Tokujiro interrupted him. His tone was domineering and full of contempt for Yamaguchi.
“I know all that. ‘Though we reduce the number, we’ll never concede the essential demands’ … I know all that…” (For a second time Yamaguchi jumped. These identical phrases had been used at one meeting of the leaders.) “… But, actually, by bringing on this strike you will lose. Why, up to four years ago you were only making sixty yen a year, now you are getting forty yen a month? That”
“Who told you we were going to make concessions?”
Tokujiro’s manner seemed to say, “Keep your hair on, there’s nothing I don’t know about you.”
“Even you, I guess I know more about you than you do yourself,” he grinned, trying to irritate Yamaguchi.
“You can talk big, you crowd, but do you think you’re going to divide the ranks of our workers? From all accounts you, yourselves, are being split up on all sides. Isn’t that the case?”
Yamaguchi left off the conversation and went away. He felt very downhearted. “He must be the spy.” In his mind he had picked Tokujiro’s informant. It was a man who had a reputation of being one of their able leaders. “It must be him. He’s the only one who could have told Tokujiro all those inside details about us,” he mumbled to himself as he walked towards the strikers’ headquarters.
