And what a night it had been. The radicals had produced a splendid speaker, Morris Hillquit the socialist. With soaring oratory, he told the packed hall that the factory owners and the magistrates who had fined them were nothing more than the mailed fists of oppression. “Sisters,” he cried, “your cause is just, and you will be victorious.” Not only that, he assured them, the garment women’s strike was the beginning of something altogether more wonderful. Through the union, they could lead the great socialist cause of a class struggle that would soon transform not only the factories of the Lower East Side, but the entire city, and even the whole of America. It was a thrilling speech, and they cheered him to the rafters.

True, he was followed by a moderate lawyer who counseled restraint and a legal battle instead. But his speech was so boring that the crowd grew restless. And when Leonora O’Reilly of the WTU spoke next, and chided the lawyer, and told the women that their strike had done more for the union movement than all the preaching of the last ten years, they cheered her too. No wonder they were in high spirits.

But not everyone was happy. Tammany Hall liked political power, not revolution. The conservative leaders of America’s big unions, men like Sam Gompers, didn’t think that preaching revolution was a good strategy either. From that evening, support in the smoke-filled rooms of the labor movement began to fade. And something else began to ebb away rapidly. Money.

Had Rose’s intervention at old Hetty’s lunch made an impression? Who knew? But one thing was certain. When Anne Morgan attended the Carnegie Hall meeting, she didn’t like what she heard. The very next day she let everyone know that she’d support the garment women’s rights, but not socialism. She wasn’t giving money to start a revolution. Other wealthy donors followed her lead.

It wasn’t until early February that the strike wound down. The women got a shorter working week, down to only fifty-two hours; they were even allowed to join a union. But the Triangle and the other factories could employ whomever they liked, union member or not.

Edmund Keller supposed that Rose must be pleased about that. He’d been puzzled that she thought he was a socialist, but since he wasn’t, he’d shrugged the accusation off as made in the excitement of the moment.

He did not quite understand that because she believed him to be a socialist, and because she thought he’d tried to make a fool of her in public, Rose Master was now, in fact, his enemy.

The year 1910 was a happy one for Salvatore. He was fourteen years old now, and starting to feel himself a young man. It was also the year that he and Anna decided they were going to make little Angelo stronger. Anna’s method was to give him more food. Each day when they went home together from the Triangle Factory, they would stop at the restaurant where Uncle Luigi worked, and the owner would give them a little bag of leftovers. “For the sickly one,” he’d say.