Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [45]
McDermott edges his way toward the notice that’s tacked up on the wire fencing at the mill entrance. The men and women who have read the notice move away and stand with their hands in their pockets, as if uncertain about going through the gate.
McDermott shoulders his way toward the front. He can see that Ross, with a large wad of tobacco in his cheek, is standing by the notice board.
“What’s going on?” McDermott asks when he reaches Ross’s side.
“Read it,” Ross says.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Operating costs at this mill have undergone such changes that we are confronted with a situation that is not only abnormal but extremely critical.
LOWER WAGES IN OTHER COMMUNITIES
In many of the cotton mills of New England, wage reductions have become effective. The operatives in the Ely Falls Mill now receive wages that are much higher than what is paid for the same class of work in competing mills elsewhere. Some of the mills can operate 54 hours a week.
ELY FALLS MILL HANDICAPPED
It should be obvious that the manufacturers of the Ely Falls Mill, paying by the old wage scale, and limited to a 48-hour week, must be doing business under a serious handicap.
RELUCTANT TO REDUCE WAGES
When, in other sections of New England, cotton manufacturers reduced wages, the Ely Falls Mill refrained from taking similar action. But owing to the competitive conditions which now exist, the Ely Falls Mill is forced to make a reduction in wages of 10 percent, effective Monday, November 24, and have posted notices accordingly. It is hoped this will relieve the situation sufficiently to enable the mill to take orders which would otherwise go to competitors.
“They’ve finally done it,” McDermott says.
“Fuckin’ owners,” Ross says.
“They expect us to feel sorry for them?” McDermott watches the men and women gather in groups. Still no one has gone through the gates. “What will happen now?” he asks.
“We’ll get the union.”
“We didn’t get the vote,” McDermott says.
“We will now.”
McDermott knows that the wage cut, on top of the speed-up, will change the minds of the loom fixers who’ve been reluctant to form a union. The wage rates are already below poverty level.
Ross spits on the ground. “It’s beautiful the way the bosses do the organizing for you, isn’t it?” he says.
Alphonse
All day and all night the men have been going in the front door of the apartment house and even milling around outside, and no one seems to be sneaking in the way they did the last time. Alphonse has counted nearly forty men who have gone through the door and he wonders how Arnaud Nadeau’s front room will hold them all. Alphonse knows that all the activity is because of the wage cut and the talk about unions. His mother and his aunt are in the bedroom speaking in low tones all about unions and strikes and whatnot, and Alphonse thinks that a strike would be just fine with him because he hasn’t had a day off except Sundays and Labor Day and Christmas since he started in the mill a year ago. He can’t imagine what everyone would do on a Monday in the middle of November if they didn’t go to work.
Sam Coyne, who moved up from New Bedford last year, told him all about what it’s like to be on strike and Sam says that after a while it’s no picnic and that everyone gets hungry but that it’s mostly all right for the kids because the charities put soup in their pails and give them hunks of bread, although it’s sometimes a bother to have to stand in line all morning just to get a meal. You have to eat the soup sitting on the sidewalk, he says, even if it’s snowing out, because if you go home you have to share it with your sisters and your brothers and maybe even your mother and your father, and by that time there won’t be anything left for you. Alphonse can’t imagine trying to eat his soup on the sidewalk if he knew his mother was hungry. If Marie-Thérèse was hungry, well, that’s another story.
Sam also told him about the scabs, who everybody hates. The strikers spit at the scabs and might even beat them up because the scabs go into the mills and work