Joe dug into these strikes, called at the union headquarters, spoke with the men, even called on some of the cloak-makers' bosses and learned their grievances. Then he wrote accounts of the strike without taking sides, merely reporting the facts as fairly as he could.
In this way, and with the aid of clippings, and by printing that poem by Lowell which was his mother's favorite, wherein was the couplet already quoted,
"They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three,"
Up in the corner of the editorial page he ran the following, subject to change:
A WEEKLY WORD ABOUT MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN
I ACCEPT LIFE LARGELY, BUT NOT IN DETAILS
Anything that prevents a child from being well born and from fulfilling its possibilities.
Anything that prevents a woman or man from using every good side of her or his nature.
And let's avoid jealousy, quarrels, ridicule, meanness, and the rest of the mosquito things.
This didn't please him altogether, but he wanted to be definite and simple, and he wanted to show that he wasn't a narrow partisan.
Thus the first number came to be. As he turned it out, Billy rushed it in batches to the compositors, and when finally it all came back in strips of type, it was hurried down to the idlers in the basement. At ten-thirty that chilly, dust-blowing morning, when the sun-stricken air glittered with eddies of motes, Joe, sitting at his desk, had the exquisite rapture of feeling the building tremble.
"Can't you feel the press going? Listen!"
Truly the new life had begun--the vision was beginning to crystallize in daily living.
"We're in the fight now, mother!" he cried. "There's something doing!"
And later, when Joe stood at the back of the press and that first complete sheet came through, he picked it up as if it were a new-born child, as indeed it was, wet, drippy, forlorn, and weird, and yet a wonder and a miracle. Joe looked on his own creation--the little sheets--the big, black _The Nine-Tenths_--the clear, good type. He was awed and reduced almost to tears.
He mailed a copy to Myra with a brief note:
DEAR MYRA,--Here's the answer to your question. I'm doing the inclosed, and doing it in West Tenth Street. Do you know the neighborhood? Old Greenwich Village, red, shabby, shoddy, common, and vulgar. Mother and I are as happy as children. How are you? Your letter is splendid. I am sure you will come to understand. When are you returning to New York?