4
PARTISAN REVIEW
with their banners-"This is our fight, and we're with the men to the
finish." That was the meaning of the seamen and the oilers and the wipen
and the mastermates and the pilots and the scalers torrentiug into the
river, widening into the sea.
The kids coming in from the waterfront. The flame in thein eyes,
the feeling of invincibility singing in their blood. The stories they had
to tell of scabs educated, of bloody skirmishes. My heart was ballooning
with happiness anyhow, to be back, working in the movement again, but
the things happening down at the waterfront, the heroic everydays, stored
such richness in me I can never lose it. The feeling of sympathy widening
over the city, of quickening--dass lines sharpening. I armored myself
with that on National Youth Day hearing the
sma~h
and thud of clubs
around me, seeing boy,; fall to their knees in streams of blood, pioneer
kids trampled under by horses. . . .
There was a night that was the climax of those first days--when
the workers of San Francisco packed into the Auditorium to fling a
warning to the shipowners. There are thir.gs one holds like glow in
the breast, like a fire; they make the unseen warmth that keeps one
through the cold of defeat, the hunger of despair. That night was one–
symbol and portent of what will be. We League kids came to the meeing
in a group, and walking up the stairs we felt ourselves a flame, a force.
At the door bulls were standing, with menacing faces. but behind them
fear was blanching-the people massing in, they had never dreamed it
possible-people coming in and filling the aisles, packing the back. Spurts
of song flaming up from downstairs, answered by us, echord across the
gallery, solidarity weaving us all into one being. 20,000 jar,lmed in and
the dim blue ring of cops back in the hall was wavering, was stretch–
ing itself th in and unseeable. It was OUR auditorium, we had taken
it over. And for blocks around they hear OUR voice. The thunder
of our applause, the mighty roar of it for Bridges, for Caves, for Schuma–
cher. "Thats no lie." "Tell them Harry" "To the Finish" "'Ve're with
you" "Attaboy" "We're solid." The speeches, "They can never load
their ships with tear gas and guns," "For years we were nothing but
nameless beasts of burden to them, but now.... " "Even if it means ...
GENERAL STRIKE," the voices rising, lifted on a sea of affection,
vibrating in 20,000 hearts.
There was the moment-the first bruise in the hearts of our masters–
when Mayor Rossi entered, padding himself from the fists of boos smash–
ing around him with 60 heavyfoots, and bulls, and honoraries. The boos
