Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Mistresses -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
There was no water on this floor. He put on his shoes in the cold and
stood up, shaking himself in his stiffness. His clothes felt
disagreeable, his hair bad.
"Hell!" he muttered, as he put on his hat.
Downstairs things were stirring again.
He found a hydrant, with a trough which had once been used for horses,
but there was no towel here, and his handkerchief was soiled from
yesterday. He contented himself with wetting his eyes with the ice-cold
water. Then he sought the foreman, who was already on the ground.
"Had your breakfast yet?" inquired that worthy.
"No," said Hurstwood.
"Better get it, then; your car won't be ready for a little while."
Hurstwood hesitated.
"Could you let me have a meal ticket?" he asked, with an effort.
"Here you are," said the man, handing him one.
He breakfasted as poorly as the night before on some fried steak and bad
coffee. Then he went back.
"Here," said the foreman, motioning him, when he came in. "You take this
car out in a few minutes."
Hurstwood climbed up on the platform in the gloomy barn and waited for a
signal. He was nervous, and yet the thing was a relief. Anything was
better than the barn.
On this the fourth day of the strike, the situation had taken a turn for
the worse. The strikers, following the counsel of their leaders and the
newspapers, had struggled peaceably enough. There had been no great
violence done. Cars had been stopped, it is true, and the men argued
with. Some crews had been won over and led away, some windows broken,
some jeering and yelling done; but in no more than five or six instances
had men been seriously injured. These by crowds whose acts the leaders
disclaimed.
Idleness, however, and the sight of the company, backed by the police,
triumphing, angered the men. They saw that each day more cars were going
on, each day more declarations were being made by the company officials
that the effective opposition of the strikers was broken. This put
desperate thoughts in the minds of the men. Peaceful methods meant, they
saw, that the companies would soon run all their cars and those who had
complained would be forgotten. There was nothing so helpful to the
companies as peaceful methods.
All at once they blazed forth, and for a week there was storm and
stress. Cars were assailed, men attacked, policemen struggled with,
tracks torn up, and shots fired, until at last street fights and mob
movements became frequent, and the city was invested with militia.
Hurstwood knew nothing of the change of temper.
"Run your car out," called the foreman, waving a vigorous hand at him. A
green conductor jumped up behind and rang the bell twice as a signal to
start. Hurstwood turned the lever and ran the car out through the door
into the street in front of the barn. Here two brawny policemen got up
beside him on the platform--one on either hand.
At the sound of a gong near the barn door, two bells were given by the
conductor and Hurstwood opened his lever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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