low drawling
voice, "Joe says you're thinking of writing me up."

So this was why Joe had sent for me. I had quite forgotten this idea,
but I took to it eagerly now. My work was going badly. Here was
something I could do, the life story of a man whose picture would soon
be on the front page of every paper in New York. It would interest my
magazine, it would give me a chance to get myself clear on this whole
ugly business of labor, poverty and strikes. I had evaded it long
enough, I would turn and face it squarely now.

"Why yes, I'd like to try," I said.

"He wants to do your picture with the America you know," said Joe. "He
says he's ready to be shown."

Marsh glanced out at the harbor.

"If he'll trail around with us for a while we may show him some of it
here," he drawled. And then quietly ignoring my presence he continued
his talk with Joe, as though taking it for granted that I was an
interested friend. I listened there all afternoon.

The thing that struck me most at first was the cool effrontery of the
man in undertaking such a struggle. The old type of labor leader had at
least stuck to one industry, and had known by close experience what he
had to face. But here was a mere outsider, a visitor strolling into a
place and saying, "I guess I'll stop all this." Vaguely I knew what he
had to contend with. Sitting here in this cheap bare room, the thought
of other rooms rose in my mind, spacious, handsomely furnished rooms
where at one time or another I had interviewed heads of foreign ship
companies, railroad presidents, bankers and lawyers, newspaper editors,
men representing enormous wealth. All these rooms had been parts of my
harbor--a massed array of money and brains. He would have all this
against him. And to such a struggle I could see no end for him but jail.

For against all this, on his side, was a chaotic army of ignorant men,
stokers, dockers, teamsters, scattered all over this immense region,
practically unorganized. What possible chance to bring them together?
How could he feel that he had a chance? How much did he already know?

I asked him what he had seen of the harbor. For days, I learned, he had
told no one but Joe of his coming, he had wandered about the port by
himself. And as a veteran tramp will in some mysterious fashion get the
feel of a new town within a few short hours there, so Marsh had got the
feel of this place--of a harbor different from mine, for he felt it from
the point of