"Fellow-toilers, we have listened with great respect to what our friend Gabriel Weltstein has said to us, for we know he would help us if he could--that his heart is with us. And much that he has said is true. But the time has gone by to start such a society as be speaks of. Why, if we formed it, the distresses of the people are so great that our very members would sell us out on election day." [Applause.] "The community is rotten to the core; and so rotten that it is not conscious that it is rotten." [Applause.] "There is no sound place to build on. There is no remedy but the utter destruction of the existing order of things." [Great applause.] "It cannot be worse for us than it is; it may be better." [Cheers.] "But," I cried out, "do you want to destroy civilization??" "Civilization," he replied solemnly; "what interest have we in the preservation of civilization? Look around and behold its fruits! Here are probably ten thousand industrious, sober, intelligent workingmen; I doubt if there is one in all this multitude that can honestly say he has had, during the past week, enough to eat." [Cries of "That's so."] "I doubt if there is one here who believes that the present condition of things can give him, or his children, anything better for the future." [Applause.] "Our masters have educated us to understand that we have no interest in civilization or society. We are its victims, not its members. They depend on repression, on force alone; on cruelty, starvation, to hold us down until we work our lives away. Our lives are all we have;--it may be all we will ever have! They are as dear to us as existence is to the millionaire. "What is civilization worth which means happiness for a few thousand men and inexpressible misery for hundreds of millions? No, down with it!" [Immense cheering. Men rising and waving their hats.] "If they have set love and justice adrift and depend only on force, why should we not have recourse to force also?" [Cheers and applause, mingled with cries of "Take care!" "Look out!" "Spies!" etc.] "Yes," continued the speaker, "I mean, of course, the force of argument and reason." [Great laughter and applause.] "Of course none of us would advocate a violation of the law--that blessed law which it has cost our masters so much hard-earned money to purchase;" [renewed laughter and applause,] "and which restrains us and not them; for under it no injustice is forbidden to them, and no justice is permitted to us, Our labor creates everything; we possess nothing. Yes, we have the scant supply of food necessary to enable us to create more." [Applause.] "We have ceased to be men--we are machines. Did God die for a machine? Certainly not.