that are in business and are not workers. They have hoodwinked
us. They have made fools of us. A speaker asked are we mice or
men. I ask them are they rats or men. I want these rats to come
out of their holes and stand upon this floor. Who was the first
man that suggested this strike? I want to see the color of his
hair. Stand up, if he's in the hall. If he isn't here, why isn't
he?"

No one answered.

"If this strike was called by outsiders," I cried, "why don't
the outsiders do the striking? Whose jobs will be lost in this
strike--our jobs or the outsiders' jobs? If the man who started
this strike has a job that won't be lost in the strike, then I
claim that we have made a bad mistake. And if we're making a
mistake, men, what are we going to do about it?"

I sat down, exhausted by the first attempt at public pleading I
had ever made. Everything grew dark about me, and I knew that I
had done my best and that I was through. I was quite young, and I
went to pieces like an untrained runner who had overdone himself.

The men were talking to one another, and somebody moved that
the meeting take a recess until after supper. It would give time
to think it over and find out what the men really thought about
the strike proposition.



CHAPTER XXXII