And then there were official returns from the various
precincts and wards of the city itself! Whether it was a
factory district or one of the "silk-stocking" wards seemed
to make no particular difference in the increase; but one
of the things which surprised the party leaders most was
the tremendous vote that came rolling in from the stock~
yards. Packingtown comprised three wards of the city,
and the vote in the spring of 1903 had been five hundred,
and in the fall of the same year, sixteen hundred. Now,
only a year later, it was over sixty-three hundred -- and
the Democratic vote only eighty-eight hundred! There
were other wards in which the Democratic vote had been
actually surpassed, and in two districts, members of the
state legislature had been elected. Thus Chicago now led
the country; it had set a new standard for the party, it
had shown the working-men the way!

-- So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thou~
sand pairs of eyes were fixed upon him, and two thousand
voices were cheering his every sentence. The orator had
been the head of the city's relief bureau in the stockyards,
until the sight of misery and corruption had made him
sick. He was young, hungry-looking, full of fire; and as
he swung his long arms and beat up the crowd, to Jurgis
he seemed the very spirit of the revolution. "Organize!
Organize! Organize!" -- that was his cry. He was afraid
of this tremendous vote, which his party had not expected,
and which it had not earned. "These men are not So~
cialists!" he cried. "This election will pass, and the ex~
citement will die, and people will forget about it; and if
you forget about it, too, if you sink back and rest upon
your oars, we shall lose this vote that we have polled to~
day, and our enemies will laugh us to scorn! It rests with
you to take your resolution -- now, in the flush of victory,
to find these men who have voted for us, and bring them
to our meetings, and organize them and bind them to us!
We shall not find all our campaigns as easy as this one.
Everywhere in the country tonight the old party politi~
cians are studying this vote, and setting their sails by it;
and nowhere will they be quicker or more cunning than

[[412]]

p411 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p412w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p413

v?