"Bah! Why should I waste my time with a crippled old basket maker--I
have work to do. If you watch from the window of your shanty you will
see to-morrow whether or not the Mill workers are with me. I will make
for you a demonstration that will be known through the country. I told
you at the first that the working people would find out who is their
friend. Now you shall see what they will do to the enemies of their
class. Who can say, Mr. Interpreter, perhaps your miserable hut so high
up here would make a good torch to signal the beginning of the show,
heh?"
When the door had closed behind Jake Vodell, the Interpreter said,
aloud, "So he has set to-morrow night for his demonstration. We must
work fast, Billy--there is no time to lose."
With his hands he asked his companion for paper and pencil. When Billy
brought them he wrote a few words and folding the message gave it to
the big man who stood waiting.
For a few minutes they talked together in their silent way. Then Billy
Rand put the Interpreter's message carefully in his pocket and
hurriedly left the hut.
* * * * *
That evening Jake Vodell addressed the largest crowd that had yet
assembled at his street meetings. With characteristic eloquence the
agitator pictured Captain Charlie as a martyr to the unprincipled
schemes of the employer class.
"McIver and his crew are charging the strikers with this crime in order
to set our union brothers against us," he shouted. "They think that by
setting up a division among us they can win. They know that if the
working people stand together, true to their class, loyal to their
comrades, they will rule the world. Why don't the police produce the
murderer of Captain Charlie? I will tell you the answer, my brother
workmen: it is because the law and the officers of the law are under
the control of those who do not want the murderer produced--that is
why. They dare not produce him. The life of a poor working man--what is
that to these masters of crime who acknowledge no law but the laws they
make for themselves. You workers have no laws. A slave knows no justice
but the whim of his master. Think of the mothers and children in your
homes--you slaves who create the wealth of your lords and masters. And
now they have taken the life of one of your truest and most loyal union
leaders. Where will they stop? If you do not stand like men against
these cruel outrages what have you to hope for? You know as well as I
that no workman in Millsburgh would raise his hand against such a
fellow worker as Captain Charlie Martin."
While the agitator was speaking, Billy Rand moved quickly here and
there through the crowd, as if searching for some one.
After the mass meeting on the street there was a meeting of the Mill
workers' union.
Later, Vodell's inner circle met in the room back of Dago Bill's pool
hall.
It was midnight when Billy Rand finally returned to the waiting
Interpreter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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