r for
it.

"What are the men saying now?" she asked Archey at the end of their first
good week.

"They're not saying much, but I think they're up to something. They've
called a special meeting for tonight."

The next morning was Sunday. Mary was hardly downstairs when Archey
called.

"I've found out about their meeting last night," he said. "They have
appointed a committee to try to have a boycott declared on our bearings."

It didn't take Mary long to see that this might be a mortal thrust unless
it were parried.

"But how can they?" she asked.

"They are going to try labour headquarters first. 'Unfair to
labour'--that's what they are going to claim it is--to allow women to do
what they're doing here. They're going to try to have a boycott declared,
so that no union man will handle Spencer bearings, the teamsters won't
truck them, the railways won't ship them, the metal workers and mechanics
won't install them, and no union man will use a tool or a machine that
has a Spencer bearing in it. That's their program. That's what they are
going to try to do."

From over the distance came the memory of Ma'm Maynard's words:

"I tell you, Miss Mary, it has halways been so and it halways will:
Everything that lives has its own natural enemy--and a woman's natural
enemy--eet is man!"

"No, sir!" said Mary to herself, as resolutely as ever, "I don't believe
it. They're trying to gain their point--that's all--the same as I'm
trying to gain mine.... But aren't they fighting hard when they do a
thing like that...!"

It came to her then with a sharp sense of relief that no organization--no
union--could well afford to boycott products simply because they were
made by women. "Because then," she thought, "women could boycott things
that were made by unions, and I'm sure the unions wouldn't want that."

She mentioned this to Archey and it was decided that Judge Cutler should
follow the strikers' committee to Washington and present the women's side
of the case.

Archey went, but the atmosphere of worry which he had brought with him
stayed behind. Mary seemed to breathe it all day and to feel its
oppression every time she awoke in the night.

"What a thing it would be," she thought, "if they did declare a boycott!
All the work we've done would go for nothing--all our hopes and
plans--everything wiped right out--and every woman pushed right back in
her trap--and a man sitting on the lid--with a boycott in his hand...!"