At twelve o ’clock crowds of working people began to swarm into Adams’s grove. Five hundred horsemen were lined up at the gate. Around a temporary speaker’s stand a squad of policemen was formed. The crowd stood waiting. Grant Adams did not appear. The crowd grew restless; it began to fear that he had been arrested, that there had been some mishap. Laura Van Dorn, sensing the uncertainty and discouragement of the crowd, decided to try to hold it. It seemed to her as she watched the uneasiness rising slowly to impatience in the men and women about her, that it was of much importance–tremendous importance indeed–to hold these people to their faith, not especially in Grant, though to her that seemed necessary, too, but at bottom to hold their faith firm in themselves, in their own powers to better themselves, to rise of their own endeavors, to build upon themselves! So she walked quickly to the policeman before the steps leading to the stand and said smilingly:
“Pardon me,” and stepped behind him and was on the stand before he realized that he had been fooled. Her white-clad figure upon the platform attracted a thousand eyes in a second, and in a moment she was speaking:
“I am here to defend our ancient rights of meeting, speaking, and trial by jury.” A policeman started for her. She 567smiled and waved him back with such a dignity of mien that her very manner stopped him.
When he hesitated, knowing that she was a person of consequence in Harvey, she went on: “No cause can thrive until it maintains anew its right to speech, to assemble and to have its day in court before a jury. Every cause must fight this world-old fight–and then if it is a just cause, when it has won those ancient rights–which are not rights at all but are merely ancient battle grounds on which every cause must fight, then any cause may stand a chance to win. I think we should make it clear now that as free-born Americans, no one has a right to stop us from meeting and speaking; no one has a right to deny us jury trials. I believe the time has come when we should ignore rather definitely–” she paused, and turned to the policeman standing beside her, “we should ignore rather finally this proclamation of the provost marshal and should insist rather firmly that he shall try to enforce it.”
A policeman stepped suddenly and menacingly toward her. She did not flinch. The dignity of five generations of courtly Satterthwaites rose in her as she gazed at the clumsy officer. She saw Grant Adams coming up at a side entrance to the grove. The policeman stopped. She desired to divert the policeman and the crowd from Grant Adams. The crowd tittering at the quick halt of the policeman, angered him. Again he stepped toward her. His face was reddening. The Satterthwaite dignity mounted, but the Nesbit mind guided her, and she said coldly: “All right, sir, but you must club me. I’ll not give up my rights here so easily.”
Three officers made a rush for her, grabbed her by the arms, and, struggling, she went off the platform, but she left Grant Adams standing upon it and a cheering crowd saw the ruse.
“I’m here,” he boomed out in his great voice, “because ‘the woods were man’s first temples’ and we’ll hold them for that sacred right to-day.” The police were waiting for him to put his toe across the line of defiance. “We’ll transgress this order of little Joe Calvin’s–why, he might as well post a trespass notice against snowslides as against this forward moving cause of labor.” His voice rose, “I’m here to tell 568you that under your rights as citizens of this Republic, and under your rights in the coming Democracy of Labor, I bid you tear up these martial law proclamations to kindle fires in your stoves.”
He glared at the policemen and held up his hand to stop them as they came. “Listen,” he cried, “I’m going to give you better evidence than that against me. I, as the leader of this strike–take this down, Mr. Stenographer, there–I’ll say it slowly; I, as the leader of this movement of the Democracy of Labor, as the preacher preaching the era of good will and comradeship all over the earth, bid you, my fellow-workers, meet to preach Christ’s workingman’s gospel wherever you can hire a hall or rent a lot, to parade your own streets, and to bare your heads to clubs and your breasts to bullets if need be to restore in this district the right of trial by jury in times of peace. And now,”–the crowd roared its approval. He glared defiance at the policemen. He raised his voice above the din, “And now I want to tell you something more. Our property in these mills and mines–” again the crowd bellowed its joyous approval of his words and Grant’s face lighted madly, “our property–the property we have earned, we must guard against the violence of the very master class themselves; for under this infernal Russian ukase of little Joe Calvin, the devil only knows what arson and loot and murder–” the crowd howled wildly; a policeman blew his whistle and when the mêlée was over Grant Adams was in the midst of the blue-coated squad marching toward the gate.
At the gate, on a pawing white horse, sat young Joe Calvin. The crowd, following the officers, came upon the first squad of policemen–the squad that took Laura Van Dorn from the stand. The two squads joined with their prisoners, and back of the officers came the yelling, hooting crowd, pushing the officers along. As the officers came up, the provost marshal cried:
“Turn them over to my men here. Men, handcuff them together.” In an instant it was done.