A "White Way" had been opened up both sides of the four main avenues,
with five great white globes every thirty feet. Streamers of patriotic
tri-colored lights lined the side streets, converging to a tapering pole
in the center of Main Park--a vast pyramid of glitter and sparkle. Two
new bandstands flashed back the twinkle from their shining woodwork; an
ornate speakers' stand lifted above between them. Bunting draped the
thoroughfares, the national emblem interwoven with the flags of France,
England, Belgium, Russia, Japan, thickest over the court house and jail,
the big retail houses, the offices of the mining and furnace companies,
and the rambling cotton mills. Here the gay cloth framed the faces of
women and children, busily bending, in the half gloom, above vast black
machines--noisily weaving, in the human silence, cloth for more bunting.
The new Commercial Club building, a transplanted Greek temple, marble
white, was to be dedicated, as part of the celebration. The gleaming
symbol of adamantine prosperity was christened with champagne; the punch
bubbled for gay members and wives, who applauded the eloquence of Dudley
Randolph, the retiring president, as he relinquished the gavel to Paul
Judson.
"This is the man who has saved Adamsville. I may be giving away a
secret, but--we all know Paul Judson's backbone. But for it, we might
have union miners swaggering down our avenues and boulevards. Instead,
we have the militia, our sons under the waving banners of red and white
and blue----" Frantic cheers submerged the rest of the sentence. "Mark
my words: the time's coming when these law-defying strikers will feel
the militia's iron insistence upon the majesty of the law!
"We can handle Adamsville; but that is not enough." His pulsing tones
shook and trembled above their heads. "I want to see those same boys
marching under that same flag, side by side with the tricolor of France
and the Union Jack, against another autocracy greater than the domestic
tyranny of the labor union carpet-bagger!" The shouts were
whole-hearted, one veteran attempting the yodelled "Coo-ee" of the rebel
yell.
"Let the rest of the South hang back," his strident tones shouted,
"because of the loss of its cotton trade with Germany. We've got the
iron and steel here to lay the rails straight down Unter den Linden, to
forge the 42-centimeter guns that will blast the hated house of
Hohenzollern into its home, the reddest sub-cellar of Hell! We demand
that our country avenge the _Lusitania_--avenge the rape of
Belgium--avenge the foul assault on the soul of civilization. And when
her citizens speak, Columbia will not lag behind!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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