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THE STRIKE OF ONE, by Elliott Flower

Danny Burke was discharged.

A certain distinguished ex-President of the United States probably would have said that he was discharged for “pernicious activity”; but the head of the branch messenger-office merely said that he was “an infernal nuisance.”

Danny was a good union man. As a matter of fact, he was a boy, and a small boy at that; but he would have scorned any description that did not put him down as “a good union man.” Danny’s environment had been one of uncompromising unionism, and that was what ailed him. He wanted to advance the union idea. To this end, he undertook to organize the other messengers in the branch office, advancing all the arguments that he had heard his mother and his father use in their discussions. The boys thought favorably of the scheme, but most of them were inclined to let some one else do the experimenting. It might result disastrously. Just to encourage them, Danny became insolent, as he had already become inattentive; he told the manager what he would do and what he would not do, and positively declined to deliver a message that would carry his work a few minutes beyond quitting-time.

Then Danny was discharged—and he laughed. Discharge him! Well, he’d show them a thing or two.

“We’ll arbitrate,” he announced.

“Get out!” ordered the manager.

“You got to arbitrate,” insisted Danny. “You got to confer with your men or you’re goin’ to have a strike!” Danny had heard so much about conferences that he felt he was on safe ground now. “We can’t stand fer no autycrats!” he added. “You got to meet your men fair an’ talk it over. A committee—”

“Get out!” repeated the manager, rising from his desk, near which the waiting boys were seated.

“Men,” yelled Danny, “I calls a strike an’ a boycott!”

Two of the boys rose as if to follow him, but the manager was too quick. He had Danny by the collar before Danny knew what had happened, and the struggling boy was marched to the door and pushed out. The boys who had risen promptly subsided.

Danny was too astonished for words. In all his extended hearsay knowledge of strikes he never had heard of anything like this. There was nothing heroic in it at all. He had expected a conference, and, instead, he was ignominiously handled and thrust into the street.

Danny sat down on a pile of paving-stones to think it over. Without reasoning the matter out, he now regarded himself as a union. The other members had deserted him, but he was on a strike; and somehow he had absorbed the idea that the men who were striking were always the union men. So, this being a strike of one, he was an entire union. It did not take him long to decide that the first thing to do was to “picket the plant.” That was a familiar phrase, and he knew the meaning of it. Everything was nicely arranged for him, too. The street was being paved, and he was sitting on some paving-stones, with a pile of gravel beside him. He selected fifteen or twenty of the largest stones from the gravel-pile.

A woman was the first victim. As she was about to enter the messenger-office she was startled by a yell of warning from Danny.

“Hey, you!” he shouted. “Keep out!”

She backed away hastily, and looked up to see if anything were about to fall on her.

“Why should I keep out?” she asked at last.

“’Cause you’ll git hit with a rock if you don’t,” was the prompt reply.

“But, little boy—” she began.

“I ain’t a little boy,” asserted Danny. “I’m a union.”

The woman looked puzzled, but she finally decided that this was some boyish joke.

“You’d better run home,” she said, and turned to enter the messenger-office. She could not refrain from looking over her shoulder, however, and she saw that he was poised for a throw.

“Don’t do that!” she cried hastily. “You might hurt me.”

“Sure I’ll hurt you,” was the reply. “I’ll smash your block in if you don’t git a move on.”

The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.

Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.

“What’s the matter, Danny?” he asked.

“Got the plant picketed,” asserted Danny. “Nobody can’t go in or come out.”

“I’m goin’ in,” said the other boy.

“You!” exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.

“No, I ain’t, Danny,” the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.

“Sure?” asked Danny.

“Honest.”

“This here’s a strike,” explained Danny.

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” apologized the boy. “I ain’t a strike-breaker.”

Danny let him up, but made him sit on another pile of stones a short distance away. He would be all right as long as he kept still, Danny explained, but no longer.

* * * *

While Danny was continuing strike operations with rapidly growing enthusiasm, the woman he had first stopped was taking an unexpected part in the little comedy. She had gone to another of the branch offices with the message she wished delivered, and had told of the trouble she had experienced. Thereupon the manager of this office called up the manager of the other on the telephone.

“What’s the matter over there?” he asked.

“Nothing,” was the surprised reply. “Who said there was?”

“Why, a woman has just reported that she was driven away by a boy with a pile of stones.”

The manager hastened to the window, and realized at once that something was decidedly wrong. On a pile of paving-stones directly in front of the door sat the proud and happy Danny. At his feet there was a pile of smaller stones, and he held a few in his hands. On his right was a boy who had started on a trip a short time before, and on his left was one who should have reported back. A man was gesticulating excitedly, a number of others and some boys were laughing, and Danny seemed to be intimating that any one who tried to enter would be hurt.

