The “five o’clock” edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World!  An ominous name, an ominous title,—­compared by a well-known publicist to the sound of a fire-bell in the night.  The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the World!  No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton!  The writer of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words “syndicalism” and “sabotage,” or the phrase “direct action,” he was too young to know the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour, or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,—­the home of lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder.  For obvious reasons he did not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West, where it had ravaged and wrecked communities.  His article was guardedly respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and capital—­catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton as remote as Kansas cyclones....

Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, “to suffocation.”  Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout.  In the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice the longings and passions of those below.  He did not blink in the light; he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over the hall as he arose.  His speech was taken down verbatim, to be submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the possession of a power—­rare among agitators—­to pour forth in torrents apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and to remember them.  If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts.  Skilfully, always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world’s oppressed.  Their cause was his—­the cause of human progress; he universalized, it.  The world belonged to the “producer,” if only he had the courage to take possession of his own....