ashington Park, with its monumental arch, and its
shadowy trees, its wide and curving walks--its general sense of being a
green breathing-space in the sweep of streets. As they walked through
the sharp wintry air in the closing sunlight, what time the blue
electric lights gleamed out among the almost naked boughs, the
six-o'clock whistles began blowing from factories all about them--a glad
shriek that jumped from street to street over the city--and at once
across the eastern plaza of the park streamed the strange torrent of the
workers--a mighty, swift march of girls and boys, women and men,
homeward bound, the day's work ended--a human stream, in the gray light,
steeped in an atmosphere of accomplishment, sweet peace, solution. All
life seemed to touch a moment of harvest.

Joe's mother was thrilled, and in spite of himself Joe felt his heart
clutched, as it were, in a vise. He felt the strange, strong, human
grip. It was a marvelous spectacle, though common, daily, and cheap as
life.

Joe's mother whispered, in a low voice:

"Joe, this is the real New York!"

And then again:

"Those others are only a fraction--these are the people."

"Yes," murmured Joe, his blood surging to his cheeks, "these are the
nine-tenths."

They went closer to that mighty marching host--they saw the cheap
garments--baggy trousers, torn shoes, worn shirts; they saw the earnest,
tired faces, the white and toil-shrunk countenances, the poverty, the
reality of pain and work, all pressing on in an atmosphere of serious
progress, as if they knew what fires roared, what sinews ached down in
the foundations of the world where the future is created. And Joe
realized, as never before, that upon these people and their captains,
their teachers and interpreters, rested the burdens of civilization;
that the mighty city was wrought by their hands and those who dreamed
with them, that the foam and sparkle of Broadway and Fifth Avenue
bubbled up from that strong liquor beneath. And he believed that the
second-generation idlers had somehow expropriated the toilers and were
living like drones in the hive, and he felt that this could not be
forever, and he was seized by the conviction that a change could only
come through the toilers themselves. Could these pale people but know
their power, know their standing, know the facts of this strange double
life, and then use their might wisely and well, constructively,
creatively, to build up a better and faire