Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/105

Rh of thugs was always in readiness on the wharf. The scabs were farmers and fishermen. When these were taken on temporarily, during the slack season on the farms, they were called unskilled and received only 60 per cent. or 70 per cent. of the full wage. Now they got 20 per cent. or 25 per cent. over the regular wages.

When the boat drew alongside the pier, the human ants crawled down the gangway. They were so placed as to make them look as numerous as possible. But the strikers were up to such tricks.

“What of it? They haven’t got eighty real workers,” they sneered. When counted from the distance, one by one, the men who looked really capable of working amounted to only sixty-five.

“D’ye think they’ve got eighty? With a handful like that it’ll take them all their time to mix the pulp.”

“You’ve said it.”

But as the strikers weakened under the strain the number of workers began to increase. Eighty became 100; 100 became 120.

The farmers made not the least response to the strikers’ leaflets and house-to-house canvassing. The leaflets they used as toilet-paper. These farmers, who, working on their farms from morning till night, just managing to pay their rent and buy manure, had never known what it was to hold ready cash in their hands and felt unbounded gratitude for this work in the soy factory where they could make more than two yen a day.