The San Francisco call., 1896-10-25
Some Quer Aspects Of the Political Campaign Viewed From

reemen of this City to govern our
selves and our neighbors is by no means
fully described in the news columns of the
daily papers, wherein are recorded from
day to day some things that some men
say and the output of some political meet
ings and some political clubs and some
political cabaIs.
If Won owned a few shares of Union
Iron Works stock the facts of the daily
progress in making ships and machinery
would interest you much, but you might
find another kind of interest in the Union
Iron Works if you just strolled into them
and rehectively watched the great roaring
furnaces, the noisy shops, the laundering
hammers, the grimy toilers, the growing
Ihlps and all the picturesque things and
ioings that would not be described in an
annual report.
A political campaign is about the most
picturesque thing that human life gets up
for the instruction and delight of people
with eyes, and it is crammed full of
charming mysteries. But you are not apt
to see the pictures or note the mysteries
II you are q politician yourself and are
down there helping kick up all that dust
You must go up a tree and feel safe,
philosophical and good-naJured to really
bee the vast Donny brook fair and know
what is really gong on.
The other evening I called on some
friends whose rooms are delightfully."- situ-
ated just above a busy downtown corner.
This busy corner, with the aid of an easily
opened window, supplies the domestic
circle and its guests at any dull moment
with assorted distractions of street life.
AT the time of the said call the goings-
on which allured to the open bay-windows
mainly concerned the present misunder-
standing about what is going to happen
on November 3. The entertainment was
quite worth the foggy price, though only
now and then one came out of the human
streams that passed below and needed
anything in the scene.
There were little eddies about the sides
of the human current caused by sundry
efforts to persuade people who were
abroad that night, and the air was jammed
with sounds. Two takers were response
bic fo- two bunches of men and a share of
the bedlam, and the Salvation Army
noisily and nobly invited to still waters,
but the campaign gave especial prosperity
to the racket, for it had brought to the
niSht-life of the old corner some noisy
things that the campaign always brings to
that old corner and TO some other old cor
ners just once in two years. They were
picturesque side features of the operation
of popular male suffrage. They were
some of the fantastic things that bienni-
ally trouble few autumn nights and van
ish with the fever.
Some of them were political meetings
that were not reported In the papers next
day. They were small in size, but size
isn't all there is to political meeting.
Torch flames by the speakers threshed the
air in an excited way, jerking weird lights
and shadows across human faces, while
the night wind spun tarry smoke into
peoples faces from their eager tips. The
speakers were trying to be torches, too,
and they threshed about in an excited
way, Jerking weird lights and shadows
across some human things, while smoky
seemed the spinning from their eager
tongues.
The street harangues flew up to the
window in little chunks as voices rose and
fell, competing with each other, with
cheers and ieers and with the general
racket. Little chunks are all you want of
very earnestly seeking the all-truth.
'When Pm elected Mayor you won't
have to put on boiled shirt to speak to
your servant. You'll just walk right into
your own Office and talk to your slave
while them fellows in the plug hat waits"
["Hoora-ay."]
The window had opened Just in time to
receive this treasure. 1t came from the
s;rident mouth of a gray-headed man,
who stood above crowd of fifty people.
on platform, under plug hat and be-
tween two torches. The gray-headed man
lowered his voice and arm in awful earn
estness. and gave fair chance to another
message that came with sonorous power
from two rods further up the street, where
another orator, with harsh modulation,
proclaimed truth and duty to knot of
citizens
What, my fellow-citizens, will become
then of the people on Mob Hill and the
people in the slums? Don't you see that
they will be wiped off the face of the
earth-as classes?''
This being highly important if true, my
attention took guidance from my ears and
noticed more closely that two torches
seemed to reveal that the speaker on the
box was a plain workingman who was
honest by his face, exceedingly in earnest
by his manner, and by his words deeply
versed in social and political science and