"My observations at the Manzanita wreck. You have, I believe, a knack
for handling a situation."
"I can always try," accepted Banneker.
Supplied with letters to the officials of the International Cloth
Company, and a liberal sum for expenses, the neophyte went to Sippiac.
There he visited the strongly guarded mills, still making a feeble
pretense of operating, talked with the harassed officials, the gang-boss
of the strike-breakers, the "private guards," who had, in fact,
practically assumed dominant police authority in the place; all of which
was faithful to the programme arranged by Mr. Vanney. Having done so
much, he undertook to obtain a view of the strike from the other side;
visited the wretched tenements of the laborers, sought out the sullen
and distrustful strike-leaders, heard much fiery oratory and some veiled
threats from impassioned agitators, mostly foreign and all tragically
earnest; chatted with corner grocerymen, saloon-keepers, ward
politicians, composing his mental picture of a strike in a minor city,
absolutely controlled, industrially, politically, and socially by the
industry which had made it. The town, as he came to conceive it, was a
fevered and struggling gnome, bound to a wheel which ground for others;
a gnome who, if he broke his bonds, would be perhaps only the worse for
his freedom.
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