Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/126

116 The scabs, obedient to the masters, toiled sixteen hours a day. … “We’ll have to work and save up now, as we won’t get the chance of working sixteen hours a day when the strike’s over.” Their fingers had become all blistered and bleeding from handling the bags. From standing so long their legs became like logs of wood. During the day it was not so bad, but from twilight until knocking-off time seemed longer than the whole day. They longed for the 10.30 bell. The sleep they could get in the dormitory was insufficient to rest their fatigued muscles. Standing up, sewing the bags, they would drop off to sleep. The eyes of the young boys who dashed the pulp into the bags became blurred and they would miss their aim. All around was slushy with the pulp.

If they had not toiled away feverishly like this! If they had not worked more than the regular eight hours! Who would have worked the extra? The oppressed workers. The strikers would have won. The company would have been forced to climb down.

Thinking of themselves, they had turned their backs on the strikers. They went to all lengths cringing before the bosses, and found themselves working sixteen or seventeen hours a day. If the workers begin to concede an inch they are done for and become just like oxen with great heavy weights hung through their nostrils, which weigh them down. For ever they must go with bowed heads.

The clock in the office struck ten. Its last note was still tingling in the ear-drum when from the