of country roads we will march.
Our legs may be weary and our throats
hot and dry,
But still we will march, shoulder
to shoulder.
We will march until the ground shakes
and tall buildings tremble.
Shoulder to shoulder we will go—all
of us—
On and on forever.
We will not talk nor listen to talk.
We will march and we will teach
our sons and our daughters to
march.
Their minds are troubled. Our
minds are clear.
We do not think and banter words.
We march.
Our faces are coarse and there is
dust in our hair and beards.
See, the inner parts of our hands
are rough.
And still we march—we
the workers.”
Who will ever forget that Labour Day in Chicago?
How they marched!— thousands and thousands
and more thousands! They filled the streets.
The cars stopped. Men trembled with the import
of the impending hour.
Here they come! How the ground trembles!
The chant chant chant of that song! It must have
been thus that Grant felt at the great review of the
veterans in Washington when all day long they marched
past him, the men of the Civil War, the whites of
their eyes showing in the tan of their faces.
McGregor stood on the stone curbing above the tracks
in Grant Park. As the men marched they massed
in there about him, thousands of them, steel workers
and iron workers and great red-necked butchers and
teamsters.
And in the air wailed the marching song of the workers.
All of the world that was not marching jammed into
the buildings facing Michigan Boulevard and waited.
Margaret Ormsby was there. She sat with her father
in a carriage near where Van Buren Street ends at
the Boulevard. As the men kept crowding in about
them she clutched nervously at the sleeve of David
Ormsby’s coat. “He is going to speak,”
she whispered and pointed. Her tense air of expectancy
expressed much of the feeling of the crowd. “See,
listen, he is going to speak out.”
It must have been five in the afternoon when the men
got through marching. They were massed in there
clear down to the Twelfth Street Station of the Illinois
Central. McGregor lifted his hands. In the
hush his harsh voice carried far. “We are
at the beginning,” he shouted and silence fell
upon the people. In the stillness one standing
near her might have heard Margaret Ormsby weeping softly.
There was the gentle murmur that always prevails where
many people stand at attention. The weeping of
the woman was scarcely audible but it persisted like
the sound of little waves on a beach at the end of
the day.
