The Rector and I tried to avoid the notice of the newspapers and for about six months we succeeded. Then came the explosion of the bomb on Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight. I was on the Square that afternoon.
It was designed to be a mass meeting of the unemployed. The unemployed are not usually interested in any sort of propaganda; the more intelligent of the labour men are, and the Socialists are more so.
So the promoters of the mass meeting for the unemployed were Socialists. It was at this meeting that a police official declared to a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman's club was mightier than the Constitution of the United States.
No permit was given and no mass meeting held, but the multitude was there and when the police began to disperse it the people who were neither Socialists nor unemployed resented being driven off the streets. I saw men clubbed and women deliberately ridden over by the mounted police. I kept moving: I wanted to be where it was most dangerous. I suffered for months with a bruised arm that I got as I went with the crowd in front of the horses: it was a blow aimed at a man's head; I was clubbed on the back for not moving fast enough. At every turn, at every angle of the Square, the police were as brutal as any Cossack that ever wielded a knout.
Late on that afternoon the police opened the Square—that is, the people were permitted to cross it in all directions. My study was at No. 75 Fifth Avenue, and I was moving in that direction past the fountain when the explosion took place. I was hurled off my feet; that is, the shock to my nervous system was so great that I collapsed. My first flash of thought was of the battle-field!
Fifteen feet in front of me two men staggered. It seemed to me that one of them had been ripped in twain. He fell and the other fell on top of him. Instantly the policemen around me seemed crazed: as I staggered to my feet one of them struck me a terrific blow with his club. The blow landed between my shoulders, but glanced upward, striking me on the back of the head. I tumbled over, dazed, but the thought that his next blow would murder me seemed to give me superhuman strength and I ran. As I turned he attacked another man and I thought I was free. I was mistaken, however, for he gave chase and if I had not escaped into the crowd I would have fared badly at his hands.
My nerves were so badly shattered that on the way to my room I fell several times. The following Sunday night the Civic Federation packed our meeting with their speakers.
Mr. Gompers's representative in New York was the first man put up. He was furnished with quotations from alleged Socialist writers on the question of religion. Then a woman from Boston who had once been a Socialist, sent a note to me—I was presiding—asking for extended time. I was the only Socialist in the place who knew what was going on.
The newspapers had all been "tipped off," as the Herald reporter told me later. The discussion waxed so warm that fifty people were on their feet at once, shouting for recognition.
Humour in such a situation is a tremendous relief. I managed to inject some into the discussion and it was like grease to a cartwheel. In a humorous way I turned the light on the Civic Federation and the audience laughed. Next day every newspaper in New York had an account of the meeting. From that time until the end of the first year of the meeting the papers reported not only what happened but much that never happened. Most of them were humorous in their treatment. The Marceline of the press gave us much space in its characteristic style.