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clamor for redress and relief. I pointed to the fact that in the city of Pittsburg a repot was made by, I think, the Superintendent of Police of that city, stating that at the Bethel home, a charitable institution in that city, from January 1, 1884, to January 1, 1885, there were 26,374 destitute men—tramps, American soverigns—who applied for a night's lodging and a morsel of food at one establishment alone in the city of Pittsburg. I referred, of course, to many other places and similar things, showing the general condition of labor in the country. I then spoke of the eight-hour movement—that it was designed to bring relief to these men and to the country. I thought surely there was nothing in it to excite such hostility on the part of employers and on the part of monopoly and corporations against it as was witnessed in different parts of the country. I referred to the refusal of the corporations and monopolists to grant and concede the modest request of the working class, and their attempts to defeat it. I then referred to the fact that, in the face of all these causes producing these effects the monopolistic newspapers, in the interests of corporations, blamed such men as I—blamed the so-called agitators, blamed the workingmen—for these evidences of discontent, this turmoil and confusion and so-called disorder. I called the attention of the crowd specifically to that fact—that we were being blamed for this thing, when, on the contrary, it was evident to any fair-minded man that we were simply calling the attention of the people to this condition of things and seeking a redress for it. I impressed that upon the crowd specifically, and I remembered that in response to that several gentlemen spoke up loudly and said: "Well, we need a good many just such men as you to right these wrongs and to arouse the people."
"I spoke of the compulsory idleness and starvation wages, and how these things drove the workingmen to desperation—drove them to commit acts for which they ought not to be held responsible; that they were the creatures of circumstances, and that this condition of things was the fault, not of the workingmen, but of those who claimed the right to control and regulate the rights of the workingmen. I pointed out the fact that monopoly, in its course in grinding down labor in this country and in refusing to concede anything to it—refusing to make any concessions whatever—that
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