Summary
A cathedral of steel and sweat rises along the riverbank; inside, rivets sing like hailstones on iron lungs. Jim McDonald, sinewy patriarch of the yard and reluctant prince of the shop-floor, stalks the gantries with a slide-rule scepter, trying to out-shout the sulphur whispers of Klimoff—lean, spectral, a poet of detonation who dreams of America cracking open like a rotten fruit. Between them pulses a country’s breath: furnaces vomiting red halos, wives counting nickels on oil-cloth, children rehearsing hunger. Klimoff’s manifestos flutter down like black butterflies; every leaflet is a lit fuse. The strike erupts, a hemorrhage of wheels and fury. Horses, driverless, bolt through fog, iron shoes drumming the cobbles; McDonald’s little boy—paper boat of innocence—falls beneath that avalanche of hooves. Grief detonates inside the foreman, but the riot keeps chewing streets, bridges, horizons. From Petrograd to Pittsburgh, mirror-mobs smash shop-windows, daubing the snow with crimson exclamation points. Yet the pendulum of history pauses: a fragile truce, stitched from wage percentages and the exhausted hush of two armies measuring their wounds. Klimoff is abandoned, a prophet without congregation; the workers discover the cost of becoming someone else’s matchstick. Smoke thins, revealing a sunrise bruised but still breathing—an armistice neither side understands, both sides signing with trembling hands.
Synopsis
Jim McDonald, the foreman of a shipbuilding plant and head of the labor union, strives to combat the anarchistic propaganda being put forth by Klimoff, the leader of a Bolshevik gang whose goal is to disrupt the country with strikes and anarchy. Despite McDonald's efforts, a strike is called, resulting in chaos. McDonald's child is knocked down by runaway horses abandoned by their striking driver, and dies. Mob scenes take place in America, as well as in Russia. Eventually, the unrest is quelled with an armistice called between Capital and Labor for a year, during which time wages are to be increased to reflect the cost of living, and leaders are to work out a common plan for their mutual advantage. The strikers now realize that they have been pawns of the Bolsheviks and call off the strike, agreeing to the plan.
