CHAPTER XXVIII
YETTA TAKES HOLD
But if Yetta did not think her work mattered very much, Isadore and Rheinhardt and Paulding and all those who had the welfare of The Clarion at heart thought very differently about it. Gradually she transformed the labor page into a vital force in the trade-union world.
Organized labor is fighting out the same problem in democracy which our larger community is facing. "How shall elected delegates be made to represent their constituents?" The rank and file of workers cannot attend all the meetings of their central organizations any more than we can spend all our time in watching Congress. Labor bosses, like political crooks, love darkness. Yetta, taking a suggestion from the progressive magazines, turned the light of publicity on the weekly meetings of the Central Federated Union. She made the Monday afternoon labor page a verbatim report of the Sunday session. Among the delegates to the C. F. U. there were many fearless, upright men who were as much opposed to gang politics as any insurgent senator at Washington. Yetta knew them from her old work and drew them into a sort of informal Good Government Club. Every day she tried to run some story dealing with this issue of clean politics. More and more the "labor grafters" denounced The Clarion, and more and more their opponents came to rely on it as their greatest ally. The percentage of "crooked" and "straight" among the unionists is about the same as in any church membership. The circulation grew among the honest workers – the vast majority.
Her influence was not confined to her own department. Her experience in the Woman's Trade Union League had made her an expert beggar; more and more she helped Isadore, relieving him of some of the burden of money-raising. This freed more of his time and energy for his page. He listened more docilely to her suggestions about bettering the style of his editorials – adding snap to them – than he had done when Paulding had tried to help him. The improvement was noticeable. During her apprenticeship under Mr. Brace Yetta had absorbed some of his "sense of make-up." Harry Moore often appealed to her judgment. In time The Clarion began to look almost attractive.
One day Yetta's old friend Cowan, the sporting editor of The Star, met her on the street.
"I hear you're working on this Socialist paper," he said. "How goes it?"
"I like it better than The Star," she replied.
"I've looked over some of the copies," he said. "You people aren't handling local news the way you ought to. Why don't you tear the lid off this Subway scandal? I'm not a Socialist. But I hate to see such good stories going to waste."
Yetta rather wearily went over the long story of their limitations. She had learned to recite it as glibly as Isadore or Paulding.
"It's too bad," Cowan said, as he left her. "I didn't realize you were up against it so hard. I sure hate to see some of these hot stories unused."
A couple of days later, Yetta received a long, unsigned typewritten manuscript. It was a well-written story of a session of the Public Service Commission. A witness had made a statement which seemed to offer the key to the whole situation in the tangled effort of the city to get decent transportation. A few more questions promised to bring out the fact – generally suspected – that a well-known banker was obstructing progress. The chairman had unexpectedly adjourned the sitting. When they reassembled, the old witness – the only one who had ever shown any willingness to remember important things – had left town. Then followed from official court records a list of the cases in which the Chairman of the Commission had served as personal attorney for the banker who was under suspicion. It was a wrought-iron story, hardly a word in it was not public record; chapter and verse were cited for every allegation. Yetta called up Cowan and asked him about it. He denied all knowledge of it so ardently that she was sure he had sent it. They made a screaming front-page story of it. The regular papers denounced it as "a malicious and audacious lie" – which was good advertising for The Clarion. More anonymous stories followed. They attracted a new class of readers. The circulation grew. Gradually Yetta and The Clarion found firmer ground underfoot.
Despite her strenuous work for The Clarion, Yetta did not lose interest in, nor neglect, her vest-makers union. She was not alone in her ambition to see all the garment trades allied in a strong federation. There were many Socialists in the various unions, and there were many who, while not party members, had been influenced by the propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World. As the months passed the sentiment for "One Big Union" grew steadily. At last, when Yetta had been about a year on The Clarion, a convention of all the garment trades was called to consider the matter.
The victory of Yetta's faction was by no means sure. Each union had its own ambitions, which it was loath to sacrifice for the common good. In all the unions there were little groups of "officials" – some of them afraid of losing their salaries in the proposed new arrangement, more who feared to lose their influence. A union man who is elected to the executive committee by his fellows has all the personal pride in the matter that a college graduate has in being on the board of governors of his club. The union man has the same temptation to resort to petty intrigues to hold his place. Officialdom always distrusts innovations – is always conservative. Working-men are surprisingly like the rest of us – especially in these little personal jealousies and meannesses.
