The words worked magic. They were all eagerness, and exchanged names. Thus Joe came to know Jacob Izon and Salvatore Giotto and Nathan Latsky. He was greatly interested in Izon, the facts of whose life he soon came to know. Izon was a designer, working at Marrin's, the shirtwaist manufacturer; he made thirty dollars a week, had a wife and two children, and was studying engineering in a night school. He and his wife had come from Russia, where they had been revolutionists.
The three men examined the paper closely.
"That's what we need," said Izon. "You must let us help to spread it!"
He went to Giotto's house with him, up to the sixth floor of a tenement, and met the Italian's neat, dark-eyed wife, and looked in on the three sleeping children. Then under the blazing gas in the crowded room, with its cheap, frail, shiny furniture, its crayons on the wall, its crockery and cheap clocks, and with the noise of the city's night rising all about them, the two big men talked together. Joe was immensely interested. The Italian was large-hearted, open-minded, big in body and soul, and spoke quaintly, but thoughtfully.
Giotto spread out the palms of his hands.
"What to tell? I get a good education in the old country--but not much spik English--better read, better write it. I try hard to learn. Come over here, and education no good. Nobody want Italian educated man. So worked on Italian paper--go round and see the poor--many tragedies, many--like the theater. Write a novel, a romance, about the poor. Wish I could write it in English."
"Good work," cried Joe. "Then what did you do?"
"Imported the wine--got broke--open the saloon. Toughs come there, thieves, to swindle the immigrants. Awfully slick. No good to warn immigrants--they lose all their money. Come in crying. What can I do? I get after the bums and they say, 'Giotto no good; we will kill him.' Then I get broke again. Go to West Virginia and work in the coal-mine--break my leg. And that was the baddest place in the world."
"And the town. Laborers--Italian, nigger; saloons and politics--Jews; bosses all Irish--nothing but the saloons and the women to spenda the money. Company own everything--stores, saloons, women. Pay you the money and get it all back. Every day a man killed. Hell!"