Girls. Gray-haired women. A woman in a wheel chair, smiling. A
man next to Fanny began to jeer. He was a red-faced young man, with a
coarse, blotchy skin, and thick lips. He smoked a cigar, and called to
the women in a falsetto voice, "Hello, Sadie!" he called. "Hello, kid!"
And the women marched on, serious-faced, calm-eyed. There came floats;
elaborate affairs, with girls in Greek robes. Fanny did not care for
these. More solid ranks. And then a strange and pitiful and tragic
and eloquent group. Their banner said, "Garment Workers. Infants' Wear
Section." And at their head marched a girl, carrying a banner. I don't
know how she attained that honor. I think she must have been one of
those fiery, eloquent leaders in her factory clique. The banner she
carried was a large one, and it flapped prodigiously in the breeze, and
its pole was thick and heavy. She was a very small girl, even in that
group of pale-faced, under-sized, under-fed girls. A Russian Jewess,
evidently. Her shoes were ludicrous. They curled up at the toes, and the
heels were run down. Her dress was a sort of parody on the prevailing
fashion. But on her face, as she trudged along, hugging the pole of the
great pennant that flapped in the breeze, was stamped a look.--well, you
see that same look in some pictures of Joan of Arc. It wasn't merely a
look. It was a story. It was tragedy. It was the history of a people.
You saw in it that which told of centuries of oppression in Russia. You
saw eager groups of student Intellectuals, gathered in secret places
for low-voiced, fiery talk. There was in it the unspeakable misery of
Siberia. It spoke eloquently of pogroms, of massacres, of Kiev and its
sister-horror, Kishineff. You saw mean and narrow streets, and carefully
darkened windows, and, on the other side of those windows the warm
yellow glow of the seven-branched Shabbos light. Above this there shone
the courage of a race serene in the knowledge that it cannot die.
And illuminating all, so that her pinched face, beneath the flapping
pennant, was the rapt, uplifted countenance of the Crusader, there
blazed the great glow of hope. This woman movement, spoken of so glibly
as Suffrage, was, to the mind of this over-read, under-fed, emotional,
dreamy little Russian garment worker the glorious means to a long hoped
for end. She had idealized it, with the imagery of her kind. She had
endowed it with promise that it would never actually hold for her,
perhaps. And so