There was also the hostility of the American Federation of Labor to overcome. Within that great organization the same struggle between industrialism and the old-fashioned craft-unionism was waxing more bitter every year. A bitter opposition was growing against the rule of Samuel Gompers and his satellites. No one denied that this group had done great service to the cause of labor – ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. But the younger union men – especially those most in sympathy with Socialism or the I. W. W. – said these "leaders" were getting old, that they were out of touch with the times. Naturally these leaders did not look with favor on the spread of such ideas.
Yetta and her friends saw at once that their only hope of success lay in appealing to the rank and file. So during the first days of the convention, while the official delegates were denouncing the principles of Industrial Unionism, Yetta spoke at noon factory meetings, two or three times each evening, and devoted almost all of The Clarion's "Labor Page" to the same subject. This is the secret of democratic politics. If the mass of the people can be stirred into watching and controlling their representatives, Democracy is safe. The mass of the garment workers believed in federation. They made their wishes heard even in the Convention Hall, – it is rare, indeed, that the will of the people control such assemblies, – and when the crucial vote was taken, the resolution of the industrial unionists was carried by an unexpectedly large majority.
For close to five years, Yetta had been working towards this end. At first she had been laughed at and snubbed. The victory made her wild with joy – but also she felt very tired. The meeting did not break up till after one in the morning. The last week had been a ceaseless rush. She felt that if she went to sleep she would not wake up for a month or so. It was important to have the story in the morrow's Clarion, and Isadore ought to write an editorial on the victory. She decided to go to the office, hammer out the "copy," leave a note for Isadore, and then go home to sleep with a clear conscience.
The elevator was not running at this hour, and Yetta had to climb up the six flights to the Clarion's loft in the dark. There is something eerie and weird about a deserted office. The feverish activity of the day haunts the place like a ghost, even in the stillest hours of the night. Although Yetta knew the room was empty there was a very distinct feeling that some one was there. She was not afraid of the dark, but it was a decided relief when, after much fumbling about, she found the way to her table and turned on the light. The electric globe hung low, and the light was so concentrated, by a green glass shade, that it shone glaringly on the table and typewriter, but did not illumine the rest of the room at all.
Once Yetta had a sheet of paper arranged in her machine, the feeling of weirdness left her, and soon the spirit of composition made her forget that she was tired. For an hour she hammered the keyboard without interruption. It was not till she had finished her "story" that the fatigue reasserted itself. She ought to look over the copy to make corrections. She ought also to write a note to Isadore about the convention and to say that she was going home to sleep a week. She stretched herself energetically to drive away the drowsiness and – unconsciously – her arms went down on the table, her head down on her arms, and she was hopelessly asleep.
Isadore was generally the first of the editorial force to come to the office. His "eight-hour" workday was from 4 A.M. till noon. On his way to the office in the morning he picked up the early editions of the other papers, clipped the news he wanted worked up for their afternoon edition, and got his day's editorial finished before the rest of the staff turned up. It was his theory that if he had an evening engagement, – a committee meeting or a speech to make, – he would sleep four hours in the afternoon. If he had work in the afternoon, he went to bed before nine. So he got in seven hours of sleep every day – theoretically. But it so often happened that he had work to do both afternoon and evening that the week was rare when he averaged more than five hours sleep a day.
He generally found the office empty when he arrived. But this morning a light was burning in the back of the loft – "the composing room." One of the linotypers, who was also a mechanic, had come a few minutes before him to repair one of the machines which had gone wrong, and so save the expense of bringing in an expert. It was a violation of the union rules, but this linotyper was a Socialist.
"Comrade," he said, when he saw Braun, "it's a crime. This linotype is worn out. I'm getting it so it will run again, but it's dead slow. And it'll break down again in a couple of days. It ought to be scrapped. It costs more to keep it going than the interest on the price of a new machine. It's uneconomic."
