What were the strikers thinking now, and what would they be thinking soon? They had wanted easier lives, they had wanted to feel themselves powers here. Caught up in the tide of democracy now sweeping all around the earth, they had wanted to feel themselves running themselves in all this work they were doing. So they had come out on strike and become a crowd, and in the crowd they had suddenly found such strength as they never dreamed could be theirs. And they would not easily forget. The harbor was already seeing to that, for already its work had gone on with a rush, and all its heavy labor was weighing down upon them--"like a million tons of brick on their chests." I remembered what Joe Kramer had said: "It's got so they can't even breathe without thinking." Was the defeat of this one strike the end? The grim battleships answered, "Yes, it is the end." But the restless harbor answered, "No." What change was coming in my life? I did not know. Of one thing only I was sure. The last of my gods, Efficiency, whose feet had stood firm on mechanical laws and in whose head were all the brains of all the big men at the top, had now come tottering crashing down. And in its place a huge new god, whose feet stood deep in poverty and in whose head were all the dreams of all the toilers of the earth, had called to me with one deep voice, with one tremendous burning passion for the freedom of mankind. BOOK IV CHAPTER I Once I saw the harbor in a February storm. And in the wind and skurrying snow I saw it all together like one whirling thing alive. But the next morning the storm had died away, and a wind from the south had brought banks of fog that moved sluggishly low down on the water dividing the whole region into many separate parts. And from above, a dazzling sun shone down upon three objects near me, a ferryboat, a puffing tug, and a tramp which lay at anchor, shone so brightly on these three they seemed alone, with nothing but mist all about them. So it was now for a time with me. The strike, which had so suddenly drawn me into its whirling crowd-life, now as suddenly dropped away. And personal troubles piled one on the other. In place of that mass of thousands, I saw only a few people I loved, and I saw them so intensely that for a time we were quite alone, with nothing but mist all around us. * * * * * Sue sent for me one morning and I went over to our house. I was startled by the change in her face. It looked not only tired, it looked so disillusioned, done, so through with all the absorbing ideas and warm enthusiasms that had given it abundant life. "I'm not going to marry Joe Kramer," she said. "And I want you to tell him so." I stared at her blankly. "I'm sorry," I said. "Are you?" There was just a worn shadow of her old smile.