Comrade Yetta Part 30

The second summer after Walter had left, a desperate and successful strike of the cloak-makers brought Yetta's name once more into the papers. Mrs. Karner used the opportunity to open a new line of work to Yetta.

Mr. Karner owned _The Star_--the "yellowest" paper in the city. It was not only vulgar to the edge of obscenity, it was notoriously corrupt in politics. Being a one-cent paper, it of course posed as a "friend of the working-man," but it stood--unless the other side had collected an unusually large campaign fund--for Tammany Hall and the traction interests.

One morning at breakfast--while the cloak-makers' strike was a "live"

news item--Mr. Karner spoke enviously of a woman who gave sentimental advice to love-lorn damsels on the magazine page of his keenest rival.

"I wish I could find some counter attraction," he said. "Our circulation among working girls is pitiful."

"Why don't you try Yetta Rayefsky?" Mrs. Karner suggested. "All the East Side girls know her. Do you happen to be advocating trade-unions this month?"

"Mildly--as usual."

"Yetta is keen on that. You remember her. She was out at Cos-Cob last summer. Rather caught your eye, I think."

"That little Jewess? She was good-looking. Has she any other qualifications as a journalist?"

Mrs. Karner shrugged her shoulders.

"I thought you prided yourself on developing raw material."

Two days later Yetta was summoned to Mr. Karner's office. She went to the appointment, wondering what the great newspaper man could want of her--hoping that she might interest him in her girls.

"Glad to see you," Mr. Karner said cordially as she was ushered into his beautifully furnished sanctum. "This cloak-makers' strike is a big story. But we're not making the most of it. There's more in it than news copy.

"There ought to be something for our magazine page. I don't know whether you've ever read it, but it's the page that gets the women. They're not interested in arguments--not much in facts. It's the human interest story--something to make them cry--that gets over with them. About their own people. If they say 'That's just like Sadie or Flossie,' it's the right thing for us. We're always looking for that kind of copy.

"There must be some stories in this strike. Couldn't you give us two or three?"

Yetta was surprised at the offer and decidedly uncertain.

"It won't do any harm to try," he urged her.

He pressed a b.u.t.ton, and when a rotund, merry-looking man appeared, he introduced him.

"Mr. Brace, this is Miss Rayefsky. She has just promised to send us some copy about the cloak-makers' strike for your magazine page."

They discussed it for a few minutes, and when Yetta had gone, Karner kept Brace a moment.

"My wife," he said, "thinks we could train this Rayefsky girl to write.

If we could get some one to put a crimp in Lilian Leberwurtz' 'Balm for Busted Bussums,' it would help a lot. Look over her copy when it comes in. Buy enough anyhow to pay her for her trouble. And if it shows any promise, see what you can make of her. And keep me informed."

Yetta floated out of _The Star_ office on clouds. In a sudden flame of enthusiasm she pictured herself as a great author. But as she went home a horrible doubt struck her--she might fail. The doubt increased as she laid out a sheet of paper.

After much hesitation and several false starts, she decided to stick as closely as might be to reality. She wrote the story of one of her girls who, although she worked on the highest-priced opera-cloaks, was so poor that she had never worn any wrap but a frayed old shawl.

It was natural for Yetta to be simple and direct. The copious notes she had written in connection with her study had taught her some familiarity with her pen. Above all, her public speaking had helped her. It had taught her to think ahead and plan her climax in advance. The women who would read the magazine page were--or had been--shop-girls, such as the audiences she spoke to night after night. And Mr. Brace had told her to write just as she talked.

At last she mailed three sketches. Within twenty-four hours she received a letter from Mr. Brace asking her to come and talk them over. She had a difficult time looking unconcerned as she entered _The Star_ office.

Her stories had seemed rather good when she had finished them, but they had so sunk in her estimation by this time that she wished she had not written them. This sinking process was most rapid during the few minutes she was kept waiting on a bench in the big reporters' room outside the gla.s.s door of Mr. Brace's private office.

There were long tables on two sides of the room; they were divided off into sections by little railings. Most of the places were filled by reporters writing feverishly on yellow copy paper or banging away at typewriters. Boys and men rushed about, carrying copy or proof in and out of the various gla.s.s doors about the room. Almost every one looked curiously at Yetta and the others on the waiting bench. There were three people ahead of her: a woman who looked like an actress, a white-haired old man, with a beard almost to his belt. He held a heavy ma.n.u.script on his knees with great care, evidently afraid some one would steal it.

Next to her was a perspiring young curate in a clerical collar.

Presently Mr. Brace ushered a disappointed poet out of his office and called "Miss Rayefsky." "By appointment," he added, as those who were ahead of her moved restlessly in protest.