Isadore said he would talk it over with the executive committee. He made his way through the shadowy machines to the front part of the loft, which was by courtesy called "the Editorial Room." No one who has not experienced the expensiveness of poverty can realize how maddening it is to throw money away because you are not rich enough to save it. Isadore knew there was very little chance of buying a new linotype. He turned the end of a long bookcase and suddenly saw the light burning over Yetta's table; he saw her stretched out motionless across her work. He had never seen her asleep. With an awful sinking of the heart the thought came that she might be dead. He sprang towards her and called her name. In the semidarkness he upset a chair with appalling clatter.
Yetta, startled out of profound sleep, sprang to her feet. Her head struck the light, which hung low, broke the glass shade; the jar dislocated the fragile film of the lamp. In the instant before the light went out, the only thing which Yetta realized was that her surroundings were unfamiliar. She had never been so frightened before in her life. When they told her afterwards that she had screamed, she could hardly believe it. She could not recall having done so. The first thing she was conscious of was that some one's arms were about her and Isadore's voice was saying, – ungrammatically but convincingly, – "It's me."
After the hideous nightmare of fright, his accustomed voice, his strong arms about her, were utterly comforting. She told herself afterwards that she must have been partly over the verge of fainting, for Isadore kissed her and she made no motion – had no idea – of resistance. First, in the darkness, his hand had found the way to her neck and face; then she had felt the hot wave of his breath, – murmuring words which made no sense to her, – and then his lips on her cheek and mouth. She was never quite sure if she had kissed him back. Whether she had or not she knew she had been very close to doing so.
But the moment of forgetfulness had been interrupted by the linotyper, running towards them and asking the cause of the commotion. At the idea of an onlooker, Yetta disengaged herself from Isadore's arms – just in time. The linotyper turned on a light. Isadore tried to laugh.
"We scared ourselves nearly to death," he explained. "Comrade Rayefsky had fallen asleep. The sight of her scared me into upsetting a chair. That startled her awake. She jumped up so quick she broke the lamp."
The linotyper was a good fellow. He unscrewed a lamp from another socket and substituted it for the one Yetta had broken, and went decently back to his work.
Isadore seemed on the point of coming towards her, and Yetta retreated back of the chair.
"How stupid of me to fall asleep. We won out at the convention. I came down to write it up. I must have just started to look it over when I went to sleep. You'll have to grind out an editorial on it. I'll finish it up at once."
She sat down to her work.
Isadore found it harder to bring his wits together. But her movement of retreat had been like a blow in the face to him. It steadied him a trifle – but only a trifle. He had kissed Yetta. All these years he had loved her. Suddenly – utterly unexpectedly – the Heavens had opened. He had held her in his arms, he had kissed her.
The foolish idea came to him that he would like to look at his lips, which – after waiting so long – had at last found their goal. As there was no mirror in the office, this was manifestly impossible. But his hand – at least he could look at that – it also had caressed the beloved face. His hand was stained with blood. For an instant he was dazed. Yetta – her cheeks aflame – was bent over her work. A little stream of blood ran down her neck, where a bit of the broken lamp-shade had cut her in its fall.
"Yetta, Yetta!" he cried, "you're wounded."
"What?" she said in amazement. She had been preparing a crushing answer in case he started to make love again. The emotions that were tearing her were too violent to let her take note of a little cut.
"Look," he said, showing her his hand. "Broken glass. On your neck. Let me see."
Impressed by the sight of blood, she bent her head for the examination. But Isadore's ideas of treating such a wound were sentimental rather than scientific.
"Oh, don't. Please!" she protested, agonized by shame. She struggled up to her feet, but somehow she had forgotten the crushing retort she had prepared. "It isn't serious. It doesn't hurt. Please let me finish this work."
Isadore retreated before her distressed eyes.
"Wipe the blood off your lips," she ordered sternly.
Then she sat down again, utterly confused. It seemed such a stupid, inane thing she had said. It was all her fault, she unjustly told herself. If only she had kept her wits that first moment instead of being so childishly frightened. She felt humiliated. It took an extreme effort of will to turn her attention to the garment workers and the article she must correct. It would have helped if she could have heard the scratching of his pen or the rustle of his newspaper. There was not a sound from his desk. She did not dare to look around.
