The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen-chair, with his feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in low whispers, so as not to waken those in the next room. To Jurgis he seemed a scarcely less wonderful person than the speaker at the meeting; he was poor, the lowest of the low, hunger-driven and miserable⁠—and yet how much he knew, how much he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had been! There were others like him, too⁠—thousands like him, and all of them workingmen! That all this wonderful machinery of progress had been created by his fellows⁠—Jurgis could not believe it, it seemed too good to be true.