id. Then we
arranged for a formal presentation of a topic and a discussion to
follow it.

The Socialists were always in the majority. Every Socialist is a
propagandist--not always an intelligent propagandist. Intelligent and
leading Socialists are generally engaged Sunday evenings, so the
majority of those who came to us were of the hard-working
kind--limited, very limited, in the literary expression of the social
soul flame that so passionately moves them.

Some of our church officers who took an active part in the first
year's meetings were somewhat alarmed at the brusqueness of these men
and women, and undertook to correct their manners.

The Rector understood. And with great patience and tact he heard all.
The Church of the Ascension has in its membership some of the
country's biggest leaders in industry; some of these men came to the
meetings. What they saw and heard was different to what they expected.
They fraternized with the men of toil. It was a fraternity utterly
devoid of patronage. There were free exchanges of thought. The
average labouring man is incapable of such conference, for no matter
how many years a member of a labour union it is only when he becomes a
Socialist that he becomes an intelligent advocate of anything.

[Illustration: The Church of the Ascension]

The Rector and I tried to avoid the notice of the newspapers and for
about six months we succeeded. Then came the explosion of the bomb on
Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight. I was on
the Square that afternoon.

It was designed to be a mass meeting of the unemployed. The unemployed
are not usually interested in any sort of propaganda; the more
intelligent of the labour men are, and the Socialists are more so.

So the promoters of the mass meeting for the unemployed were
Socialists. It was at this meeting that a police official declared to
a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman's club
was mightier than the Constitution of the United States.

No permit was given and no mass meeting held, but the multitude was
there and when the police began to disperse it the people who were
neither Socialists nor unemployed resented being driven off the
streets. I saw men clubbed and women deliberately ridden over by the
mounted police. I kept moving: I wanted to be where it was most
dangerous. I suffered for months with a bruised arm that I got as I
went with the crowd in front of the horses: it was a blo