ve liked to talk to
her, he felt sure that she would have understood him. Later on in the
evening, when the group broke up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in
a low voice, "I wonder if Mr. Maynard will still write the same things
about Socialism"; to which she answered, "I don't know--but if he does
we shall know that he is a knave!"

And only a few hours after this came election day--when the long
campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold
its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of
Hinds's Hotel could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they
hurried off to the big hall which the party had hired for that evening.

But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph
instrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns. When the
final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to be over four
hundred thousand--an increase of something like three hundred and fifty
per cent in four years. And that was doing well; but the party was
dependent for its early returns upon messages from the locals, and
naturally those locals which had been most successful were the ones
which felt most like reporting; and so that night every one in the hall
believed that the vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight
hundred thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually been
made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been 6,700
in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been 9,600, and
now it was 69,000! So, as the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in, the
meeting was a sight to be seen. Bulletins would be read, and the people
would shout themselves hoarse--and then some one would make a speech,
and there would be more shouting; and then a brief silence, and more
bulletins. There would come messages from the secretaries of neighboring
states, reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from
2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from 4,800
to 36,000! There were telegrams to the national office from enthusiastic
individuals in little towns which had made amazing and unprecedented
increases in a single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26 to 260; Henderson,
Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208; Cleo,
Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many
more of the same kind. There were literally hundreds of such towns;
there would be reports from