no promise of our getting an audience. Eventually we fixed on a sort of cinder-heap underneath the Gartsherrie blast furnaces, near, I think, to where the present fountain stands. We borrowed a chair from a neighbouring cottage, spread out our Commonweals and tracts as showily as we could, and ranged ourselves round so as to make ourselves look as big a crowd as possible. (How familiar all these proceedings still are at our Socialist open-air meetings!)
We selected as our first speaker Pollack (a brass-finisher), on account of his having a powerful voice, hoping thereby to attract the passers-by and a few miners who were leaning against a neighbouring blank wall. But the stratagem did not succeed. The miners, finding they could hear what the speaker was saying without moving closer in, clung to their gable wall, giving no indication that they were in the least interested in what was being shouted in their ears; while the passers-by, hearing the words 'Socialism' and 'Labour,' were satisfied that the subject was of no interest to them, and passed unheedingly on. Experience, I may say, has long since taught us that the better way to begin an open-air meeting is to put up a speaker who will address only those close to him and do so as quietly as possible. Curiosity as to what he may be speaking about almost invariably draws the beginnings of a crowd, if crowd there is at all to be had.
Pollack's efforts proving fruitless, I then made a try; and eventually, after about twenty minutes' haranguing, drew into the ring about a dozen listeners by dwelling upon some of the more notorious facts concerning the firm of Baird & Co., the owners of the neighbouring blast furnaces and the then wealthiest iron and coal masters in Scotland.
I now introduced Morris, failing not, of course, to impress upon my scant audience the great favour which we were bestowing on them by bringing so illustrious a man to speak to them in Coatbridge. Morris, who had been fidgeting round the ring all the time, making audible assents to points in the speeches, and whose personality was evidently
