"Agitator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his life-long vengeance. Leagued with a professional agitator named Razzaro, he commenced to undermine my authority with great subtilty, till in the end my simple people who once had loved me and my family grew to hate me, and to look upon Waldemar, even the Royalists, ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... retired physician; but unfortunately he also was a respectable man. When he saw something going forwards that he did not think was right, he protested and voted against it and then—he collapsed! There was nothing of the low agitator about HIM. As for the Brigands, they laughed at his protests and his vote did ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... aggressive about him with it all; but on the contrary, an atmosphere of kindliness exuded from him, creating a wonderful effect upon those with whom he came in contact. The wild stories of this turbulent agitator, which everyone seemed to hear, and be acquainted with, made the audience hostile to begin with. It was not a demonstrable hostility; but one felt it was there, ready to break out, and overwhelm this stormy ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... carried on a horizontal spindle in such a way that it can be rocked periodically in order to assist in freeing the lumps of carbide from the adhering particles of lime. As an alternative to the movable grid, or even as an adjunct thereto, an agitator scraping the conical sides of the generator may be fitted which also assists in ensuring a reasonably complete absence of undecomposed carbide from the sludge drawn off at intervals. A further point deserves attention. If constructed in the ideal manner shown in Fig. 6 removal of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... sending the guilty one to prison. But the merchant himself could invidiously and continuously rob the customer without fear of any law. All of this was converted into a code of moralities; and any bold spirit who exposed its cant and sham was denounced as an agitator and as an enemy of law and order. [Footnote: A few progressive jurists in the International Prison Congress are attempting to secure the recognition in law of the principle that society, as a supreme necessity, is obligated to protect its members from being made ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... round, "that a man is in a street row in Dublin, when no one knows he is even in the town. Suppose the—eh—English side of the question is getting battered, and he hits out and kills a drunken beast of an Irish agitator. Suppose an innocent man is accused of it and the right chap is forced to come forward and show up UNDER A FALSE NAME and gets five years. Suppose he escapes after three and a half, and goes home, saying ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... agitator makes profit out of this ambiguity. In addressing the woman worker who does not, at the rate which her labour commands on the market, earn enough to give her any reasonable measure of financial freedom, the agitator will assure her that the suffrage would ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... is much degraded by this Chrestus: "In his 'Life of Claudius,' who expelled the Jews from Rome, he has shown his undoubted inferiority to Tacitus as a historian by treating 'Christ' as a restless and seditious Jewish agitator, who was still living in the time of Claudius, and, indeed, in Rome" ("Jesus of Nazara," ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... strongly to impress on my readers is that I do not write as an advocate. I am not an agitator for phonetic reform in England. My interest in the matter is, and always has been, purely theoretical and scientific. Spelling and the reform of spelling are problems which concern every student of the science of language. It does not matter whether the language be English, German, or ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... got on to the ferry about eleven, after encountering various perils and vexations, in the loss of horse-shoes and wheel-pins, and in a great gap in the road, over which we had to lead the horses, and haul the carriage separately. At this place we supplicated our agitator for leave to eat a little breakfast; but he would not stop an instant, and we were obliged to snatch up a roll or two apiece and gnaw the dry crusts during our passage to keep soul and body together. We got in soon ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... do you say to that? Would you ever have thought I would become a political agitator ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... Erberveld was a half-caste agitator who had conspired with certain disaffected natives to launch a revolt, massacre all the Dutch in Batavia, and have himself proclaimed king. Fortunately for the Dutch, the plot was betrayed through the faithlessness of a native girl with whom Erberveld was infatuated. Because of the imperative ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... to see so many people willing at last to do justice to a great and a maligned man. Of course I do not claim that Paine was perfect. All I claim is that he was a patriot and a political philosopher; that he was a revolutionist and an agitator; that he was infinitely full of suggestive thought, and that he did more than any man to convince the people of American not only that they ought to separate from Great Britain, but that they ought to found a representative government. He has been ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Jeremiah Watts, a representative of a class of men existing in every community where the intellect is stimulated and idiosyncrasies allowed to develop themselves. By occupation he was a dish-turner, but by temperament an enthusiast, a zealot, and an agitator. He was not satisfied with things as they were, nor willing to give time an opportunity to improve them. He took hold of the horns of the altar with daring hands. He denounced the Church and the world,—undertook ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... war. In great black type we read the call for men, and a sense of common danger thrills us. In the evening by a street lamp's glare we watch a passionate agitator who points to a flag that we have learned to love. The tramp, tramp of passing regiments