BONNIE stood on Ora’s porch with her baby in her arms, watching for John. It was the morning after they had walked out of the mill and John had not yet returned. Somewhere, she knew, he was looking for Tom Moore, or they together were hurrying to get back. When would they come?
She was anxious and disturbed, for something must be done very soon. She thought of John Stevens, but it was too late to get him a message. If they did not hear from John during the day, then someone must go for John Stevens that night.
She thought again of the words which John Stevens had spoken, when she had talked with him at different times. At first she had not believed in his words, for they seemed too fanciful to be true. Then she had been convinced that he had a message that was founded in the facts of her everyday life. It seemed reasonable and sure. For the present she was interested in the immediate need, the things that Tom Moore had suggested they might hope to win—a day in which they would work only eight hours, and pay that was not less than twenty dollars. To Bonnie, who had been receiving nine dollars a week, twenty seemed riches.
Ora came out of the house. “You don’t see him yet?” she asked and stood beside Bonnie on the porch.
They sat on the steps and talked; Ora tall above Bonnie with her rawboned old face looking fine and earnest.
“We’ve got t’ win,” she said.
“Yes, and us women have got to fight hard, like the men,” Bonnie added.
“There’ll be some who’ll say women should stay at home, and not mix in men’s affairs. But they don’t say hit when we go out t’ work, and I can’t see why they should say hit now.”
“Yes, if we work out, we’ve got a right to speak.”
“Is that Dewey Fayon’s wife a-coming up the street?”
“I don’t know. Is hit?”
“I believe so. I wonder what she wants.”
Dewey Fayon lived on Strutt Street, and his wife did not often come down into the village, but stayed on her street or went into town where she had friends. She was a stout woman, but very pretty. She wore high heeled slippers and at every moment a person watching expected to see her topple over on one side; and often she did turn her ankle so that her heels were continually run down at the edges.
She came and stood right before Ora and Bonnie as if she had planned to speak with them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” Ora told her.
“Well, it looks as if you’re not working to-day.”
“Yes’m,” Ora said. “Hit looks as if you’re not a-working either.”
“I was just walking around.”
“And we’re just setting here.”
“Is John around?” Mrs. Fayon asked, looking at Bonnie.
“No’m.”
“You know where he is?”
“Somewheres. I don’ know.”
Mrs. Fayon moved her heavy weight from one high heel to the other.
“Set down, if you want,” Ora said. She could not keep a person who was visiting her standing for long.
“Well, I’ll have to be going soon. So I won’t sit down. Is it most twelve?”
“I’ll see,” Bonnie told her and went in to look at the alarm clock. She wanted to see for herself how much time there was. It was ten minutes of eleven. And everyone was to meet at the mill at half past.
She went out and told Mrs. Fayon the time.
“Well, I’ll stay a few minutes,” Mrs. Fayon said. “But I won’t sit down.”
“You know,” she said, not looking at them. “I want to tell you something as a friend. People are talking about you two. It’s getting around that you want t’ be like men. And people say the Bible says let women look to their houses and let men tend to the world. It’s what I do,” she said, looking very righteous.
“And I believe in it like Preacher Simpkins does.”
“Well,” Bonnie began, but Ora put her big hand out and laid it on Bonnie’s arm.
“The Bible says women should be in subjection to their husbands.”
Ora did not answer. She was silent as a mountain in an uninhabited country, and Bonnie sat like her, very still. Only the baby moved in her arms.
“It’s well said,” Mrs. Fayon told them. “I always let my husband decide everything. He wants to be master in his own house.”
She looked up at Bonnie and Ora who sat looking out into the distance, which was bounded by the house across the road. Now Bonnie did not want John to come, not while Mrs. Fayon was there. She was hoping that he would not come—not at once.
“Well,” Mrs. Fayon said to the silent faces above her. “I suppose I’ll have to be going.”
“Must ye?” Ora asked.
“Well, it seems people around here aren’t used to polite conversation,” Mrs. Fayon said and turned away from them. At the corner one of her heels stuck in the mud, and she had to lean over and pull the shoe out, while she balanced on the other.
Bonnie and Ora watched, then looked at each other.
“I don’t like t’ feel evil toward anybody,” Bonnie said. “But I did enjoy seeing that.”
“She just came snooping to find out what she could.”
“Yes. I got t’ know it, though, only after she asked us, ‘Where is John?’ ”
Bonnie went inside to lay the sleeping child on the bed, and change her dress. That morning she and Ora had washed and ironed their extra dresses. For they felt a need to dress in a way that would point out to others the importance and splendor of the occasion when they went down to the mill.
“Hit’s twenty after,” Bonnie said to Ora. She looked at her anxiously. Perhaps they might be forced to take the responsibility of those whom John had told to meet at the gates of the mill at half past eleven. “You think . . .” she began but Ora interrupted.
“We’d better go along,” she said firmly. “Maybe they’ll come. Maybe they’re there already.”
In front of the mill, some distance back from the gate, but filling the road far down on each side, were those who had walked out the day before. Like Bonnie and Ora the women were dressed in the best they had, and the men looked as if they had prepared for church.
Bonnie and Ora joined the crowd of friends and neighbors. There was a feeling like that of an outdoor church meeting in the mountains, for people were talking as neighbors do who have not seen each other in a long while.
There were some who had not come out the day before, but who did not go to work that morning, and they were welcomed by the others, as if the open road was a house full of hospitable people. There was a great deal of talk, and some almost hysterical laughing from the women especially. From a distance it all sounded joyful, and in a way the crowd was joyful. But under the joy was a tense waiting, and perhaps some fear. For across the road, just outside the high wire fence of the mill, stood guards who carried sawed-off shot guns, and it was easy to see that in their pockets were pistols ready for use.
