“Holy Saints,” he exclaimed, “shure th’ ould cyart’ll jolt yer guts out!”

“Pile me in.”

So they lifted me on the mattress and laid me in the express wagon.  Bob Grant sat beside me; the four comrades steadied it—­two on each side.

“Git up now, Larry, an’ be aisy wid ye.”

When the wagon wheel mounted a stone, Jimmy blamed Larry and swore at him.  Occasionally he would turn around and say:  “How’s it goin’, yer riverence?”

I was in such agony that I sweat.  Pains were shooting through every part of my body but I usually answered: 

“Fine, Jimmy, fine!”

So I came back within the gates of the city—­rejected, defeated, deserted, and practically a pauper.

It had been a long fight but the city had conquered.  A few more attempts at work; a few more appeals for fair play, a few more speeches for the propaganda; but as baggage in Jimmy Moohan’s express wagon I was down and out!

At a regular meeting of the Trades Council of New Haven a member moved that a letter of sympathy be sent to me.  A week after my fall, another was made and carried to make me a member of the council and a third to send me a check for fifty dollars.  This was the only money I ever received for my services to labour and as it arrived a few hours before the agent called for his rent, it was very welcome.

It seemed odd to all sorts of people that, after being starved out, I should bob up again in one of the largest houses on Chapel Street—­I couldn’t quite understand it myself.  My wife could, however.  She said the whole business of life was a matter of mental attitude and she only laughed when I asked whether there was any chance of my being kicked to death by a mule for the next month’s rent!

I made another attempt to interest the students of Yale in the human affairs of New Haven.  Ten years previous to this, when there was some suggestion that I take charge of Yale’s mission work, I was astounded to be told by the leaders of the Yale Y.M.C.A. that the chief end in view was not the work but the worker.  Yale’s mission was to give the student practice.  Missions were to be laboratories—­the specimens were to be humans.  The eternal questions of sin and poverty were to be answered by the pious phrases and the cast-off junk of immature students.  I gave a series of talks on labour unions to a selected group of students who were leaders.

I was a social evangelist then and, after the talks, took stock of the results.  Many fell by the wayside, but a group of strong men formed themselves into a “University Federal Labour Union.”  Dick Morse, captain of the ’Varsity crew, became president of it.  Representative union constitutions were studied.  The following sentences from the declaration of principles will illustrate how thoroughly these young men got in line with the union movement: 

“We believe it inconsistent and unworthy that a wage-worker should take the benefits that accrue to a craft as a direct result of organization and at the same time hold himself aloof from the responsibilities and from his share of the expenses of that organization.