and the sound of martial music thrill us. We lay down our tool or pen and march to the front. And then comes the first engagement. The air is blackened ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... element of disaster which now and then gains ascendancy in the community of reformers. It is the professional agitator, the parasite who will speak for or against a principle according to the economic advantage which one side or the other may offer. You may hold that such a man is not altogether undesirable, provided he can "organize" and persuade people that the society is worthy of support. You may think ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... begins to suffer from the curate's disease, the bright-eyed, hysterical condition in which a man talks all day long to a succession of sympathetic hearers about his own overwork, and drifts into actual ill-health, though he is not making an hour's continuous exertion in the day. I knew a young agitator in that state who thought that he could not make a propagandist speech unless the deeply admiring pitman, in whose cottage he was staying, played the Marseillaise on a harmonium before he started. Often such a man takes to drink. In any ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the men in all the factories to strike—that's the new game of the modern labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France," he added disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do the priests—what does Monseigneur Lourde say to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners, and heard a new, alien tongue in the mouths of the philosophers of the people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a law-school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen. For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned that there were warring social philosophies. He heard hundreds of technical words that were new ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... of white and amethyst, he wore the clothes of a working-man, a little too short in the sleeves; and where Carpenter had a soft and silky brown beard, this man had a skinny Adam's apple that worked up and down. He was something of an agitator, I judged, and he appeared to have a religious streak. "I am a Christian," I heard him say; "but one of the kind that speak out against injustice. And I can show you Bible texts for it," he insisted. "I can prove it by the ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... first strike for many years, the townspeople looked upon it with a strange mingling of pride and fear. It was stirred up by an agitator called Mars, and had broken out simultaneously in other ports too. More gendarmes were sent for in case of need, though Mademoiselle Loire said it was hoped matters might be arranged amicably by a meeting between masters ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... weaving mills, employing over 100,000 operatives, congregated mostly in the northern suburbs of the city. Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere contact may involve "pollution." In this, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... an old man of eighty, afflicted with the palsy, was arrested during the reign of terror, under suspicion of being an agitator. Being asked what he had to say to the accusation, "Alas, gentlemen, it is very true, I am agitated enough, God knows, for I have not been able to keep a limb still ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... striking phenomenon in the field of ethics to-day is the rapid growth of the new proletarian morality; and one of the principal functions of the Socialist agitator and propagandist is to facilitate and further this growth. He is the teacher of a new morality and, if one accepted Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as "morality touched with emotion," he might be called the preacher of a new religion. Let who will call this sentimentalism, ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... Lord Anglesey's letter to Curtis I wrote him a long letter, in which I told him why I thought the letter and its publication were unjustifiable and indiscreet, and particularly cautioned him against connecting himself much with the agitator, on account of the harm it would do him here. He wrote me a long answer, defending Lord Anglesey and his measures, but I do not think he makes out a case for him, and if the Lord-Lieutenant makes in the House of Lords the defence which he proposes to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... prices to induce enormous shipments of cattle, and then dropping them again and scooping in all they needed, a stock raiser was very apt to find himself in Chicago without money enough to pay his freight bill; and so he had to go to a cheap hotel, and it was no drawback to him if there was an agitator talking in the lobby. These Western fellows were just "meat" for Tommy Hinds—he would get a dozen of them around him and paint little pictures of "the System." Of course, it was not a week before he ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... not discussing Lassalle as a public agitator or as a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who most seriously affected his life. The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt, who, as we have seen, occupied—or rather wasted—nine ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... was the act of a cad and a silly schoolboy. But I had some provocation, Tommy. I had spoken at length amid many interruptions, and I was getting cross. It was at Gledfoot, and the meeting was entirely against me. Then a man got up to tackle me, not a native, but some wretched London agitator. As I looked at him—a little chap With fiery eyes and receding brow—and heard his cockney patter, my temper went utterly. I made a fool of him, and I abused the whole assembly, and, funnily enough, I carried them with me. People say I helped ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say that whilst I recognize in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to take of that agitator, in my humble opinion he would better have consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him with contemptuous silence. He would exclude us from European society, he who himself, can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... toleration, humanity, charity and liberality are terms which have been selected and abused by the servants of the devil "to deceive the hearts of the simple." These are alike the watchwords of the spiritual seducer and the political agitator. What dogma or heresy so absurd,—what conduct so immoral, as not to find patronage in the journals of the day? or not to find tolerance or protection under the fostering wings of church or state? What is impiously called "free love," as well as avowed infidelity ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... about this time that the people of Keighley got the by-name of "th' crooked legged 'uns." It was not a mere local name, but became a general stigmatic description of Keighley folks throughout the country. The great agitator, the late Richard Oastler, was agitating for the Ten Hours Bill at this time. Many of the young people of Keighley were then "knock o' kneed" and otherwise deformed. This fact was represented to Mr Oastler by the local poet, Abraham Wildman. The latter was interested in the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... some man, desirous of selling his remedy, claims it will be beneficial, they rush in and buy. To one who knows the true nature of some of these remedies, many laughable instances are visible. One man recently discovered that a temperance agitator was daily dosing herself with a certain tonic which was known to contain a larger percentage of alcohol than did the beverages ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... the Crimean War; but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody ought to fight anybody, was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... short-sighted eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the careful political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian police, was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of red-shirted rough-riders, appealed to the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he declared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but also in the schools. "It is ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... far more influential positions than Winstanley and his comrades, gave forcible expression to much the same views. In the debates of the Army Council on the Agreement of the People, on November 1647, Edward Sexby, the Agitator or Representative of the private soldiers, an able, daring, and energetic man, replying to Ireton, on the question of the right to vote, said: "We have engaged in this kingdom and ventured our lives, and it was all for this: ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... the Ring and the old Chateau; it formed part of the Recollet Convent, "a vast quadrangular building, with a court and well stocked orchard" on Garden Street; it was occasionally used as a state prison. The Huguenot and agitator, Pierre DuCalvet, [62] spent some dreary days in its cells in 1781-84; and during the summer of 1776, a young volunteer under Benedict Arnold, John Joseph Henry, (who lived to become a distinguished Pennsylvania Judge), was immured in this monastery, after ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... within the untutored child, and produced an emotion she had never felt before. "I, too, can make a stone man," she said. Almost instinctively, she turned to that great Apostle of Human Liberty, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and asked his advice. The kind-hearted agitator gave her a note to Mr. Brackett, the Boston sculptor. He received her kindly, heard her express the desire and ambition of her heart, and then giving her a model of a human foot and some clay, said: "Go home and make that. If there is any thing in you ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... with their lot; labourers and dockers who had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race. O'Flynn, the printer of the Bomb, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew frightfully muddled and confused. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power, and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He was a Nero in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... study are: the shopgirl, the policeman, the peddler, the cabman, the night watchman, the clairvoyant, the vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss, the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each with its special experience, insight, and point of view determines for each vocational group and for the city ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have said that—it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, with this order on my hands. I've ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the representative of the infant United States than the reception accorded him by this dictator of Paris. Though Mr. Morris was known to disapprove openly of the excesses to which the Assembly and the revolution had already gone, yet this agitator, this leader of the most violent district of Paris, welcomed him with marked deference and consideration. And it was with the deepest regret that he professed himself unable to undertake to obtain, at Mr. Morris's request, a passport ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the direction indicated. A little vat, indeed, I saw. It stood there, half-filled with a sticky mess, through which an agitator, run by the electric ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... but the repeal he demanded did not involve the creation of an Irish republic. Ireland was still to be connected with Great Britain by "the golden link of the crown," and though agitation was carried to the verge of rebellion, the great agitator never actually advised his dupes to rise in arms for a war of independence. Short of this he did all in his power, and with too much success, to inflame them with a malignant hatred of the sister country. