“Wahna littel money for milk,” she said, when at length their attention was drawn to her.

“But you get your money, every Saturday,” the secretary informed her kindly.

She shook her head.

“Baby die, ’less I have littel milk—­I show you.”

Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and ghastly blue lips ....  And she herself went out with the woman to buy the milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she called home—­in one of those “rear” tenements separated from the front buildings by a narrow court reeking with refuse.  The place was dank and cold, malodorous.  The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the other room of the kennel, were out on the streets.  But when her eyes grew used to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in the bed in the corner....

On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee—­one of those normally happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the despair of mill overseers.  Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes grief-stricken like a wounded animal’s.

“She is killidd, my wife—­de polees, dey killidd her!”

It was Anna Mower who investigated the case.  “The girl wasn’t doing nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on her and beat her.  She put out her hand because she thought he’d hit her —­and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the gutter.  If you’d see her you’d know she wouldn’t hurt a fly, she’s that gentle looking, like all the Syrian women.  She had a `Don’t be a scab’ ribbon on—­that’s all she done!  Somebody’ll shoot that guy, and I wouldn’t blame ’em.”  Anna stood beside Janet’s typewriter, her face red with anger as she told the story.

“And how is the woman now?” asked Janet.

“In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her head.  I got a doctor.  He could hardly see her in that black place they live."...

Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter flame.  Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the remnant of those who still clung to their employment.  One magistrate in particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it.  “Minions, slaves of the capitalists, of the masters,” the courts were called, and Janet subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a tyranny from which she, too, had suffered.  There arrived at Headquarters frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not paid.  Antonelli himself calmed these.  “Let the landlords try it!” he said phlegmatically....