_ In time people grew tired of talking and reading about the strike, and more than one man wished it might end. The strikers wished it too, for hundreds of them were at the point of starvation. The police courts were constantly crowded, and often overflowed and filled the morgue. Misery, disappointment, want, and hunger made men commit crimes the very thought of which would have caused them to shudder a year ago. One day a desolate looking striker was warming his feet in a cheap saloon when a well-dressed stranger came and sat near him and asked the cause of his melancholia.
"I'm a striker," said the man; "and I have had no breakfast. More than that, my wife is hungry at home and she is sick, too. She's been sick ever since we buried the baby, three weeks ago. All day yesterday I begged for work, but there was nothing for me to do. To-day I have begged for money to buy medicine and food for her, but I have received nothing, and now my only hope is that she may be dead when I go home to-night, empty-handed and hungry."
The stranger drew his chair yet nearer to that of the miserable man and asked in a low tone why he did not steal.
"I don't know how," said the striker, looking his questioner in the face. "I have never stolen anything and I should be caught at my first attempt. If not, it would only be a question of time, and if I must become a thief to live we might as well all die and have done with it. It'll be easier anyway after she's gone, and that won't be long; she don't want to live. Away in the dead of night she wakes me praying for death. And she used to be about the happiest woman in the world, and one of the best, but when a mother sits and sees her baby starve and die, it is apt to harden her heart against the people who have been the cause of it all. I think she has almost ceased to care for me, for of course she blames me for going out with the strikers, but how's a man to know what to do? If I could raise the price I think I'd take a couple of doses of poison home with me and put an end to our misery. She'd take it in a holy minute."
"Don't do that," said the stranger, dabbing a silk handkerchief to his eyes, one after the other. "And don't steal, for if you do once you will steal again, and by and by you'll get bolder and do worse. I've heard men tell how they had begun by lifting a dicer in front of a clothing store, or stealing a loaf of bread, and ended by committing murder. They can't break this way always--brace up."
The switchman went over to the bar where a couple of non-union men were shaking dice for the drinks. He recognized one of them as the man who had taken his place in the yards, but he scarcely blamed him now. Perhaps the fellow had been hungry, and the striker knew too well what that meant. Presently, the switchman went back to the stove and began to button his thin coat up about his throat.
"I'm dead broke myself," said the well-dressed stranger, "but I'm going to help you if you'll let me."
As the striker stared at the stranger the man took off a sixty-dollar overcoat and hung it over the switchman's arm. "Take it," he said, "it's bran new; I just got it from the tailor this morning. Go out and sell it and bring the money to me and I'll help you."
When the striker had been gone a quarter of an hour the well-dressed man strolled up to the bar and ordered a cocktail. Fifteen minutes later he took another drink and went out in front of the saloon. It was cold outside and after looking anxiously up and down the street the philanthropist re[:e]ntered the beer-shop and warmed himself by the big stove. At the end of an hour he ordered another dose of nerve food and sat down to think. It began to dawn upon him that he had been "had," as the English say. Perhaps this fellow was an impostor, a professional crook from New York, and he would sell the overcoat and have riotous pastime upon the proceeds.
"The wife and baby story was a rank fake--I'm a marine," said the well-dressed man taking another drink. It seemed to him that the task of helping the needy was a thankless one, and he wished he had the overcoat back again. He had been waiting nearly two hours when the switchman came in. "I had a hard time finding a purchaser," explained the striker, "and finally when I did sell it I could only get twelve dollars and they made me give my name and tell how I came to have such a coat. I suppose they thought I had stolen it and I dare say I looked guilty for it is so embarrassing to try to sell something that really doesn't belong to you, and to feel yourself suspected of having stolen it."
"And you told them that a gentleman had given the coat to you to sell because he was sorry for you?"
"Yes, I gave them a description of you and told them the place."
"That was right," said the gentleman, glancing toward the door. "Here are two dollars; come back here to-morrow and I'll have something more for you--good-by." And the philanthropist passed out by a side door which opened on an alley.
The striker gripped the two-dollar bill hard in his hand and started for the front door. All thought of hunger had left him now, and he was thinking only of his starving wife, and wondering what would be best for her to eat. Two or three men in citizens' dress, accompanied by a policeman, were coming in just as he was going out, but he was looking at the money and did not notice them. "There goes the thief," said one of the men, and an officer laid a heavy hand on the striker's shoulder. The man looked up into the officer's face with amazement, and asked what the matter was.
"Did you sell an overcoat to this gentleman a little while ago?" asked the policeman.
"Yes," said the striker glancing down at the two dollars he still held in his hand.
"Und yer sthold dot coats fum mine vindo'," said a stout man shoving his fist under the switchman's nose.
"A gentleman gave me the coat in this saloon," urged the striker. "Why, he was here a moment ago."
"Ah! dot's too tin," laughed the tailor, "tak' 'im avay, Meester Bleasman, tak' 'im avay," and the miserable man was hurried away to prison.
That night while the switchman sat in a dark cell his young wife lay dying of cold and hunger in a fireless room, and when an enterprising detective came to search the house for stolen goods on the following morning, he found her there stiff and cold.
Of course no one was to blame in particular, unless it was the well-dressed gentleman who had "helped" the striker, for no one, in particular, was responsible for the strike. It may have been the company and it may have been the brotherhood, or both, but you can't put a railroad company or a brotherhood in jail. _