At last the task was finished. She put on her cloak and hat and wrapped the muffler about her throat before she found courage to look at Isadore. He was sunk down in his chair, watching her hungrily. She bit her lip at the sight and had trouble speaking.
"Isad – Comrade, here's the copy. I hope you can make an editorial out of it. It's awfully important for Organized Labor. – This convention has finished me. I'm dead tired. I'll take a vacation to-morrow – I mean to-day – and sleep."
Isadore did not reply. He just looked at her, a dumb plea in his eyes – which she did not want to seem to understand.
"So long," she said.
She was almost out of sight before he spoke.
"You'll come back? When you're rested?"
"Why, yes," she said. "Of course."
It was at least half an hour before Isadore pulled himself together and got to work. But the editorial which he wrote on the Federated Garment Trades was very creditable.
Yetta walked home through the dawn. She was very tired, and she tried not to think. But she could not free herself from the insistent question – "Did I really kiss him?" She looked at herself in the glass, just before she turned out the gas and went to bed. "Did I really kiss him?" she asked her reflected image. She got no answer, and, as though vexed at this silence, she spoke defiantly. "If I did, I'm sorry. I don't love him." This rather comforted her, and she fell asleep at once.
But when she woke up in the early afternoon, she felt worse about the night's adventure than ever. Very emphatically she told herself that she loved Walter. That had been La grande passion. No. Not "had been"; it "was." It was a treason to think of it as "having been." She had told Walter that love had no tenses, that it was "somehow eternally always and now and for ever and ever." Romance still dominated all her thinking. The books and poems said there could only be one real love. She was sure that her love for Walter had been real – hence, in strict logic, she loved him still and always would and could never love any one else.
Although she really believed this – wanted to believe it, felt that life would be impossible on any other hypothesis – she was beginning to realize that somehow the Romantic Explanation of Life does not quite explain. For the poets it was beautifully simple – either you loved or you did not love. It was the crudest sort of dualism. Things were black or white. The gray tones were not mentioned.
But while she did not love Isadore as she had loved Walter, he was certainly in a different category from all the other men whom she did not love. The men at the office, for instance. She was the best of chums with them; she respected them, admired them, liked them – and did not love them. But it was different with Isadore.
The hungry look in his eyes haunted her. The memory of his sudden, unexpected ardor – the rough vehemence of his caresses, his stormy outbreak of passionate tenderness – disturbed and distressed her. She had never taken him quite seriously before. She had deliberately, but unconsciously, refused to look the matter in the face. It is very hard to be sympathetic and just to a love we do not return. It had not occurred to her that Isadore's love was as painful to him as hers for Walter had been. That startling contact in the dark of the office had opened her eyes to the reality of his passion. What a mess it all was! Isadore loved her. She loved Walter. Walter loved Mabel!
The sun was resplendent, and Yetta – having promised herself a holiday – walked over to Washington Square and took a bus up to Riverside Drive. It was zero weather, the sun shone dazzlingly on the blanket of snow, which had given an unwonted beauty to the Jersey shore. Yetta walked up and down the Drive till the sinking sun had reddened the West with an added glory. It was not often that she had such outings. The crisp air stimulated her. She was happy with the pure joy of being alive and outdoors in a way she had not known since Walter went away. To be sure her mood was tinged with melancholy. She was sorry for Isadore. But less sorry than usual for herself. Somehow she felt less bitterly the appalling loneliness.
As she was going downtown in the dusk she noticed a poster of the Russian Symphony Orchestra. It offered a programme from Tchaikovsky. She had some neglected work she ought to finish up. She had barely enough money in her pocket for a ticket – and a hundred things she ought to use it for. But in a sudden daredevil expansiveness, she dropped off the bus, got a scrap of supper at a Childs' restaurant, and went to the concert.
Under the spell of the music she forgot all her preoccupations. Her intellect dropped down into subconsciousness. She did not think – she felt.
