“Any laws that man has made which abridge this right of equal opportunity are unconstitutional in the broad sense of being at variance with God’s will.  Applied to our Constitution, the vested right of the people to the equal opportunity to labor is higher than the right of the few to retain the fruits of the labor of the many.

“I advocate the taxing of the incomes of our citizens before we tax their wages, which is their capital.”  Cheers interrupt the speaker for a full minute.

“It is my hope, the people’s hope, that the bulwark of this country be once more as it was for a century, not a standing army of idle soldiers, but an active army of free men, busied by day in the fields and in the workshops; resting by night under cover of their homes, surrounded by their happy families; an army that is ready at an instant’s call to fight for the protection of their Flag and their Homes.”

“The united armies of the world would hesitate to face the legions of contented freemen.  Our power in the world will be increased more by a fleet of merchant ships than by squadrons of steel battleships.

“We want a National Militia, to be composed of every able bodied man, who in the hours of peace prepares against the possibility of war.  We want a Navy strong enough to represent our interest on every sea; a Naval Reserve strong enough to convert our Merchant Marine into the greatest fleet in the world, should need arise.

“We want, and we will succeed in getting the Army of the Unemployed mustered out.

“With us rests the duty of selecting a mustering officer; a man to carry out the wishes of the people; a man who is temperate in his judgment, unswerving in his purpose and unimpeachable in his integrity; a man in whom the people may place full confidence.  With such a man as a candidate on the platform we shall adopt, the will of the people cannot be thwarted.

“We can frame the platform.  Where is the man?”

“Trueman!  Trueman!” comes the cry.

From mouth to mouth the name passes; now it is shrieked by an entire state delegation; now by the entire assemblage.  Louder and louder becomes the cry.  It is chanted, sung, shouted, shrieked.  Men who have shouted themselves hoarse utter it inarticulately.

In the centre of the floor there is a movement; the guidon of New York is moving.  It is being borne toward the Pennsylvania delegation.

Another and another state guidon follows in its wake.  The convention is in an uproar.

Ten, twenty of the delegations are now swarming about the standard of Pennsylvania.  The galleries keep up the incessant shout of “Trueman!  Trueman!”

A hundred men are clustered about the speaker as he stands, awed by the outburst of enthusiasm.  He is picked up and placed on the shoulders of his friends.

The delegations who have rallied to his support now number forty; they are moving toward the platform.  The men carrying Trueman go to meet them.