It is very curious to observe how his rôle has taken hold of him and changed him. I am told that when he first came to New York he wore checked trousers and fancy ties; and now he wears the traditional soft hat and frock coat of our statesmen. And also, I think, the rôle has changed his character. For this struggle is a real one, it is a struggle of the people for life; the cause is a cause of truth and justice, and the man does not live who can do battle for it as Mr. Hearst has done, and not come to take fire with the passion of it. The man does not live who can make the enemies Mr. Hearst has made, and not take a real and vital interest in the task of bringing them to their knees. I believe that Mr. Hearst is to-day as sincere a man as we have in political life. It may be, of course, that some one else will get the Democratic nomination in 1912; that matters not at all in my thesis—the one thing certain is that it will be some man who stands pledged to put an end to class-government. Following it there will be a campaign of an intensity of fury such as this country has never before witnessed in its history. Let us outline in a few words the situation as it will then exist. In the first place there will be two or three million—perhaps five or ten million—men out of work. They will have been out for a year or two, and have had plenty of time to work up excitement. They may have forced Congress to provide them some temporary employment—which will, of course, be the first taste of blood to the tiger. They will certainly have been waging strikes of a violence never before known—they will have been shot down in great numbers, and they may have done a great deal of burning and dynamiting. That some particularly conspicuous individual like Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Baer may have been assassinated, seems more than likely; that a “Coxey’s Army” of much larger size will have marched on Washington, seems quite certain. When I was in Chicago, just after the last “Beef Strike,” I met half a dozen labour leaders who told me an interesting story. Chicago has the most thoroughly revolutionary working-class of any city in the country, and towards the end of this strike they were deeply stirred, and there had been several conferences in which a complete program had been laid out for an “anti-rent strike.” On a certain day, all the working people of Chicago were to refuse to pay rent until the meat-packers gave in. The project was nipped by the settlement of the strike, but it only waits a new occasion to be put into effect. By the time which we are picturing here, it will quite certainly have spread east and west to the two oceans, so that not half our city population will be paying any rent for their homes at this time. [Illustration: _Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly_ ] [Illustration: _Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly_ COXEY’S ARMY ON THE MARCH AND IN WASHINGTON ]