The Socialists were always in the majority.  Every Socialist is a propagandist—­not always an intelligent propagandist.  Intelligent and leading Socialists are generally engaged Sunday evenings, so the majority of those who came to us were of the hard-working kind—­limited, very limited, in the literary expression of the social soul flame that so passionately moves them.

Some of our church officers who took an active part in the first year’s meetings were somewhat alarmed at the brusqueness of these men and women, and undertook to correct their manners.

The Rector understood.  And with great patience and tact he heard all.  The Church of the Ascension has in its membership some of the country’s biggest leaders in industry; some of these men came to the meetings.  What they saw and heard was different to what they expected.  They fraternized with the men of toil.  It was a fraternity utterly devoid of patronage.  There were free exchanges of thought.  The average labouring man is incapable of such conference, for no matter how many years a member of a labour union it is only when he becomes a Socialist that he becomes an intelligent advocate of anything.

[Illustration:  The Church of the Ascension]

The Rector and I tried to avoid the notice of the newspapers and for about six months we succeeded.  Then came the explosion of the bomb on Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight.  I was on the Square that afternoon.

It was designed to be a mass meeting of the unemployed.  The unemployed are not usually interested in any sort of propaganda; the more intelligent of the labour men are, and the Socialists are more so.

So the promoters of the mass meeting for the unemployed were Socialists.  It was at this meeting that a police official declared to a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman’s club was mightier than the Constitution of the United States.

No permit was given and no mass meeting held, but the multitude was there and when the police began to disperse it the people who were neither Socialists nor unemployed resented being driven off the streets.  I saw men clubbed and women deliberately ridden over by the mounted police.  I kept moving:  I wanted to be where it was most dangerous.  I suffered for months with a bruised arm that I got as I went with the crowd in front of the horses:  it was a blow aimed at a man’s head; I was clubbed on the back for not moving fast enough.  At every turn, at every angle of the Square, the police were as brutal as any Cossack that ever wielded a knout.

Late on that afternoon the police opened the Square—­that is, the people were permitted to cross it in all directions.  My study was at No. 75 Fifth Avenue, and I was moving in that direction past the fountain when the explosion took place.  I was hurled off my feet; that is, the shock to my nervous system was so great that I collapsed.  My first flash of thought was of the battle-field!