Some of us have seen sooner than the others.  But we are nearly all of us seeing to-day.  We have stood by now these many years through strikes and rumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the Lawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike.  We have seen, in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into the fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights of capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something could not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the huge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person doddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by one side and now by the other.  It has almost looked, some days, as if both sides in the quarrel—­Capital and Labour, really thought that the Public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at all.  Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so noble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but the poor old Lady!—­some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization and the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her.

Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make a stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person?

Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to stand up for Her—­for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole?

We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily Newspaper—­the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for Everybody?  Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up—­the scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of poverty, take his stand against them all—­against both sides, and dare them to touch the dear helpless old Lady again?

When this man arises—­this Tom Mann for Everybody—­whether he slips up into immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against them in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as a man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in the childhood of the world.

* * * * *