Chapter 31

by Upton Sinclair

　　One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a jobwas to go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of thehouse to meet him, and he stood by the door with his hat in hishand, saying, "I've got work now, and so you can leave here."But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for herto do, she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keepher past a secret--girls had tried it, and they were always foundout. There were thousands of men who came to this place, andsooner or later she would meet one of them. "And besides,"Marija added, "I can't do anything. I'm no good--I take dope.What could you do with me?""Can't you stop?" Jurgis cried."No," she answered, "I'll never stop. What's the use of talkingabout it--I'll stay here till I die, I guess. It's all I'm fitfor." And that was all that he could get her to say--there was nouse trying. When he told her he would not let Elzbieta take hermoney, she answered indifferently: "Then it'll be wastedhere--that's all." Her eyelids looked heavy and her face was redand swollen; he saw that he was annoying her, that she onlywanted him to go away. So he went, disappointed and sad.Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta wassick a good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and verymuch the worse for their life upon the streets. But he stuck bythe family nevertheless, for they reminded him of his oldhappiness; and when things went wrong he could solace himselfwith a plunge into the Socialist movement. Since his life hadbeen caught up into the current of this great stream, thingswhich had before been the whole of life to him came to seem ofrelatively slight importance; his interests were elsewhere,in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace anduninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remainone while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought,his life was a perpetual adventure. There was so much to know--somany wonders to be discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgisforget the day before election, when there came a telephonemessage from a friend of Harry Adams, asking him to bring Jurgisto see him that night; and Jurgis went, and met one of the mindsof the movement.The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionairewho had given up his life to settlement work, and had a littlehome in the heart of the city's slums. He did not belong to theparty, but he was in sympathy with it; and he said that he was tohave as his guest that night the editor of a big Easternmagazine, who wrote against Socialism, but really did not knowwhat it was. The millionaire suggested that Adams bring Jurgisalong, and then start up the subject of "pure food," in which theeditor was interested.Young Fisher's home was a little two-story brick house, dingy andweather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room thatJurgis saw was half lined with books, and upon the walls weremany pictures, dimly visible in the soft, yellow light; it was acold, rainy night, so a log fire was crackling in the openhearth. Seven or eight people were gathered about it when Adamsand his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to his dismay that threeof them were ladies. He had never talked to people of this sortbefore, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment. He stood inthe doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and made adeep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, whenhe was asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner,and sat down upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration offhis forehead with his sleeve. He was terrified lest they shouldexpect him to talk.There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad inevening dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-lookinggentleman named Maynard. There was the former's frail youngwife, and also an elderly lady, who taught kindergarten in thesettlement, and a young college student, a beautiful girl with anintense and earnest face. She only spoke once or twice whileJurgis was there--the rest of the time she sat by the table inthe center of the room, resting her chin in her hands anddrinking in the conversation. There were two other men, whomyoung Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr.Schliemann; he heard them address Adams as "Comrade," and so heknew that they were Socialists.The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentlemanof clerical aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, ittranspired, and had seen the light and become a prophet of thenew dispensation. He traveled all over the country, living likethe apostles of old, upon hospitality, and preaching upon street-corners when there was no hall. The other man had been in themidst of a discussion with the editor when Adams and Jurgis camein; and at the suggestion of the host they resumed it after theinterruption. Jurgis was soon sitting spellbound, thinking thathere was surely the strangest man that had ever lived in theworld.Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairyhands and bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, andhad been a professor of philosophy--until, as he said, he hadfound that he was selling his character as well as his time.Instead he had come to America, where he lived in a garret roomin this slum district, and made volcanic energy take the place offire. He studied the composition of food-stuffs, and knewexactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his body needed;and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the valueof all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the first ofJuly he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and whenhe struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollarsand a half a day, and come home when he had another year'ssupply--a hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearestapproach to independence a man could make "under capitalism," heexplained; he would never marry, for no sane man would allowhimself to fall in love until after the revolution.He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head sofar in the shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflectedfrom the fire on the hearth. He spoke simply, and utterlywithout emotion; with the manner of a teacher setting forth to agroup of scholars an axiom in geometry, he would enunciate suchpropositions as made the hair of an ordinary person rise on end.And when the auditor had asserted his non-comprehension, he wouldproceed to elucidate by some new proposition, yet more appalling.To Jurgis the Herr Dr. Schliemann assumed the proportions of athunderstorm or an earthquake. And yet, strange as it mightseem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he could followthe argument nearly all the time. He was carried over thedifficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging awayin mad career--a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horseSpeculation.Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and withman as a small part of it. He understood human institutions, andblew them about like soap bubbles. It was surprising that somuch destructiveness could be contained in one human mind. Wasit government? The purpose of government was the guarding ofproperty-rights, the perpetuation of ancient force and modernfraud. Or was it marriage? Marriage and prostitution were twosides of one shield, the predatory man's exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a difference of class.If a woman had money she might dictate her own terms: equality,a life contract, and the legitimacy--that is, the property-rights--of her children. If she had no money, she was a proletarian, andsold herself for an existence. And then the subject becameReligion, which was the Archfiend's deadliest weapon. Governmentoppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed hismind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. Theworking-man was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while hispockets were picked in this one; he was brought up to frugality,humility, obedience--in short to all the pseudo-virtues ofcapitalism. The destiny of civilization would be decided in onefinal death struggle between the Red International and the Black,between Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church; while here athome, "the stygian midnight of American evangelicalism--"And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was alively tussle. "Comrade" Lucas was not what is called aneducated man; he knew only the Bible, but it was the Bibleinterpreted by real experience. And what was the use, he asked,of confusing Religion with men's perversions of it? That thechurch was in the hands of the merchants at the moment wasobvious enough; but already there were signs of rebellion, and ifComrade Schliemann could come back a few years from now--"Ah, yes," said the other, "of course, I have no doubt that in ahundred years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposedSocialism, just as at present it denies that it ever torturedGalileo.""I am not defending the Vatican," exclaimed Lucas, vehemently."I am defending the word of God--which is one long cry of thehuman spirit for deliverance from the sway of oppression. Takethe twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Job, which I amaccustomed to quote in my addresses as 'the Bible upon the BeefTrust'; or take the words of Isaiah--or of the Master himself!Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious art, not thejeweled idol of our society churches--but the Jesus of the awfulreality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of theworld, who had nowhere to lay his head--""I will grant you Jesus," interrupted the other."Well, then," cried Lucas, "and why should Jesus have nothing todo with his church--why should his words and his life be of noauthority among those who profess to adore him? Here is a manwho was the world's first revolutionist, the true founder of theSocialist movement; a man whose whole being was one flame ofhatred for wealth, and all that wealth stands for,--for the prideof wealth, and the luxury of wealth, and the tyranny of wealth;who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man of the people, anassociate of saloon-keepers and women of the town; who again andagain, in the most explicit language, denounced wealth and theholding of wealth: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures onearth!'--'Sell that ye have and give alms!'--'Blessed are yepoor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven!'--'Woe unto you thatare rich, for ye have received your consolation!'--'Verily, I sayunto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom ofHeaven!' Who denounced in unmeasured terms the exploiters of hisown time: 'Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!'--'Woe unto you also, you lawyers!'--'Ye serpents, ye generation ofvipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' Who drove outthe businessmen and brokers from the temple with a whip! Who wascrucified--think of it--for an incendiary and a disturber of thesocial order! And this man they have made into the high priestof property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all thehorrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization!Jeweled images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense tohim, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrungfrom the toil of helpless women and children, and build templesto him, and sit in cushioned seats and listen to his teachingsexpounded by doctors of dusty divinity--""Bravo!" cried Schliemann, laughing. But the other was in fullcareer--he had talked this subject every day for five years, andhad never yet let himself be stopped. "This Jesus of Nazareth!"he cried. "This class-conscious working-man! This unioncarpenter! This agitator, law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist!He, the sovereign lord and master of a world which grinds thebodies and souls of human beings into dollars--if he could comeinto the world this day and see the things that men have made inhis name, would it not blast his soul with horror? Would he notgo mad at the sight of it, he the Prince of Mercy and Love! Thatdreadful night when he lay in the Garden of Gethsemane andwrithed in agony until he sweat blood--do you think that he sawanything worse than he might see tonight upon the plains ofManchuria, where men march out with a jeweled image of him beforethem, to do wholesale murder for the benefit of foul monsters ofsensuality and cruelty? Do you not know that if he were in St.Petersburg now, he would take the whip with which he drove outthe bankers from his temple--"Here the speaker paused an instant for breath. "No, comrade,"said the other, dryly, "for he was a practical man. He wouldtake pretty little imitation lemons, such as are now beingshipped into Russia, handy for carrying in the pockets, andstrong enough to blow a whole temple out of sight."Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this;then he began again: "But look at it from the point of view ofpractical politics, comrade. Here is an historical figure whomall men reverence and love, whom some regard as divine; and whowas one of us--who lived our life, and taught our doctrine. Andnow shall we leave him in the hands of his enemies--shall weallow them to stifle and stultify his example? We have hiswords, which no one can deny; and shall we not quote them to thepeople, and prove to them what he was, and what he taught, andwhat he did? No, no, a thousand times no!--we shall use hisauthority to turn out the knaves and sluggards from his ministry,and we shall yet rouse the people to action!--"Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to apaper on the table. "Here, comrade," he said, with a laugh,"here is a place for you to begin. A bishop whose wife has justbeen robbed of fifty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds! And amost unctuous and oily of bishops! An eminent and scholarlybishop! A philanthropist and friend of labor bishop--a CivicFederation decoy duck for the chloroforming of the wage-working-man!"To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat asspectators. But now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion toremark, somewhat naively, that he had always understood thatSocialists had a cut-and-dried program for the future ofcivilization; whereas here were two active members of the party,who, from what he could make out, were agreed about nothing atall. Would the two, for his enlightenment, try to ascertain justwhat they had in common, and why they belonged to the same party?This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of twocarefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist believesin the common ownership and democratic management of the means ofproducing the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialistbelieves that the means by which this is to be brought about isthe class conscious political organization of the wage-earners.Thus far they were at one; but no farther. To Lucas, thereligious zealot, the co-operative commonwealth was the NewJerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, which is "within you." To theother, Socialism was simply a necessary step toward a far-distantgoal, a step to be tolerated with impatience. Schliemann calledhimself a "philosophic anarchist"; and he explained that ananarchist was one who believed that the end of human existencewas the free development of every personality, unrestricted bylaws save those of its own being. Since the same kind of matchwould light every one's fire and the same-shaped loaf of breadwould fill every one's stomach, it would be perfectly feasible tosubmit industry to the control of a majority vote. There wasonly one earth, and the quantity of material things was limited.Of intellectual and moral things, on the other hand, there was nolimit, and one could have more without another's having less;hence "Communism in material production, anarchism inintellectual," was the formula of modern proletarian thought.As soon as the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society hadbeen healed, there would be established a simple system wherebyeach man was credited with his labor and debited with hispurchases; and after that the processes of production, exchange,and consumption would go on automatically, and without our beingconscious of them, any more than a man is conscious of thebeating of his heart. And then, explained Schliemann, societywould break up into independent, self-governing communities ofmutually congenial persons; examples of which at present wereclubs, churches, and political parties. After the revolution,all the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of menwould be cared for by such "free associations"; romanticnovelists would be supported by those who liked to read romanticnovels, and impressionist painters would be supported by thosewho liked to look at impressionist pictures--and the same withpreachers and scientists, editors and actors and musicians. Ifany one wanted to work or paint or pray, and could find no one tomaintain him, he could support himself by working part of thetime. That was the case at present, the only difference beingthat the competitive wage system compelled a man to work all thetime to live, while, after the abolition of privilege andexploitation, any one would be able to support himself by anhour's work a day. Also the artist's audience of the present wasa small minority of people, all debased and vulgarized by theeffort it had cost them to win in the commercial battle, of theintellectual and artistic activities which would result when thewhole of mankind was set free from the nightmare of competition,we could at present form no conception whatever.And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr.Schliemann asserted that it might be possible for a society toexist upon an hour's toil by each of its members. "Just what,"answered the other, "would be the productive capacity of societyif the present resources of science were utilized, we have nomeans of ascertaining; but we may be sure it would exceedanything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to theferocious barbarities of capitalism. After the triumph of theinternational proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable;and who can figure the cost of war to humanity--not merely thevalue of the lives and the material that it destroys, not merelythe cost of keeping millions of men in idleness, of arming andequipping them for battle and parade, but the drain upon thevital energies of society by the war attitude and the war terror,the brutality and ignorance, the drunkenness, prostitution, andcrime it entails, the industrial impotence and the moraldeadness? Do you think that it would be too much to say that twohours of the working time of every efficient member of acommunity goes to feed the red fiend of war?"And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes ofcompetition: the losses of industrial warfare; the ceaselessworry and friction; the vices--such as drink, for instance, theuse of which had nearly doubled in twenty years, as a consequenceof the intensification of the economic struggle; the idle andunproductive members of the community, the frivolous rich and thepauperized poor; the law and the whole machinery of repression;the wastes of social ostentation, the milliners and tailors, thehairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and lackeys. "Youunderstand," he said, "that in a society dominated by the fact ofcommercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess,and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So we have, at thepresent moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of thepopulation occupied in producing useless articles, and one percent occupied in destroying them. And this is not all; for theservants and panders of the parasites are also parasites, themilliners and the jewelers and the lackeys have also to besupported by the useful members of the community. And bear inmind also that this monstrous disease affects not merely theidlers and their menials, its poison penetrates the whole socialbody. Beneath the hundred thousand women of the elite are amillion middle-class women, miserable because they are not of theelite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath them,in turn, are five million farmers' wives reading 'fashion papers'and trimming bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids sellingthemselves into brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-skin robes. And then consider that, added to this competition indisplay, you have, like oil on the flames, a whole system ofcompetition in selling! You have manufacturers contriving tensof thousands of catchpenny devices, storekeepers displaying them,and newspapers and magazines filled up with advertisements ofthem!""And don't forget the wastes of fraud," put in young Fisher."When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,"responded Schliemann--"the science of persuading people to buywhat they do not want--he is in the very center of the ghastlycharnel house of capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcelyknows which of a dozen horrors to point out first. But considerthe waste in time and energy incidental to making ten thousandvarieties of a thing for purposes of ostentation andsnobbishness, where one variety would do for use! Consider allthe waste incidental to the manufacture of cheap qualities ofgoods, of goods made to sell and deceive the ignorant; considerthe wastes of adulteration,--the shoddy clothing, the cottonblankets, the unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the adulterated milk, the aniline soda water, thepotato-flour sausages--""And consider the moral aspects of the thing," put in theex-preacher."Precisely," said Schliemann; "the low knavery and the ferociouscruelty incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and thebribing, the blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, thehurrying and worrying. Of course, imitation and adulteration arethe essence of competition--they are but another form of thephrase 'to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.'A government official has stated that the nation suffers a loss ofa billion and a quarter dollars a year through adulterated foods;which means, of course, not only materials wasted that might havebeen useful outside of the human stomach, but doctors and nursesfor people who would otherwise have been well, and undertakersfor the whole human race ten or twenty years before the propertime. Then again, consider the waste of time and energy requiredto sell these things in a dozen stores, where one would do.There are a million or two of business firms in the country,and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling andrehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning andworrying, the balancing of petty profit and loss. Consider thewhole machinery of the civil law made necessary by theseprocesses; the libraries of ponderous tomes, the courts andjuries to interpret them, the lawyers studying to circumventthem, the pettifogging and chicanery, the hatreds and lies!Consider the wastes incidental to the blind and haphazardproduction of commodities--the factories closed, the workersidle, the goods spoiling in storage; consider the activities ofthe stock manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, theoverstimulation of others, for speculative purposes; theassignments and bank failures, the crises and panics, thedeserted towns and the starving populations! Consider theenergies wasted in the seeking of markets, the sterile trades,such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster, advertising agent.Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into cities, madenecessary by competition and by monopoly railroad rates; considerthe slums, the bad air, the disease and the waste of vitalenergies; consider the office buildings, the waste of time andmaterial in the piling of story upon story, and the burrowingunderground! Then take the whole business of insurance, theenormous mass of administrative and clerical labor it involves,and all utter waste--""I do not follow that," said the editor. "The CooperativeCommonwealth is a universal automatic insurance company andsavings bank for all its members. Capital being the property ofall, injury to it is shared by all and made up by all. The bankis the universal government credit-account, the ledger in whichevery individual's earnings and spendings ate balanced. There isalso a universal government bulletin, in which are listed andprecisely described everything which the commonwealth has forsale. As no one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longerany stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation; nocheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery or'grafting.'""How is the price of an article determined?""The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, andit is determined by the first principles of arithmetic. Themillion workers in the nation's wheat fields have worked ahundred days each, and the total product of the labor is abillion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is the tenthpart of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary symbol, andpay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of abushel of wheat is fifty cents.""You say 'for farm work,'" said Mr. Maynard. "Then labor is notto be paid alike?""Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and weshould have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners.Of course the wages may be left the same, and the hours varied;one or the other will have to be varied continually, according asa greater or less number of workers is needed in any particularindustry. That is precisely what is done at present, except thatthe transfer of the workers is accomplished blindly andimperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of instantlyand completely, by a universal government bulletin.""How about those occupations in which time is difficult tocalculate? What is the labor cost of a book?""Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, andbinding of it--about a fifth of its present cost.""And the author?""I have already said that the state could not controlintellectual production. The state might say that it had taken ayear to write the book, and the author might say it had takenthirty. Goethe said that every bon mot of his had cost a purseof gold. What I outline here is a national, or ratherinternational, system for the providing of the material needs ofmen. Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will worklonger, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and inhis own way. I live on the same earth as the majority, I wearthe same kind of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but Ido not think the same kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to payfor such thinkers as the majority selects. I wish such things tobe left to free effort, as at present. If people want to listento a certain preacher, they get together and contribute what theyplease, and pay for a church and support the preacher, and thenlisten to him; I, who do not want to listen to him, stay away,and it costs me nothing. In the same way there are magazinesabout Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and flying machines,and athletic records, and I know nothing about any of them. Onthe other hand, if wage slavery were abolished, and I could earnsome spare money without paying tribute to an exploitingcapitalist, then there would be a magazine for the purpose ofinterpreting and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche,the prophet of Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, theinventor of the noble science of clean eating; and incidentally,perhaps, for the discouraging of long skirts, and the scientificbreeding of men and women, and the establishing of divorce bymutual consent."Dr. Schliemann paused for a moment. "That was a lecture," hesaid with a laugh, "and yet I am only begun!""What else is there?" asked Maynard."I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,"answered the other. "I have hardly mentioned the positiveeconomies of co-operation. Allowing five to a family, there arefifteen million families in this country; and at least tenmillion of these live separately, the domestic drudge beingeither the wife or a wage slave. Now set aside the modern systemof pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operativecooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes.Surely it is moderate to say that the dishwashing for a family offive takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day's work, ittakes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons--mostlywomen to do the dishwashing of the country. And note that thisis most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is acause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; ofprostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands anddegenerate children--for all of which things the community hasnaturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my littlefree communities there would be a machine which would wash anddry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch,but scientifically--sterilizing them--and do it at a saving ofall the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of thesethings you may find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then takeKropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops, and read about thenew science of agriculture, which has been built up in the lastten years; by which, with made soils and intensive culture, agardener can raise ten or twelve crops in a season, and twohundred tons of vegetables upon a single acre; by which thepopulation of the whole globe could be supported on the soil nowcultivated in the United States alone! It is impossible to applysuch methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of ourscattered farming population; but imagine the problem ofproviding the food supply of our nation once taken in handsystematically and rationally, by scientists! All the poor androcky land set apart for a national timber reserve, in which ourchildren play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell! Themost favorable climate and soil for each product selected;the exact requirements of the community known, and the acreagefigured accordingly; the most improved machinery employed, underthe direction of expert agricultural chemists! I was brought upon a farm, and I know the awful deadliness of farm work; and Ilike to picture it all as it will be after the revolution. Topicture the great potato-planting machine, drawn by four horses,or an electric motor, ploughing the furrow, cutting and droppingand covering the potatoes, and planting a score of acres a day!To picture the great potato-digging machine, run by electricity,perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field, scooping upearth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks! To everyother kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way--applesand oranges picked by machinery, cows milked byelectricity--things which are already done, as you may know. Topicture the harvest fields of the future, to which millions ofhappy men and women come for a summer holiday, brought by specialtrains, the exactly needful number to each place! And tocontrast all this with our present agonizing system ofindependent small farming,--a stunted, haggard, ignorant man,mated with a yellow, lean, and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling fromfour o'clock in the morning until nine at night, working thechildren as soon as they are able to walk, scratching the soilwith its primitive tools, and shut out from all knowledge andhope, from all their benefits of science and invention, and allthe joys of the spirit--held to a bare existence by competitionin labor, and boasting of his freedom because he is too blind tosee his chains!"Dr. Schliemann paused a moment. "And then," he continued,"place beside this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newestdiscovery of physiologists, that most of the ills of the humansystem are due to overfeeding! And then again, it has beenproven that meat is unnecessary as a food; and meat is obviouslymore difficult to produce than vegetable food, less pleasant toprepare and handle, and more likely to be unclean. But what ofthat, so long as it tickles the palate more strongly?""How would Socialism change that?" asked the girl-student,quickly. It was the first time she had spoken."So long as we have wage slavery," answered Schliemann, "itmatters not in the least how debasing and repulsive a task maybe, it is easy to find people to perform it. But just as soon aslabor is set free, then the price of such work will begin torise. So one by one the old, dingy, and unsanitary factorieswill come down--it will be cheaper to build new; and so thesteamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and so thedangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be foundfor their products. In exactly the same way, as the citizens ofour Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost ofslaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those whowant to eat meat will have to do their own killing--and how longdo you think the custom would survive then?--To go on to anotheritem--one of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in ademocracy is political corruption; and one of the consequences ofcivic administration by ignorant and vicious politicians, is thatpreventable diseases kill off half our population. And even ifscience were allowed to try, it could do little, because themajority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, butsimply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They arepenned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery,and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than allthe doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course,they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us,and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish. Forthis reason I would seriously maintain that all the medical andsurgical discoveries that science can make in the future will beof less importance than the application of the knowledge wealready possess, when the disinherited of the earth haveestablished their right to a human existence."And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis hadnoticed that the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-tablewas listening with something of the same look that he himself hadworn, the time when he had first discovered Socialism. Jurgiswould have liked to talk to her, he felt sure that she would haveunderstood him. Later on in the evening, when the group brokeup, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in a low voice, "I wonder ifMr. Maynard will still write the same things about Socialism"; towhich she answered, "I don't know--but if he does we shall knowthat he is a knave!"And only a few hours after this came election day--when the longcampaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand stilland hold its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest ofthe staff of Hinds's Hotel could hardly stop to finish theirdinner, before they hurried off to the big hall which the partyhad hired for that evening.But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraphinstrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns. Whenthe final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to beover four hundred thousand--an increase of something like threehundred and fifty per cent in four years. And that was doingwell; but the party was dependent for its early returns uponmessages from the locals, and naturally those locals which hadbeen most successful were the ones which felt most likereporting; and so that night every one in the hall believed thatthe vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight hundredthousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually beenmade in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been6,700 in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been9,600, and now it was 69,000! So, as the evening waxed, and thecrowd piled in, the meeting was a sight to be seen. Bulletinswould be read, and the people would shout themselves hoarse --and then some one would make a speech, and there would be moreshouting; and then a brief silence, and more bulletins. Therewould come messages from the secretaries of neighboring states,reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from4,800 to 36,000! There were telegrams to the national officefrom enthusiastic individuals in little towns which had madeamazing and unprecedented increases in a single year: Benedict,Kansas, from 26 to 260; Henderson, Kentucky, from 19 to 111;Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208; Cleo, Oklahoma, from 0 to 104;Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many more of the samekind. There were literally hundreds of such towns; there wouldbe reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch oftelegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to theaudience were old campaigners, who had been to the places andhelped to make the vote, and could make appropriate comments:Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to 831--that was where the mayor hadarrested a Socialist speaker! Crawford County, Kansas, from 285to 1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal to Reason"! BattleCreek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the answer oflabor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!And then there were official returns from the various precinctsand wards of the city itself! Whether it was a factory districtor one of the "silk-stocking" wards seemed to make no particulardifference in the increase; but one of the things which surprisedthe party leaders most was the tremendous vote that came rollingin from the stockyards. Packingtown comprised three wards of thecity, and the vote in the spring of 1903 had been 500, and in thefall of the same year, 1,600. Now, only one year later, it wasover 6,300--and the Democratic vote only 8,800! There were otherwards in which the Democratic vote had been actually surpassed,and in two districts, members of the state legislature had beenelected. Thus Chicago now led the country; it had set a newstandard for the party, it had shown the workingmen the way!--So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs ofeyes were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheeringhis every sentence. The orator had been the head of the city'srelief bureau in the stockyards, until the sight of misery andcorruption had made him sick. He was young, hungry-looking, fullof fire; and as he swung his long arms and beat up the crowd, toJurgis he seemed the very spirit of the revolution. "Organize!Organize! Organize!"--that was his cry. He was afraid of thistremendous vote, which his party had not expected, and which ithad not earned. "These men are not Socialists!" he cried. "Thiselection will pass, and the excitement will die, and people willforget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sinkback and rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that wehave polled to-day, and our enemies will laugh us to scorn! Itrests with you to take your resolution--now, in the flush ofvictory, to find these men who have voted for us, and bring themto our meetings, and organize them and bind them to us! We shallnot find all our campaigns as easy as this one. Everywhere inthe country tonight the old party politicians are studying thisvote, and setting their sails by it; and nowhere will they bequicker or more cunning than here in our own city. Fiftythousand Socialist votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownershipDemocracy in the spring! And then they will fool the voters oncemore, and all the powers of plunder and corruption will be sweptinto office again! But whatever they may do when they get in,there is one thing they will not do, and that will be the thingfor which they were elected! They will not give the people ofour city municipal ownership--they will not mean to do it, theywill not try to do it; all that they will do is give our party inChicago the greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialismin America! We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified andself-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy left withouta lie with which to cover its nakedness! And then will begin therush that will never be checked, the tide that will never turntill it has reached its flood--that will be irresistible,overwhelming--the rallying of the outraged workingmen of Chicagoto our standard! And we shall organize them, we shall drillthem, we shall marshal them for the victory! We shall bear downthe opposition, we shall sweep if before us--and Chicago will beours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!"