“Where are you going?”
“How old are you?”
“What’s your name?”
“Where do you expect to go when you die?”
“Why don’t you shave?”
Such were the questions that, with almost fierce rapidity, he plied me with, waiting meanwhile for but the briefest answer to each. And when the ordeal was over, he laughed a low, shrewd laugh while his eyes twinkled merrily, as he remarked, dryly: “I guess you’ll do.”
He allowed me no time to acknowledge the compliment, but went swiftly on:
“Do you know that Mr. Frick has been shot and may die?”
I did not know it, for I had not seen a newspaper since leaving Algona, and my intercourse had been with farmers whose news reaches them by the weekly press,
It was an exceedingly tragic climax to the situation at Homestead, and not without influence in determining the sympathies of the Western farmers with the issues involved there. It had been amazing to me to discover how keen was the interest taken in the strike all along my route, and it was not a little significant, I thought, to find everywhere a strong indignation against the use of a private police force in accomplishing ends legal in themselves and fully provided for by law and usage. So far in the struggle the feeling of the farmers was with the men. Beyond that they appeared uncertain. There was a question of fact to begin with. Did the cut affect more the hands who were working for a dollar and a half a day or the skilled workmen who were reported to get, some of them as much as fifteen dollars? Until this was clear, there could be but speculation.