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That very evening, Mr. Gerbati came home from his trip to the shop around the corner, his arms full of newspapers. He marched into the kitchen and, without even taking off his overcoat, spread the papers out on the kitchen table.
"Shoo! Shoo!" Mrs. Gerbati ordered. "Pick up this papers! Where I put my food?"
"Later we eat." Mr. Gerbati said. "Come, Rosa, you read. Is English." He handed her The New York Herald.
In a sweep she took in the headlines, and her voice was shaking as she began to read:
BAR SHIPMENT OF
STRIKE CHILDREN;
WOMEN CLUBBED
Youngsters Trampled in Riot
When Lawrence Police
Halt Exportation
MOTHERS FIGHT WITH
TEETH AND HATPINS
Authorities Descend on Station Where
One Hundred Little Ones Were to
Entrain for Philadelphia
Rosa looked up, unable to read further. "Hatpins?" she said faintly. Mrs. Marino, perhaps, but never Mamma.
"Mamma and Anna is all right, Rosa," Mrs. Gerbati said. "We hear, remember?"
Rosa nodded. Even so, reading the rest of the article to the eager Mr. Gerbati was not easy. Pictures of Mamma and Anna and maybe even little Ricci being beaten and trampled flooded her mind.
"You see? You see?" Mr. Gerbati cried. "Whole world angry for your mamma now!" He was right of course—every word in the article railed against the brutality of the Lawrence police and the Massachusetts militia. Her voice still shaking, she went on to the next paper. The Boston Common was equally incensed. "Police, acting under the orders of the city marshal, clubbed, choked and knocked down women and children, the innocent wives and babies of the strikers...." Rosa stopped midsentence. Choked?
"Don't worry, your mamma be okay. Mrs. Gurley Flynn say so," Mr. Gerbati said.
Mrs. Gerbati was stroking Rosa's head, but her hand was trembling. "Knocka down babies," she said. "Who can believe such peoples?"
"Is over," Mr. Gerbati said. "Your mamma win. Now whole world is on her side."
Despite Rosa's renewed anxiety, Mr. Gerbati seemed to be right. Every day brought more news. The whole world had turned against Mr. Billy Wood and his fellow mill owners. Congressmen were calling for hearings. Children who worked in the mills were going to Washington to testify. Even the president, Mr. William Howard Taft himself, was asking for investigations into conditions in American industries. And by week's end there was another letter from Anna, this one posted with a real stamp. It read:
Dear Rosa,
You have heard about the truble at the railway stashnn I think. Do not worry. Mamma and I
are fine. I got a bruz on my arm and Mamma got a bump on her head, but we are ok. We are home from jail. The polees took Ricci to the poor Farm. We did not no where he was, but he is home now and ok to. Mamma says she is sory to giv you so much wory.
The strike is big and better than befor. Mamma says it is wirth a bump on her head and three nites in jail for shure. WE ARE GOING TO WIN. Soon you can come home. We all mis you. Grany J. says the bed is to cold.
Your loving sister Anna,
Mamma and Ricci to
She folded the letter very carefully and returned it to its envelope before she let herself burst into tears.
