before
him. On top of his desk were huge ledgers, and over them upon hooks on
the wall hung bunches of letters from other ports. It all gave me a
heavy impression of dull daily drudgery. And in this Joe was so absorbed
that he took no notice of my presence, although I now stood close behind
him. When at last he did look up and I got a full view of his face, with
its large, familiar features, tight-set jaw and deep-set eyes, I was
startled at its gauntness.

"Hello, Joe----"

"Hello." A dullish red came into his face and then a slight frown. He
half rose from his seat. "Hello, Bill," he repeated. "What's brought you
here?"

He appeared a little dazed at first, then anything but glad to see me.
The thought of our old college days flashed for a moment into my mind.
How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks
he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on
the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it
showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I
thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose of having it all
out with Joe and learning what he was about. Persisting in my
friendliness my questions slowly drew him out.

Since I had seen him five years ago he had continued his writing, but as
he had grown steadily more set on writing only what he called "the truth
about things," the newspapers had closed their doors. While I had gone
up he had gone down, until finally throwing up in disgust "this whole
fool game of putting words on paper," he had made up his mind to throw
in his life with the lives of the men at the bottom. So for two years he
had shoveled coal in the stokeholes of ships by day and by night, he had
mixed with stokers of every race, from English, French and Germans to
Russians and Italians, Spaniards, Hindus, Coolies, Greeks. He had worked
and eaten and slept in their holes, he had ranged the slums of all the
seas. And of all this he spoke in short, commonplace phrases, still in
that indifferent tone, as though personal stories were a bore.

"But look here, Joe," I asked at the end, "what's the good of living
like this? What the devil can you do?"

I still remember the look he gave me, the weary remoteness of it. But
all he said was,

"Organize strikes."

"Here?"

"Everywhere."

"Of stokers?"

"No, of all industries."

"For higher pay, eh, and shorter hours."

Another brief look.

"No,