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wages, with “Please Pay Waitress” instead of “Please Pay Cashier,” as it was felt the tips would be bigger if the waitresses presented the change, as they do in the hotels and higher class restaurants, and free uniforms. But I could see objections to all of these, from the management’s point of view, and I didn’t believe we could obtain them. What I wanted was the same hourly wages as we had, as what the restaurant paid us was only a small part of what we made anyhow, with a straight ten per cent charge for tips, as they have in a number of restaurants, with a minimum tip of twenty-five cents. Because in the first place it would be the customer who paid this, rather than the restaurant. And in the second place, it would come to more than the system we already had because what cut our tips down was the people who sat around for a long time occupying the chairs in our station during rush hour, and then leaving a dime tip. So I thought my plan would yield us quite a lot more, without costing the restaurant anything.
    However, the others, and especially Clara Gruber, were all hot for making the management pay, and to my great surprise, Mr. Holden seemed willing to do whatever they wanted. This I could not understand until we were having some coffee in a restaurant one night, after the other girls had gone home. If he was going to see me alone, I had insisted that we go out. My running away that night, by the way, he had merely taken as a sort of joke and intimated that he would make progress with me yet. As to that, I had my own ideas, so I usually led the talk around to the union and our demands. His attitude he explained one night, first giving me a long wink. “Demands are poetry.”
    “They’re what?”
    “I’m surprised at the narrow limits of your soul. Let the girls demand. It expands their natures, makes them feel good, acts as a fine, stimulating tonic.”
    “But they won’t get their demands.”
    “Oh—now you’re speaking of settlement. That’s reality.”
    “Isn’t it all reality?”
    “Not at all. They demand the stuff that dreams are made upon. They settle for what they can get.”
    “But that way we’re sure to have a strike.”
    “No doubt we are.”
    “But that’s terrible.”
    “Think, my pretty friend—it’s August.”
    “Well?”
    “It’s hot. And a strike makes a holiday.”
    “They give vacations.”
    “Two weeks at Brighton, with mosquito bites. But a strike—there’s something real. They have speeches and parades and lofty thoughts, and patriotic music.”
    “My but you sound cold-blooded.”
    “The main thing to remember in all labor matters, the point they all forget about, is the state of the weather. Cold-blooded? It’s you that’s cold-blooded, thinking always of the money. I remember that workers are human.”
    “They’ll lose their wages.”
    “If they drew their wages, would they have their wages, will you tell me that? If they wind up broke in any case, why not have fun? Besides, it solidifies the union spirit.”
    “It’s—wasteful.”
    “Your pretty dress is wasteful, for the matter of that.”
    “But it’s pretty.”
    “So is a strike, in its way—a lot of girls, finding the courage to lift their heads at last. Perhaps they don’t get all they want, but they had the fun of a fight. There’s an element of beauty in it.”
    “To me it’s just foolishness.”
    “Are you never foolish, Carrie?”
    “Not willingly.”
    “A little folly would become you, I think.”
    The Saturday following our first meeting Grant came in for lunch again, and sat there very moody and didn’t eat any of his Korn on the Karb, although the way he wanted it was rapidly becoming a restaurant joke. Then he wanted to see me that night, but I couldn’t, and then he proposed that we spend the next day, which was Sunday, on the Sound. He said he had the use of a shack near Port Washington and a boat, and we could have a good time. Well, I thought, why not? I was