down and hear
Harry Lauder. Thank Heaven he happens to be in town. To hear you talk
you'd think the whole American people had forgotten how to laugh.

"Now Billy," she ended smoothly, "go to the icebox and get two bottles
of nice cool beer--and make me a tall glass of lemonade. And don't use
too much sugar."

CHAPTER IV

The next day and the next evening Eleanore's program was carried out.
But after that night the laughing stopped. For Joe Kramer was coming to
trial.

I had not seen Joe for over two weeks, and I had taken his view of his
case, that there was no serious danger. But now I learned from a good
source that Joe and both his colleagues were to be brought to trial at
once, while the public feeling was still hot against them. As the time
of the trials drew near every paper in town took up the cry. Let these
men be settled once and for all, they demanded. Let them not be set free
for other strikes, for wholesale murder and pillage. Let them pay the
full penalty for their crimes!

In the face of this storm, I found myself on Joe's defense committee,
the best part of my time each day and evening taken up with raising
money, helping to find witnesses and doing the press work for parades
and big mass meetings of labor.

Through this work, in odd hours, I finished my story of the strike. It
all came back to me vividly now and I tried to tell what I had seen. I
took it to my editor.

"Print that?" he said when he'd read it. "You're mad."

"It's the truth," I remarked.

"As you see it," he said. "And you've seen it only from one side. If
this story had been written and signed by Marsh or your friend Kramer,
we might have run it, with a reply from the companies. But I don't want
to see _you_ stand for this--in our magazine or anywhere else--it means
too much to you as a writer. Look out, my boy," he added, with a
return to the old brusque kindliness which he had always shown me in the
years I had worked under him. "We think a lot of you in this office. For
God's sake don't lose your head. Don't be one more good reporter
spoiled."

I took my story of the strike to every editor I knew, and it was
rejected by each in turn. They thought it all on the side of the crowd,
an open plea for revolution. Then I took it to Joe in the Tombs.

"Will you sign this, Joe?" I asked, when he had read it.

"No," he replied. "It's too damn mild. You've given too much to the
other side. All these bouquets to efficiency