Comrade Yetta Part 23

There is something grotesque about most large public meetings. Very rarely a speaker gets the feeling, at his first glance over the upturned faces, that there is some cohesion in the a.s.sembly, some unity. He realizes that they have come together from their various walks of life, their factories and counting-houses, because of some dominant idea. It is then his easy task, if he is anything of an orator, to catch the keynote of the a.s.sembly and carry his hearers where he will.

It was not such an audience which gathered that night at Carnegie Hall.

After Walter had given a quick glance from the door of the dressing-room over the ma.s.s on the floor, the circle of boxes, and the packed tiers of balconies, he turned to Mabel.

"The people in the boxes," he said, "have come to stare at Yetta, and the rest to stare at them."

"Don't tell her that, for goodness' sake," Mabel said.

But Yetta saw it herself. For the first time she had a sort of stage-fright as she peeked out at them. The people in the boxes irritated her. She had talked to that kind of women before, and they had only given a few dollars. She wondered how many of them had been to Bryn Mawr.

Mabel called Yetta from the doorway to introduce the Rev. Dunham Denning, the rector of Mrs. Van Cleave's church, who was to act as chairman. And then she was presented to an honorable gentleman named Crossman, who had once been a cabinet member and had gray hair, and a wart on his nose. These two elderly gentlemen embarra.s.sed Yetta very much by their courtly attentions. She did not have the slightest idea what to say to them.

When at last the speakers stepped out on the platform, there was a break of polite hand-clapping from the auditorium and a perfect storm of applause from the back of the stage. Yetta turned in surprise to find that banks of seats had been put up and that they were closely packed with her own vest-makers. She had not seen them from the door of the dressing-room. She stopped stock-still with tears in her eyes. Mabel had to pull her sleeve to get her to come forward and acknowledge the greeting of the main audience.

But the noise behind her had shaken Yetta out of the la.s.situde which the sight of the well-dressed, complacent people of the boxes had given her.

She must do her best. She felt herself very small and the thing she wanted to say very big. She pulled her chair close to Mabel's and slipped her hand into that of her friend.

The Rev. Dunham Denning in a very scholarly way reminded the audience of several things which the Christ had said about the neighbors and which he--the reverend gentleman--feared were too often forgot. He introduced the Honorable Mr. Crossman, who was known to all for his distinguished services in the nation's business, his justly famed philanthropies, and his active work in the Civic Federation, which was striving so efficiently to soften the bitterness of the industrial struggle. Mr.

Crossman had very little to say, and said it in thundering periods. It took him nearly an hour.

Then it was Mabel's turn. She spoke, as was her wont, in an unimpa.s.sioned, businesslike way. She outlined the work of the organization which she represented and spoke of the vest-makers' strike as an example of what the league could do if it had sufficient means.

When she sat down, the chairman began to cast the flowers of his eloquence at Yetta's feet.

"If I may use such an expression," he said, "while Miss Train has been the brains of this strike, which we have gathered here to approve, the next speaker has been its very soul. My own acquaintance with her is of the slightest. But it has been sufficient to convince me past any doubt that the charge on which she was sent to the workhouse was an infamous libel. Who can look at her sweet face and believe her capable of vulgar a.s.sault? But you are to have the opportunity to judge for yourself. She will tell us of this victory to which she has so glowingly contributed, and it is my hope, as I am sure it is that of this vast a.s.sembly, that she will tell us about her own experiences.--Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Miss Yetta Rayefsky."

Yetta squeezed Mabel's hand and, getting up, walked down to the edge of the platform. She wanted to get near them so they could hear her.

The laughter and the conversation in the boxes stopped for a formal round of applause. But as they clapped their hands and stared at the curiosity, something about her fragile beauty made them clap more heartily. At close range, Yetta looked abundantly healthy. But far away, standing alone on the great platform, she seemed frail and exotic. The two-dollar seats took their cue from the boxes and made as much noise as they could. The gallery and the ma.s.s of vest-makers behind her cheered and howled and stamped their feet without thought of the proprieties.

And Yetta stood there alone, the blood mounting to her cheeks, looking more and more like an orchid, and waited for the storm to pa.s.s.

"I'm not going to talk about this strike," she said when she could make herself heard. "It's over. I want to tell you about the next one--and the next. I wish very much I could make you understand about the strikes that are coming.

"But first I ought to say a few words to you for my union. We're very much obliged to all who have helped us. We couldn't have won without money, and we're thankful to everybody that gave us a dime or a penny.

"It's a wonderful victory for us girls and women. We're very glad. For more than a month we've been out on strike, and now we can go back to the sweat-shop. Because we've been hungry for a month--some of us have got children and it was worse to have them hungry,--because a lot of us have been beaten up by the cops and more than twenty of us have gone to jail, we can go back to the machines now and the bosses can't make us work no more than fifty-six hours a week. That's not much more than nine hours a day, if we have one day off. And the bosses have promised us a little more pay and more air to breathe, and when we've wore ourselves out working for them, they won't throw us out to starve so long as they can find any odd jobs for us to do. We've had to fight hard for this victory, and we're proud we won, and we're thankful to all you who helped us. But better than the shorter hours and everything else is our union. We've got that now, and that's the most important. We won't never be quite so much slaves again like we was before.

"But we've won this strike now, so we've all got to think about the next one. I don't know what trade it will be in. Perhaps you never heard of the paper-box makers, or the artificial-flower makers, or the ta.s.sel makers. There's men with families in those trades that never earned as much as I did making vests. And the cigar makers--they're bad too. And if you seen the places where they bake bread, you wouldn't never eat it.

