"I wish the whole world could see this meeting," she said, "and understand it for what it is. It is an expression of a movement, not the movement itself. It is a demand; but the revolt that lies back of the demand is greater than the expression of it. The demand, the expression, may change, the form of our whole movement may pass away; but the spirit that makes it great, that carries it forward, is invincible and imperishable. All the ages have contributed to this movement. It is an outgrowth of the past.
"The heart and centre of this movement is a demand for justice, not for ourselves alone, but for the toiling poor wherever found. If this movement is higher and deeper and broader than the Grange was, it is because its sympathies are broader. With me, it is no longer a question of legislating for the farmer; it is a question of the abolition of industrial slavery."
The tremendous cheer which broke forth at this point showed that the conception of the movement had widened in the minds of the people themselves; it was no longer a class movement. It stirred Bradley as if some swift electric wind had blown upon him.
"Wherever a man is robbed, wherever a man toils and the fruits of his toil are taken from him; wherever the frosty lash of winter stings or the tear of poverty scalds, there the principle of our order reaches."
As she continued, the people turned to each other with shining faces. She was thrilling them by her passionate, simple utterance of their innermost thoughts.
While she spoke Bradley had eyes for nothing else; but when she sat down amid wild applause, and the choir rose to sing, he turned to look back over the audience, banked there in rows on the hard, wooden seats, and felt again its majesty and its desolation. There was the same absence of beauty, youth, color, and grace that he had noticed in the procession. Everywhere worn and weary women in sombre dresses, a wistful light in their faces, as if they felt dimly the difference between the lithe and beautiful figure of the girl and their own stiffened joints and emaciated forms.
The great throng sat silent, listening intently, their eyes fixed upon the speaker. They were there for a purpose; they were there to find out why it was that their toil, their sobriety, their self-deprivation, left them at middle life with distorted and stiffened limbs, gray hair, and empty hands. They were terribly in earnest, and Bradley felt his kinship with them. They were his kind.
The music, which set them wild with enthusiasm, was of the simplest and most stirring sort. That it pleased them so much, showed all too clearly how barren their lives were of songs and color and light.
The people pressed forward to speak a word to Ida; and Bradley, yielding to the pressure of the crowd, was carried forward with it. It stirred him very deeply to see the love and admiration they all felt for her. On all sides he heard words of affection which came straight from the heart. Their utter sincerity could not be doubted. He knew he ought to turn and go away before she saw him, but he could not.