discussed the political situation from every point of
view, and all that troubled Jurgis was the impossibility of carrying off
but a small part of the treasures they offered him.

There was a man who was known in the party as the "Little Giant." The
Lord had used up so much material in the making of his head that there
had not been enough to complete his legs; but he got about on the
platform, and when he shook his raven whiskers the pillars of capitalism
rocked. He had written a veritable encyclopedia upon the subject, a book
that was nearly as big as himself--And then there was a young
author, who came from California, and had been a salmon fisher, an
oyster-pirate, a longshoreman, a sailor; who had tramped the country and
been sent to jail, had lived in the Whitechapel slums, and been to the
Klondike in search of gold. All these things he pictured in his books,
and because he was a man of genius he forced the world to hear him. Now
he was famous, but wherever he went he still preached the gospel of
the poor. And then there was one who was known at the "millionaire
Socialist." He had made a fortune in business, and spent nearly all of
it in building up a magazine, which the post office department had tried
to suppress, and had driven to Canada. He was a quiet-mannered man, whom
you would have taken for anything in the world but a Socialist agitator.
His speech was simple and informal--he could not understand why any
one should get excited about these things. It was a process of economic
evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws and methods. Life was a
struggle for existence, and the strong overcame the weak, and in turn
were overcome by the strongest. Those who lost in the struggle were
generally exterminated; but now and then they had been known to save
themselves by combination--which was a new and higher kind of strength.
It was so that the gregarious animals had overcome the predaceous; it
was so, in human history, that the people had mastered the kings. The
workers were simply the citizens of industry, and the Socialist movement
was the expression of their will to survive. The inevitability of the
revolution depended upon this fact, that they had no choice but to unite
or be exterminated; this fact, grim and inexorable, depended upon no
human will, it was the law of the economic process, of which the editor
showed the details with the most marvelous precision.

And later on came the evening of the great meet