It don't matter which way you look, the people that work ain't none of them getting a square deal. They ain't getting a square deal from the bosses. They ain't getting a square deal from the landlords. And the storekeepers sell them rotten things for food. There's going to be strikes right along, till everybody gets a square deal.

"Perhaps there's some of you never thought much about strikes till now.

Well. There's been strikes all the time. I don't believe there's ever been a year when there wasn't dozens here in New York. When we began, the skirt-finishers was out. They lost their strike. They went hungry just the way we did, but n.o.body helped them. And they're worse now than ever. There ain't no difference between one strike and another. Perhaps they are striking for more pay or recognition or closed shops. But the next strike'll be just like ours. It'll be people fighting so they won't be so much slaves like they was before.

"The Chairman said perhaps I'd tell you about my experience. There ain't nothing to tell except everybody has been awful kind to me. It's fine to have people so kind to me. But I'd rather if they'd try to understand what this strike business means to all of us workers--this strike we've won and the ones that are coming. If I tell you how kind one woman wants to be to me, perhaps you'll understand. You see, it would be fine for me, but it wouldn't help the others any.

"Well. I come out of the workhouse to-day, and they tell me this lady wants to give me money to study, she wants to have me go to college like I was a rich girl. It's very kind. I want to study. I ain't been to school none since I was fifteen. I guess I can't even talk English very good. I'd like to go to college. And I used to see pictures in the papers of beautiful rich women, and of course it would be fine to have clothes like them. But being in a strike, seeing all the people suffer, seeing all the cruelty--it makes things look different.

"The Chairman told you something out of the Christian Bible. Well, we Jews have got a story too--perhaps it's in your Bible--about Moses and his people in Egypt. He'd been brought up by a rich Egyptian lady--a princess--just like he was her son. But as long as he tried to be an Egyptian he wasn't no good. And G.o.d spoke to him one day out of a bush on fire. I don't remember just the words of the story, but G.o.d said: 'Moses, you're a Jew. You ain't got no business with the Egyptians. Take off those fine clothes and go back to your own people and help them escape from bondage.' Well. Of course, I ain't like Moses, and G.o.d has never talked to me. But it seems to me sort of as if--during this strike--I'd seen a Blazing Bush. Anyhow I've seen my people in bondage.

And I don't want to go to college and be a lady. I guess the kind princess couldn't understand why Moses wanted to be a poor Jew instead of a rich Egyptian. But if you can understand, if you can understand why I'm going to stay with my own people, you'll understand all I've been trying to say.

"We're a people in bondage. There's lots of people who's kind to us. I guess the princess wasn't the only Egyptian lady that was kind to the Jews. But kindness ain't what people want who are in bondage. Kindness won't never make us free. And G.o.d don't send any more prophets nowadays.

We've got to escape all by ourselves. And when you read in the papers that there's a strike--it don't matter whether it's street-car conductors or lace-makers, whether it's Eyetalians or Polacks or Jews or Americans, whether it's here or in Chicago--it's my People--the People in Bondage who are starting out for the Promised Land."

She stopped a moment, and a strange look came over her face--a look of communication with some distant spirit. When she spoke again, her words were unintelligible to most of the audience. Some of the Jewish vest-makers understood. And the Rev. Dunham Denning, who was a famous scholar, understood. But even those who did not were held spellbound by the swinging sonorous cadence. She stopped abruptly.

"It's Hebrew," she explained. "It's what my father taught me when I was a little girl. It's about the Promised Land--I can't say it in good English--I--"

"Unless I've forgotten my Hebrew," the Reverend Chairman said, stepping forward, "Miss Rayefsky has been repeating G.o.d's words to Moses as recorded in the third chapter of Exodus. I think it's the seventh verse:--

"'And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;

"'And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

"Yes. That's it," Yetta said. "Well, that's what strikes mean. We're fighting for the old promises."

"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" a blonde lady in Mrs. Van Cleave's box asked her neighbor.

"Not my style," he replied. "Even if you had no other charms, if you were humpbacked and cross-eyed, that hair of yours would do the trick with me. Haven't you a free afternoon next week, so we could get married?"

"I didn't know old Denning was so snappy with his Hebrew," another broke in.

"Which reminds me of a story--"

"Is it fit to listen to?" the blonde lady asked.

"Yes--of course. It's about a Welsh minister--"

But the lady had turned away discouraged, to the boredom of the man who really wanted to marry her.

But perhaps in that crowded auditorium there may have been some who had understood what Yetta had been talking about.

Later in the evening, when she was standing with Longman on the deserted stage, waiting for Mabel, who--to use Eleanor's expression--was "sweeping up," he asked her what she was doing the next day.

"I want you to have dinner with me," he said. "Mabel and Isadore Braun are coming. And if it isn't asking too much, I wish you could give me some of the afternoon before they come. I'd like to talk over a lot of things with you. You know I'm sailing the day after to-morrow. It's my last chance to get really acquainted with you."

"Sure. I'd like to come," Yetta replied. "But where are you going?"

She listened in amazement to his plans. She had thought he was going to marry Mabel. When he had left them at the door of the flat, Yetta asked her with nave directness if she wasn't engaged to Longman.

"No," Mabel laughed. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Why, all the girls think you are."

"Well, they're all wrong. I'm not."