loading up at the depot of the little Kansas town. It was a
four-page weekly, which sold for less than half a cent a
copy; its regular subscription list was a quarter of a mill~
ion, and it went to every cross-roads post-office in America.

The "Appeal" was a "propaganda" paper. It had a
manner all its own, -- it was full of ginger and spice, of
Western slang and hustle. It collected news of the doings
of the "plutes," and served it up for the benefit of the
"American working-mule." It would have columns of
the deadly parallel, -- the million dollars' worth of diamonds,
or the fancy pet-poodle establishment of a society dame,
beside the fate of Mrs. Murphy of San Francisco, who had
starved to death on the streets, or of John Robinson, just
out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New York
because he could not find work. It collected the stories
of graft and misery from the daily press, and made little
pungent paragraphs out of them. "Three banks of Bung~
town, South Dakota, failed, and more savings of the
workers swallowed up!" "The mayor of Sandy Creek,
Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousand dollars.
That's the kind of rulers the old partyites give you!"
"The president of the Florida Flying Machine Company
is in jail for bigamy. He was a prominent opponent of So~
cialism, which he said would break up the home!" The
"Appeal" had what it called its "Army," about thirty
thousand of the faithful, who did things for it; and it was
always exhorting the "Army" to keep its dander up, and
occasionally encouraging it with a prize competition, for
anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or an eighty-
acre farm. Its office helpers were all known to the "Army"
by quaint titles -- "Inky Ike," "the Bald-headed Man,"
"the Redheaded Girl," "the Bulldog," "the Office
Goat," and "the One Hoss."

But sometimes, again, the "Appeal" would be desperately
serious. It sent a correspondent to Colorado, and printed
pages describing the overthrow of American institutions
in that state. In a certain city of the country it had over
forty of its "Army" in the headquarters of the Telegraph
Trust, and no message of importance to Socialists ever

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