The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 15, 1906, Page 11

<THE SAN FRANCIS O NDAY CALL E wk to smile s. He has box the form to you for work ome! with bludgeoner uring secrets in the out taking off nd whirling demonstration of his man with salve st in finer mold. dark, vivid fa and embroidered which his very cuff and shirt and then In t, pictur- altogether other end the and not persuasiy - grammatical cleverness of speech, com- esq pause on our moment tc nough to hold a crowd that is the envy of cvery Orator except the Socialist who holds his own against all comers. Am_admirer my is out for diversion and taking the elbow, who, like m pleasure of a connoisscur in the per- formances, assures me that “some of them arrent fit to be heard by d ady can 1 to without a & He's a gintleman! Between these two who mark the .ere are offcred with vary- and logic and coherence itio h isistence < P 1 eomp 2d obvious illit- eracy and with h burning, strug- gling, throbhbing sincerity, remedies for every ill that man individually and col- Jectively if heir to, for every ill spir- jtual, physical, government private, public, personal, national, domestic, siness and industrial DUTI]IH:ESO' falist i€ there—and it is well to note that he has quite the biggest crowd, and the most intent and eager listeners, and that he “usually - talks well and convineingly and persuasively a not heatedly. “nunr this night the Socialist is an earnest young man much in nced of a shave. He -~eems to be the higher @ g . CURE V/a’/ / ype of mechanle, intelligent, well read nd well informed, with the native force and vigor of that type of man, and without the smoothness of culture, As he talks reasonably, argumentative- ly and appealingly the crowd squeezes closer and closer around the little foot- rest he Is perched upon, and grows larger and larger and more quietly and willingly attentive—and this, I say again, is one of the things worth not- ing on Grant avenue. There are other Grant-avenue Or: tors besides this young man and his kind who scream Socialism. One ' of them is of the shining blackness of a newly polished stove, with kinky side- chops and a turbulent flow of . lan- guage. He interprets Jack London’in an _incendiary way that would be a revelation to the enthusiastic Mr. Ldn- don himself, and he arouses much laughter, .and seems perfectly satisfied with himself, which perhaps in this later day is the chief end of man, Of Soclalists there is another who talks in secret undertone to little se- little- reverence—and , [0 I >Y AND SOU 8Y HELEN DARE b EVERY GAND sLs4 3 roeo MEQ . A& COMRATE BREITH - NG REO oz lected groups about the evils of mon- archies and the crimes of republics, and still others, who, having been of the listening crowd and fired by the eloquence of the established orators, set up as orators on a sSmall scale themselves and buttonhole an = augdi- ence of two or three or more to im- part their grievances to. Sometimes among these impromptu orators making their debut there is the man who has just been decreed to pay alimony; the man whose too bibulous babits have lost him his job, the man who, having neglected to join his trades union) is now an Ishmael in the industrial world a ul; man who, di Orator he has listened to himsclf on the opposition. Almost anything serves as an im- pulse to public speaking in this block, where so much oratory is in the air Sometimes it is the want of a meal or a drink too much; sometimes it is an old wound opened or a fresh one ac- quired; yet whatever it is it Is true that in this forum of the wayfarers thera is more sincerity of utterance, there are more words spoken out of tull- ness of the heart than anywhere else that the voice of man Is lifted up to the Ppeople. A Sometimes the words are of exceed- ing foolishness, but in them is always a pathos—sometimes me the pathos of vanity, and often of loneliness, disappointment and defeat. There are religionists, too, of many stripes, the Salvation Army. the Volunteers, the independent, irregular organizations, black and white, exhort- ing, singing. taking up Interminable Collections; and in their wake the in- dividual religionists, making cam- paigns against the devil on thi hook either because they disagree with some accepted Interpretdtion of the Bible or want the money There are the medicine venders, gling, palming, doing tricks to their crowd; there are the - Thought apostles, the Heralds of new last ecomes one the religions and world-revolutionary propaganda, proselyters to that are old, N tion to the b And while t acting, vying w ear of the i with a new m them portfolio e talking, arguins. other for the owd, a banner lifted among two of wish to Orators to them es on this page weres was not on his rostrum. and his fellow Orat c ally noted bsence and 2 e of him and ¢ wondered w he had missed afternoons in pear ests awa know anj here tog: knowing bus the speakers for their point of “The relat oratorg are apparently more antagonistic than other< wise. They will talk at each other for the sake of getting a crowd, or to retaliate when one takes a crowd from another, as often happens, and they sometimes get to arguing with each other instead of ad- dressing the public when they differ m thelr bellefs, yet under this impersonal antagonism there is really a feeling of fel- lowship among them.™ So these quarreling Orators of Grant Avenue, who maneuver to outgeneral each other for the best places to set up their platforms or soap boxes, who outwit each other for the sake of a crowd, are. on the word of one of them, really like the mem- bers of a happy family, that feel at lib- erty to differ among themselves, but band together against the world. us it was in the case of the man whe was missing. They knew on this night why he was missing. The morning paper had told the story of his strange and lonely death and of the finding of his body lapped by the edge of the-tide under a wharf. Some of them had even gone to the Morgue to iden- tify him. and_ here on this night two of them rose among them to speak in his memory, evea as in the houses of Con- gress the members rise to eulogize some member that has gone the long journey. Then here and there a speaker came down from his platform or hopped off his soap box or stool and joined this crowd around the man and woman. They had put their own business aside for this one night special panacea Is—and covered thsir business banner with the announcement of death of the missing Orator. He was C. Franklin Jones. a man whose unsatisfied mind had sent him gn a tan- gent out of the conventional round of life into this oratorical maelstrom of chaotie theories and half-baked philosophics. The man and woman who had thought to honor his memory and do an ordinary human duty to him spoke, first one and then the other, of his appearance and work among them, of his daughter and the filial devotion that had moved her to endeavor to give him decent burial by peying month by month out of the slender wage she earns as a saieswoman. ‘And then they asked all those who had lifted, their voices with his on the avenue. and all those that had heard him, and hearing had felt a friendly feeling to him, not to leave his burial to the patient sac- rifice of the daughter, but to give toward 1t themselves. Many hands went into pockets, and the collection that was taken up amounted to more than $50. Perhaps this sort of thing never hap- pened among the Orators of Grant Avenus Defore. Perhaps it will never happen again. But, on the whole, T am glad it happened on my night with ‘bem. for human o~