“I’ve worked all day and I can’t
march up and down here all night,” complained
the voice of the workman.
Past the shoulder of the young man went a, shadow.
Before his eyes on the field, fronting the waiting
ranks of men, stood McGregor. His fist shot out
and the complaining workman crumpled to the ground.
“This is no time for words,” said the
harsh voice. “Get back in there. This
is not a game. It’s the beginning of men’s
realisation of themselves. Get in there and say
nothing. If you can’t march with us get
out. The movement we have started can pay no attention
to whimperers.”
Among the ranks of men a cheer arose. By the
factory wall the excited newspaper man danced up and
down. At a word of command from the captain the
line of marching men again swept down the field and
he watched them with tears standing in his eyes.
“It’s going to work,” he cried.
“It’s bound to work. At last a man
has come to lead the men of labor.”
John Van Moore a young Chicago advertising man went
one afternoon to the offices of the Wheelright Bicycle
Company. The company had both its factory and
offices far out on the west side. The factory
was a huge brick affair fronted by a broad cement
sidewalk and a narrow green lawn spotted with flower
beds. The building used for offices was smaller
and had a veranda facing the street. Up the sides
of the office building vines grew.
Like the reporter who had watched the Marching Men
in the field by the factory wall John Van Moore was
a dapper young man with a moustache. In his leisure
hours he played a clarinet. “It gives a
man something to cling to,” he explained to
his friends. “One sees life going past
and feels that he is not a mere drifting log in the
stream of things. Although as a musician I amount
to nothing, it at least makes me dream.”
Among the men in the advertising office where he worked
Van Moore was known as something of a fool, redeemed
by his ability to string words together. He wore
a heavy black braided watch chain and carried a cane
and he had a wife who after marriage had studied medicine
and with whom he did not live. Sometimes on a
Saturday evening the two met at some restaurant and
sat for hours drinking and laughing. When the
wife had gone to her own place the advertising man
continued the fun, going from saloon to saloon and
making long speeches setting forth his philosophy
of life. “I am an individualist,”
he declared, strutting up and down and swinging the
cane about. “I am a dabbler, an experimenter
if you will. Before I die it is my dream that
I will discover a new quality in existence.”
For the bicycle company the advertising man was to
write a booklet telling in romantic and readable form
the history of the company. When finished the
booklet would be sent out to those who had answered
advertisements put into magazines and newspapers.
The company had a process of manufacture peculiar
to Wheelright bicycles and in the booklet this was
to be much emphasised.
