Then came a catalogue of their grievances and wrongs, presented with much force and marked dramatic ability, and on the heels of it a tirade against all employers and capitalists, and especially against their employer, whom he pictured as their arch enemy and oppressor, the chief and final act of whose infamy, he declared to be his "attempt to bribe them with baskets of rotten fowls." Who was this man? He would tell them. He held in his hand a paper which pictured him in his true character. Here he opened a journal and read from the article I had written for Kalender--the infamous headlines of the editor which changed the whole. This was the man with whom they had to deal--a man who flung scraps from his table for famishing children to wrangle over with dogs. There was but one way to meet such insolence, he declared, to fling them back in his face and make him understand that they didn't want favors from him, but justice; not rotten fowls, but their own hard-earned money. "And now," he cried, "I put the motion to send every basket back with this message and to demand an increase of twenty-five per cent. pay forthwith. Thus, we shall show them and all the world that we are independent American workmen earning our own bread and asking no man's meat. Let all who favor this rise and the scabs sit still." It was so quickly and shrewdly done that a large part of the assembly were on their feet in a second, indeed, many of them were already standing, and the protest of the objectors was lost in the wild storm of applause. Over on the far side I saw little McNeil shouting and gesticulating in vehement protest; but as I caught sight of him a dozen men piled on him and pulled him down, hammering him into silence. The man's power and boldness had accomplished what his reasoning could never have effected.