THE STRIKE
5
had filled into breasts feeling and seeing the tattoo of his clubs on
the embarcadero, and Rossi hearing tried to lose himself into his top–
coat, failing, tried to puff himself invincible with the majesty of his
office. "Remember, I am your chief executive, the respect ... the honor
... due that office ... don't listen to me then but listen to your mayor ...
listen," and the boos rolled over him again and again so that the reptile
voice smothered, stopped. He never forgot the moment he called for
law and order, charging the meeting with not caring to settle by peaceful
means, wanting only violence, and voices ripped from every corner. "Who
started the violence?" "Who calls the bulls to the waterfront
?"
"Who
ordered the clubbing ?"-and in a torrent of anger shouted, "Shut up, we
have to put up with your clubs but not with your words, get out of here,
GET OUT OF HERE." That memory clamped into his heart, into
the hearts of those who command him, that bruise becames the cancer of
fear that flowered into the monstrous Bloody Thursday, that opened into
the pus of Terror- but the cancer grows, grows; there is no cure. ...
It was after that night he formed his "Citizens Committee," after
that night the still smiling lips of the Industrial Association bared into a
growl of open hatred, exposing the naked teeth of guns and tear gas.
The tempo of those days maddened to a crescendo. The city became a
camp, a battlefield, the screams of ambulances sent the day reeling, class
lines fell sharply-everywhere, on streetcars, on corners, in stores, pople
talked, cursing, stirred ·with something strange in their breasts, incom–
prehensible, shaken with fury at the police, the papers, the shipowners ...
going down to the waterfront, not curious spectators, but to stand there,
watching, silent, trying to read the lesson the moving bodies underneath
were writing, trying to grope to the meaning of it all, police "rrotecting
lives" smashing clubs and gas bombs into masses of men like themselves,
papers screaming lies. Those were the days when with every attack on
the picket lines the phone rang at the I.L.A.-"NOW-will you arbi–
trate ?"-when the mutter GENERAL STRIKE swelled tu a thunder,
when everywhere the cry arose-"WE'VE GOT
ITO
END IT NOW."
Coming down to headquarters from the waterfront, the faces of comrades
had the strained look of men in battle, that strangely intense look ot
living, of feeling too much in too brief a space of time....
Yes, those were the days crescendoing-and the typewriter breaks,
stops for an instant-to Bloody Thursday. Weeks afterward my fists
clench at the remembrance and the hate congests so I feel I will burst.
Bloody Thursday-our day we write on the pages of history with letters
