notice-board outside the rotary press shop. There was still some time before their shift began.
“We workers” One dark-skinned young fellow, wearing a sports shirt smeared with various coloured inks, jumped up on to a big roll of paper. Waving his arms excitedly, he began to speak. His name was Tora-Ko and he was practising making a speech.
But the other men sat around or stretched out unsympathetically on top of rolls, without even deigning to look round at him.
“We workers”
He was a member of the works council and therefore was expected to say something at the efficiency committee meeting. The night before, at a meeting called by the union to discuss what measures they would take in regard to the efficiency committee, he had listened to the speech of Nagai, the head of the union executive.
“Well, what about us?” Some of the men, with their backs still turned, started to heckle him.
“We workers demand the right of managing the factory.” These words came out with a rush, as, in the manner of his idolized revolutionary fighter, Shingo Magara, he brought his right arm down to his side with a bang, but he could not find the words to say next.
“But—but”
The big words would not out. Compared with the men working in the foundry, the vocabulary of the men of his department was very small. He had understood the gist of what Nagai was saying quite well—that in their present condition,
