ruin your life by involving yourself in this malarkey. Stay away. I’ve seen this before. It’s nothing but trouble.”
All the nerve endings in Gina’s body agreed.
That evening when he heard what had happened, Arturo ordered Angela and Gina to march right back to the mill doors the following morning and make clear to this Mr. Evans that not a single worker was returning to the looms until the “accounting error” was rectified. “Not a single one.”
Shaking his head, Harry got up from the table. “Angie, you do what you want,” he said. “Listen to Arturo, don’t listen to him, it’s no difference to me. You’re a grown woman. But don’t involve my wife in this.”
“She is also a grown woman! She also got paid two hours less.”
“Yes, Harry, what are you talking about?” Arturo said, frowning. “You’re involved in this.”
“I didn’t say me. I said her.”
“What could you be thinking?”
“You know what I’m thinking,” Harry said, pulling Gina by her wrist from the table, nudging her up the stairs, away, away. “Because I just told you. I’ll do what I have to, but keep her out of it.”
Angela followed Gina upstairs behind a shut bedroom door. “Are you really not going to come with me?” she asked disbelievingly.
“I can’t, Ange. We’re having a baby. We need the money.”
“What money? There is no money. Gina, if there is a strike, no one will get paid.”
Gina turned jelly-legged. She sat on the bed. “Maybe it’ll all be over by tomorrow.”
“How in the world …”
“Maybe cooler heads will prevail.”
“Are you saying I’m not in my right mind?”
“I’m saying we need the money. Don’t you?”
“I need justice more.”
“Harry doesn’t want me involved. What am I going to do? Go against his wishes?”
“I’m family!” yelled Angela. “You’re not going to stand by your own family?”
“Angie, don’t go! He’s my family, too. And we’re having a baby. Why can’t you understand?”
“Oh, I understand. I understand being pushed away.”
“Ask Pam to go.”
“Lester hates Pam after she nearly lost her hand at the double loom and made such a stink about it. But he likes you. He’s apt to give in to you.”
“Did he give in to me this morning?” Gina shook her head. “Harry said no.”
“Look at you, all your feminist virtues into the trash as soon as there’s a hint of trouble!”
“It’s because there’s trouble that he’s telling me to keep out of it.”
“And you’re listening. What happened to the right to your own soul?”
“We’re having a baby!”
“This is social change. Progress! The revolution. It’s all the things we’ve been talking about finally carried into action. Are you really going to stand idly by while the blood of other men and women is spilled onto your sidewalk?”
“Angela, maybe you don’t hear yourself, but you’re making my argument for me. The time for radical action is not when I’m pregnant.”
“History is not going to stand still for your baby, Gina.”
“Well, then, I’ll just hop on the next train if it’s all the same to you. There seems to be a revolution every year.”
They stopped speaking. Angela stormed out, and Gina didn’t go with her the next morning. In a crowd of women, Angela went by herself to confront Lester Evans.
It couldn’t have gone less well. The manager fired Angela then and there. He told her that if she ever harassed him in front of his mill again, he’d have her arrested and thrown in jail. Through a megaphone he informed the fifty women shouting behind her that unless they showed up for work the following morning, they would also be fired. “And Miss LoPizo, please tell Miss Attaviano,” he added, “that unless she shows up for work, she too will be fired with all the rest.”
“She’s a married woman, now, Mr. Evans,” shouted Angela. “She doesn’t answer to you or to me. She answers to her husband. And he works for Bill Haywood.”
“Then too bad for her being associated with all those filthy Wobblies,” said Evans. “Too bad for all of you. Now get away from my factory.”
Gina was outraged. “I didn’t go with you and that’s how you punish me?” she said to Angela. “By making me lose my job? I’m going to work. I don’t know how you’re planning to pay your rent, but in this house we work for a living.”
“Gina, this isn’t punishment. It’s war. We have to fight.”
“I can’t and I won’t.”
“You can either stand with your family and your women and your fellow workers fighting for your wages, or you can break the line, but then no one in this town will ever speak to you again. Because we don’t talk to scabs,” Angela said. “Not even family scabs. Tell her, Arturo.”
“We don’t talk to scabs,” said Arturo.
“Get out of my house,” said Gina. “Where is Harry?”
“Striking!”
“How can he strike? He doesn’t work at the mills!”
“Organizing the strikers then,” Arturo said. “Going door to door with Joe. Wiring telegrams to Big Bill telling him he’s urgently needed in Lawrence. Calling Mother Jones. Calling Emma Goldman. Your husband,” he went on with pomposity, “is fighting for our side. Like you should be doing.”
“I thought I told you to get out of my house, Arturo.”
“Gina, this strike is for you, too. The full-time wages of mill employees are inadequate for a family.”
Gina pointedly said nothing. Angela cleared her throat. “Actually, Arturo,” she said, “Gina makes quite a decent wage working in the mending room.” She averted her eyes. “Yes, a generous wage for skilled labor. But even you, Gia, are now making less because they cut your salary.”
“They didn’t cut my salary. They cut my hours.”
“You were working too much.”
“Who decides this—you? I needed the money,” Gina said. “I
