this was that could scourge a human soul with a madness for accumulating money without spending it.  The people of the United States suffered from quite a different idea of money.  They were just beginning to feel the great American fever for spending more of it than they could get.  This was a serious phase of social conditions then, and I remember how keenly I felt the menace of it at the time.  Those who couldn’t get enough to spend became envious, jealous, hateful of those who could and these envious ones were the American masses.

In the spring of 1878, in May, there was a tiger sprang out of this jungle of discontent, and, crouching, threatened to spring upon American Society.

It was—­Communism.  Its theory was that what could not be obtained lawfully, under the pressure of circumstances, you could take anyhow.  Communism meant no individual rights in property.  If wages were not adequate to the luxurious appetite, then the wage-earner claimed the right to knock his employer down and take what he wanted.  “Bread or blood” was the motto.  It all came from across the Atlantic, and it spread rapidly.  In Brooklyn, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, it was evident that Communism was organising, that its executive desperadoes met in rooms, formed lodges, invented grips and pass-words.

In the eighth ward of New York an organisation was unearthed at this time, consisting of 800 men, all armed with muskets and revolvers.  These organisations described themselves as working-men’s parties, and so tried to ally themselves with the interests of trade unions.

Twenty American newspapers advocated this shocking creed.  Tens of thousands adopted this theory.  I said then, in response to the opinion that Communism was impossible in this country, that there were just as many cut-throats along the East River and the Hudson as there were along the Seine or the Thames.  There was only one thing that prevented revolution in our cities in this memorable spring of 1878, and that was the police and the military guard.

Through dissatisfaction about wages, or from any cause, men have a right to stop work, and to stop in bands and bodies until their labour shall be appreciated; but when by violence, as in the summer of 1877, they compel others to stop, or hinder substitutes from taking the places, then the act is Communistic, and ought to be riven of the lightnings of public condemnation.  What was the matter in Pittsburg that summer?  What fired the long line of cars that made night hideous?  What lifted the wild howl in Chicago?  Why, coming toward that city, were we obliged to dismount from the cars and take carriages through the back streets?  Why, when one night the Michigan Central train left Chicago, were there but three passengers on board a train of eight cars?  What forced three rail trains from the tracks and shot down engineers with their hands on the valves?  Communism.  For hundreds of miles along the track leading from the