Just how much education the Hobohemian proletariat gets from this speaking and reading is not easily estimated. They learn something about the class struggle, industrial organization, and politics. Sometimes an observation on science or literature or art will fall from a speaker’s lips, but most of these observations are new only to the stranger in the class. The old-timer, however, hears only old ideas restated; or, at best, new facts and figures interpreted to support old ideas. It is like a game with a limited number of pieces and a limited number of moves. Sometimes, to be sure, a speaker endeavors to serve “science” to the “floating fraternity.” Lectures on biology, psychology, sociology, or economics may be heard any evening or holiday during the summer. Most of these lectures go over the heads of the audience, and it is questionable whether the speakers have sufficient background to speak intelligently of the sciences they are attempting to expound. This effort to educate the proletariat is, nevertheless, not altogether without results. It gives men something to occupy their minds. It gives them some understanding of their common interests; creates a certain amount of solidarity and, perhaps, best of all, “kills time.” Some speakers realize this and declare that the soap box is primarily a kind of entertainment. One man makes it a point to try to amuse his crowd as well as to “instruct” them. “You’ve got to keep ’em interested. You have to amuse them and make ’em laugh before you can get any ideas into their heads. Whenever things get dry, I leave an opening for a drunk or someone to ask me a question or crack a joke, and interest picks up again.” AN AFTERNOON SERIES OF SOAP-BOX ORATIONS 60. During a Sunday in July, 1922, no less than twenty men spoke on the box at the corner of Jefferson and Madison streets; and as many topics were treated. In the afternoon the following speakers shared the time: 1. The meeting was opened by a man who borrowed a box from a nearby fruit stand. He tried to get another man to speak first so that he would not have to hurt his voice gathering the crowd, but no one cared to start. He talked for twenty minutes about graft in the patent-medicine trade. He had a very catchy speech well tempered with humor and he gathered a big crowd. Evidently he had made a study of the patent-medicine business and his speech was an “exposure” of the game. He finished by selling some pamphlets dealing with the subject. 2. The second speaker was an I.W.W. who talked for fifteen minutes on education. He was a good talker and held the crowd. He wound up by selling some I.W.W. literature and periodicals in which the thoughts of economists had been reduced from the difficult academic language to the understanding of the man on the street. He also passed out some literature, i.e., old issues of the _Solidarity_, and I.W.W. papers.