ared from the courtyards, where they were hidden, and fired into the
crowded mass of human beings, killing more than five hundred and wounding
nearly three thousand. All who were able to do so turned and fled, among
them Father Gapon.

Bloody Sunday, as the day is known in Russian annals, is generally regarded
as the beginning of the First Revolution. Immediately people began to talk
of armed resistance. On the evening of the day of the tragedy there was a
meeting of more than seven hundred Intellectuals at which the means for
carrying on revolution was the topic discussed. This was the first of many
similar gatherings which took place all over Russia. Soon the Intellectuals
began to organize unions, ostensibly for the protection of their
professional interests, but in reality for political purposes. There were
unions of doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, professors, editors, and so
on. Quietly, and almost without design, there was being effected another
and more important union, namely, the union of all classes against
autocracy and despotism.

The Czar gave from his private purse fifty thousand rubles for the relief
of the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. On the 19th of January he
received a deputation of carefully selected "loyal" working-men and
delivered to them a characteristic homily, which infuriated the masses by
its stupid perversion of the facts connected with the wanton massacre of
Bloody Sunday. Then, at the end of the month, he proclaimed the appointment
of a commission to "investigate the causes of labor unrest in St.
Petersburg and its suburbs and to find means of avoiding them in the
future." This commission was to consist of representatives of capital and
labor. The working-men thereupon made the following demands:

(1) That labor be given an equal number of members in the commission with
capital;

(2) That the working-men be permitted to freely elect their own
representatives;

(3) That the sessions of the commission be open to the public;

(4) That there be complete freedom of speech for the representatives of
labor in the commission;

(5) That all the working-people arrested on January 9th be released.

These demands of the working-men's organizations were rejected by the
government, whereupon the workers agreed to boycott the commission and
refuse to have anything to do with it. At last it became evident to the
government that, in the circumstances, the commission could not acco