At the center stove, a little way off from its red heart, sat Joe and Sally and Izon.  The men began to smoke cigarettes and little cigars, and with the rank tobacco smell was mingled the sweaty human odor.  The room grew densely hot, and a window had to be thrown open.  A vapor of smoke filled the atmosphere, shot golden with the lights, and in the smoke the many heads, bent this way and that, leaning forward or tilted up, showed strange and a little unreal.  Joe could see faces that fascinated him by their vivid lines, their starting dark eyes and the white eye-balls, their bulging noses and big mouths.  Hands fluttered in lively gestures and a storm of Yiddish words broke loose.

Joe arose, lifting his hand for silence.  Men pulled each other by the sleeve, and a strident “’Ssh!” ran round the room.

“Silence!” cried Joe.  His voice came from the depths of his big chest, and was masterful, ringing with determination.

An expectant hush followed.  And then Joe spoke.

“I want to welcome you to this room.  It belongs to you as much as to anybody, for in this room is published a paper that works for your good.  But I not only want to welcome you:  I want to ask your permission to speak at this meeting.”

There were cries of:  “Speak!  Go on!  Say it!”

Joe went on.  Behind his words was a menace.

“Then I want to say this to you.  Your boss, Mr. Marrin, has done a cowardly and treacherous thing.  He has made scabs of you all.  You are no better than strike-breakers.  If you do this work, if you make these cloaks, you are traitors to your fellow-workers, the cloak-makers.  You are crippling other workmen.  You are selling them to their bosses.  But I’m sure you won’t stand for this.  You are men enough to fight for the cause of all working people.  You belong to a race that has been persecuted through the ages, a brave race, a race that has triumphed through hunger and cold and massacres.  You are great enough to make this sacrifice.  If this is so, I call on you to resist your boss, to refuse to do his dirty work, and I ask you—­if he persists in his orders—­to lay down your work and strike.”

He sat down, and there was a miserable pause.  He had not stirred them at all, and felt his failure keenly.  It was as if he had not reached over the fence of race.  He told himself he must school himself in the future, must broaden out.  As a matter of fact, it was the menace in his tone that hushed the meeting.  The men rather feared what lay behind Joe’s words.

At once, however, one of the men leaped to his feet, and began a fiery speech in Yiddish, speaking gaspingly, passionately, hotly, shaking his fist, fluttering his hands, tearing a passion to tatters.  Joe understood not a word, but the burden of the speech was: