Thriftiness has become a crime, So spend everything you earn;
We're living now in a funny time, When money is made to burn."
Mary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable signals of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying on an apron, washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher of steaming beer from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked and talked about the coming strike.
"It oughta come years ago," was Bert's dictum. "It can't come any too quick now to suit me, but it's too late. We're beaten thumbs donn. Here's where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the neck, ker-whop!"
"Oh, I don't know," Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely, began to counsel. "Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day.
Why, I can remember when there wasn't any unions in California, Look at us now--wages, an' hours, an' everything."
"You talk like an organizer," Bert sneered, "shovin' the bull con on the boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won't buy as much now as unorganized wages used to buy. They've got us whipsawed. Look at Frisco, the labor leaders doin' dirtier polities than the old parties, pawin' an' squabblin' over graft, an' goin' to San Quentin, while--what are the Frisco carpenters doin'? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown, if you listen to all you hear you'll hear that every Frisco carpenter is union an' gettin' full union wages. Do you believe it? It's a damn lie.
There ain't a carpenter that don't rebate his wages Saturday night to the contractor. An' that's your buildin' trades in San Francisco, while the leaders are makin' trips to Europe on the earnings of the tenderloin--when they ain't coughing it up to the lawyers to get out of wearin' stripes."
"That's all right," Tom concurred. "Nobody's denyin' it. The trouble is labor ain't quite got its eyes open. It ought to play politics, but the politics ought to be the right kind."
"Socialism, eh?" Bert caught him up with scorn. "Wouldn't they sell us out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?"
"Get men that are honest," Billy said. "That's the whole trouble.
Not that I stand for socialism. I don't. All our folks was a long time in America, an' I for one won't stand for a lot of fat Germans an' greasy Russian Jews tellin' me how to run my country when they can't speak English yet."
"Your country!" Bert cried. "Why, you bonehead, you ain't got a country. That's a fairy story the grafters shove at you every time they want to rob you some more."
"But don't vote for the grafters," Billy contended. "If we selected honest men we'd get honest treatment."
"I wish you'd come to some of our meetings, Billy," Tom said wistfully. "If you would, you'd get your eyes open an' vote the socialist ticket next election."
"Not on your life," Billy declined. ""When you catch me in a socialist meeting'll be when they can talk like white men."
Bert was humming:
"We're living now in a funny time, When money is made to burn."
Mary was too angry with her husband, because of the impending strike and his incendiary utterances, to hold conversation with Saxon, and the latter, bepuzzled, listened to the conflicting opinions of the men.
"Where are we at?" she asked them, with a merriness that concealed her anxiety at heart.
"We ain't at," Bert snarled. "We're gone."
"But meat and oil have gone up again," she chafed. "And Billy's wages have been cut, and the shop men's were cut last year.
Something must be done."
"The only thing to do is fight like hell," Bert answered. "Fight, an' go down fightin'. That's all. We're licked anyhow, but we can have a last run for our money."
"That's no way to talk," Tom rebuked.
"The time for talkin' 's past, old cock. The time for fightin' 's come."
"A hell of a chance you'd have against regular troops and machine guns," Billy retorted.
"Oh, not that way. There's such things as greasy sticks that go up with a loud noise and leave holes. There's such things as emery powder--"
"Oh, ho!" Mary burst out upon him, arms akimbo. "So that's what it means. That's what the emery in your vest pocket meant."
Her husband ignored her. Tom smoked with a troubled air. Billy was hurt. It showed plainly in his face.
"You ain't ben doin' that, Bert?" he asked, his manner showing his expectancy of his friend's denial.
"Sure thing, if you wont to know. I'd see'm all in hell if I could, before I go."
"He's a bloody-minded anarchist," Mary complained. "Men like him killed McKinley, and Garfield, an'--an' an' all the rest. He'll be hung. You'll see. Mark my words. I'm glad there's no children in sight, that's all."
"It's hot air," Billy comforted her.
"He's just teasing you," Saxon soothed. "He always was a josher."
But Mary shook her head.
"I know. I hear him talkin' in his sleep. He swears and curses something awful, an' grits his teeth. Listen to him now."
Bert, his handsome face bitter and devil-may-care, had tilted his chair back against the wall and was singing "Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire, Nobody likes his looks, Nobody'll share his slightest care, He classes with thugs and crooks."
Tom was saying something about reasonableness and justice, and Bert ceased from singing to catch him up.
"Justice, eh? Another pipe-dream. I'll show you where the working class gets justice. You remember Forbes--J. Alliston Forbes--wrecked the Alta California Trust Company an' salted down two cold millions. I saw him yesterday, in a big hell-bent automobile. What'd he get? Eight years' sentence. How long did he serve? Less'n two years. Pardoned out on account of ill health.
Ill hell! We'll be dead an' rotten before he kicks the bucket.
Here. Look out this window. You see the back of that house with the broken porch rail. Mrs. Danaker lives there. She takes in washin'. Her old man was killed on the railroad. Nitsky on damages--contributory negligence, or fellow-servant-something-or-other flimflam. That's what the courts handed her. Her boy, Archie, was sixteen. He was on the road, a regular road-kid. He blew into Fresno an' rolled a drunk.
