen different people telling of the new plans and asking them to come to the League rooms on the morrow. It was nearly seven when she and Yetta and the two stenographers left the office.

All the last hour, Harry Klein had stood impatiently in the dark doorway, waiting for Yetta to pass. As the last of the ebb tide flowed by him, he went across the street and told his followers that there was nothing doing. For two more nights he marshalled them, but Yetta did not pass that way any more.

His luck had changed. It was not long before his retainers noticed it. In due time a new president was elected to the James B. O'Rourke Democratic Club. And so he passes out of this story.

CHAPTER XI

MABEL'S FLAT

Yetta had no clear idea of what fairy-land should be like, but when she passed through the door of Mabel's flat, it seemed that she had entered it.

She had never dreamed of such beautiful rooms. Even a more sophisticated observer would have been impressed with Miss Mead's arrangements. Interior decoration was her profession, and she was more proud of her work in this humble apartment than of anything she had done elsewhere. Most of her commissions were for people who were foolishly rich, who were more anxious to have their rooms appear expensive than beautiful. There was nothing in the apartment simply because it had been high-priced. Nothing pleased Eleanor more than to tell how little it had all cost. She could talk by the hour on the absolute lack of relationship between pure æsthetics and money. One of her lectures was on this subject, and she used the apartment as a demonstration room. But to Yetta the forty dollar flat seemed a miracle of luxury.

The room which impressed her most with its appearance of opulence was the white enamelled, large-mirrored bath-room.

Eleanor herself was a vision of loveliness. Yetta had seen very few women with real blonde hair, and those few had not known how to wear it. There was a book she had seen as a child with a picture in it like Eleanor, but she had not thought that such women walked the earth. And her dress! It seemed to the little East-sider fit raiment for a queen. She could not imagine how it could shine so unless it was woven of spun gold. But it was not so costly as she imagined. The only real extravagance which Eleanor permitted herself in her quest for the Beautiful was the purchase of early daffodils.

Mabel got out one of her own shirt-waists and hurried Yetta into it. While she was changing her own workaday clothes for a fresh outfit, – hardly less gorgeous than Eleanor's, – they heard the maid admitting Isadore Braun.

He was a product of the Social Settlement Movement. Even as a little boy he had been bitten by the desire to know. The poverty of his family had forced him to go to work, but he had continued his studies in the night classes of a Settlement. His boyish precociousness had attracted attention, and some of the University men of the Settlement, impressed by his eagerness to learn, had helped out his family finances so Isadore could return to school. They had helped him through High School and into the City College.

During his sophomore year Isadore had joined the Socialist party. His conversion had been a deep and stormy spiritual experience to him. He knew it would shock and alienate his supporters. Caution, expediency, every prudent consideration had urged him to postpone the issue – at least till he had finished college. But the new vision of life flamed with an impatient glory. He could not wait.