“Why, you poor man,” she said, “haven’t you heard? The strike was called
off this afternoon. Of course we’ll give you something to eat.”
She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparing to fry
it.
“Let me have some now, please,” I begged; and I ate the raw bacon on a
slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demands of the
I.L.W. had been granted. The wires had been opened up in the early
afternoon, and everywhere the employers’ associations had given in.
There hadn’t been any employers left in San Francisco, but General Folsom
had spoken for them. The trains and steamers would start running in the
morning, and so would everything else just as soon as system could be
established.
And that was the end of the general strike. I never want to see another
one. It was worse than a war. A general strike is a cruel and immoral
thing, and the brain of man should be capable of running industry in a
more rational way. Harrison is still my chauffeur. It was part of the
conditions of the I.L.W. that all of its members should be reinstated in
their old positions. Brown never came back, but the rest of the servants
are with me. I hadn’t the heart to discharge them—poor creatures, they
were pretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver.
And now I can’t discharge them. They have all been unionized by the
I.L.W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond human
endurance. Something must be done.
THE SEA-FARMER
“THAT wull be the doctor’s launch,” said Captain MacElrath.
The pilot grunted, while the skipper swept on with his glass from the
launch to the strip of beach and to Kingston beyond, and then slowly
across the entrance to Howth Head on the northern side.
“The tide’s right, and we’ll have you docked in two hours,” the pilot
vouchsafed, with an effort at cheeriness. “Ring’s End Basin, is it?”
This time the skipper grunted.
“A dirty Dublin day.”
Again the skipper grunted. He was weary with the night of wind in the
Irish Channel behind him, the unbroken hours of which he had spent on the
bridge. And he was weary with all the voyage behind him—two years and
four months between home port and home port, eight hundred and fifty days
by his log.
“Proper wunter weather,” he answered, after a silence. “The town is
undistinct. Ut wull be rainun’ guid an’ hearty for the day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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