It seems absurdly simple now. There he sat at his desk. The police might have walked in and arrested him. But if you begin figuring that way the whole thing was absurd. What differs it if men march coming from work, swinging along shoulder to shoulder or shuffle aimlessly along, and what harm can come out of the singing of a song?

You see McGregor understood something that all of us had not counted on. He knew that every one has an imagination. He was at war with men’s minds. He challenged something in us that we hardly realised was there. He had been sitting there for years thinking it out. He had watched Dr. Dowie and Mrs. Eddy. He knew what he was doing.

A crowd of newspaper men went one night to hear McGregor at a big outdoor meeting up on the North Side. Dr. Cowell was with them—the big English statesman and writer who later was drowned on the Titanic. He was a big man, physically and mentally, and was in Chicago to see McGregor and try to understand what he was doing.

And McGregor got him as he had all men. Out there under the sky the men stood silent, Cowell’s head sticking up above the sea of faces, and McGregor talked. The newspaper men declared he could not talk. They were wrong about that. McGregor had a way of throwing up his arms and straining and shouting out his sentences, that got to the souls of men.

He was a kind of crude artist drawing pictures on the mind.

That night he talked about labour as always—labour personified—huge crude old Labour. How he made the men before him see and feel the blind giant who has lived in the world since time began and who still goes stumbling blindly about, rubbing his eyes and lying down to sleep away centuries in the dust of the fields and the factories.

A man arose in the audience and climbed upon the platform beside McGregor. It was a daring thing to do and men’s knees trembled. While the man was crawling up to the platform shouts arose. One has in mind a picture of a bustling little fellow going into the house and into the upper room where Jesus and his followers were having the last supper together, going in there to wrangle about the price to be paid for the wine.

The man who got on the platform with McGregor was a socialist. He wanted to argue.

But McGregor did not argue with him. He sprang forward, it was a quick tiger-like movement, and spun the socialist about, making him stand small and blinking and comical before the crowd.

Then McGregor began to talk. He made of the little stuttering arguing socialist a figure representing all labour, made him the personification of the old weary struggle of the world. And the socialist who went to argue stood with tears in his eyes, proud of his position in men’s eyes.

All over the city McGregor talked of old Labour and how he was to be built up and put before men’s eyes by the movement of the Marching Men. How our legs tingled to fall in step and go marching away with him.

Out of the crowds there came the note of that wailing march. Some one always started that.

That night on the North Side Doctor Cowell got hold of the shoulder of a newspaper man and led him to a car. He who knew Bismarck and who had sat in council with kings went walking and babbling half the night through the empty streets.

It is amusing now to think of the things men said under the influence of McGregor. Like old Doctor Johnson and his friend Savage they walked half drunk through the streets swearing that whatever happened they would stick to the movement. Doctor Cowell himself said things just as absurd as that.

And all over the country men were getting the idea—the Marching Men—old Labour in one mass marching before the eyes of men—old Labour that was going to make the world see—see and feel its bigness at last. Men were to come to the end of strife—men united—Marching! Marching! Marching!

CHAPTER V

In all of the time of The Marching Men there was but one bit of written matter from the leader McGregor. It had a circulation running into the millions and was printed in every tongue spoken in America. A copy of the little circular lies before me now.

THE MARCHERS

“They ask us what we mean. Well, here is our answer. We mean to go on marching. We mean to march in the morning and in the evening when the sun goes down. On Sundays they may sit on their porches or shout at men playing ball in a field But we will march. On the hard cobblestones of the city streets and through the dust of country roads we will march. Our legs may be weary and our throats hot and dry, But still we will march, shoulder to shoulder. We will march until the ground shakes and tall buildings tremble. Shoulder to shoulder we will go—all of us— On and on forever. We will not talk nor listen to talk. We will march and we will teach our sons and our daughters to march. Their minds are troubled. Our minds are clear. We do not think and banter words. We march. Our faces are coarse and there is dust in our hair and beards. See, the inner parts of our hands are rough. And still we march—we the workers.”

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