We were a little early, but we chanced upon a Socialistic acquaintance of mine, who took us in with him and seated us well to the front. As the members entered I had a chance to point out to Mr. Ford those among them who had been pointed out to me as the officers of their various unions. He was deeply interested from the first, and much impressed apparently by the size of the gathering and the enormous numbers of organized workers which were represented there. The stage of “new business” was barely reached that afternoon when matters were well beyond the control of the president. Motions and amendments and questions of privilege and points of order were fast driving him mad, when in despair he called upon a fellow-member to take charge of the meeting and become its temporary chairman. By this time there was a good deal of confusion; men in many parts of the hall were clamoring for the floor, and trying to drown one another’s voices. But there was immediate recognition of a change of generalship. The man who had taken the chair was a member of a union of musicians, a person of excellent address and well-appearing, and, as it proved eventually, a masterly parliamentarian. To reduce to quiet an assembly so excited was beyond his power, but he did unravel the skein of its tangled business, and through all the uproar and confusion he kept his temper perfectly, and secured some actual disposition of the affairs in hand. The intricacies of intermingling interests there represented were beyond measure bewildering. The Cigarmakers’ Union had a grievance, which its representatives insisted upon presenting and having righted at once. But the Waiters’ Union claimed an antecedent right to the presentation of a question with reference to admitting certain men to their organization. And the Bricklayers’ Union demanded an immediate investigation of the account of expenditure for a certain recent Union picnic, charging directly, meanwhile, a flagrant misappropriation of funds. Passions were running high. The lie direct was passed repeatedly, and men were all but shaking fists in one another’s faces. The shouting rose sometimes to such a pitch that the chairman’s voice could not be heard. But the passion was that of strong vitality. The Union, to its members, was an intensely living thing, and its issues, touching them so closely, most naturally roused comparatively untutored men to strong emotion.