"Y ou kin go anywheres and git a job on a paper
like you had ....
I wish I had your schoolin' ....
I
bet you'll be glad to be quit of this bunch of hunkies."
"They are the working class, Gus."
"Sure if we could only git more sense into our
damn heads ....
You know I've got an own brother
scabbin' right to this day."
"He's probably worried about his wife and fam-
ily."
"I'd worry him if I could get my hands on him.
... A woikin' man ain't got no right to have a wife
and family."
"He can have a girl." Her voice failed. She felt
her heart beating so hard as she walked along be-
side him over the uneven pavement she was afraid
he'd hear it.
"Girls aplenty." Gus laughed. "They're free and
easy, Polish girls are. That's one good thing."
"I wish ....
" Mary heard her voice saying.
"Well good night. Rest good, you look all in."
He'd given her a pat on the shoulder and he'd turned
and gone off with his long shambling stride. She
was at the door of her house. When she got in her
room she threw herself on the bed and cried.
It was several weeks later that Gus Moscowski
was arrested distributing leaflets in Braddock. She
saw him brought up before the squire in the dirty
courtroom crowded with the grey uniforms of state
troopers and sentenced to five years. His arm was
in a sling and there was a scab of clotted blood on
the towy stubble on the back of his head. His blue
eyes caught hers in the crowd and he grinned and
gave her a jaunty wave of a big hand.
"So that's how it is, is it?" snarled a voice beside
her. There was a hulking grey trooper on either side
of her. They hustled her out of court and marched
her down to the interurban trolleys top talking filth
at her all the way. She didn't say anything but she
couldn't keep back the tears. She hadn't known men
could talk to women like that. "Come on now, loosen
up, me an Steve here we're twice the men. You
ought to have better sense....
No money in that
guy....
"
At last the Pittsburgh trolley came and they put
her on it with a warning that if they ever saw her
around again they'd have her up for soliciting. As
the car pulled out she saw them turn away laugh-
ing. She sat there hunched up in the seat in the back
of the car with her stomach churning and her face
set. Back at the office, all she said was that the cos-
sacks had run her out of the courthouse.
When she heard that George Barrow was in town
with the Senatorial Investigating Commission, she
went to him at once. She waited for him in the lobby
of the Schenley. The still winter evening was one
block of black iron cold. She was shivering in her
thin coat. She was dead tired. It seemed weeks since
she'd slept.
It was warm in the big quiet hotel lobby, through
6
her thin paper soles she could feel the thick nap of
the carpet. There must have been a bridge party
somewhere in the hotel because groups of welldressed
middleaged women that reminded her of her mo·
ther kept going through the lobby. She let herself
drop into a deep chair by a radiator and started at
once to drowse off.
"You poor little girl I can see you've been work-
ing....
This is different from social service work
I'll bet." She opened her eyes. George Barrow had
on a furlined coat with a fur collar out of which his
thin neck and long knobby face stuck comically like
the head of a maribou stork.
She got up. "Oh Mr. Barrow ... I mean George."
He took her hand in his left hand and patted it
gently with his right. "Now I know what the front
line trenches are like," she said laughing at his kind
comical look.
"You're laughing at my fur coat ....
Wouldn't
help the Amalgamated if I got pneumonia, would
it? ...
Why haven't you got a warm coat? ...
Sweet little Mary French ....
Just exactly the p('r.
son I wanted to see. . . . Do you mind if we go
upstairs,? I don't like to talk here, too many ewes.
droppers. "
Upstairs in his ample warm room with pink hang-
ings and pink lights he helped her off with her coat.
He stood there frowning and weighing it in his hand.
"You've got to get a warm coat," he said. After
he'd ordered tea for her from the waiter he rather
ostentatiously left the door into the hall open. They
settled down on either side of a little table at the
foot of the bed that was littered with newspapers
and typewritten sheets. "Well well well," he said.
"This is a, great pleasure for a lonely old codger
like me. What would you think of having dinner
with the Senator? ...
To see how the other half
lives."
They talked and .talked. Now and then he slipped
a little whiskey in her tea. He was very kind, said
he was sure all the boys could be gotten out of jail
as soon as the strike was settled and that it virtually
was settled. He'd just been over in Youngstown
talking to Fitzpatrick. He thought he'd just about
convinced him that the only thing to do was to get
the men back to work. He had Judge Gary's own
private assurance that nobody would be discrim-
inated against and that experts were working on
the problem of an eight hour day. As soon as the
technical difficulties' could be overcome, the whole
picture of the steel workers' life would change rad-
ically for the better. Then and there he offered to
put Mary ,French on the payroll as his secretary. He
said her actual experience with conditions would be
invaluable in influencing legislation. If the great
effort of the underpaid steelworkers wasn't to be
lost it would have to be incorporated in legislation.
The center of the fight was moving to Washington.
He felt the time was ripe in the senate.
MAY,
1936
