The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 30, 1926, Page 10

y THE strike was now smoldering into its seventh week, and, perhaps, it would soon be a bitter ash in the mouths of the men. For finds were at an ebb, scabs were coming in like a locust plague, the company officials were growing more and more militant in their self- righteousness, and the strikers themselves were drifting into a settled state of depression and dangerous self-distrust. Their solidarity was beginning to show fissures and aching cracks. All these woeful conditions beat in like a winter sea on the tired brain of Kurelovitch .with the bleak morning light that waked him, He lifted his throbbing head from the pillow, looked about the dingy bedroom with his bleary sleep-glazed eyes, and heaved a long, troubled sigh out-of his pain. At a meeting of company executives once Kurelovitch had been denounced as a danger- ous agitator, whose pathological thirst for vio- lence had created and sustained the strike. “The man is a menace, a mad dog, whose ‘career ought to be stopped before he does “more mischief,’ said one venerable director, his kind, blue eyes developing a pinkish glare that would have horrified the women folk of his family. “The scoundrel’s probably pocketing half of the strike funds,” declared another director with plump, rosy gills and a full,, bald head that glittered like a sunset cloud, as he stunned the long table with a blow of his balled fist. But Kurelovitch was not a mad dog, and he was not waxing fat with industrial spoils, as so ‘many of the directors had. He was really a tall, tragic, rough-hewn Pole, who had been suddenly hammered into leadership by the crisis of the strike, by reason of his unquench- able integrity and social fire. He had deep, blue, burning eyes, a rugged nose and mous- taches, and his hands and form were ungainly, work-twisted symbols of the life of drudgery he had led. Now he was thinking wearily of all -the “thorny problems that would-be heaped upon him that day in the course of the strike. he extricated himself from the bedclothes and sat up to dress, the problems writhed and clam- ored in his jaded brain for solution. For seven weeks now he had risen almost at dawn and had labored till midnight at the Titan task of wringing a fifteen per cent increase out of cap- italism for his fellow workers. He had grewn gaunt and somber and wise in the process; skeptical of man and of god. He had seen plans collapse, heads broken unjustly, sen- tences inflicted by corrupt judges, babies and women starving. He had heard himself as- sailed as a monster by the other group, and as a weakling and tool by the more embittered of his own side. ‘ His wife heard him sigh, and she called from the kitchen, where she was already stirring. “There ain’t no coffee for you this morning, Stanislaw,” she announced in a sullen voice, in which there was also anger and scorn. “And there ain’t no nothin’ else to eat, only a few hunks of old bread.” é Kurelovitch stumbled wearily to his feet and entered the malodorous kitchen. Greasy pans and platters and sour garbage were strewn about, and in an apaque cloud of smoke his wife was hovering over the stove, their fourth child mewing in the nest of her arms. She was heating all the milk she had for the infant, and when her husband came in she turned on him with swift virulence. “No, not a taste of food in the house, damn _ you,” she spat. last night without hardly any supper.” _. “But it’s not my fault, now, is it, Annie?” the big man returned humbly as he went over to her and put an arm over her shoulder. She cast it off with fierce contempt, and stood him off with a volley of words that were like poison- ed arrows, each piercing straight to his vital “It is your fault, you clumsy fool, you,” she screamed out of her over-laden heart. “You were one of the first men to go out on strike, even though we hadn’t a penny in the house at the time. ‘And last week when the company wanted the men to come back you talked them eae ne were ak em starving, thanks ‘to you.” : “But, Annie—” the tall man attempted gent- The Damned Agitator “And the kids went to bed “Don’t Annie me, or try to fool me with one of your speeches. You know the strike’s lost as well as I do, and that after it you'll be black- listed in every mill town in New England. But you don’t care if yourchildren starve, do you? You'd be glad to see us all dead, wouldn’t you?” The man had crumpled under the attack, and he seemed as small almgst as his infuriated wife. But then he straightened in the dusty pallor of the kitchen, and moved to the door. “T’ll see that you get a lot of groceries and things from headquarters this morning,” he said huskily, as he went out into.the dark, bit- ter streets. Kurelovitch shivered at his contact with the gray, sharp air. A thin ash of snow had fallen through the night, and was now a noisome slush, after its: brief experience with the mill town, which degraded. everything it touched. The muddy ooze squirmed through the vul- nerable spots in his shoes, and. started the gooseflesh along Kurelovitch’s spine. Across the river in the drab morning he could see the residential heights where the rich dwelt, and |: they reminded him of the village of his youth, with its girdle of snow-covered hills and peace- ful cottages. He remembered a Polish lullaby his mother used to sing to him, and shivered~ the more. From the rough bridge which bound the split halves of the town he could see the mill, glow- ering and blocking shadows deep as ignorance on the rotting ice of the river. The resplend- ent emblem of America gleamed and waved from a staff on the low, sprawling structure, as if to sanctify all that went on beneath. And now Kurelovitch had traversed a morass of de- caying huts and offal-strewn streets and was directly within the massive shadow of the mill. Two or three of his fellow-workers recognized him, and came hurrying forward from the picket line. Kurelovitch’s day had begun. “The damned gunmen are out for fight this morning,” said a sombre, chunky Pole, swath- ed in old burlap and a tremendous fur cap that had come from Europe. | “Yes, they must ‘have gotten “more booze than usual last night,” said another striker be- tween his.chattering teeth. A young picket with brooding, dark eyes burst out with a hot voice, ‘Well, we’ll give them any fight they want, the dirty lice. We’re not afraid.” Kurelovitch