He pulled up a chair for her beside his desk, and picking up his blue pencil, began a little lecture on the advertising rate of the magazine page. It was ten cents a word. His blue pencil scratched out a sentence from one of her stories. It would certainly not do any one a dollar and a half's worth of good. It began to look to Yetta as if there would be nothing left except blue pencil marks. But he glowed with pleasure during the process. When he had come to the end, he announced with pride that he had killed at least twenty-five dollars' worth of padding. She wished he would let her go quickly. She was afraid she might cry if he jeered at her any more.

"I hope we can arrange for some more of this soon," he said abruptly, handing her a check.

It was for seventy-five dollars! She had never had so much money at one time before in her life. And she had earned it in four days!

But this was a small matter beside seeing her story in print that afternoon. Here was a tangible sign of her progress to send Walter. She was just reaching the end of his outline of study, and she was already writing for the papers! Her pride was somewhat tempered as she reread her story and realized how much it had been improved by Mr. Brace's vigorous slas.h.i.+ng.

Her new sense of importance became almost oppressive when, a few days later, they offered her a contract at what seemed to her a magnificent salary--to conduct a column on Working-girls' Worries.

Mabel also was enthusiastic about it. It was a great and unexpected chance to give publicity to their work of organizing women. _The Star_ had more than a million readers. Yetta could never have hoped to reach so large an audience with her voice.

But when Isadore saw the flaring posters which blossomed out on the East Side, announcing that Yetta Rayefsky was writing daily and exclusively for _The Evening Star_, he was mightily disturbed. Such conscienceless journalism as Mr. Karner's seemed to him the worst crime of our civilization. He could hardly believe that Yetta had thrown in her lot with it. It shook him out of his reserve, and he rushed over to her room.

In her new pride, in the excitement of her new career, Yetta seemed more disturbingly beautiful to him than ever. Face to face with her he forgot all his carefully thought-out arguments.

"Oh, Yetta," he blurted out, "is it really true that you're going to work on that dirty paper?"

"They have offered to let me conduct a column for working girls, and I've accepted," she replied defiantly.

"You know it's a dirty paper," he stuck to his point. "Dirty in every way,--in its news, in its advertis.e.m.e.nts. Most of all in its rotten politics. These yellow journals are the worst enemy Socialism has to face. They mislead the people. They're paid to. All the editors are crooked--sold out. But Karner's the worst."

"I haven't anything to do with their news nor their advertising, nor with Mr. Karner's politics--I've been talking to working girls as hard as I know how for the last two years. Suddenly I get a chance to speak louder, so that thousands will hear. I might just as well refuse to speak in some of the East Side halls, because on other nights they are used for rotten dances."

"Oh, Yetta," he broke in, "you don't know what you are doing. I know it isn't the salary that makes you do it. But that's sure to be big. And Karner's not a philanthropist; he's not giving you money for nothing.

He's buying something. You've got to give him his money's worth. He's buying your name. He's after circulation. He's using your name--have you seen the posters? He's using your popularity, Yetta, to sell his dirty paper to our people. He's paying you to persuade our working girls to read the filthiest paper in New York. Yetta, you don't realize what it means. It's a sort of betrayal--"

"Are you through?" she interrupted angrily.

"No, I'm not. I've got to say it all. Not because it's you and me, Yetta, but Comrade to Comrade, because we're both Socialists. They won't let you say what you want to. No capitalist paper could, least of all this rotten one. If the cla.s.s struggle means anything at all, it means that they are our enemies. They won't pay you to fight against them.

They'll tie you up with some sort of a contract and gag you. They are bribing you, fooling you with the promise of a big audience. But they won't--can't--let you say what you believe."

"Mr. Braun," she said, trying hard to keep her temper, but at the same time to annihilate him, "I've talked this over with a number of friends.

They all urged me to accept. So you see there is room for difference of opinion. You are the only one who has opposed it. Much as I respect your opinion in most matters, in this case I must--"

"No. You must not!" he stormed, jumping up and losing control of himself more than ever before. "I say you must not."

"What right have you--"

"Right? Who's got a better right? You know I love you. I'd rather a thousand times see myself disgraced than you, Yetta. What do Mabel Train and the other women care? They see a chance to advertise their pet scheme. What do they care about your reputation, your self-respect? They think it will be good for their little Trade Union League. But I see you, Yetta--selling yourself to a bunch of crooks--not being able to do the good you want to--and always with the shame of it on you! Oh, it's too terrible."

He sank down in the chair, his head in his hands. Yetta's hard words melted as she saw how he was suffering.