the very spirit of the revolution. “Organize!
Organize! Organize!”—that was
his cry. He was afraid of this tremendous vote,
which his party had not expected, and which it had
not earned. “These men are not Socialists!”
he cried. “This election will pass, and
the excitement will die, and people will forget about
it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink back
and rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that
we have polled to-day, and our enemies will laugh
us to scorn! It rests with you to take your resolution—now,
in the flush of victory, to find these men who have
voted for us, and bring them to our meetings, and organize
them and bind them to us! We shall not find all
our campaigns as easy as this one. Everywhere
in the country tonight the old party politicians are
studying this vote, and setting their sails by it;
and nowhere will they be quicker or more cunning than
here in our own city. Fifty thousand Socialist
votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownership Democracy
in the spring! And then they will fool the voters
once more, and all the powers of plunder and corruption
will be swept into office again! But whatever
they may do when they get in, there is one thing they
will not do, and that will be the thing for which
they were elected! They will not give the people
of our city municipal ownership—they will
not mean to do it, they will not try to do it; all
that they will do is give our party in Chicago the
greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialism
in America! We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified
and self-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy
left without a lie with which to cover its nakedness!
And then will begin the rush that will never be checked,
the tide that will never turn till it has reached
its flood—that will be irresistible, overwhelming—the
rallying of the outraged workingmen of Chicago to
our standard! And we shall organize them, we
shall drill them, we shall marshal them for the victory!
We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep
if before us—and Chicago will be ours!
Chicago will be ours! Chicago will be
ours!”