Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; City and town life -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- Pennsylvania -- Fiction; Labor leaders -- Fiction
David Ormsby said nothing. When McGregor had begun to speak he touched
the horses with the whip and drove slowly along Van Buren Street past
the silent attentive ranks of men. When he had got into one of the
streets near the river a vast cheer arose. It seemed to shake the city
and the horses reared and leaped forward over the rough cobblestones.
With one hand David quieted them while with the other he gripped the
hand of his daughter. They drove over a bridge and into the West Side
and as they went the marching song of the workers rising up out of
thousands of throats rang in their ears. For a time the air seemed to
pulsate with it but as they went westward it grew continually less and
less distinct. At last when they had turned into a street lined by tall
factories it died out altogether. “That is the end of him for me and
mine,” thought David and again set himself for the task he had to
perform.
Through street after street David let the horses wander while he clung
to his daughter's hand and thought of what he wanted to say. Not all of
the streets were lined with factories. Some, and these in the evening
light were the most hideous, were bordered by the homes of workers. The
houses of the workers, jammed closely together and black with grime,
were filled with noisy life. Women sat in the doorways and children ran
screaming and shouting in the road. Dogs barked and howled. Everywhere
was dirt and disorder, the terrible evidence of men's failure in the
difficult and delicate art of living. In one of the streets a little
girl child who sat on the post of a fence made a ludicrous figure. As
David and Margaret drove past she beat with her heels against the sides
of the post and screamed. Tears ran down her cheeks and her dishevelled
hair was black with dirt. “I want a banana! I want a banana!” she
howled, staring at the blank walls of one of the houses. In spite of
herself Margaret was touched and her mind left the figure of McGregor.
By an odd chance the child on the post was the daughter of that
socialist orator who one night on the North Side had climbed upon a
platform to confront McGregor with the propaganda of the Socialist
Party.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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