Already a great concourse had assembled. Mr. McPherson mounted his rostrum, and, after a few preliminary flourishes, began in a clear, strong tone, that had the power of concentrating the attention of his audience. He went back centuries, and proved that from the very beginning of all industries there had been the desire to oppress, that the working-classes had to combine and fight for every advantage gained, to wrest from kings, peers, masters, even equals, the privileges they held to-day. Plainly, capital was a tyrant fattening on unpaid toil. "Were not the rich always in the ranks of capital, always against the poor man? They squeezed him to the utmost when they had need, then they flung him away. Did it matter to them if his wife and children starved? If he stole a loaf of bread to appease the pangs of hunger, he was sent to prison; but if a bank president stole half a million, he went to--Europe! [Laughter and applause.] Does the capitalist employ the laborer in order that there shall be fewer starving men in the country? It comes in the market, and buys at the lowest price, solely for its own benefit. It does not concern capital, whether this man can support wife and children on such a pittance: what business has he with wife and children! If the man drops at the work-bench, the victim of long hours, exhaustive toil, insufficient food, the town will thrust him into a pauper's grave, and another will fill his place. Even negro-slavery was more noble than this: it was to the master's interest that the slave should be well fed. Capital was shrewd, selfish, experienced, astute, strong: labor was kept in ignorance lest it might learn its worth, its rights; it was half-starved that it might be weak; it was driven from pillar to post with a more cruel than slave-driver's whip, that it might never be able to perfect a successful organization." And so on and on. The crowd increased. The six-o'clock bells rang, and the procession from shops wended their way thither, many from curiosity, some from a hope of a new truth, and not a few filled with a secret sense of wrong and dissatisfaction. Mr. McPherson was still belaboring capital. Now he had declared it "a stupendous fraud, a hollow bubble, a reputation for wealth where no wealth existed, a fictitious claim for what was not, but which still managed to hold the workman in its iron grasp; the concentrated labor of the men, not the lawful working interest of money. Some way this system of evil was going to be uprooted by men standing firm, refusing the wages of sweat and blood; and in the general overturn by legislation of state and country, every man was to have a farm or a factory, to quit work in the middle of the afternoon, and sit with folded hands on his own door-step, his own master, a free man!" [Great shouting and applause.]