Her forecast proved true. Before two o'clock every one knew that the strike had "caught." Half a dozen shops, including one of the biggest, walked out during the morning. And after the noon hour not a quarter of the vest-makers were at work. While it might have been possible for Jake Goldfogle to find twelve skilled workers for his small shop, it was not possible to find enough for the whole trade quickly. It settled down into an endurance fight. Both sides "organized." The strikers rented a hall in the sweat-shop district for headquarters and a committee sat there _en permanence_, making out union cards for the strikers, and a card catalogue of their names and addresses, arranging for the distribution in "strike benefits" of all the money that could be raised. In this detail work, of immense importance to the successful conduct of a strike, Mabel was a tower of strength. She had been through it all a hundred times before, and she never got flurried. Everything seemed like a chaos, but through it her cool-headed generalship kept an effective order. In a Broadway office the bosses organized "The Association of Vest Manufacturers." Their headquarters were less noisy than those of the Union. But quiet does not always mean a higher standard of ethics. As the Woman's Trade Union League was helping the strikers, so trained men were lent to the bosses by the Employers' Association. In a few days skilled vest makers from other cities began to flow into New York. Some of the shops were able to begin work again at about half their normal capacity. The press agents of the Association of Vest Manufacturers sent out announcements to the newspapers that the strike was over. The Union retaliated by a campaign of "picketing." Isadore Braun took this work in hand. He marshalled the volunteer "pickets" every morning, assigned them to their posts, and carefully explained to them their legal rights. They were free to stand anywhere on the street and to talk to any one who would listen, so long as they did not attract a crowd which impeded traffic. They must not detain any one by force, nor threaten violence, nor use insulting language. Recently a justice of the Supreme Court of New York has handed down a decision that "peaceful picketing" is a contradiction in terms. From his point of view all picketing is inherently violent. As a legal maxim it is idiotic. The great majority of labor pickets are peaceful. But in any large and long-continued industrial conflict some of the strikers are starving, many have hungry children at home. They cannot be expected to love the "scabs," who are taking their jobs. And it is desperately hard for the leaders of a strike--no matter how sincerely they try--to prevent sporadic acts of violence. Braun, himself a lawyer and a Socialist, was a firm believer in legality. Again and again he impressed on the strikers the urgent desirability of keeping within the letter of the law.