Music can be the most decorative of all the Arts – or the most intellectual. The trained musician, who knows the meaning of "theme" and "development," who can recite glibly all the arguments for or against "programme" music, who will tell you offhand in what year this Symphony was written, whether it is a production of the composer's "first period" or a mature work, cannot avoid bringing a large assortment of purely intellectual considerations – historical and technical – to the appreciation of music. But to the naïve listener, like Yetta, music is decorative. It appeals solely to the emotions. It is never interesting – it is either pleasing or displeasing. Yetta sat dreamily through the concert – half the time with closed eyes – and found it wonderful. There was too little chance for the play of sentiments in her life. Every waking hour she had to think. Tchaikovsky laid a caressing hand over the tired eyes of her intellect and showed beautiful things to her heart.
The next morning as Yetta went to the office she thought with some uneasiness of meeting Isadore. As usual in such matters she decided to face the affair frankly.
"Good morning," she said, going at once to his desk; "I'm sorry about what happened the other night. I was startled and bewildered."
Isadore knew that she had been taken unawares – that the kiss did not belong to him by rights.
"If there's any apology necessary," he said, "I'm the one to make it. I was as much startled and bewildered as you were. I'm sorry if you feel bad about it."
"We'll forget it," Yetta said.
Isadore did not look as if he were certain on this point.
They fell again into the accustomed rut of comradeship. Neither of them spoke again of the outburst. No one in the office noticed any change in their relationship.
But there was a change. Isadore could never forget that wonderful moment; he could never be quite the same. And Yetta – when in time the memory of it lost its element of excitement, when she got over being afraid that Isadore might begin again – found that she also had changed. The fact that Isadore loved her passionately had taken a definite place in her consciousness. She could not ignore this any more, as she had done before. In a way it made him more interesting. She did not for a moment think of marrying him – she loved Walter. But she was sorry for Isadore. They had this added thing in common – the pain of a hopeless love.
It seemed wildly unjust to her that she might not in any way show her sympathy to him without encouraging his love – making him "hope." She knew when he was tired and discouraged; she would have liked to cheer him. She sometimes sewed on a button for Harry Smith. She ordered Levine about severely. She did not like either of them half as much as she did Isadore, but she must not show him any of these womanly attentions. It was stupid and vexatious that just because Isadore loved her, she must be carefully and particularly unfriendly to him.
Paulding was raising Yetta's salary among his personal friends, and his check came to her directly without passing through the general treasury. Her work kept her out of the office most of the time, and it was not until her second year that she chanced to be at her desk on a Saturday morning. About twelve-thirty Harry Moore came in from the composing-room, where he had been attending to the lock-up. He leaned back in his chair and stretched wearily.
"About time for the 'ghost' to walk," he said.
"Not much of a ghost this week," the pessimistic Levine growled.
A few minutes later Mary Ames, the treasurer, bustled in. Her face was round and unattractive; she was short and had been fat, but her clothes hung about her loosely as though she had lost much flesh.
"It's a bad week, Comrades," she announced cheerfully. "Thought I wasn't going to be able to meet the union pay-roll to-day. Six dollars short. But the ten o'clock mail brought in twenty. Isadore went out and touched Mrs. Wainwright for fifty, and Branch 3 just sent in eleven from a special collection. So I've seventy-five for you. Who comes first?"
"Locke's wife is sick," Levine said mournfully.
"That's twenty dollars, isn't it?" Mary said, counting off the bills. "And you know Isadore hasn't had full pay for months. We must be a hundred and fifty back on his salary."
"Twenty-five to him," the stenographer said. "It'll give him a surprise."
"Surprise?" Levine said gloomily. "It'll give him apoplexy."
"That's forty-five gone," Mary said. "There's thirty left."
"How much do you need, Nell?" Moore asked the stenographer.
"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could get along with ten."
"Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons and ice-cream sodas."
"That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a dog's life."
"Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to Sherry's for lunch. – It's on me."
Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the office.
Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry.
"If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys."
She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards Yetta's desk.
"I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop – crying like this. You're always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm discouraged – rushing round all week begging money, and every Saturday morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed – that I haven't enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Saturdays. It's those two boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And – I know – sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the hole they sleep in!"
Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her cheeks.
"I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices – everybody selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of the other. It's hard for me to believe in this.
"I don't know much about Socialism," she went on. "I ain't educated like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world, and we're part of it."
Yetta put her arms about the older woman.
"I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It would go on just the same – if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry over a little baby – if it was mine. But not over this – "
She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words. Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry over.