ay by day assumed for me a personality of its own. Slowly I began to
feel what It wanted, what It hated, how It planned and how It acted. And
this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years
I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to
shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his
self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving
day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred
bewildering multitude. And slowly in my striving I felt them fuse
together into one great being, look at me with two great eyes, speak to
me with one deep voice, pour into me with one tremendous burning passion
for the freedom of mankind.

Was this another god of mine?

CHAPTER XIV

The great voice of the crowd--incessant, demanding of me and of all
within hearing to throw in our lives, to join in this march to a new
free world regardless of all risk to ourselves--grew clear to me now.

I felt myself drawn in with the rest. I was helping in the publicity
work, each day I met with the leaders to draw up statements for the
press. And these messages to the outside world that I wrote to the slow
and labored dictation of some burly docker comrade, or again by myself
at dawn to express the will of a meeting that had lasted half the
night--slowly became for me my own. Almost unawares I had taken the
habit of asking:

"How much can _we_ do? How sane and vigilant can _we_ be to keep clear
of violence, bloodshed, mobs and a return to chaos? How long can we hold
together fast? How far can we march toward this promised land?"

In order to see ourselves as a whole and feel our swiftly swelling
strength, having now burst the confines of our hall, we began to hold
meetings out on "the Farm." There are many "farms" on the waterfront,
for a "farm" is simply the open shore space in front of a dock. But
this, which was one of the widest of all, now came to be spoken of as
"the Farm," and took on an atmosphere all its own. For there were scenes
here which will long endure in the memories of thousands of people. For
them it will be a great bright spot in the times gone by--in one of
those times behind the times, as this strange world keeps rushing on.

From the top of a pile of sand, where I stood with the speakers at the
end of a soft April day, I saw the whole Farm massed solid with people.
This mass rose in hummocks and hills of humanity o