"Sorry. No cab, miss," said a constable. "The whole city's on strike."
That explained my inability to get Limerick on the wire. From Kildare I had
been trying all morning to reach Limerick on the telephone. All the
Limerick shops I passed were blinded or shuttered. In the gray light, black
lines of people moved desolately up and down, not allowed to congregate and
apparently not wanting to remain in homes they were weary of. A few candles
flickered in windows. After leaving my suitcase at a hotel, I left for the
strike headquarters. On my way I neared Sarsfield bridge. Between it and
me, there loomed a great black mass. Close to it, I found it was a tank,
stenciled with the name of Scotch-and-Soda, and surrounded by massed barbed
wire inside a wooden fence. On the bridge, the guards paraded up and down
and called to the people:
"Step to the road!"
At the door of a river street house, I mounted gritty stone steps. A
red-badged man opened the door part way. As soon as I told him I was an
American journalist, the suspicious look on his face vanished. With much
cordiality he invited me to come upstairs. While he knocked on a
consultation door, he bade me wait. In the wavering hall light, the knots
in the worn wooden floor threw blots of shadow. On an invitation to come
in, I entered a badly lit room where workingmen sat at a long black
scratched table.
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