All we do is sign the pay-roll—­
    And we don’t get a goddam cent.

You would go a little farther, and find a couple of automobiles trying to get past, and a merry crowd amusing itself throwing large waste cans in front of them.  Some one would shout:  “Who won the war?” And the answer would come booming:  “The goddam slackers;” or maybe it would be, “The goddam officers.”  The crowd would move along, starting to chant the favorite refrain: 

    You’re in the army now,
    You’re not behind the plow—­;
    You son-of-a—–­,
    You’ll never get rich—­
    You’re in the army now!

And from farther down the street would come a chorus from another crowd of marchers: 

    I got a girl in Baltimore,
    The street-car runs right by her door.

Every now and then you would come on a fist-fight, or maybe a fight with bottles, and a crowd, laughing and whooping, engaged in pulling the warriors apart and sitting on them.  Through a mile or two of this kind of thing I made my way, my heart sinking deeper with misgiving.  I got within a couple of blocks of the City Hall, and then suddenly I came upon the thing I dreaded—­my friend Carpenter in the hands of the mob!

LXI

They had got hold of a canvas-covered wagon, of the type of the old “prairie-schooner.”  You still find these camped by our roadsides now and then, with nomad families in them; and evidently one of these families had been so ill advised as to come to town for the convention.  The rioters had hoisted their victim on top of the wagon, having first dumped a gallon of red paint over his head, so that everyone might know him for the Red Prophet they had been reading about in the papers.  They had tied a long rope to the shaft of the wagon, and one or two hundred men had hold of it, and were hauling it through the streets, dancing and singing, shouting murder-threats against the “reds.”  Some ran ahead, to clear the traffic; and then came the wagon, lumbering and rocking, so that the prophet was thrown from side to side.  Fortunately there was a hole in the canvas, and he could hold to one of the wooden ribs.

The cortege came opposite to me.  On each side was a guard of honor, a line of men walking in lock-step, each with his hands on the shoulders of the one in front; they had got up a sort of chant:  “Hi!  Hi!  The Bolsheviki prophet!  Hi!  Hi!  The Bolsheviki prophet!” And others would yell, “I won’t work!  I won’t work!”—­this being our Mobland nickname for the I.W.W.  Some one had daubed the letters on the sides of the wagon, using the red paint; and a drunken fellow standing near me shook his clenched fist at the wretch on top and bellowed in a fog-horn voice:  “Hey, there, you goddam Arnychist, if you’re a prophet, come down from that there wagon and cure my venereal disease!” There was a roar of laughter from the throng, and the drunken fellow liked the sensation so well that he walked alongside, shouting his challenge again and again.