working-men want the same. Can you blame them? We are fighting them and they are fighting us. The world is not a wedding-feast, Levinsky. It is a big barn-yard full of chickens and they are scratching one another, and scrambling over one another. Why? Because there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each chicken wants to get as much of it as possible. So let us try our best. But why be mad at the other chickens? Scratch away, Levinsky, but what's the use being excited?"

He gave a chuckle, and I could not help smiling, but at heart I was bored and wretched.

The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages, yet they were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could not afford to pay high wages.

If I had to, I should have to get out of business.

Officially mine had become a union shop, yet my men continued to work on non-union terms. They made considerably more money by working for non-union wages than they would in the places that were under stringent union supervision. They could work any number of hours in my shop, and that was what my piece-workers wanted. To toil from sunrise till long after sunset was what every tailor was accustomed to in Antomir, for instance. Only over there one received a paltry few shillings at the end of the week. while I paid my men many dollars

So far, then, I had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the walking delegates and my shop was in full blast from 5 in the morning to midnight, whereas in the genuine union shops the regular workday was restricted to ten hours, and overtime to three, which, coupled with the especial advantage accruing from a limited number of styles handled, made my shop a desirable place to my "hands."

A storm broke. All cloak-manufacturers formed a coalition and locked out their union men. A bitter struggle ensued. As it was rich in quaint "human-nature" material, the newspapers bestowed a good deal of space upon it

I made a pretense of joining in the lockout, my men clandestinely continuing to work for me. More than that, my working force was trebled, for, besides filling my own orders, I did some of the work of a well-known firm which found it much more difficult to procure non-union labor than I did. What was a great calamity to the trade in general seemed to be a source of overwhelming prosperity to me. But the golden windfall did not last long.

The agitation and the picketing activities of the union, aided by the Arbeiter Zeitung, a Yiddish socialist weekly, were spreading a spell of enthusiasm (or fear) to which my men gradually succumbed. My best operator, a young fellow who exercised much influence over his shopmates and who had hitherto been genuinely devoted to me, became an ardent convert to union principles and led all my operatives out of the shop. I organized a shop elsewhere, but it was soon discovered

Somebody must have reported to the editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung that at one time I had been a member of the union myself, for that weekly published a scurrilous paragraph, branding me as a traitor

I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain, and yet the sight of my name in print flattered my vanity, and when the heat of my fury subsided I became conscious of a sneaking feeling of gratitude to the socialist editor for printing the attack on me. For, behold! the same organ assailed the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Rothschilds, and by calling me "a fleecer of labor" it placed me in their class. I felt in good company. I felt, too, that while there were people by whom "fleecers" were cursed, there were many others who held them in high esteem, and that even those who cursed them had a secret envy for them, hoping some day to be fleecers of labor like them

The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the appellation of "cockroach manufacturer" by which it referred to me. I was going to parade the "quip" before Max and Dora, but thought better of it. The notion of Dora hearing me called "cockroach" made me squirm

But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph, and one evening as I came home for supper he said, good-naturedly: "You got a spanking, didn't you? I have seen what they say in the Arbeiter Zeitung about you."

"Oh. to the eighty black years with them!" I answered, blushing, and hastened to switch the conversation to the lockout and strike in general.

"Oh, we'll get all the men we want," I said. "It's only a matter of time.

We'll teach these scoundrels a lesson they'll never forget."

"If only you manufacturers stick together."

"You bet we will. We can wait. We are in no hurry. We can wait till those tramps come begging for a job," I said. For the benefit of Dora I added a little disquisition on the opportunities America offered to every man who had brains and industry, and on the grudge which men like myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows. "Those union leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work. That's why they can't work themselves up," I said. "Yes, and that's why they begrudge those who can. All those scoundrels are able to do is to hatch trouble."

I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes and of long standing. That some of the big cloak firms had promised to back me with funds to keep me from yielding to the union I never mentioned

CHAPTER XIII MY shop being practically closed, I was at home most of the time, not only in the evening, but many a forenoon or afternoon as well. Dora and I would hold interminable conversations. Our love was never alluded to. A relationship on new terms seemed to have been established between us. It was as if she were saying: "Now, isn't this better? Why can't we go on like this forever?"

Sometimes I would watch her read with Lucy. Or else I would take up a newspaper or a book and sit reading it at the same table. Dora was making rapid headway in her studies. It was July and Lucy was free from school, so she would let her spend many an hour in the street, but she caused her to spend a good deal of time with her, too. If she did not read with her she would talk or listen to her. I often wondered whether it was for fear of being too much thrown into my company that she would make the child stay indoors. At all events, her readings, spelling contests, or talks with Lucy bore perceptible fruit. Her English seemed to be improving every day, so much so that we gradually came to use a good deal of that language even when we were alone in the house; even when every word we said had an echo of intimacy with which the tongue we were learning to speak seemed to be out of accord

One evening mother and daughter sat at the open parlor window. While I was reclining in an easy-chair at the other end of the room Lucy was narrating something and Dora was listening, apparently with rapt attention. I watched their profiles. Finally I said: "She must be telling you something important, considering the interest you are taking in it."

"Everything she says is important to me," Dora answered

"What has she been telling you?"

"Oh, about her girls, about their brothers and their baseball games, about lots of things," she said, with a far-away tone in her voice. "I want to know everything about her. Everything. I wish I could get right into her. I wish I could be a child like her. Oh, why can't a person be born over again?"

Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with her feelings for me than with her feelings for her child. Anyhow, what she said about her being interested in everything that Lucy had to say was true. And, whether she listened to the child's prattle or not, it always seemed to me as though she absorbed every English word Lucy uttered and every American gesture she made. The American school-girl radiated a subtle influence, a spiritual ozone, which her mother breathed in greedily

"My own life is lost, but she shall be educated"-- these words dropped from her lips quite often. On one occasion they came from her with a modification that lent them unusual meaning. It was on a Friday evening. Max was out, as usual, and the children were asleep. "My own life is lost, but Lucy shall be happy," she said

"Why?" I said, feelingly. "Why should you think yourself lost? I can't bear it, Dora."

She made no answer. I attempted to renew the conversation, but without avail. She answered in melancholy monosyllables and my voice had a constrained note

At last I burst out, in our native tongue: "Why do you torture me, Dora? Why don't you let me talk and pour my heart out?"

"'S-sh! You mustn't," she said, peremptorily, also in Yiddish. "You'll get me in trouble if you do. It'll be the ruin of me and of the children, too.

You mustn't."

"But you say your life is lost," I retorted, coming up close to the chair on which she sat. "Do you think it's easy for me to hear it? Do you think my heart is made of iron?"

"'S-sh! You know everything without my speaking," she said, slowly rising and drawing back. "You know well enough that I am not happy. Can't you rest until you have heard me say so again and again? Must you drink my blood? All right, then. Go ahead. Here. I am unhappy, I am unhappy, I am unhappy. Max is a good husband to me. I can't complain. And we get along well, too. And I shall be true to him. May I choke right here, may darkness come upon me, if I ever cease to be a faithful wife to him. But you know that my heart has never been happy. Lucy will be happy and that will be my happiness, too. She shall go to college and be an educated American lady, and, if God lets me live, I shall see to it that she doesn't marry unless she meets the choice of her heart. She must be happy. She must make up for her mother's lost life,