Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/133

 It was when he was undergoing such criticism as this that he came to see me, to ask me to speak at Golden Rule Park. This was a bit of green grass next to his factory; he had dedicated it to the people's use, and there under a large willow-tree, on Sunday afternoons, he used to speak to hundreds. There was a little piano which two men could carry, and with that on the platform to play the accompaniments the people used to sing songs that Jones had written—some of them of real beauty, and breathing the spirit of poetry, if they were not always quite in its form. In the winter these meetings were held in Golden Rule Hall, a large room that served very well as an auditorium, in his factory hard by. On the walls of Golden Rule Hall was the original tin sign he had hung up in his factory as the only rule to be known there, "Therefore whatsoever things ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." In the course of time every reformer, every radical, in the country had spoken in that hall or under that willow-tree, and the place developed an atmosphere that was immensely impressive. The hall had the portraits of many liberal leaders and humanitarians on its walls, and a number of paintings; and in connection with the settlement which Jones established across the street the institution came to be, as a reporter wrote one day in his newspaper, the center of intelligence in Toledo.

Well then, on that morning when first he called, Jones said to me:

"I want you to come out and speak."