To Make My Bread (49 page)

“To all spinners, loom fixers, weavers, twisters, carders, frame hands, inspectors, and all other workers of the day and night shifts:” it began.

And spoke of the reasons for a strike, and asked those who felt the need for one to come out to the railroad crossing where speakers would talk to them right after the twelve o'clock whistle that day.

Tom Moore drove off in the car to prepare a place for the speaking, and John remained to talk with those who had assembled.

“When the twelve o'clock whistle blows,” he said, “we must give these papers to those who come from the gates. Each and everyone must receive one of these.” He held up one of the papers.

“Did Zinie come?” John asked Bonnie who was standing by him.

“No,” Bonnie said, and looked at John with sympathy.

“She's somewhat fearful.”

“Yes, I know.”

“There's the whistle.”

The whistle blew loud and long. Bonnie saw that the guards lifted their guns, but during the whole time that day they did not move from their places. At that time when the mill was confident, the deputies had orders only to keep people out of the compound.

The two lines of workers came from the mills. Those outside crowded up to them in the road and gave out the pieces of paper on which were printed the important words. They also spoke to the ones who had just come out of the gates.

“We've got to stand together,” they said.

“You won't go against your neighbors, will ye?” they asked.

And many said, “Come to the meeting, and see.”

On the side toward the mill the railroad embankment sloped down into a wide grassy place. On the slope, near the track, and high up where all could see any speakers, Tom Moore had constructed a round platform made from two large packing cases.

When Bonnie with John and Ora reached the grassy place there were already many people there. John went up to Tom Moore who was standing beside the platform, for John was to speak when Tom Moore finished. They watched the crowds that came along the mill road and gathered with the others already there. Presently Tom Moore said, with excitement under the quiet of his voice, “It's time to begin.”

He was not a tall man, but his voice was strong and confident.

“Fellow workers,” he began.

“Yesterday some of your fellow workers were dismissed from the mill without any reason being given. We all know they were good workers. But they were suddenly given their time. Why? Because they wanted to start up a union here. But the mill owners did not realize that they were dealing with people and not machines. You can throw out a machine that doesn't work as you want it and the other machines will go right on working for the owners. But in this case the owners were dealing with people, people who have a sense of loyalty to their neighbors, to their fellow workers—people who possess something of pride in themselves, and a sense of justice to their own. Some of these people who knew why our fellow workers were dismissed followed them out of the mill. It was one of the finest things I have ever known.

“Now we want to share with the rest of you the reasons for this union. We have got to better our conditions. We are nothing but slaves. And who gets the benefit of our hard toil? Our families? No. Our children are forced to leave school at an early age to work long hours in the mill, in order that we and they may live. The owners are making good money, while through the use of the hank machines most of us do not know what our wages will be by the end of the week, except that we know they will not be enough.

“People have been laid off, and no one knows who will be next. What is left for us to do but make a fight for our own? How else can we improve our lives, raise our wages, shorten the working day, protect ourselves from insults, win for ourselves and our children the opportunities of education?

“The mill owners are against us, and naturally so—for the worse off we become, the better off they are. Our strength lies in standing together. The owners of the mills will call this treason and bad faith, but do not worry over those charges. You need only to be concerned with treason against your own people, against your neighbors and friends, those who work with you, and are now trying to get better lives for you and all that are dear to you. Be true to yourselves and your own, and you can't go far wrong.

“Some will wonder, ‘How will we eat, if we go out of the mill?' Well, it can't be said that we eat very well as it is. But there are other workers in this country, and there are other people who will stand up for you, and send down money for food.”

He went on speaking, and Bonnie, moving about in the crowd, heard words that gladdened her. For the words and the faces that were concentrated on Tom Moore, looking up to him where he stood on the boards, said to her that people were hearing something they had longed to hear, but had not known that it was on the face of the earth.

Toward the end of his talk Tom Moore said, “I want to know how many will stay out of the mill. All those who will . . .” Bonnie heard this much and then she could hear no more.

From the railroad siding near the station a freight train came up to the crossing and stopped just behind the platform. Tom Moore stopped speaking, thinking it would go on, for the noise it made prevented those further away from hearing him. But it did not go away. On the step below the engineer Dewey Fayon stood with his sawed-off shot gun in his hand and looked out over the crowd. Then he looked up and spoke to the engineer. From the bowels of the engine came clouds of steam. Tom tried to go on speaking, but the steam cut him off from the crowd. Added to this was another interruption. The engine began to whistle, long piercing whistles, so that those on the speaking stand were obliterated by the steam cloud and by the noise.

In the cloud Tom Moore spoke with his mouth close to John's ear. “We've got to let them know about the meeting to-night. They're breaking up. Quick. Take two or three others and go on the road across the track. I'll run down on the road to the mill. Say, ‘Meet this evening at six in the vacant lot behind Mrs. Sevier's boarding house.' ”

The crowd was leaving the meeting place. When he saw this Dewey Fayon gave a sign to the engineer, and with a last high derisive whistle the engine backed onto its siding.

O
N
Railroad Avenue, a short avenue two blocks from the mill, there was about a block of stores that were empty. Tom Moore and John rented an old wooden one-story structure for the union office and two doors away the bottom floor of a two-story brick building for a place from which to give out food and other relief.

