Book VI: Chapter VI

by Sherwood Anderson

　　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 thatsong! It must have been thus that Grant felt at the great review ofthe 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 tanof their faces. McGregor stood on the stone curbing above the tracksin Grant Park. As the men marched they massed in there about him,thousands of them, steel workers and iron workers and great red-neckedbutchers and teamsters.

　　And in the air wailed the marching song of the workers.

　　All of the world that was not marching jammed into the buildingsfacing Michigan Boulevard and waited. Margaret Ormsby was there. Shesat with her father in a carriage near where Van Buren Street ends atthe Boulevard. As the men kept crowding in about them she clutchednervously at the sleeve of David Ormsby's coat. "He is going tospeak," she whispered and pointed. Her tense air of expectancyexpressed much of the feeling of the crowd. "See, listen, he is goingto speak out."

　　It must have been five in the afternoon when the men got throughmarching. They were massed in there clear down to the Twelfth StreetStation of the Illinois Central. McGregor lifted his hands. In thehush his harsh voice carried far. "We are at the beginning," heshouted and silence fell upon the people. In the stillness onestanding near her might have heard Margaret Ormsby weeping softly.There was the gentle murmur that always prevails where many peoplestand at attention. The weeping of the woman was scarcely audible butit persisted like the sound of little waves on a beach at the end ofthe day.