“Jim,” said the manager to the largest messenger, “go out there and see what’s the matter with Danny Burke. Tell him I’ll have him arrested if he doesn’t get out.”

* * * *

Danny was a wise general. He wanted no prisoners that he could not handle easily, and this big boy would be dangerous to have within his lines. The big boy was a sort of star messenger, who did not fraternize with Danny anyhow. Consequently Danny fired a volley the moment he saw who it was, and the big boy hastily retreated, bearing with him one bump on the forehead.

“That’s Jim,” Danny explained to the increasing crowd. “He’s the biggest, next to the boss. Watch me nail the boss.”

“You’re the stuff!” exclaimed some of the delighted loiterers, thus proving that the loiterers are just as anxious to see trouble in a small strike as in a large one.

Danny picked out a stone considerably larger than the others, for he expected the manager to appear next, and the manager had incurred his personal enmity. In the case of his victims thus far, he had acted merely on principle—to win his point.

The manager appeared. For his own prestige (necessary to maintain discipline), the manager had to do something, but he felt reasonably sure that the dignity of his official position would make Danny less hasty and strenuous than he had been with others. The manager planned to extend the olive branch and at the same time raise the siege by beckoning Danny in, so that he might reason with him and show him how surely he would land in a police station if he would not consent to be a good boy. This would be quicker and better than summoning an officer. But the manager got the big stone in the pit of his stomach just as he had raised his hand to beckon, and he and his dignity collapsed together, with a most plebeian grunt. As he had not closed the door, he quickly rolled inside, where he lay on the floor with his hands on his stomach and listened to the joyous yelps of the crowd outside. This was too much for the manager.

“Call up police headquarters,” he said, still holding his stomach as if fearful that it might become detached, “and tell them there’s a riot here.”

The boy addressed obeyed literally.

Meanwhile Danny had decided that, as victory perched on his banners, it was time to state the terms on which he would permit the enemy to surrender, but he was too wise to put himself in the enemy’s power before these terms were settled.

“Go in, Tim,” was the order he gave to one of his prisoners, “an’ tell the guy with the stomick-ache that when he recognizes the union an’ gives me fifty cents more a week an’ makes a work-day end when the clock strikes, I’m willin’ to call it off.”

“Make him come down handsome,” advised one of the loiterers.

“I guess I got ’em on the run,” said Danny exultingly.

But Tim went in and failed to come out. This was not Tim’s fault, however, for the manager released his hold on his stomach long enough to get a grip on Tim’s collar. The striker’s defiance seemed to displease him, and, because he could not shake Danny, he shook Tim, and he said things to Tim that he would have preferred to say to Danny. Then his excited harangue was interrupted by the sound of a gong, which convinced him that he might again venture to the door.

Danny was in the grasp of the strong arm of the law. A half dozen policemen had valiantly rushed through the crowd and captured the entire besieging party, which was Danny.

“What you doin’?” demanded Danny angrily.

“What are you doing?” retorted the police sergeant in charge.

“This here’s a strike,” asserted Danny. “I got the plant picketed.”

“Run him in!” ordered the manager from the doorway.

“What’s the row?” asked the sergeant.

“That’s the row,” said the manager, pointing to Danny.

“That!” exclaimed the sergeant scornfully. “You said it was a riot. You don’t call that kid a riot, do you?”

“Well, it’s assault and battery, anyhow,” insisted the manager. “He hit me with a rock.”

“Where?” asked the sergeant.

“Where he carries his brains,” said Danny, which made the crowd yelp with joy again.

“Lock him up!” cried the manager angrily. “I’ll prefer the charge and appear against him.”

The sergeant looked at Danny and then at the manager.

“Say!” he said at last, “you ain’t got the nerve to charge this kid with assaulting you, have you?”

“I’m going to do it,” said the manager.

“Oh, all right,” returned the sergeant disgustedly.

The crowd was disposed to protest, but the police were in sufficient force to make resistance unsafe, and Danny was lifted into the patrol-wagon.

At the station the captain happened to be present when Danny was brought in, escorted by a wagon-load of policemen.

“What’s the charge?” asked the captain.

“Assault and battery on a grown man!” was the scornful reply of the sergeant.

“What did he do?” persisted the surprised captain.

“Hurt his digestion with a rock,” explained the sergeant.

“I was on strike,” said Danny. “I’m a good union man. You got no business to touch me.”

“I understand,” said the sergeant, “that he was discharged, and he stationed himself outside with a pile of rocks.”

“You’ve no right to do that,” the captain told Danny.

“They all do it,” asserted Danny.

This was so near the truth that the captain thought it wise to dodge the subject.

