simply the citizens of industry, and the Socialist movement
was the expression of their will to survive. The inevita~
bility of the revolution depended upon this fact, that they
had no choice but to unite or be exterminated; this fact,
grim and inexorable, depended upon no human will, it was
the law of the economic process, of which the editor showed
the details with the most marvelous precision.

And later on came the evening of the great meeting of
the campaign, when Jurgis heard the two standard-bearers
of his party. Ten years before there had been in Chicago
a strike of a hundred and fifty thousand railroad employees,
and thugs had been hired by the railroads to commit
violence, and the President of the United States had sent
in troops to break the strike, by flinging the officers of the
union into jail without trial. The president of the union
came out of his cell a ruined man; but also he came out a
Socialist; and now for just ten years he had been travelling
up and down the country, standing face to face with the
people, and pleading with them for justice. He was a man
of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thin
by struggle and suffering. The fury of outraged manhood
gleamed in it -- and the tears of suffering little children
pleaded in his voice. When he spoke he paced the stage,
lithe and eager, like a panther. He leaned over, reaching
out for his audience; he pointed into their souls with an
insistent finger. His voice was husky from much speaking,
but the great auditorium was as still as death, and every
one heard him.

And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some
one handed him a paper which he carried home with him
and read; and so he became acquainted with the "Appeal
to Reason." About twelve years previously a Colorado
real-estate speculator had made up his mind that it was
wrong to gamble in the necessities of life of human beings;
and so he had retired and begun the publication of a
Socialist weekly. There had come a time when he had to
set his own type, but he had held on and won out, and now
his publication was an institution. It used a car-load of
paper every week, and the mail-trains would be hours

[[390]]

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