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WISCONSIN LITERARY MAGAZINE
turns to his office, is a center of interest. "How are
they coming?" men want to know.    "Stand fast!"
"Don't give in!" "Settle this thing quick!" After a
week some of them become anxious.  "When can we
get to work?"  "When can we earn some money?"
They pester the clerk for jobs. Brooks Company has
given in to the union, and there is a scramble for berths.
"Take the kid, here.  He'll be starving to death!"
"Take this man; he's been picketing every day."
They crowd into the office, demanding, questioning,
pushing. The Seamens' Church building and the Sea-
mens' Y. M. C. A. are masses of seething, anxious,
eager, crowding humanity.  And the bulletin boards
in the union hall, in the Church Institute, in the Y. M.
C. A., in the Scandinavian Sailors' Home, contain a
wealth of news, or reports on the conference, reports
of scabbing engineers, directions for all union men, di-
rections for picketers, newspaper clippings on the situ-
ation in Baltimore and the sympathy-strike in Sweden.
Truck loads and drays full of spoiling goods stand
in the blistering sun, waiting to be loaded into an occa-
sional Dutchman or some one of the Brooks Liners.
Rows upon rows of smokestacks and masts lie idle in
the harbor. The heart of the world has ceased beat-
ing, while the seamen and the oilers and the cooks and
the firemen send their delegates to the daily confer-
ences to tell of their demands.
The world sends out a frantic call for help.  Mo-
tion is stopped.  Millions are lost daily.  Men are
starving for lack of food.
"Your ten thousand tons will go to Finland when
the unions allow it", a gray suited, quiet-faced man
tells his customer. He may as well add: "When we
give in to the unions," for the customer and the office
and the delegate can see, for two brief and terrible
weeks, who is the master and who is helpless in the
hands of a giant.
Then the strike ends.  Almost instantly things be-
come as they were before.   From the tops of their
sky-scrapers the many steamship companies look out
over the beating heart of the world and say with a non-
chalant, self-sufficient air: "We are the masters; all
this is ours to play with."
COLOR SKETCHES
PENNELL CROSBY
Peacock blue and ruddy gold,
Intricate design and old;
Depths and shadows manifold,
And shiny twinklings, overbold.
Carmen stroked with lacquered black,
Dull gray with a silver track,
Purple, tawny, vermillac.
Black of midnight, with a rift
Of silver, for an angel's wing,
Or just a silver moon to drift
Through darkness void, unechoing.
Palegray-green and soft blue-gray,
Blue-green in careless splashes lay
Where molten silver waters play;
Brown-tawny leaves; tree columns gray.
Tired gray and faded brown,
And threatening blue black shadows frown;
But where the darkness deepest lies,
Across the angry gloom there flies
A flash of scarlet, brave and bright
Like joyous, dauntless, laughter-light.
38
November, 1920