“We’ll get justice without the help of the state,” remarked Antonelli curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall.

That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected.  He knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was interrupted.

Had the mill owners accepted their services?

The Chairman cleared his throat.

The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in a body.  A meeting would be arranged—­“When you arrange a meeting, let me know,” said Antonelli.

A laugh went around the room.  It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep one’s temper under such treatment.  The Chairman looked it.

“A meeting would be arranged,” he declared, with a long-suffering expression.  He even smiled a little.  “In the meantime—­”

“What can your committee do?” demanded one of the strike leaders, passionately—­it was Findley.  “If you find one party wrong, can your state force it to do right?  Can you legislators be impartial when you have not lived the bitter life of the workers?  Would you arbitrate a question of life and death?  And are the worst wages paid in these mills anything short of death?  Do you investigate because conditions are bad? or because the workers broke loose and struck?  Why did you not come before the strike?”

This drew more approval from the rear.  Why, indeed?  The Chairman was adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a handkerchief.  The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to investigate such matters until called to its attention....

Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side of the strikers.

“Public opinion!” savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a slight accent.  “If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread, but public opinion is with us,’ would that satisfy you?”

This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a look of disgust on his face....  The Committee withdrew, and for many weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton....