hand. After that
he would start off upon a tour of his own, ending at some place between
New York and Oregon; and when he came back from there, he would go out
to organize new locals for the state committee; and finally he would
come home to rest--and talk Socialism in Chicago. Hinds's hotel was a
very hot-bed of the propaganda; all the employees were party men, and if
they were not when they came, they were quite certain to be before they
went away. The proprietor would get into a discussion with some one in
the lobby, and as the conversation grew animated, others would gather
about to listen, until finally every one in the place would be crowded
into a group, and a regular debate would be under way. This went on
every night--when Tommy Hinds was not there to do it, his clerk did it;
and when his clerk was away campaigning, the assistant attended to it,
while Mrs. Hinds sat behind the desk and did the work. The clerk was an
old crony of the proprietor's, an awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with
a lean, sallow face, a broad mouth, and whiskers under his chin,
the very type and body of a prairie farmer. He had been that all his
life--he had fought the railroads in Kansas for fifty years, a Granger,
a Farmers' Alliance man, a "middle-of-the-road" Populist. Finally, Tommy
Hinds had revealed to him the wonderful idea of using the trusts instead
of destroying them, and he had sold his farm and come to Chicago.

That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, the assistant
clerk, a pale, scholarly-looking man, who came from Massachusetts, of
Pilgrim stock. Adams had been a cotton operative in Fall River, and the
continued depression in the industry had worn him and his family out,
and he had emigrated to South Carolina. In Massachusetts the percentage
of white illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in South
Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent; also in South Carolina
there is a property qualification for voters--and for these and other
reasons child labor is the rule, and so the cotton mills were driving
those of Massachusetts out of the business. Adams did not know this, he
only knew that the Southern mills were running; but when he got there
he found that if he was to live, all his family would have to work, and
from six o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. So he had set
to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion in Massachusetts,
and had been discharged; but he had gotten