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Instantly, motion sprang to life in all its component parts; the header knives, cutting a thirty-six foot swath, gnashed like teeth; beltings slid and moved like smooth flowing streams; the separator whirred, the agitator jarred and crashed; cylinders, augers, fans, seeders and elevators, drapers and chaff-carriers clattered, rumbled, buzzed, and clanged. The steam hissed and rasped; the ground reverberated a hollow note, and the thousands upon thousands of wheat stalks sliced and slashed in the clashing shears ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... The fact that he had been on the point of inheriting a fortune in itself gave him standing; he told his story in public-houses and elsewhere, and relished the distinction of having such a story to tell. Even as his brother Richard could not rest unless he was prominent as an agitator, so it became a necessity to 'Arry to lead in the gin-palace and the music-hall. He made ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... to say in the second half of the 19th century—its most influential representatives were ardent socialists. Among them should be mentioned the critic Byelinsky, the "Petracheviens,"—adepts in the doctrine of Fourier,—and that powerful agitator of ideas, Hertzen, who founded the Russian free press in London. Among Western writers, there were two well liked in Russia: George Sand and Charles Dickens. The former was a socialist, the latter was a democrat. Their ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... "No, I'll not give him up, for he's Tim's b'y, though most unlike him. I do moind hearin' wanst that Tim had a brother of that sort. Jim's loike him, no doubt, and he come to a bad end, so he did, a-gettin' to be an agitator, as they calls 'em. And sure what's an agitator but wan that's sour at iverybody's good luck but his own, and his own good luck turnin' out bad on account of laziness and consate? I'm needin' more wisdom than I've got when I'd ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... expelled from Berlin alone. A reign of official tyranny and police persecution was established, and even the employers undertook to impoverish and to blacklist men who were thought to hold socialist views. Within a few weeks every society, periodical, and agitator disappeared, and not a thing seemed left of the great movement of half a million men that had existed a few weeks before. There have been many similar situations that have faced the socialist and labor movements of other countries. England and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the American mails reported here to-day, I hope that the reports dispatched in the ordinary course of my duty have all reached your Excellency safely. In case they have not done so, I may report that since my audience with Mr. Wilson, the removal of the 'agitator' Dernburg, the mission of Meyer Gerhardt, and the arrival of the Press telegrams from Berlin giving details of the last-named, things have been pretty quiet generally; the situation has reverted to the normal, and will remain normal if our next Note shows a conciliatory disposition. I might ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... seems—more and more the holiday temper of the majority. Mockery is the only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the only intelligence. They make an image of some one in whom they do not believe, to deride it. Say that the guy is the effigy of an agitator in the cause of something to be desired; the street man and boy have then two motives of mocking: they think the reform to be not worth doing, and they are willing to suspect the reformer of some kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this occasion is most ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... unpretentious lodging-house in Pennsylvania avenue, near the Capitol, the man who as much, if not more than any other agitator, is said to have blazed the way to the Civil War, the writer who stirred this nation to its core by his anti-slavery philippics, and the promoter with the most gigantic railroad enterprise projected in the history of the world, was found gript in the icy hand ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Judgment, on which the careers and influences of a number of social types are weighed and punishment inflicted—for all are guilty. The Plutocrat, the Daughter of Joy, the Bookmaker, the Party Politician, the Musical Comedy entrepreneur, the Agitator, even the Cleric (although not, I am sure, he of the wrapper) are called to justice. Everything for and against them is then said, either by themselves or the advocate, and sentence is passed. The result is a book curiously rich in sympathy, fearless and fine, and provocative ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... be ready to confess that no playhouse, or game, or any of the distractions the city may afford, can compare with the satisfaction of such an experience. Upon the visit in question Whittier talked of the days of his anti-slavery life in 1835 or 1836, when the English agitator, George Thompson, first came to this country. The latter was suffering from the attack of many a mob, and was fatigued by frequent speaking and as frequent abuse. Whittier invited him to his home in the neighborhood of Haverhill, where he could find quiet and rest during the warm ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... said to have been prompted by the well-known agitator, Jemal-ed-Din, who, though called an Afghan, is really a native of Hamadan, in Western Persia; but having travelled and resided a short time in Afghanistan, the term 'Afghani' was added to his name. He was well known in Tehran in 1891 for his vehement and violent ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... to an American actor, a Welsh socialist agitator, and a German army officer, Fraulein Furst at last placed herself and her great brewery interests into the trustworthy hands of Otto Ottenburg, who had been her suitor ever since he was a clerk, learning his business in ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a journalist incurs a heavy responsibility if he neglects a favourable opportunity of emancipating the masses—the humble and oppressed. I know well enough that in exalted circles I shall be called an agitator, and all that sort of thing; but they may call what they like. If only my conscience doesn't reproach ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the financial world, and perspired gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator, a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a wig, and diamonds which were so large ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a true statement. They are, I believe, a gross exaggeration