They Call Me Carpenter eBook

And so I left the Labor Temple and walked up and down on the sidewalk in front.  It was really rather unreasonable of me to be annoyed with this labor man for having voiced the same point of view of “common sense” which I had been defending to Carpenter’s group on the previous evening.  Also, I was obliged to admit to myself that if I were a labor leader, trying to hold together a group of half-educated men in the face of public sentiment such as existed in this city, I might not have the same carefree, laughing attitude towards life as a certain rich young man whose pockets were stuffed with unearned increments.

To this mood of tolerance I had brought myself, when I saw a white robe come round the corner, arm in arm with a frock coat of black broadcloth.  Also there came Everett, looking still more ghastly, his nose and lip having become purple, and in places green.  Also there was Korwsky, and two other men; Moneta, a young Mexican cigarmaker out of work, and a man named Hamby, who had turned up on the previous evening, introducing himself as a pacifist who had been arrested and beaten up during the war.  Somehow he did not conform to my idea of a pacifist, being a solid and rather stoutish fellow, with nothing of the idealist about him.  But Carpenter took him, as he took everybody, without question or suspicion.

XLV

I joined the group, and made clear to them, as tactfully as I could, that they were not wanted inside.  Comrade Abell threw up his hands.  “Oh, those labor skates!” he cried.  “Those miserable, cowardly, grafting politicians!  Thinking about nothing but keeping themselves respectable, and holding on to their fat, comfortable salaries!”

“Vell, vat you expect?” cried Korwsky.  “You git de verkin’ men into politics, and den you blame dem fer bein’ politicians!”

“Nothing was said about returning the money, I suppose?” remarked Everett, in a bitter tone.

“Something was said,” I replied.  “I said it.  I don’t think the money will be returned.”

Then Carpenter spoke.  “The money was given to feed the hungry,” said he.  “If it is used for that purpose, we can ask no more.  And if men set out to preach a new doctrine, how can they expect to be welcomed at once?  We have chosen to be outcasts, and must not complain.  Let us go to the jail.  Perhaps that is the place for us.”  So the little group set out in a new direction.

On the way we talked about the labor movement, and what was the matter with it.  Comrade Abell said that Carpenter was right, the fundamental trouble was that the workers were imbued with the psychology of their masters.  They would strike for this or that improvement in their condition, and then go to the polls and vote for the candidates of their masters.  But Korwsky was more vehement; he was an industrial unionist, and thought the present craft unions worse than nothing.