normally
happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the
despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes
grief-stricken like a wounded animal's.

"She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!"

It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. "The girl wasn't doing
nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on
her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit her
--and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the
gutter. If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that
gentle looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a `Don't be a scab'
ribbon on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I
wouldn't blame 'em." Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red
with anger as she told the story.

"And how is the woman now?" asked Janet.

"In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her
head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they
live."...

Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter
flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and
imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the
remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in
particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the
extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. "Minions, slaves of
the capitalists, of the masters," the courts were called, and Janet
subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a
tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters
frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of
landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not
paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. "Let the landlords try it!" he said
phlegmatically....

After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege of
privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent.
Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions
of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire
real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording
payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly,
through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm of
the leaders, by the expectation that the mil