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_ Who will ever forget that Labour Day in Chicago? How they marched!--
thousands and thousands and more thousands! They filled the streets.
The cars stopped. Men trembled with the import of the impending hour.
Here they come! How the ground trembles! The chant chant chant of that
song! It must have been thus that Grant felt at the great review of
the veterans in Washington when all day long they marched past him,
the men of the Civil War, the whites of their eyes showing in the tan
of their faces. McGregor stood on the stone curbing above the tracks
in Grant Park. As the men marched they massed in there about him,
thousands of them, steel workers and iron workers and great red-necked
butchers and teamsters.
And in the air wailed the marching song of the workers.
All of the world that was not marching jammed into the buildings
facing Michigan Boulevard and waited. Margaret Ormsby was there. She
sat with her father in a carriage near where Van Buren Street ends at
the Boulevard. As the men kept crowding in about them she clutched
nervously at the sleeve of David Ormsby's coat. "He is going to
speak," she whispered and pointed. Her tense air of expectancy
expressed much of the feeling of the crowd. "See, listen, he is going
to speak out."
It must have been five in the afternoon when the men got through
marching. They were massed in there clear down to the Twelfth Street
Station of the Illinois Central. McGregor lifted his hands. In the
hush his harsh voice carried far. "We are at the beginning," he
shouted and silence fell upon the people. In the stillness one
standing near her might have heard Margaret Ormsby weeping softly.
There was the gentle murmur that always prevails where many people
stand at attention. The weeping of the woman was scarcely audible but
it persisted like the sound of little waves on a beach at the end of
the day. _
Read next: BOOK VII: CHAPTER I
Read previous: BOOK VI: CHAPTER V
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