“Of course, if no one else will take a man’s place,” he explained, “the employer will have to take him back or—”

“There wasn’t nobody tryin’ to take my place—not while I was there!” asserted Danny belligerently.

“That’s no lie, either,” laughed the sergeant. “He had the office tied up tight.”

Danny swelled with pride at this testimonial to his prowess. Then it suddenly occurred to him that the sergeant did not act as he talked.

“What’d you butt in for, then?” he demanded.

“It was his duty,” said the captain.

“Ho!” exclaimed Danny. “It’s your business to protect the public, ain’t it?”

“Of course,” admitted the captain.

“Well, ain’t we the public?”

The captain laughed uneasily. His experience as a policeman had left him very much in doubt as to who were the public. Both sides to a controversy always claimed that distinction, and the law-breaker was usually the louder in his claims. Danny’s inability to see anything but his own side of the case was far from unusual.

The captain took Danny into his private office and talked to him. The captain did not wish to lock up the boy, so he sent for Danny’s father and also for the manager of the branch messenger-office. Meanwhile he tried to explain the matter to Danny, but Danny was obtuse. Why should not he do as his father and his father’s friends did? When they had a disagreement with the boss, they picketed the plant, and ensuing incidents sent many people to the hospitals. Why was it worse for one boy to do this than it was for some hundreds or thousands of men? Danny was confident that he was within his rights.

“Dad knows,” he said in conclusion. “Dad’ll say I’m right. You got no business mixin’ in.”

“Dad’s coming,” the captain told him.

The manager came first. “The boy ought to be punished,” said he. “He hit me with a rock.”

“I wish you’d seen him,” said the beaming Danny to the captain, for the recollection of that victory made all else seem trivial. “Say! he doubled up like a clown droppin’ into a barrel.”

“If he isn’t punished,” asserted the glowering manager, “he’ll get worse and worse and end by going to the devil.”

“Perhaps,” replied the captain. “But just stand beside him a moment, please. Don’t dodge, Danny. He’ll go behind the bars if he touches you. Stand side by side.”

They did so.

“Now,” said the captain to the manager, “how do you think you’ll look, standing beside him in the police court and accusing him of assault and battery?”

“Like a fool,” replied the manager promptly, forced to laugh in spite of himself.

“And what kind of a story—illustrated story—will it be for the papers?” persisted the captain.

“Let him go,” said the manager; “but he ought to be whaled.”

It was at this point that Dan arrived, accompanied by his wife.

“F’r why sh’u’d he be whaled?” demanded the latter aggressively.

The matter was explained to her.

“Is that thrue, Danny?” she asked.

“Sure,” replied the boy.

“Well, I’d like to see anny wan outside the fam’ly whale ye,” she said, with a defiant look at the manager, “but I’ll do it mesilf.”

Danny was astounded. In this quarter at least he had expected support. He glanced at his father.

“I’ll take a lick or two at ye mesilf,” said Dan. “The idee of breakin’ the law an’ makin’ all this throuble.”

“You’ve done it yourself,” argued Danny.

“Shut up!” commanded Dan. “Ye don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about. A sthrike’s wan thing an’ disordherly conduct’s another.”

“This was a strike,” insisted Danny.

“Where’s the union?” demanded Dan.

“I’m it,” replied Danny. “I was organizin’ it.”

“If ye’ll let him go, Captain,” said Dan, ignoring his son’s reply, “I’ll larrup him good.”

“For what?” wailed Danny. “I was only doin’ what you said was right, an’ what mom said was right, an’ what you’ve all been talkin’ for years. You’ve been a picket yourself, an’ I’ve heard you laughin’ over the way men who wouldn’t strike was done up. We got to organize. Wasn’t I organizin’? We got to enforce our rights. Wasn’t I enforcin’ them? We got to discourage traitors to the cause of labor. Wasn’t I discouragin’ them? Didn’t the union tie up a plant once when you was discharged? What’s eatin’ you, dad?”

Danny’s own presentation of the case was so strong that it gave him courage. But the last question made Dan jump, although he was not accustomed to any extraordinary show of respect from his son.

“The lad has no sinse,” he announced, “but I’ll larrup him plenty. Ye get an exthry wan f’r that, Danny. I’ll tache ye that ye’re not runnin’ things.”

“Makin’ throuble f’r father an’ mother an’ th’ good man that’s payin’ ye wages we need at home,” added Mrs. Burke.

“Now, what do you think of that?” whimpered Danny, as he was led away. “I’m to be licked fer doin’ what he does. Why don’t he teach himself the same, an’ stop others from doin’ what he talks?”

“Danny,” said the commiserating captain, “you’re to be licked for learning your lesson too well, and that’s the truth.”

But that did not make the situation any the less painful for Danny.