The well-grown muscular, intelligent workingman was the dominant type among them, but the general average in point of respectability was so high that it gave to the company rather the appearance of a gathering of the _bourgeoisie_ than of proletarians. Had the proportion between men and women been reversed, without change of average status, I might have been in a prayer-meeting. But the prayer-meeting in sustaining the resemblance would have been one of marked vitality. Speeches were following one another in quick succession. Some were good and some were vapid; some were in broken English, and others were in English more than broken; but all were surcharged with the kind of earnestness which captivates attention. Irresistibly at times one was reminded of the propaganda of a new faith. Much was said the meaning of which I could not catch, but the spirit of it all was not far to seek. Here there was no cant; there was room for none. These men believed that they had hold of a truth which is regenerating society. In the face of a world deep-rooted in an individualistic organization of industry and of social order, they preached a gospel of collectivism, with unbounded belief in its ultimate triumph. At times there was a malignant animus in what they said, when argument was enforced from sources of personal experience; for men would speak with the intensity of feeling of those who know what hunger is and what it is to hear their children cry for bread, while within their sight is the wasteful luxury of the rich. But a certain earnest moderateness of speech was far more common, and it sometimes revealed a breadth of view and an acquaintance with economics which to me were astonishing.