Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/459

Rh and keep out their enemies, as they aim to use, and generally succeed in using, all parties, and men of high social standing did not hesitate, when it served their purpose, to furnish points and matter for sand-lot harangues, or to speak at meetings which Kearney and his gang had captured; for, until they met a very warm reception at a Democratic meeting, they arrogated to themselves the right to interrupt and "bulldoze" any meeting that did not suit them.

Kearney had quickly come to the head of the movement, changing his first place of secretary for that of president shortly after taking to the sand-lot, and having, by the time he and his companions emerged from jail in triumph, got so well to the head as to become in the popular eye its representative and embodiment. He showed great address in keeping the place. The organization which he managed to give the new party was admirably designed for this purpose. The weekly assemblage on the sand-lot, where anybody could shout and vote, was recognized as the great parliament and plebiscitum, and in the State conventions, in which the country as well as the city clubs were represented, the supremacy of the city clubs was provided for by the interdiction of proxies. As president of the party (something new in American politics, but an idea probably borrowed from the Committee of Public Safety), Kearney was anything but a mere figure-head. He has seemed to see, as clearly as any philosophical student of history has seen, the true spring and foundation of arbitrary power—the connection between Cæsar and the proletariate.

He appeared on all occasions in rough working-dress; he announced that he would take no office, but, as soon as he had led the people to a victory, he would go back to his dray, and must in the mean time be supported by collections, for which he passed around the hat at every meeting. These things, the style of his oratory, the prominence he had attained, his energy, tact, and temperance, gave him command of that floating element which will travel around to the most meetings and do the loudest shouting. And, commanding this, he commanded his party.

Presiding at the sand-lot, he claimed the right to say who should speak and to put all questions, and, traveling around from club to club, accompanied by a crowd of admiring followers, who voted just as the Parisian rabble did in the Revolutionary clubs and conventions, he took possession wherever he went. Availing himself of the feeling against politicians and political chicanery, he declared parliamentary law to be political trickery, and put motions as he pleased, or didn't put them at all, and for him to denounce any mutineer as a politician was to doom him to immediate "firing out." This was the fate, one after the other, of all the men who had begun with him the agitation, and of all those who from time to time began to gain any prominence which might