and a gross calumny on the Irish soldiers, nor do I doubt that most, if not all, the soldiers who may have been induced over a glass of whiskey, or through the persuasions of some cunning agitator, to take the Fenian oath would, if an actual conflict had arisen, have proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as praiseworthy, has not been ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the exciter, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Garden[17] strikes her as a very sudden step, calculated to cause much dissatisfaction in many quarters, and setting a dangerous example to agitators in general (for his main reputation Mr Cobden gained as a successful agitator). The Queen therefore thinks it best that Mr Cobden should first enter the service of the Crown, serve as a public functionary in Parliament, and be promoted subsequently to the Cabinet, which step will then become a very ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... same strain. He was the type of the Belleville agitator, a lazy, dissipated mechanic, perverting his fellow workmen, constantly spouting the ill-digested odds and ends of political harangues that he had heard, belching forth in the same breath the loftiest sentiments and the most asinine revolutionary ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in their lodges will do. There, as a rule, the 'Walking delegate' and a few agitators rule with despotic power. If a workman, whose large family forces him to take conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation and demands that traitors to the cause of labor be expelled. This throttles freedom of action in many labor unions, so that often what appears on the surface to be the unanimous action of the members of workingmen's leagues, is but the exercise of despotic power ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... stupid patrons, or listen to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The ideal editor of the popular press must be the quintescence of tact; an adroit strategist, a sagacious chief executive, keenly critical, ably judicial, broad, generous, sympathetic, hospitable, aye, charitable, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... his dissatisfaction. Bince had hired the man, and during the several months that Krovac had been with the company, the assistant general manager had learned enough from other workers to realize that the man was an agitator and a troublemaker. Several times he had been upon the point of discharging him, but now he was glad that he had not, for he thought he saw in him a type that in the light of present conditions might ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... become established only by the displacement of the traditional opinions; and the way to displace a traditional error is not to be compromising and conciliatory, but to be as uncompromising and as irritating as one's abilities and one's vision of the truth will permit. The critic in his capacity as agitator is living in a state of war with his opponents; and the ethics of warfare are not the ethics of statesmanship. Public opinion can be reconciled to a constructive national programme only by the agitation of what is from the traditional standpoint ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... prophet. His function was to reduce principles to action, to engage the forces of the times in the spirit of the times, and by combat with such weapons as lay to hand to urge the cause forward. The word "agitator" might have been invented for him. He was the first great warrior of socialism. It is no reflection upon Marx to indicate that the present need of the Social Democracy is for warriors rather ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of Massachusetts, Member of the first Massachusetts Board of Education, "an honor intended to be conferred only on such as were well qualified by their literary acquisitions to discharge its responsible duties." He was also a prominent agitator against the fugitive slave law, and organizer and corporator of the Illinois Central Railroad, the first transcontinental line projected. John Jay McGilvra (1827-1903), of Scots parentage, took part in many prominent enterprises for ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... out of every acre of land on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. And now, for the third time, we are recalled to the same territory, no longer as the goal of the adventurous trader or the battle ground of the political agitator, but as a land of promise—a new El Dorado, to which men are rushing with all the avidity that the presence of the one, thing which all men, in all times and in all places, insatiably ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... of the legislation directed at the trusts would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with business interests, for the Government to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out to be bad, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... louder. Now the landlords, as a body, are quite aware of the difficulties under which farming has been conducted of late, and exhibit a decided inclination to meet and assist the tenant. But it by no means suits the agitator to admit this; he would of the two rather the landlord showed an impracticable disposition, in order that there might be grounds ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the one hand, the persecution of the existing powers which hold him responsible for all acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the other, the lack of understanding on the part of his own followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person prominent ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... governed the Great Powers may have deprecated Rakovski as much as he deprecated them. It must have been exasperating for those solid persons subsequently to acknowledge—if they did so—that this unbalanced agitator weighed them very well. But the Balkan countries were too weak; they had to suffer being thrown aside, pushed here and there, and trampled on; for when the Great Powers came down to the Balkans they could really not pay much attention to the little peoples of the country and ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... cellar. When I mentioned that I couldn't quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an "agitator"—as though that, forsooth, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of a projector, a bit of a City man, and a bit of a West-end man. His business, he said, was of a general nature. He was usually to be heard of in connection with apocryphal companies and misty speculations. He was always great as an agitator. As soon as a League was formed, Happy Jack flew to its head-quarters as a vulture to a battle-field. Was it a league for the promotion of vegetarianism?