put his hand on the young chap, and then the three went with him to where about fifty or more of the strikers were shifting slowly up and down the length’ of the wide mill gate. There were men and women in the line, all dark and silent and seeming more like a host of mourners than anything else in the world of bitter sky and slush-laden earth. They were muffled to the chins in grotesque rags, and their breaths went up like incense in the chi morning. A mood of sadness and suspense hung about them, and whenever they passed the knot of gunmen at the gate they turned their eyes away almost in grief. Two of the gunmen had detached themselves from the evil-eyed mob huddled, like a curse, at the gate. They carried clubs in their hands, and at their hips could be seen bulging the bad- ges.of their mission in life, which was to break strikes and to murder. They came up to Kureloviteh and sneered at him ‘with sadistic eyes. As he walked up and down in the sluggish picket line, they dogged him and used their vilest art to taunt him into resistance. ‘ 3 i About an hour later, as he was departing from the line, the two gunmen still followed him. A little group of pickets, therefore, form- ed themselves in a cordon. about Kurelovitch and escorted kim to the strike headquarters, burning all the way with repressed rage. Kur- elovitch was a marked man in the strike zone, and his maiming was a subject of much yearn- ing and planning by the gunmen.. - ~ | The daily meetings of the strikers were held in a great barn-like structure in the center of the tangled streets and alleys of the mill-work- ers’ quarters. A burst of oratory smote Kurel- ovitch as he entered the great room and a thou- sand faces, staring row on row, orientated to the leader as he marched in. ; “Kurelovitch, Kurelovitch has come,” ran a murmur like wind through a forest. } Kurelovitch leaped on the rough stage, where others of the strike committee were sitting, and }.clear-eyed strength and understanding. when passion breathed on them. By Michael Gold whispered in consultation with a fellow Pole. He learned that there was nothing of momen that day—no sign from the bosses nor ng from sympathizers. It was merely another by the dark days of the strike. - “But many of the Russians are getting rest-| jnj less,” the man whispered. “Ravillof has been | ¢p, at them,.and yesterday their priest told them to go back. Give ’em hell, Kurelovitch!” his Kurelovitch came to the edge of the platform | on in a hush like that of an operating room, look- | co ing out over a foam of varied faces. They were | an faces that had blown into the golden land on | dr the twelve winds of the world, though about | in nine-tenths of the faces were the broad-boned, | lin earthy, beautiful faces of mystic Slavdom. | ag Daylight struggled through large, smutty win- | bo dows and dusted the heads and shoulders of | re the.strikers with a white, transcendent powder. | ws ‘A huge oilcloth behind Kurelovitch proclaimed } be in big, battering letters, “We Average $9 aj th Week and We Are Demanding 15 Per Cats} More. Are You With Us?” The air tightened as Kurelovitch loomed} . there, a sad hero, stooped and gaunt with | W! many cares. Finger-deep hollows were in his th cheeks, and, with his blazing eyes and strong | P@ mouth, he seemed like some ascetic follower of | ™ the warrior Mohammed. an “Fellow workers. . .” . In low, thrilling Polish he began by disposing | ap of the secular details of the strike, as on every | he day. Then something would come over Kurel- | th ovitch, a strange feeling of automatism, as if | pu he were indeed only the voice that this simple- | jn hearted horde had created out of their woe. | pi The searing phrases would rush from his lips | de in a wild, stormy music, like the voice of a gale, } Ki as as mystic and powerful. no With both hands holding his breast, as if it | 22 were bursting with passionate vision, Kurelo- vitch lifted his face in one of his superb mo- | in: ments and flamed up like an Isaiah. an “Fellow workers,” he chanted, giving the |P words a value such as cannot be “pene by mere writing,:‘‘we,cam never be; beaten, for we are the es hy og w ih ee vl sa rest p44 the pillars of the world and in whose hands are~ the tools by which life is carried on. Life, lib- erty and happiness—let us not rest till we have gotten these for ourselves and our children’s children! Let us not permit the accidents of a strike to stay us on our journey toward the beautiful city of freedom, whose grace is one day to shine on all the world. “We are beginning to starve, some of us, but let us starve bravely, for we are soldiers in a greater and nobler war than that which is bleeding Europe. We are soldiers in the class war which is finally to set mankind free of all war and all poverty, all bosses and hate. Wark- ingmen of the world, unite; we have no to lose but our chains;we have a world to gain!” Kurelovitch ended in a great shout, and then the handclapping and whistles rose to him in turbulent swirls. He found himself suddenly |), weary and limp and melancholy, and his deep- est wish was to go off somewhere alone to wait until the hollow places inside were refilled. . . je But, with the others of the strike committee, | th he left the platform and fused into the discus- sions that were raging everywhere. Every- | he body tried to come near Kurelovitch, to speak | to to him. He was a common hearth at which | ot his people crowded and shouldered for warmth, | st his starving, wistful people who believed him when he said they could wipe out the accumu- | be lated woe of humanity. . . He was treated to long recitals of the work- ings of the proletarian soul in this time of gant and panic and anger. He heard a hundred fales of temptation, of desperate hunger, of out Jages at the hands of the gunmen. Kurelovitch lis- tened to it all like a grave, kind father confes- i sor, untying many a Gordian knot with his Ms And. then came to him Raviloff, the leader | PY of the Russians, a short, black, wrinkled man, with slow.eyes that became living coals of fire = Oo. He was angry to impotence now. “You said in your speech that I was a traitor, Kurelo- vitch,” he shouted fiercely. ‘You lie; I am not. But we Russians think this strike is lost, and that we'd all better go back before it’s too late.” “It’s not lost,” Kurelovitch replied slowly. “The mills can’t work full time until we choose & Re2omanr