Comrade Yetta. Edwards Albert
All the quasi-tenderness he had felt for her earlier in the evening had gone. He wanted to break her. He cursed himself for the time he had wasted that evening. She would have gone anywhere with him a half hour before. His distorted brain was torn by strange emotions. Yetta had caught hold of the inner fabric of his imagination as no other girl had ever done. And, as is just as true of cadets as of other men, when they begin to care, they lose their sang-froid. He was suddenly afraid of losing her. He felt himself awkward.
His lack of ease was intensified by his strange surroundings. He had never been to a ball like this. He only knew two kinds: the flashy, vicious dances, organized by his own class, the kind he was planning to take Yetta to, and "Greenhorn balls" – sordid but equally vicious – in the back rooms of low-class saloons, patronized by ignorant, newly arrived immigrants.
The entry to the Lyceum Hall was packed with poorly dressed people, but they were not greenhorns. The women were the strangest of all to him. Their kind did not come to the balls he frequented. More than half of them wore shawls; they were of all ages, from fifteen to seventy. They were serious-eyed working women, and many of them looked hungry. He felt that his foppish clothes were conspicuous. He felt hostility in the stares of the men. He would have given anything to be among his own kind, on familiar ground.
Indeed he was conspicuous among that roomful of poorly dressed men. He attracted the attention of a couple who stood near the door, Mabel Train and Walter Longman. In a way they were as conspicuous as he, but the curious glances which turned in their direction were not hostile. Miss Train was secretary of the Woman's Trade Union League. Many of the women and girls, as they entered the room, rushed up to greet her. She was about twenty-seven, tall and slender. In reality her body was an almost perfect instrument. She was never sick, and rarely unpleasantly tired, but in looking at her one was more impressed with nervous than physical energy. She was more graceful than beautiful. Her face was too small, a fault which was emphasized by her great mass of brown hair. But her diminutive mouth was strong in line. Her eyes were keenly alive and unafraid.
Longman was over thirty, big of bone and limb. Although he strongly resembled a tame bear, he was a likable-looking man. And just as it surprised people to find that Miss Train was a hardy horsewoman, and could tire most men at skiing or swimming, so every one wanted to laugh when they were told that this lumbering giant, Longman, was an Instructor of Assyriology at Columbia.
"Look," she said as her eyes fell on Harry and Yetta, "he's a cadet."
The remark, and the matter of fact, decisive way she said it, was typical of Mabel Train. She knew the life of the East Side well enough to recognize Harry's unsavory profession at a glance, and she did not waste time beating about the bush of euphemisms. She never declared a heart or a club when she meant a spade.
Longman's eyebrows went up affirmatively, but he at once opposed the natural deduction from her observation.
"Now, don't you go butting in, Mabel, until you're asked."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"The girl's a stranger. I guess I've got a right to welcome her."
And with Longman lumbering behind her she crossed the hall.
"Good evening," she said to Yetta, elaborately ignoring Harry's existence. "I'm Miss Train, secretary of the League. What's your trade?"
But Yetta replied with a question.
"Didn't you talk to the girls at the Neighborhood House?"
"Yes. I gave them a talk on Trade Unions. Were you there? I don't remember your face."
Yetta started to explain how she had watched the meeting from her window. But suddenly she began to stutter; she saw Miss Train look at Harry, saw the scorn and contempt in her eyes. Yetta could not remember what she was trying to say. Some newcomers rushed up and interrupted them. Mabel Train felt that the short conversation had been a decided failure.
But to Yetta it had had immense significance. In the preceding months the Settlement had come to typify all the good things of life, for which she hungered. Like her cousin Rachel she "wanted to be good." The women whom she watched in the house across the street had seemed to her good, and also they seemed happy. Miss Train was of that world, she bore its stamp. And she did not trust Harry. Down crashed the dream into greater ruin. Yetta was afraid with Harry. Beside such women she would be safe. How could she escape?
A man on the platform clapped his hands for attention and asked the people to take seats close to the stage.
"Aw! Come on," Harry said; "let's beat it. This place is stupid."
"No," Yetta said with the determination of fear; "I want to stay."
BOOK II
CHAPTER VII
THE SKIRT-FINISHERS' BALL
Harry was right. It was a stupid ball. It was more of a strike-meeting than a dance. To most of the people the speeches were of more importance than the two-steps. As he followed Yetta, grumblingly, up towards the platform he realized that the crowd of workers, packing in about them, cut off all possibility of escape. He had not set out that evening with the intention of sitting on a hard bench and listening to "a lot of rag-chewing."
"Is this what you call fun?" he growled at Yetta.
But the crowd – so foreign to his manner of life – intimidated him. He sank into surly silence.
The first speaker was a nervous, overstrained Irish woman. With high-strung Celtic eloquence she told the story of the sweated. Her manner was almost lyrical, as if she were chanting a new "Song of the Shirt." Most of the garment workers in the audience were Jews, but although her manner of appeal was strange to them, the subject matter of her speech was their very life, and they were deeply moved.
The president of the "Skirt-Finishers' Union," who spoke in Yiddish, followed her. She told of the intolerable conditions of the trade: how the prices had been shaved until no one but girls who lived at home and had no rent to pay could earn a living at it; how at last the strike had started and how desperate the struggle was. The treasury was empty, so they could pay "benefits" no longer. Unless money could be raised they would be starved back to the machines – defeated.
Then a young Jewish lawyer, Isadore Braun, spoke. It was the ringing message of Socialism he gave them. All the working people of the world were victims of the same vicious industrial system. In one branch of industry – like "skirt-finishing," which they had just heard about – it might momentarily be worse. But the same principle was back of all labor. The coal-miner, the lace-maker, the farm-laborer, the clerk – every one who worked for wages – was in the same manner being cheated out of some of the product of his labor. Individually the workingman is powerless. When men or women get together in a union, they are stronger and can sometimes win improvements in the conditions of their trade. But if they would all get together in one immense organization, if they would also vote together, they would be an overwhelming force in politics. They would rule society. They could install a new civilization based on Justice and Brotherhood.
"Workingmen of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain!"
Dr. Liebovitz rose when Braun sat down. He was a smooth-shaven, amiable-looking man, but he spoke with a bitterness in striking contrast to his appearance.
"The bosses do more than cheat you. They're not only thieves – they're murderers! I'm a doctor. Day and night I go about through this district with a bag of medicine and surgical instruments trying to save the lives of people – men and women and newborn babies – who would never be sick if it was not for the crimes of capitalism!
"Tuberculosis! How many of you are there in this audience who haven't lost a relative from lungs? As I sat here a moment ago I heard at least a dozen tubercular coughs. It's preventable – it's curable. There's no reason why any one should have it – less still that any one of you should die of it – if Capitalistic Greed didn't force you to live in rotten tenements, to work long hours in worse shops.
"Unless you people who are here this evening – and all the working people – make up your mind to make it impossible for some people to get fat off your misery, unless