While I had been engaged with Clark, Reddick had ended his speech with a fiery peroration that brought a roar of applause, during which a stout, red-faced man climbed to the platform and took his place.
"This is all wrong, men," were the first words I heard from the new speaker. "We can't help the cause of labor by getting into a row with the police. We can't get more wages by hunting a fight with the militia. We can't even get a better job by punching a Chinaman's head."
"Who the devil is this?" cried Reddick angrily. "He's a hell-hound of plutocracy. Who asked him to speak?"
"Stop him, D'Arcy," said Parks. "He'll be a wet blanket on the meeting."
So far from being a wet blanket, the speaker had a remarkably enlivening influence on the crowd. The elements that had been roused to enthusiasm by fiery speeches, culminating in Reddick's red-pepper harangue, were in no mood to listen to this sort of talk, and catcalls, hoots and cries of dissent drowned his words.
"This agitation don't do us no good," shouted the volunteer orator. "It hurts us. It scares away capital. I lost two jobs by it myself."
"Sit down! Dry up! Get off the platform!" came in volleys from the audience, and the chairman, with a pull at the speaker's coat tails, paraphrased the demand.
"I won't sit down!" shouted the unknown. "I'm an American citizen and as good as any of you."
"Throw him off!" cried Reddick; and suiting action to word, he seized the speaker about the waist.
The unknown resented this interference by whirling about, and planting a blow on Reddick's face that sent him to the floor with a thump. But the militant friend of order was seized by a dozen men before he could make another movement, and with a struggle was hustled to the side of the platform and dropped over the rail.