the returns. When the final accounts were made up, the
Socialist vote proved to be over four hundred thousand --
an increase of something like three hundred and fifty per
cent in four years. And that was doing well; but the party
was dependent for its early returns upon messages from
the locals, and naturally those locals which had been most
successful were the ones which felt most like reporting;
and so that night everyone in the hall believed that the
vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight hundred
thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually
been made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the
city had been 6,700 in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that
of Illinois had been 9,600, and now it was 69,000! So, as
the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in, the meeting
was a sight to be seen. Bulletins would be read, and the
people would shout themselves hoarse; and then someone
would make a speech, and there would be more shouting;
and then a brief silence, and more bulletins. There would
come messages from the secretaries of neighboring states,
reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone
from 2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of
Ohio from 4,800 to 36,000! There were telegrams to the
national office from enthusiastic individuals in little towns
which had made amazing and unprecedented increases in a
single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26 to 260; Hender~
son, Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from
14 to 208; Cleo, Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin's
Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296 -- and many more of the
same kind. There were literally hundreds of such towns;
there would be reports from half a dozen of them in a
single batch of telegrams. And the men who read the
despatches off to the audience were old campaigners, who
had been to the places and helped to make the vote, and
could make appropriate comments: Quincy, Illinois, from
189 to 831 -- that was where the mayor had arrested a
Socialist speaker! Crawford County, Kansas, from 285 to
1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal to Reason"!
Battle Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the
answer of labor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!

[[411]]

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