like Bert and
Frank Davis, like Chester Johnson and Otto Frank, like Jelly Belly and
the Pinkertons, like Henderson and all the rest of the scabs, who were
beaten up, shot, clubbed, or hanged. Ah, the clever ones were very
clever. Nothing happened to them. They only rode in their automobiles.

"'You big stiffs,' the rube snivels as he crawls to his feet at the
end," Billy was continuing. "'You think you still want that job?' I ask.
He shakes his head. Then I read'm the riot act 'They's only one thing
for you to do, old hoss, an' that's beat it. D'ye get me? Beat it. Back
to the farm for YOU. An' if you come monkeyin' around town again, we'll
be real mad at you. We was only foolin' this time. But next time we
catch you your own mother won't know you when we get done with you.'

"An'--say!--you oughta seen'm beat it. I bet he's goin' yet. Ah' when he
gets back to Milpitas, or Sleepy Hollow, or wherever he hangs out, an'
tells how the boys does things in Oakland, it's dollars to doughnuts
they won't be a rube in his district that'd come to town to drive if
they offered ten dollars an hour."

"It was awful," Saxon said, then laughed well-simulated appreciation.

"But that was nothin'," Billy went on. "A bunch of the boys caught
another one this morning. They didn't do a thing to him. My goodness
gracious, no. In less'n two minutes he was the worst wreck they ever
hauled to the receivin' hospital. The evenin' papers gave the score:
nose broken, three bad scalp wounds, front teeth out, a broken
collarbone, an' two broken ribs. Gee! He certainly got all that was
comin' to him. But that's nothin'. D'ye want to know what the Frisco
teamsters did in the big strike before the Earthquake? They took every
scab they caught an' broke both his arms with a crowbar. That was so he
couldn't drive, you see. Say, the hospitals was filled with 'em. An' the
teamsters won that strike, too."

"But is it necessary, Billy, to be so terrible? I know they're scabs,
and that they're taking the bread out of the strikers' children's mouths
to put in their own children's mouths, and that it isn't fair and all
that; but just the same is it necessary to be so... terrible?"

"Sure thing," Billy answered confidently. "We just gotta throw the fear
of God into them--when we can do it without bein' caught."

"And if you're caught?"

"Then the union hires the lawyers to defend us, though that ain't
much good now, for the judges are pretty hostyle, an'