—or a league for the lowering of the price of meat?—a league for reforming the national costume?—or a league ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... at the top of his voice every instant. Birds rose before him in flocks, sandpipers took to their wings in panic, swallows swooped down over him in anxious clouds, sharp-tailed sparrows and all other winged creatures fled wildly before this "agitator," who seemed to have no aim except to disturb, and reminded me irresistibly of his human prototype. Somewhere in that "league upon league of marsh grass," I suppose, were the blackbird's little folk; for the watcher on the bank was in deepest tribulation, and his outcries quickly ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... continued. Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Ministry, sought in every possible way to silence Cobden and bring him into contempt, even to denouncing him as "a dangerous agitator who would, if he could, do for London what Robespierre did for Paris." But time went on as time does, and Cobden had been before the country as the upholder of unpopular causes for more than ten years. There was famine ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... for centuries at work in that State. Southerners who thought that, because Kentucky was a slave State it should go with the South, had failed to take these causes into consideration. In the first place, not every slaveholder was an ardent proslavery agitator. There were masters who like Henry Clay considered slavery an evil and hoped to see it abolished, but while the majority of their fellow countrymen held on to it they did so too. Many Kentuckians, moreover, were like that restless class of Westerners who, dissatisfied with the society ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... victory at Petrograd, the soldiers confidently assumed that matters would take a similar course in the future. All that was necessary, they thought, was to send an agitator to the Cossacks, who would lay down their arms the moment the object of the proletarian revolution was explained to them. Korniloff's counter-revolutionary uprising was put down by means of speeches and fraternization. By agitation and well-planned seizure of certain institutions—without ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... department. It was the custom of Zohawk Kh[a]n to choose the autumn of the year for the season of his predatory excursions, and it happened that, while absent with the flower of his force on one of these death-dealing expeditions, a conspiracy was set on foot, the principal agitator being the eunuch of the seraglio. "It was determined that on the evening when the chieftain was expected to return, a general feast should be given to those remaining at home, with the double view of rendering the men who had not joined in ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... however, to brand the whole, or even the majority, of the Southern leaders as selfish and unprincipled. Unless he has real grievances on which to work, or unless those who listen to him are supremely ignorant, the mere agitator is powerless; and it is most assuredly incredible that seven millions of Anglo-Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons of the purest strain—English, Lowland Scottish, and North Irish—should have been beguiled by silver tongues of a few ambitious or hare-brained demagogues. The latter undoubtedly ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... receive a visit from August Rockel. This name will probably call up to your imagination—as it has done in many other cases—an ultra-revolutionary agitator; in place of which you will find a gentle, refined, kindly and excellent man. I should like you to cultivate his acquaintance, and can cordially recommend him to you. His daughter (at the Burg Theater) you are sure to know—and you will also know of his old friendship with Wagner and Bulow. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... these subtle and elusive problems most harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good workman, and this, added to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. In order to keep ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Roman—had spoken to her about the meeting which was to take place at his house, and had mentioned the discourse to be pronounced by that strange personage about whom all Rome was already talking, knowing him as an enthusiastic religious agitator and miracle worker, most popular in the Testaccio district. The Marchesa was determined to hear him without being seen. She had arranged everything with Guarnacci, and had admitted three or four friends ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... actually means. What standard is to be established to determine what labor is "productive" and "useful"? Is the journalist, for instance, engaged in useful and productive labor? Is the novelist? is the agitator? Presumably the journalist employed in defending the Soviet Republic against attacks by unfriendly critics would be doing useful work and be entitled to vote, but what about the journalist employed in making the criticisms? Would the wife of the latter, no matter how much ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... German struggles of 1848 was that in Saxony. Robert Blum [Footnote: Blum, born at Cologne in 1807, was a writer and an agitator, leader of the Liberal party in Saxony. He was executed in November, 1848.