“Now,” Tom Moore said when that was accomplished, “we must send a telegram—for help.”

“They will send help from up there?”

“As much as they can. And some people will come down. We've got to work hard. In a week everybody here will have used up all the fatback and flour they have on hand.”

Bonnie, Ora, Sally and some of the other women helped with the stores. Once Ora missed Bonnie, and found her out at the back of the store sitting on a keg. She was leaning over writing laboriously on an old brown paper bag she had found in the store.

“Why, I thought you had left us,” Ora exclaimed.

“No,” Bonnie said. “I was just writing something.”

“What is it?” Ora bent over Bonnie's shoulder.

“You see, Ora, I was thinking about us, and I thought of a ballad we could sing. I thought of some words.”

“Read hit to me.”

“It's not very fine. I just thought of some words, and wrote them down.”

“You read hit.”

“I could sing better.”

“Then sing.”

“It's a mill mother's ballad,” Bonnie explained. “I thought about us leaving our young ones . . .”

“You let me hear it,” Ora said, knowing that Bonnie was trying to put her off.

So Bonnie sang, faltering at first, from the paper, on which words were scratched out and written over—until she had found the words she needed.

“It's all I've got so far,” she said.

“It's real nice,” Ora told her, really admiring. “I'm a-going t' tell Tom Moore and John so you can sing for all of us.”

“Oh no. It's not good enough.”

Bonnie slipped from the keg, and was going inside again to help, but Ora pressed her down again with one hand on her shoulder.

“You sit right there and finish, Bonnie. We've got enough t' help inside. You write that ballad. We've got t' reach people's hearts as well as their stomachs.”

From the relief store that evening they went to the meeting behind Mrs. Sevier's boarding house. Bonnie had brought her covers over and her young ones were sleeping on the floor at Ora's, so she could leave them at night. The meeting was in a field, and soon after the time set the place was almost full. After the speaking the people did not leave at once and Bonnie moved among them. Lillie Martin who was married and was now Lillie Thatcher was there with her husband's father, old Ed Thatcher.

Lillie had married Tom Thatcher, one of the wild young men of the village. And it was a queer thing, but one that sometimes happened: after her marriage Lillie had settled down, but Tom kept up the sort of life he had led when he and Lillie ran around to the horror of all good churchgoing people.

“Where's Tom?” Bonnie asked her.

“In the mill,” Lillie turned away, so that she might not have to answer again.

“We'll make him come out in the morning,” Ed told her.

The people assembled had voted to picket the mills in the morning. This is what Tom Moore told them: “There are people like those who called a strike in Sandersville some years ago. These people would say to you, ‘Now you go home and stay there and we'll talk with the owners and arrange everything for you.' Then they will go to the owners and say, ‘You and me must come to an understanding.' And they will bargain over you like people bargain over the counter for a piece of goods. And you are the goods. They call it collective bargaining. And it is collective bargaining. For those strike leaders collect our dues, and the owners of the mills collect our blood and bone, and our children's lives.

“You all know how in the frame rooms the rove is drawn and twisted to make it stronger. First, six strands are put together to make a stronger thread. Well, we've got to stick together just like that rove. We've got to show fight. We've got to picket the mill and get all those still in there working for the owners to come out with us. And when we've shown that we can all stick together, then we will elect a committee from among us to talk with the owners. And the committee will come back and report, so we can vote on what we want to do. No one will decide what is best for us but ourselves.”

It was this talk which had made Ed Thatcher say what he did. Many people felt after Tom Moore and the other speakers had finished that they could clean out the mill next morning.

Bonnie saw young Henry Sanders standing near the box from which the speakers had said their words. His mother, bent and scrawny, old in work, was at one side. Around her, varying in age, but not much in size, were the eight young children that her dead husband had left her. Henry was the oldest, and he was sixteen, with the burden of them all on him, for his mother was a sick woman. He had worked in the mill since he was ten and had to put newspapers in the heels of his shoes to make him taller. Now, at sixteen, nearing seventeen, he had grown no larger than he was at ten or eleven. But he did the work of a man.

“How are you?” Bonnie said to Henry's mother. She felt a loving care toward all the people, and a gratefulness to them for having come out, for seeing that this was the best thing to do.

Henry came up to them. “Hit looks as if there's going t' be a strike,” he said, when Mrs. Sanders had answered Bonnie's question.

“I'm s' glad t' see you out,” Bonnie said to him.

“Well,” Henry told her. “I figured we was starving anyway, and might as well starve on our feet putting up a good fight.”

“Hit's right,” Bonnie turned to Mrs. Sanders, “I didn't have enough t' feed my young ones, let alone cover their backs.”

Henry touched her arm. “Somebody's a-calling ye.”

“Where?”

Then Bonnie heard Ora's voice. “Bonnie, Bonnie Calhoun,” and Ora came pressing through the crowd. Behind her was Tom Moore.

“They want ye t' get up on the box and sing your ballad,” Ora said.

A chill went through Bonnie. She had written the ballad because it had come to her, but she had not thought of getting up before neighbors and friends to sing. Her singing had all been done with other people.

“No,” she drew back from Ora's hand that was pushing her toward the platform. “I can't, Ora.” She was very frightened. Later she became accustomed to the singing. But for the first few times she dreaded getting up before the people as she did now.