for a crust of bread in a garbage
pail. I hold her on high."

With both hands he lifted the dazed thing above his head.

"Look at her. This bundle of rags God made in the form of a woman to be
the mother of the race. She has been thrown into your streets to starve.
Her father is a workingman whom I know. For six months, out of work,
he fought with death and hell, and hell won. He is now in prison. Her
mother, unable to support herself and child, sought oblivion in drink.
She's in the gutter to-night. Her brother has joined a gang on the East
Side. Her sister is a girl of the streets.

"You talk to me of Negro Slavery in the South? Behold the child of the
White Wage Slave of the North! Why are you crying over the poor negro?
In the South the master owns the slave. Here the master owns the job.
Down there the master feeds, clothes and houses his man with care. Black
children laugh and play. Here the master who owns the job buys labor in
the open market. He can get it from a man for 75 cents a day. From a
woman for 30 cents a day. When he has bought the last ounce of strength
they can give, the master of the wage slave kicks him out to freeze or
starve or sink into crime.

"You tell me of the white master's lust down South? I tell you of the
white master's lust for the daughters of our own race.

"I see a foreman of a factory sitting in this crowd. I've known him for
ten years. I've talked with a score of his victims. He has the power
to employ or discharge girls of all ages ranging from twelve to
twenty-five. Do you think a girl can pass his bead eyes and not pay for
the job the price he sees fit to demand?

"If you think so, you don't know the man. I do!"

He paused and the stillness of death followed. Necks were craned to find
the figure of the foreman crouching in the crowd. The speaker was not
after the individual. His soul was aflame with the cause of millions.

"I see also a man in the crowd who owns a row of tenements so filthy,
so dark, so reeking with disease that no Southern master would allow a
beast to live in them. This hypocrite has given to John Brown to-night
a contribution of money for the downtrodden black man. He coined this
money out of the blood of white men and women who pay the rent for the
dirty holes in which they die."

A moment of silence that was pain as he paused and a hundred eyes swept
the room in search of the man. Again the speaker stood without a sign.
He merely paused to let h