“Perfect! Perfect to the thousandth part of an inch, Old Top,” he said, pounding Sam on the shoulder. “Just what the Old Rag wanted to say about the strike.” Then climbing upon the desk and putting the plaid coat under his head he went peacefully to sleep, and Sam, sitting beside the desk in a shaky office chair, slept also. At daybreak a black man with a broom in his hand woke them, and going into a long low room filled with presses The Skipper put his head under a water tap and came back waving a soiled towel and with water dripping from his hair. “Now for the day and the labours thereof,” he said, grinning at Sam and taking a long drink out of the gin bottle. After breakfast he and Sam took up their stand in front of the barber shop opposite the stairway leading to the shirtwaist factory. Sam’s girl with the pamphlets was gone as was also the soft-eyed Jewish girl, and in their places Frank and the Pittsburgh leader named Harrigan walked up and down. Again carriages and automobiles stood by the curb, and again a well-dressed woman got out of a machine and went toward three striking girls approaching along the sidewalk. The woman was met by Harrigan, shaking his fist and shouting, and getting back into the machine she drove off. From the stairway the flashily-dressed Hebrew looked at the crowd and laughed. “Where is the new strike leader--the mail-order strike leader?” he called to Frank. With the words, a working man with a dinner pail on his arm ran out of the crowd and knocked the Jew back into the stairway. “Punch him! Punch the dirty scab leader!” yelled Frank, dancing up and down on the sidewalk. Two policemen running forward began leading the workingman up the street, his dinner pail still clutched in one hand. “I know something,” The Skipper shouted, pounding Sam on the shoulder. “I know who will sign that note with me. The woman Harrigan drove back into her machine is the richest woman in town. I will show her your editorial. She will think I wrote it and it will get her. You’ll see.” He ran off up the street, shouting back over his shoulder, “Come over to the dump, I want to see you again.” Sam returned to the newspaper office and sat down waiting for The Skipper who, after a time, came in, took off his coat and began writing furiously. From time to time he took long drinks out of the bottle of red gin, and after silently offering it to Sam, continued reeling off sheet after sheet of loosely-written matter. “I got her to sign the note,” he called over his shoulder to Sam. “She was furious at Harrigan and when I told her we were going to attack him and defend you she fell for it quick. I won out by following my system. I always get drunk and it always wins.” At ten o’clock the newspaper office was in a ferment. The little man with the brown pointed beard, and another, kept running to The Skipper asking advice, laying typewritten sheets before him, talking as he wrote.