Gradually I began to feel what was happening in this hall. That first "strike feeling"—diffused, shifting and uncertain—was condensing as in a storm cloud here, swelling, thickening, whirling, attracting swiftly to itself all these floating forces. Here was the first awakening of that mass thought and passion, which swelling later into full life was to give me such flashes of insight into the deep buried resources of the common herd of mankind, their resources and their power of vision when they are joined and fused in a mass. Here in a few hours the great spirit of the crowd was born.
For now the crowd began to question, think and plan. Ideas were thrown out pell mell. I found that every plan of action, everything felt and thought and spoken, though it might start from a single man, was at once transformed by the feeling of all, expressed in fragments of speech, in applause, or in loud bursts of laughter, or again by a chilling silence in which an unwelcome thought soon died. The crowd spoke its will through many voices, through men who sprang up and talked hard a few moments, then sat down and were lost to sight—some to rise later again and again and grow in force of thought and expression, others not to be seen again, they had simply been parts of the crowd, and the crowd had made them rise and speak.
On the first day of this labor parliament, up rose a stolid Pole. He was no committeeman but simply a member of the throng.
"Yo' sand a spickair to my dock," he said. "Pier feefty-two—East Reever. I t'ink he make de boys come out." He sat down breathing heavily.
"You don't need any speaker, go yourself," an Irishman called from across the hall.
"I no spick," said the Pole emphatically.
"You're spicking now, ain't you?" There was a burst of laughter, and the big man's face grew red. "You don't need to talk," the voice went on. "Just go into your dock and yell 'Strike!' You've got chest enough, you Pollock."
The big Pole made his way out of the hall. In the rear I saw him light his pipe and puff and scowl in a puzzled way. Then he disappeared. The next day, in the midst of some discussion, he rose from another part of the hall.
"I want to say I strike my dock," he shouted. Nobody seemed to hear him, it had nothing whatever to do with the subject, but he sat down with a glow of pride.
A Norwegian had arisen and was speaking earnestly, but his English was so wonderful that no one could understand.