Bonnie saw that John and Tom Moore had not yet come. People came up to her and asked, “Where is John?” And she had to say, “Just wait, hell be here soon,” though she was not sure, and watched the road.
An automobile came from the east, the direction of the town. As it approached them Bonnie saw that it was the old car that Reskowitz had loaned to Tom Moore.
The car stopped right in front of the mill, cutting off the sight of the guards. John stepped out, and then Tom Moore. They reached into the back of the car and began taking out bundles of papers. Strikers crowded around and took bundles from them. Soon the papers were distributed, and those who could read the printing spoke it aloud to the others.
“To all spinners, loom fixers, weavers, twisters, carders, frame hands, inspectors, and all other workers of the day and night shifts:” it began.
And spoke of the reasons for a strike, and asked those who felt the need for one to come out to the railroad crossing where speakers would talk to them right after the twelve o’clock whistle that day.
Tom Moore drove off in the car to prepare a place for the speaking, and John remained to talk with those who had assembled.
“When the twelve o’clock whistle blows,” he said, “we must give these papers to those who come from the gates. Each and everyone must receive one of these.” He held up one of the papers.
“Did Zinie come?” John asked Bonnie who was standing by him.
“No,” Bonnie said, and looked at John with sympathy.
“She’s somewhat fearful.”
“Yes, I know.”
“There’s the whistle.”
The whistle blew loud and long. Bonnie saw that the guards lifted their guns, but during the whole time that day they did not move from their places. At that time when the mill was confident, the deputies had orders only to keep people out of the compound.
The two lines of workers came from the mills. Those outside crowded up to them in the road and gave out the pieces of paper on which were printed the important words. They also spoke to the ones who had just come out of the gates.
“We’ve got to stand together,” they said.
“You won’t go against your neighbors, will ye?” they asked.
And many said, “Come to the meeting, and see.”
On the side toward the mill the railroad embankment sloped down into a wide grassy place. On the slope, near the track, and high up where all could see any speakers, Tom Moore had constructed a round platform made from two large packing cases.
When Bonnie with John and Ora reached the grassy place there were already many people there. John went up to Tom Moore who was standing beside the platform, for John was to speak when Tom Moore finished. They watched the crowds that came along the mill road and gathered with the others already there. Presently Tom Moore said, with excitement under the quiet of his voice, “It’s time to begin.”
He was not a tall man, but his voice was strong and confident.
“Fellow workers,” he began.
“Yesterday some of your fellow workers were dismissed from the mill without any reason being given. We all know they were good workers. But they were suddenly given their time. Why? Because they wanted to start up a union here. But the mill owners did not realize that they were dealing with people and not machines. You can throw out a machine that doesn’t work as you want it and the other machines will go right on working for the owners. But in this case the owners were dealing with people, people who have a sense of loyalty to their neighbors, to their fellow workers—people who possess something of pride in themselves, and a sense of justice to their own. Some of these people who knew why our fellow workers were dismissed followed them out of the mill. It was one of the finest things I have ever known.
“Now we want to share with the rest of you the reasons for this union. We have got to better our conditions. We are nothing but slaves. And who gets the benefit of our hard toil? Our families? No. Our children are forced to leave school at an early age to work long hours in the mill, in order that we and they may live. The owners are making good money, while through the use of the hank machines most of us do not know what our wages will be by the end of the week, except that we know they will not be enough.
“People have been laid off, and no one knows who will be next. What is left for us to do but make a fight for our own? How else can we improve our lives, raise our wages, shorten the working day, protect ourselves from insults, win for ourselves and our children the opportunities of education?
“The mill owners are against us, and naturally so—for the worse off we become, the better off they are. Our strength lies in standing together. The owners of the mills will call this treason and bad faith, but do not worry over those charges. You need only to be concerned with treason against your own people, against your neighbors and friends, those who work with you, and are now trying to get better lives for you and all that are dear to you. Be true to yourselves and your own, and you can’t go far wrong.
“Some will wonder, ‘How will we eat, if we go out of the mill?’ Well, it can’t be said that we eat very well as it is. But there are other workers in this country, and there are other people who will stand up for you, and send down money for food.”
He went on speaking, and Bonnie, moving about in the crowd, heard words that gladdened her. For the words and the faces that were concentrated on Tom Moore, looking up to him where he stood on the boards, said to her that people were hearing something they had longed to hear, but had not known that it was on the face of the earth.
Toward the end of his talk Tom Moore said, “I want to know how many will stay out of the mill. All those who will . . .” Bonnie heard this much and then she could hear no more.
From the railroad siding near the station a freight train came up to the crossing and stopped just behind the platform. Tom Moore stopped speaking, thinking it would go on, for the noise it made prevented those further away from hearing him. But it did not go away. On the step below the engineer Dewey Fayon stood with his sawed-off shot gun in his hand and looked out over the crowd. Then he looked up and spoke to the engineer. From the bowels of the engine came clouds of steam. Tom tried to go on speaking, but the steam cut him off from the crowd. Added to this was another interruption. The engine began to whistle, long piercing whistles, so that those on the speaking stand were obliterated by the steam cloud and by the noise.
In the cloud Tom Moore spoke with his mouth close to John’s ear. “We’ve got to let them know about the meeting to-night. They’re breaking up. Quick. Take two or three others and go on the road across the track. I’ll run down on the road to the mill. Say, ‘Meet this evening at six in the vacant lot behind Mrs. Sevier’s boarding house.’ ”
The crowd was leaving the meeting place. When he saw this Dewey Fayon gave a sign to the engineer, and with a last high derisive whistle the engine backed onto its siding.