re, one of the poor to talk to
the poor."

His voice held back so much of his strength, his gaunt, awkward figure
under the uncertain torches, his wide, impassioned gestures, with the
carpenter's nail claw always before his hearers, made him a strange kind
of specter in the night. Yet the simplicity of his manner and the
directness of his appeal went to the hearts of his hearers. The first
part of his message was one of peace. He told the workers that every
inch they gained they lost when they tried to overcome cunning with
force. "The dynamiter tears the ground from under labor--not from under
capital; he strengthens capital," said Grant. "Every time I hear of a
bomb exploding in a strike, or of a scab being killed I think of the
long, hard march back that organized labor must make to retrieve its
lost ground. And then," he cried passionately, and the mad fanatic glare
lighted his face, "my soul revolts at the iniquity of those who, by
craft and cunning while we work, teach us the false doctrine of the
strength of force, and then when we use what they have taught us, point
us out in scorn as lawbreakers. Whether they pay cash to the man who
touched the fuse or fired the gun or whether they merely taught us to
use bombs and guns by the example of their own lawlessness, theirs is
the sin, and ours the punishment. Esau still has lost his
birthright--still is disinherited."

He spoke for a time upon the aims of organization, and set forth the
doctrine of class solidarity. He told labor that in its ranks altruism,
neighborly kindness that is the surest basis of progress, has a thousand
disintegrated expressions. "The kindness of the poor to the poor, if
expressed in terms of money, would pay the National debt over night," he
said, and, letting out his voice, and releasing his strength, he begged
the men and women who work and sweat at their work to give that altruism
some form and direction, to put it into harness--to form it into ranks,
drilled for usefulness. Then he spoke of the day when class
consciousness would not be needed, when the unions would have served
their mission, when the class wrong that makes the class suffering and
thus marks the class line, would disappear just as they have disappeared
in the classes that have risen during the last two centuries.

"Oh, Esau," he cried in the voice that men called insane because of its
intensity, "your birthright is not gone. It lies in your own heart.
Quicken your hea