Louis Marshall, an attorney well known in New
York in Jewish charities, assembled the lawyers of both sides. They drew
up an agreement in which the preferential union shop again appeared as
the basis of future operations, formulated as in the Brandeis conference.
The _Vorwaerts_ printed the result of the Marshall conference with deep
concern. It maintained a neutral attitude. The editorials urged that the
readers consider the whole document soberly, discuss it freely in local
meetings, and vote for themselves, on their own full understanding, after
mature conviction on each point.
Tremendous crowds surged around the _Vorwaerts_ office. They almost mobbed
the East Side leaders, with their voluble questioning about the
preferential Union shop. Thousands of men and women and children called
out pleas and reproaches and recriminations in an avid personal
demonstration possible only to their race. "Oh, you wouldn't sell us
out?" they cried desperately. "You wouldn't sell us out? You are our
hope."
Imagine what these days of doubt, of an attempt to understand, meant to
these multitudes, knowing no industrial faith but that of the closed shop
which had failed them absolutely, wanderers from a strange country,
turning wildly to their leaders, who could only tell them that they must
determine their own fates, they must decide for themselves.
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