—ED.] was present at a ball in Leipsic when the news arrived of the French revolution. He at once hastened to consult his friends; and they agreed to act through the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... leaked out that the Idea was not the King's but the Prime Minister's. It would not have been known but for the Prime Minister having taken offence at the refusal of the King to appoint a Socialist agitator to the vacant post of Lord Chamberlain. You see, it was this way—the Prime Minister was very anxious to get in his right-hand man for the eastern division of Grumbury, N. Now, the Revolutionaries were very strong in the eastern division of Grumbury, and, by winning the favour of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hundreds of friends had already gathered to do honor to the noble woman so ready to identify herself with the unpopular reforms of her day. Among the many beautiful works of art, a chief attraction was the picture of the grand-mother of Parnell, the Irish agitator, by Gilbert Stuart. The house was fragrant with flowers, and the unassuming manners of Mrs. Tudor, as she moved about among her guests, reflected the glory of our American institutions in giving the world a generation of common-sense women who do not plume themselves on any ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I'm up against," she exclaimed in a low voice. "That fellow is a regular agitator. Talking is his long suit. Why, he didn't even know how to throw a bowline when he hit in here, flat broke and down on his uppers. I've taught him all he knows. And now he's trying to start something. If men weren't so scarce I'd ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... power would be to assume a power of the most dangerous character. Under such assumptions the States of this Union would have no security for peace or tranquillity, but might be converted into the mere instruments of Executive will. Actuated by selfish purposes, he might become the great agitator, fomenting assaults upon the State constitutions and declaring the majority of to-day to be the minority of to-morrow, and the minority, in its turn, the majority, before whose decrees the established order of things in the State should be subverted. Revolution, civil commotion, and bloodshed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... modern State. They have no hope of salvation for themselves coming about through the State in any way. It has become somewhat natural for us to think of the social reformer as a Member of Parliament and of the revolutionary socialist as a "strike-agitator." The cries of "Don't vote!" "Don't enlist!" are heard, and care is taken to keep the workman from ceasing to quarrel with his employer. Any discussion of the rights or wrongs of any Strike is condemned at once. [Footnote: Ramsay MacDonald was ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... in Scotland.—You might suggest, that were it in Ireland, one might see a rail way out of it, or rather in it. This jest may be expected to be appreciated by a parson's wife of the sharper sort. Something ought to be got out of the visit of the agitator BURNS to the North. Example of what can be done in this direction:—"People who play with fire (persons who go in for strikes) must expect BURNS." However, be careful not to say this to a Scotchman, or he may want your blood before you get to ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... reflects, also, the new philanthropic spirit, the enthusiasm of humanity, the feeling of the brotherhood of men to which Rousseau had given expression in France and which issued in the French Revolution. In England this was the time of Wilberforce, the antislavery agitator; of Whitefield, the eloquent revival preacher; {215} of John and Charles Wesley, and of the Evangelical and Methodist movements which gave new life to the English Church. John Newton, the curate of Olney and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister and journalist, who had entered Parliament in 1832 as a follower of O'Connell and as member for Cork. He quarrelled, however, with the Irish leader, a circumstance which was fatal to success as an agitator in his own country. Restless and reckless, he henceforth carried his energy and devoted his eloquence to the Chartist movement in England, and in 1847 the popular vote carried him once more to the House of Commons as member for Nottingham. He copied ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... getting himself beautifully misunderstood. Such words as fanatic, pretender, agitator, heretic, renegade and "dangerous" were freely hurled at him. They said he was pulling down the pillars of Society. He seriously considered retiring entirely from the pulpit; and as a personal vindication and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... emerging from large white cuffs came and went breaking bread, pouring wine, and so on, with quiet mechanical precision. His head and body above the tablecloth had a rigid immobility. This firebrand, this great agitator, exhibited the least possible amount of warmth and animation. His voice was rasping, cold, and monotonous in a low key. He could not be called a talkative personality; but with his detached calm manner he appeared as ready to ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the thick, muddy, and turbid liquid, which was being stirred up by a gigantic "agitator," he could hardly believe that it could ever produce the beautiful white crystal with which he was ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... handle material up to 3-in. size. These several feeders can be set to give any desired mixture. On any material fit to be used in concrete, they will measure with an error of less than 5 per cent., an agitator being provided in the sand bin to prevent damp sand from bridging over the feeder, and preventing its action. The mixer consists of a trough, with a square shaft, on which are mounted 37 mixing paddles, which are slipped on in rotation, so as to form practically ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... wits!" hissed Jeppe contemptuously. "You, who throw your money away over the first tramp you meet! And you defend an abominable agitator, who never goes out by daylight like other people, but goes gallivanting about ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I thought," he murmured. "That fellow is an agitator from Berlin who has come to stir up trouble in the Coblenz district. He's urging these men to start an uprising that will take the American troops by surprise and wipe them out. From something he said I have an idea that he was concerned ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall |
