r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 V
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 A Comedy Drama 
 
 BY 
 
 W. B. RUBIN 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Toiler in Europe," "Billy Justin Series, 
 "Capture the Courts," etc. 
 
 THE CORNHILL COMPANY 
 BOSTON
 
 Copyright 1921 by 
 
 THE CORNHILL COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 A Comedy Drama 
 BY 
 
 W. B. RUBIN 
 
 Four Acts Three Settings 
 
 THE MESSAGE: 
 
 Americans, take heed. Bolshevism is at our door and 
 threatens us with its plague. It is in the mansion as well 
 as the gutter. 
 
 "And therefore think him as a Serpent s egg, 
 
 Which, hatch d, would as his kind grow mischievous ; 
 
 And kill him in the shell." 
 
 Live love and patriotism, that we may hand down to our 
 posterity the blessings of a free America.
 
 ACT I. 
 
 SCENE A reception room at the Fulsom residence. 
 TIME Afternoon. 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 SCENE An office in the business establishment of Mr. 
 Fulsom. 
 
 TIME Six weeks later. 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 SCENE A typical radical reading room on lower east side, 
 New York City. 
 
 TIME Four months later. 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 SCENE Same as Act I. 
 TIME The next morning.
 
 CAST OF CHARACTERS 
 
 WILLIAM C. JUSTIN a plumber. Saw service in Europe. 
 
 Spokesman of the Labor Committee and a Comrade 
 
 in the New Republic. 
 WILSON the butler. 
 JEANNETTE the maid. 
 MARY McGiNNis the cook. 
 ROBERT FULSOM of Fulsom & Company, wholesale 
 
 plumbers supplies, who made millions in the war. 
 AMY FULSOM his daughter with a democratic vision. 
 MRS. MILDRED FISHER a divorcee. Later, MRS. FULSOM. 
 HAROLD KINGSTON a rich New York idler. 
 MR. LAMB "| 
 
 MR. WORDSWORTH ^ , 
 
 ,. , \- Committee or Employers 
 
 MR. JOHNSTON 
 
 MR. COMPTON J 
 
 DONALD MCDONALD ^) 
 
 Louis MENDEL ~ .^ , ^ 
 
 V Committee of Employees. 
 HENRICO GALLICI 
 
 ALEXANDER SCHMIDT J 
 ANNY SAMPSON Secretary of the 
 
 New Republic. 
 
 ANNE LA BUY 
 
 STANISLAUS BABINSKI 
 YVAN BOLZEKOFF 
 ARTHUR MANKIN 
 SOPHIE MORGAN 
 NELS NELSON 
 EMMA GOLD 
 
 Comrades in 
 
 the 
 NewRepublic
 
 CAST OF CHARACTERS (Continued) 
 
 DR. CHARLES REED physician and author. Recently re 
 turned from a four year Red Cross Service in Russia, 
 with first hand information on Bolshevism. 
 
 DETECTIVE 
 
 SHORTHAND REPORTER 
 
 OFFICE BOY 
 
 POLICE SERGEANT O FLARITY 
 
 DETECTIVES, POLICEMEN, and "COMRADES."
 
 ACT I
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Scene : Reception room at the Fulsom home, drawing 
 room to the right where men and women are playing 
 whist.. 
 
 (As the curtain goes up, the door bell rings.) 
 
 MAID: (Addressing the butler.) I hope it is the plumber 
 man. 
 
 BUTLER: If it hain t, me for a life preserver. 
 
 MAID : You don t need any, you can float. 
 
 BUTLER : Ow habout you, pretty Miss ? 
 
 MAID : I should worry, I am an ensign in the Swiss navy. 
 (Butler leaves and comes back and announces the 
 presence of Mrs. Fisher and Mr. Kingston. Butler 
 and maid retire. Amy Fulsom enters.) 
 
 MRS. FISHER: I must apologize, Amy, for being rather 
 late so unusual of me, don t you know, but 
 
 KINGSTON : I really must apologize too. 
 
 AMY : No excuses. You are late and that is all. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: My machine was halted because some work- 
 fellow or somebody like that was struck down by an 
 automobile while crossing the road. 
 
 KINGSTON : Yes, it was a horrid sight. It was deucedly 
 awful. 
 
 AMY : Isn t that too bad. Poor soul ! How unfortunate.
 
 4 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Yes, it took my time. You know how those 
 traffic policemen are. They would not let traffic pass 
 until they had gotten the names of witnesses and gone 
 into full details of the accident. I suppose the fellow 
 left a widow and a brood of children. These work- 
 fellows never leave anything but a lot of children. 
 
 KINGSTON : Very clever, very clever. Never thought of 
 that. Leave nothing but children. 
 
 AMY : I will forgive you both this time. Besides, Mildred, 
 you have some excuse. Did you find out what hospital 
 they took him to? But what about you, Harold, what 
 detained you? 
 
 KINGSTON : Well, you see I was waiting for my valet. It 
 was his part afternoon off. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: Harold, your excuse seems valid but mine 
 is beastly luck, spoiling my whole day. This morning 
 at my nasty lawyer s, trying to hurry my divorce. These 
 lawyers ! if you lie, they want you to tell the truth, and 
 if you tell the truth, they want you to lie. Evidence! 
 Evidence! I am all nervous and exhausted. Anyway, 
 your father is more impatient about it than I. (She 
 applies her kerchief to her eyes, affecting tears.} How 
 do I look? 
 
 AMY: Now, Mildred, you are all right. You look sweet. 
 Besides, Father telephoned that he will be late himself. 
 He may not be here for another half hour. 
 
 MRS. FISHER : There again. Always business, business. These 
 busy men don t seem to understand that our pleasure 
 is as much their business as the making of contracts, 
 and that keeping appointments with us requires just 
 as much punctuality as those of business. 
 
 AMY: Do you know who is here, Mildred? 
 
 MRS. FISHER: No, why should I? Who is it?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 5 
 
 AMY: Why, Doctor Reed. He is just back from Russia 
 and tells the most interesting things. I love to hear 
 him talk. Do come in. 
 
 (Exit Mrs. Fisher, Kingston, and Amy into the card 
 room. The maid and butler enter the reception room.) 
 
 COOK S VOICE: (From kitchen) I shure will be drowned 
 here unless that divil of a plumber gits here pretty 
 soon. It is a bathen suit I will be afther havin pretty 
 soon if that plumber don t come. 
 
 MAID: (To butler) Wilson, do telephone the shop once 
 more and see why the plumber doesn t come. 
 
 BUTLER : Hi presume he is ambulating. Ow these plumbers 
 can ambulate. I really believe the original tortoise was 
 a plumber. 
 
 (Door bell rings. Butler answers the door and is de 
 tained. Maid (business.) (Chattering in the card 
 room.) 
 
 BUTLER: (Returning and addressing the maid) What do 
 you know about hit? Ere is the plumber man and is 
 elper with their dirty clothes and tools, and Hi basked 
 them hif they didn t know what the kitchen door was 
 for and the plumberman, a sharp tongued fellow, said 
 hit was for butlers and not for plumbers. The hidea. 
 I won t let them in. 
 
 MAID : If you don t, we re drowned. (She hastily opens the 
 door to the card room.) Miss Fulsom, may I see you 
 a moment? (Enter Amy.) 
 
 AMY: What seems to be the matter? 
 
 BUTLER: There are two fellows with their dirty clothes 
 and tools who insist upon entering by the front door. 
 Hi told im that the front door was only for ladies and 
 gentlemen, and E said that is the reason they came 
 that way. The hidea, the hidea.
 
 6 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 COOK: (Voice from kitchen.) For the love of Moike, I will 
 be afther hirin a boat pretty soon if that divil of a 
 plumber don t come and sthop the wather. 
 
 AMY: Wilson, let them in. 
 
 (Butler leaves and enters with William Justin and 
 Donald McDonald. McDonald is overcome with awe 
 and looks about ^vhile William Justin trains himself 
 to be natural amid the luxurious surroundings.} 
 
 MCDONALD: Ah ah 
 
 JUSTIN: (To McDonald) Never mind, Sandy. (To Amy.) 
 I beg your pardon, lady. Are you the mistress of this 
 house? 
 
 AMY: (Impatiently.) I am. 
 
 MCDONALD: Ah ah 
 
 JUSTIN : Sandy, chase the pew-angel. Let him show you 
 what needs repairing. (Exit McDonald following the 
 butler.) 
 
 AMY : Why did you not enter by way of the rear door when 
 the butler asked you to? (Exit maid) 
 
 JUSTIN: Madam, I beg your pardon, but when one sends 
 for a physician, or minister, he enters by the front 
 door. Why? Because each one of these gentlemen 
 is a member of a profession. So am I. I too have a 
 profession. I am not begging for work. You asked 
 me or rather my employer to send me here to do a 
 piece of work for you, so I come. 
 
 AMY : But that is different. You don t seem to understand ; 
 the physician and the minister are gentlemen of edu 
 cation, of high profession. Yours is a trade. 
 
 JUSTIN : A doctor may merely practice a trade, likewise a 
 minister. But some doctors and ministers turn their 
 trades into professions. Not the vocation itself but 
 society determines what is a trade or profession. I
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 7 
 
 am a producer. To the producer not only belongs 
 the right to yes, the front door itself. But be that 
 as it may, do you observe what I am wearing? 
 
 AMY : Yes, of course, the overcoat of a soldier. 
 
 JUSTIN : With that uniform, you should not expect me to 
 enter by any other way. 
 
 AMY : Why, of course not. You must excuse me. I really 
 did not mean it in that way but in war, things were 
 different. We were all different in war. 
 
 JUSTIN : That is just it. We were not different. We were 
 and are the same but some pretended to be different. I 
 take it that you and your friends and acquaintances 
 did a lot of Red Cross work and entertained in a 
 social way the sailors and soldiers. 
 
 AMY : Why, of course. W T e felt it our duty. I know I 
 was proud to do my duty, my full duty, although in my 
 set, we entertained only officers. 
 
 JUSTIN : That is it. You entertained us to urge us on, to 
 make us feel that we were becoming one people with 
 one thought, a new kind of democracy, all Ameri 
 cans for America, the rich and the poor together, each 
 for the other, for America. We went away with 
 ocean waves of handkerchiefs, to thrilling music. The 
 newspapers wrote columns and we fought. Good 
 God! Well, some of us came back amid a noisy recep 
 tion but after that, to the street, with the freedom to 
 hunt for a job. Heroes, the common fate of heroes. 
 
 AMY : I am sorry I affected you that way. I am sure I did 
 not mean to be impolite to you. I did my bit in this 
 war, too. I did all that I could do and all that I was 
 asked to do. I am sorry but how could that be helped ? 
 The stream of life covets no favorites. You are not 
 one of those men who believe that everything should 
 be divided up, I hope.
 
 8 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 JUSTIN : I am worse than that. Poverty drove me from 
 school when a mere lad to take up my profession, my 
 trade. I was taught to look up to success. I believed 
 that doctrine, I worshipped at its shrine. I started to 
 climb, content with all risks and I did climb. Then 
 the war came. I sacrificed all and volunteered. 
 
 AMY : Yes, that was every man s duty. 
 
 JUSTIN : But how about the men who have stayed behind 
 and profiteered ? Have they done their duty too ? A Mr. 
 Fulsom from whom I used to purchase my supplies 
 made millions on the rising war market and 
 
 AMY : Sir ! Mr. Fulsom is my father. 
 
 JUSTIN : I did not know. However, what is true of your 
 father, is true of many, many men in business. Does 
 it seem to you to be fair that they who went to war 
 should be the losers, while they who stayed behind 
 are gainers? 
 
 AMY: No, it is not -exactly right, but you seem so strangely 
 embittered. Surely you bear no one hatred. There 
 must be a reason which perhaps I fail to grasp. I 
 wish 1 understood you. I have never heard any other 
 soldier talk that way. 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, and had you entertained me, condescendingly, 
 dutifully, and patriotically as hundreds of other girls 
 of your station entertained the soldiers before their 
 departure, you would have found me just like the rest 
 of them. But the change came not over there but over 
 here. I listened to talks and lectures. I saw and now, 
 having fought for democracy, I want if. 
 
 AMY : Is it possible that you have humiliated the unif orm 
 that you have worn, compromised the soldier s over 
 coat that you are wearing, by attending meetings where 
 Bolshevism is preached?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 9 
 
 (Sandy McDonald sticks his head in and stutters) 
 
 SANDY : Ah ah. H B Billy c come 
 
 JUSTIN: Excuse me, Miss. (Walks away.) 
 
 AMY: (Haughtily.) You may be excused. 
 
 (Exit Justin. Amy is excited and perturbed over the 
 conversation just engaged in and is seised with a feel 
 ing of fear that Justin is a dangerous character. She 
 opens the door to the card room.) 
 
 AMY : Oh, Dr. Reed. Won t you come here for a second ? 
 (Enter Dr. Reed.) 
 
 DR. REED : What is it, Amy ? 
 
 AMY : Dr. Reed, do you know there is a Bolshevist in our 
 house? 
 
 DR. REED : Who is that ? Where is he ? 
 
 AMY : Working upon the drains. 
 
 DR. REDD: Urn hum. That is interesting. 
 
 AMY: He speaks in strange, unreasonable terms. Really, 
 Doctor, I am a little alarmed. 
 
 DR. REED: I am interested and should like very much to 
 meet him. 
 
 AMY: You will if he returns as he came. He is a soldier, 
 with a feeling of class resentment. If that is our 
 soldiers thought, it forebodes something that is not for 
 rest and peace. 
 
 DR. REED: (Taking Amy by the hand. They are seated.) 
 Amy, do you realize that soul is the source of thought? 
 So, what we think, we feel, and what we feel, we think. 
 You know there are many who believe that thought is 
 separate from matter. 
 
 AMY : I don t quite understand you, Doctor. 
 
 DR. REED : But you will understand me for I am leading up 
 to the consideration of this young man. He feels 
 what he has been thinking, and has been thinking what
 
 10 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 he feels, and it is far better that he speak his thoughts 
 than to keep them to himself. You prick your finger. 
 Later you feel a throbbing pain. That tells you 
 just as the sun tells that it is day that there is germ 
 infection. The way for relief is to open the wound 
 and drain the infection. If it is not too deep, the wound 
 will soon heal. If not controlled, it may travel so 
 rapidly as to cause death. So this soldier of ours, this 
 one time patriot, has become infected with the genii 
 of injustice and his soul is throbbing with it. Let him 
 speak it out, it is his constitutional medicine, and by 
 so doing, he may yet cure himself. 
 
 AMY : Doctor, perhaps my view point has been a little nar 
 row and somewhat intolerant. 
 DR. REED : The passport to wisdom. 
 AMY: Then there is a cure for all of us? 
 DR. REED: Yes, for every sane patient. I have seen this 
 plague in Russia and observed perfectly normal men, 
 with normal wants and desires, driven by the hunger 
 for bread or with desire for the hasty re-adjustment 
 of things, and some maddened with the memory of 
 those they lost, until today Russia is chaos. Infection 
 is no respecter of rank, society, or government. It 
 carries the human body to the door of death. So does 
 it carry the government to the door of anarchy. Like 
 all isms, it is cradled in the far back tradition of ideal 
 ism. 
 
 AMY: Could idealism foster such a monster? 
 DR. REED: It is not the fault of the thought as much as of 
 the men, the times and the circumstances that offered 
 it opportunity for its immediate power. The word 
 itself means majority the majority of the radical 
 wing of the socialist or the left movement in Russia.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 11 
 
 Under the tyranny of the Czar, they were idealists. In 
 possession of power, they become the worst of tyrants, 
 an idealism gone wild. 
 
 AMY : Is there no hope, no redemption ? 
 
 DR. REED: There is always a hope for the reclaiming of a 
 lost soul. 
 
 AMY: But miracles are not of this age. 
 
 DR. REED : This is an age of reason. Bolshevism once stood 
 for evolution, the slow natural trend toward progress, 
 but it has become a revolution toward the great evolu 
 tion instead of the evolution toward the great revolu 
 tion. So you see, my dear, a bad case of infection. 
 But here in America, it is the first touch of a fresh 
 scratch and our young soldier friend has the taint. 
 
 AMY : I want to hear more of this but I fear it is impolite 
 to leave our company for so long. 
 (Enter Justin.} 
 
 JUSTIN : Well, the job is done. 
 
 DR. REED: (To Amy} Amy. 
 
 AMY: I beg your pardon. Your name please? 
 
 JUSTIN : Justin. 
 
 AMY: (Extending her hand.} I am pleased to know you. 
 Dr. Reed, Mr. Justin. 
 
 DR. REED : How do you do, Mr. Justin. (They shake hands.) 
 
 JUSTIN : Doctor, I am glad to meet you. I have been read 
 ing a Doctor Reed s book on Russia. 
 
 DR. REED : I am the man. I understand you have seen duty 
 overseas. 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, for nearly fourteen months. 
 
 DR. REED : And I take it you were in action ? 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, Doctor. I saw some action in the Argonne 
 Forest, and at one sector of Verdun, and had a peep 
 at it in Italy.
 
 12 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 DR. REED : Have you been wounded ? 
 
 JUSTIN: Yes, peppered a little twice, besides tasting their 
 mustard. 
 
 DR. REED: Did you leave this country as a sergeant? 
 
 JUSTIN : I got my chevrons over there for a bit of good 
 luck at Argonne but that don t do a fellow much good 
 now, medals, rewards, and bravery. 
 
 DR. REED: Miss Fulsom infers that you are a student of 
 politics. 
 
 JUSTIN: No, but I am of economics, the mother field of 
 politics. 
 
 DR. REED : Please don t think me inquisitive, but may I ask, 
 are your views pronounced? By the way, why not be 
 seated ? 
 (Justin takes a seat. All are seated.} 
 
 AMY : How thoughtless of me not to have asked you before. 
 
 JUSTIN: Why, of course. I have nothing to conceal. I 
 am with no party. I disbelieve in all political parties, 
 which are either capitalistic or profess proletarianism 
 under the guise of capitalistic methods. I am for direct 
 action. The government is in need of complete re 
 generation. 
 
 DR. REED : Then shall we have here chaos like that of 
 Europe? Shall we have Spartacus rebellions, Soviet 
 revolutions, with their daily slaughter of the innocent 
 and helpless? Shall we have their graft, debauchery, 
 and bloodshed? Shall we just have a storm center, and 
 after the storm, what? 
 
 JUSTIN: Doctor, but what before the storm? Hungry men 
 may fear the law but they are no respecters of it. 
 
 DR. REED : Quite right, Mr. Justin, but do you stop to think 
 that when you are hungry, you cannot satiate your 
 hunger by preaching against a condition that brings
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 13 
 
 about hunger? The first natural and rational impulse 
 is to feed yourself and provide against a condition 
 where hunger shall not make itself known. An insane 
 man, though hungry, may refuse to eat. A rational 
 man, never. 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, that is right, Doctor, but when a babe is hun 
 gry, it cries out. It recognizes the presence of no 
 guests, no hour of the night, or the occasion of no 
 event. The babe makes its hunger known by its cries, 
 and shall we, just because we are grown-ups, not cry 
 out? So, I am crying out against a damnable condition 
 that has brought about in me a hunger for justice or 
 rather a resentment against injustice. 
 
 DR. REED: You are quite right, quite right, Mr. Justin. I 
 quite agree with you. Perhaps I agree more than you 
 think for I have lived in it for four years. I have 
 seen all the horrors of the old injustice, and all those 
 of the new justice. I have seen men beheaded, exe 
 cuted, because they were deemed arch-tyrants of a past 
 tyrannical government, and have seen the very men 
 who fought against that tyranny, who beheaded the 
 tyrants in the name of justice, become more tyrannical, 
 more oppressive, than the tyrants of the old regime. I 
 say these things because men thinking in terms of 
 hunger may become beasts. Power is the first lust of 
 life and beasts have nothing but lust. When we find 
 that in man, it expresses itself in destruction, in the 
 taking of life, with nothing gained or accomplished. 
 
 AMY : Doctor, I am so glad you are here for you are able 
 to answer Mr. Justin. 
 
 DR. REED: (Patting Amy on the hand.} But you should be 
 able to answer for yourself. You see there is a good 
 deal in what this young man says. We are suffering
 
 14 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 from injustice as I have already said, and we feel the 
 first scratch in this country. Mr. Justin is right, the 
 spirit of unrest is here. There is a growing restless 
 ness against this injustice social and industrial, and it 
 must be remedied, but it will not be remedied by class 
 hatred, by their drifting apart. I should say that 
 Bolshevists are the extremists, which includes many 
 of our rich. You, Amy, with your society are Bol 
 shevists. 
 
 AMY: Really, Doctor, how 
 
 DR. REED: In that you think only in terms of yourself and 
 your society and stand ready to destroy any inter 
 ference incompatible with your society. Yet you are 
 intolerant against every other order of society. The 
 lady in the next block whose husband chanced to pick 
 up a fortune because of the war, knocks at the door of 
 your social set. You refuse her because she is a new 
 comer, a parvenu. She becomes a radical against your 
 order of society, hungering for a social recognition 
 which she thinks your society is capable of giving her. 
 If she cannot possess it, she at least will try to destroy 
 it a natural human impulse and if it were possible 
 to have a social rank higher than yourself, you likewise 
 would be radical toward that set. The spirit of in 
 justice runs through all strata of life. It is, in fact, 
 discontent. In a way, it is the soul of life for it is 
 the meat upon which ambition feeds. Those below 
 desire to go up. Those at the very height desire to 
 keep others from reaching their height. So you are 
 both extremists and as we now understand it, neither 
 builds nor constructs. 
 AMY: Doctor, what is your program?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 15 
 
 DR. REED : The only remedy disinfect the scratch with 
 the dioxygen of common and mutual understanding and 
 love. 
 
 JUSTIN : You are quite right, Doctor. We must have under 
 standing. People must know each other and to know 
 each other, they must understand each other s lives. 
 
 AMY: But how is it possible to understand the lives of all 
 people ? 
 
 DR. REED: There unconsciously, Mr. Justin, you have hit 
 the nail on the head and Amy, you too have opened the 
 way to what represents a possible solution. Gorky, 
 who always spoke as a hungry man to the hungry, in 
 one of his short stories, says : "Multitudes of them 
 crowded together, elbowing each other while there is 
 so much room on earth. Is a man really born for 
 nothing else but to pick the ground and t^die not even 
 having picked a grave for himself? DOTT^S^ know 
 what freedom is? Does he understand the vasffca^of 
 the steppe? Does the murmur of the wave gladdeh^ls 
 heart ? No ! He is a slave, in slavery born, and a 
 slave he remains all his life." "How is it possible not 
 to believe a man?" Konovalov, the baker and vagrant, 
 remarks after hearing an obviously untrue story. "Even 
 if you see he is lying, believe him, that is to say, listen 
 and try to understand why he is lying. A lie sometimes 
 explains a man much better than the truth. And in 
 general, what truth can we tell about ourselves? The 
 meanest one. Whereas a lie is always pleasant." 
 
 AMY : I do not quite see the application. 
 
 DR. REED : A man on the hill-top seldom understands or 
 sees the one down below in the valley, and he in the 
 valley seldom understands or sees him on the hilltop. 
 You, Amy, cannot understand the hungry soul made
 
 16 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 hungrier by a hungry stomach, of the little girl strug 
 gling in the sweat-shop, and the girl in the sweat-shop 
 is unable to understand you. You are both far apart. 
 There must come an understanding and in order to 
 have that understanding, we must not only read of our 
 neighbors and lie about ourselves, but we must in part 
 experience theirs and fearlessly tell the unpleasant 
 truths about ourselves. The flower of love can only 
 blossom in the fields of common understanding. Mr. 
 Justin is quite right. There is social injustice. And 
 before we can criticise it correctly, we must not only 
 see and understand the social environs of the toiler, 
 but we must understand our own social environs. 
 
 AMY : Doctor, I am still waiting for the remedy. 
 
 DR. REED : That is very simple. I will prescribe the medi 
 cine for both. (Taking tiuo theatre tickets from his 
 pocket.} Mr. Justin, here are two seats for the opera 
 tomorrow evening Caruso in Aida at the Metro 
 politan. Take with you whom you please. 
 
 JUSTIN: I thank you, Doctor, but what has that to do with 
 social injustice? You know I do not believe in patent 
 medicines. 
 
 DR. REED: Oh, I did not think you believed me a quack. 
 (He waved his hand to silence Justin ivho wanted to 
 speak}. You are like all extremists, impatient. Life 
 was not born of impatience. Your doctrine seeks to 
 disrupt life and expresses itself in terms of impatience. 
 All infection is impatient to spread out. I just want 
 you to hear the opera and see the audience and take 
 with you a pair of tolerant glasses. I hope we shall 
 meet again. 
 
 AMY : That is right, Doctor, if Mr. Justin goes there and 
 sees society, that will cure him of his unfortunate
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 17 
 
 radicalism and perhaps his glorious patriotism will come 
 back to him. I cannot help it for as the soldier man, 
 I admire Mr. Justin, but but as the radical man, 
 I fear him, perhaps I dislike him. 
 
 JUSTIN : No. 
 
 DR. REED: (laughingly} Let me speak first. I think you 
 are wrong, Amy. The opera will not fire him with the 
 kind of emotion that you think it will unless he should 
 by chance acquire rapidly a large amount of wealth 
 which would make him think in terms of vested rights 
 and interests. (Laughs} I want him to go there for 
 the broader vision and still greater understanding he 
 will gain of the upper strata which he hates so much. 
 If he is to hate, let him do so with his eyes wide open. 
 Now, Amy, for your part, if he keeps his promise and 
 attends the opera, some evening you and I will attend 
 his reading club and meet some of his comrades and 
 listen to their dissertation upon Marx, LaSalle, and all 
 the others. Oh, yes, you may get there a fine disser 
 tation upon Ruskin, Shaw, or Wells. Am I not right? 
 By the way, what is the name of your club? 
 
 JUSTIN : United Social Workers Propaganda Circle of 
 International Justice. 
 
 DR. REED: (To Amy} What an appropriate name! 
 
 AMY: But, Doctor, how can I go there? Whom shall we 
 meet there? 
 
 DR. REED: Never mind, Amy. I shall escort you. Is it 
 a bargain, Mr. Justin? 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes. 
 
 DR. REED : Amy, is it a bargain ? 
 
 AMY: Yes. 
 
 DR. REED : Then you each solemnly promise to visit 
 the social environs of the other?
 
 18 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 (The door bell rings and Mr. Fulsom enters. He kisses 
 Amy, shakes hands with the doctor, and apologizes for 
 being late. Just then Mrs. Fisher enters.) 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Why, hello Bobby. You are, indeed, very 
 late, naughty, naughty boy. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : I was detained. (Affectionately clasping 
 her hand.) 
 
 DR. REED: Excuse me, Mr. Fulsom. I want you to meet 
 Mr. Justin, the plumber who has just made some re 
 pairs. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: A plumber? 
 
 MR. FULSOM : How do you do. I am glad to meet you. 
 
 (Justin extends his hand and Mr. Fulsom gives him a 
 very cold handshake.) 
 
 DR. REED : Mrs. Fisher, I want to introduce Mr. Justin to 
 you. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: How do you do. 
 
 JUSTIN: (Bowing politely.) I am glad to meet you. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: (Sarcastically) Mr. Justin, you are going 
 to take a hand at whist? 
 
 JUSTIN : No, thank you. I don t waste my time at cards. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: What do you waste your time at? 
 
 JUSTIN : I don t waste my time. I do a lot of reading in 
 my spare hours. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Mr. Justin, I hope you are not an agitator. 
 
 DR. REED: Let me answer for Mr. Justin. He is quite an 
 agitator. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: How shocking; Come on, Robert. Play a 
 hand or two with us. I hope that the doctor has not 
 brought Russian Bolshevism with him to this country, 
 and that he will not taint Amy with his ideas. How 
 horrid.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 19 
 
 (Commotion and Donald McDonald runs in, the cook 
 after him. Also the butler and the maid enter.) 
 
 COOK : Shure and I am goin to quit. Its me leave I am 
 takin. 
 
 AMY: What is the matter? 
 
 COOK : Shure, and I was tryin to encourage this red-headed 
 stuttering Scot, tellin him what a good plumber he was 
 so he would hasten the job and like all them divils of 
 men, he mishtook me compliment for an invitation, and 
 kissed me without even an introducshun. 
 
 DR. REED : He evidently believes in direct action. He, too, 
 is a regular Bolsheviki. Ha ! Ha ! and takes things 
 without even giving anything in return. 
 
 COOK: Bolsheviki, is he? He is not even a respicfc^He Sinn 
 Feiner. 
 (Enter Harold Kingston.) ^tf, 
 
 KINGSTON : My, how horrid. I say, is this a kitchen party? .f 
 (Curtain goes down.) 
 
 (Curtain rises. Mr. Fulsom, Amy, Mrs. Fisher, and 
 Dr. Reed on the stage remonstrating with one another.) 
 
 (CURTAIN.)
 
 ACT II
 
 ACT II 
 
 Scene : Private office of Mr. Fulsom. A big mob in 
 the street is held in order by the police. Amy comes in 
 excitedly and nervously takes the telephone. 
 
 AMY: Give me operator. Operator, Plaza 9150. 
 
 (Enter Mrs. Fisher and Harold Kingston. Amy sees 
 them and hangs up the receiver.) 
 
 AMY: I was just trying to get your home, Mildred. I can 
 not go to the matinee this afternoon. 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Goodness, gracious, me. What is the matter ? 
 Harold is to take us both to luncheon and then to the 
 matinee. I rang up your home and was told that you 
 were here and so we 
 
 KINGTON : Yes, and we had a deuced time getting here. 
 What s all the mob about? It took five minutes for 
 the policemen to clear the crowd so that our motor 
 could stop in front of the office The police are actual 
 ly guarding it. 
 
 AMY : Don t you read the papers ? There is a general strike 
 today. Really, Mildred, I cannot go. Sorry, but I am 
 going to stay right here. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: If you are expecting trouble, we had better 
 get away from here. Why be around when there is 
 anything nasty going on, I say 
 
 KINGSTON: That is what I say. Why be bothered? Come, 
 Amy, have luncheon with us. (Looks at her attentive- 
 
 ly.} 
 
 AMY : No, I cannot, I cannot. You both go, but excuse me. 
 I want to be here.
 
 24 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Well, I guess we had better go, Harold. There 
 is no use spoiling another perfectly good day. (Turn 
 ing to Amy.} I hope you are not trying to take part in 
 the settlement of this strike. That s a job for the 
 police. 
 
 AMY: (With a smile) That used to be the way. 
 
 MRS. FISHER: Ever since that plumber man was at the 
 house and the opera, there is something mysterious. 
 That exchange of greetings at the opera ! How plebeian 
 of you ! Harold never got such a greeting from you, 
 did you, Harold? 
 
 KINGSTON: I wish I could. (Looking at Amy, but Amy is 
 looking away) 
 
 MRS. FISHER : And of late you go out constantly with that 
 Dr. Reed to lectures and slumming, or as your father 
 says you call it, constructive work. You are not your 
 self. Your dressmaker is in tears. What constructive 
 work is there for a woman except her face and figure ? 
 
 KINGSTON : Very clever. Very clever. 
 
 AMY: Maybe so. Maybe so, but please 
 
 (A knock at the door. Office boy enters, announcing 
 Mr. Justin.) 
 
 AMY: Let him in. (Exit office boy.) 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Harold, we had better be going. 
 
 KINGSTON : The brass of that plumber man. 
 
 (Justin enters. He bows to Mrs. Fisher and Mr. King 
 ston.) 
 
 JUSTIN : How do you do, Miss 
 
 AMY: (Restraining herself for the moment.) How do you 
 do, Mr. Justin. 
 
 MRS. FISHER : Well, good-bye, Amy. We ll see you soon. 
 
 KINGSTON : Yes, good-bye, Amy. We ll see you soon. 
 
 AMY : Good-bye.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 ., v *k. 
 (Exit Mrs. Fisher and Mr. Kingston, both ignoring 
 
 Mr. Justin. Amy extends her hand affectionately to 
 Justin. Justin straightens himself and gives Amy his 
 hand but with a troubled look on his face.) 
 
 JUSTIN : So it is you who wanted to see me. 
 
 AMY: William, yes, I must see you. 
 
 JUSTIN : The voice at the phone claimed to be Mr. Fulsom s 
 secretary. She said that Mr. Fulsom wanted to see me 
 alone half an hour before the time set for the meeting 
 and to come ahead, without my committee. 
 
 AMY : Yes, I know. I sent that message. I wanted to see 
 you. 
 
 JUSTIN: But do you realize what you have done? 
 
 AMY: No, what? 
 
 JUSTIN : You have compromised me. 
 
 AMY: How? 
 
 (Justin looks sternly at her. He turns and raises the 
 window. The crowd shouts, "Hurrah for Billy 
 Justin." "We zvant a living wage. Three cheers for 
 Billy. Who s all right? Justin." He closes the win 
 dow.) 
 
 JUSTIN : That crowd has faith in me. The committee be 
 lieves in me. When that message came, the first thought 
 was that perhaps Mr. Fulsom was trying to strike a 
 secret bargain with me, to play unfair to sell out the 
 unfortunates for whom I am fighting. 
 
 AMY: No, Father would not do that. 
 
 JUSTIN : Don t say that. In business, as in war, all is fair. 
 
 AMY : But I am sorry for I sent for you. Father knows 
 nothing of it. 
 
 JUSTIN : So I immediately summoned my committee and 
 told them of the message, that I would not come alone, 
 that it was some trap, some scheme, but the committee
 
 26 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 decided against my protest, and said that it would come 
 with me and remain below in order that the crowd 
 would not suspect me for entering alone. And I am 
 here. 
 
 AMY : But surely you would not be afraid to come and 
 meet Father alone? 
 
 JUSTIN : Under normal circumstances, no. Under these 
 terrible conditions, yes. Crowds are suspicious bodies. 
 They are swayed this way and that. They beat against 
 one shore, then against the other. 
 
 AMY: But, William, I sent for you because I feared some 
 harm would come to you. 
 
 JUSTIN: Harm, what harm? I fear no harm. 
 
 AMY : I know, Will, but I feel that something will happen ; 
 that the employers association will not stand for your 
 demands. They say you are the brains of this move 
 ment. That with you out of the way, it would collapse. 
 
 JUSTIN : I appreciate the compliment but in our ranks, there 
 are multitudes of others to take my place. 
 
 AMY: They don t think so. I don t want to see the men 
 lose. I know their grievances are many. I have come 
 to understand better and I believe in some of the things 
 you are trying to do. But they have planned to arrest 
 you, to get you out of the way, and I don t want any 
 harm to come to you. 
 
 JUSTIN: (Looking at her.) I am certainly most grateful. It 
 was very thoughtful, but I am here to stand my 
 ground. I must. 
 
 AMY : No, Will, you must not. I have planned it all out. I 
 mean it for the best. Go. Go. It s only for a little 
 while till it blows over. I ll help you. (Takes out a 
 roll of money.) See it is my own. 
 
 JUSTIN : You offer me money. I suppose it is marked, too.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 AMY: Why, Will, you don t believe You don t think. 
 
 JUSTIN : By God, I do. Go away and desert these poor 
 unfortunates! I I was beginning to think that you, 
 though born and reared in riches, had understanding, 
 soul, sympathy. That under the guidance of Dr. Reed, 
 you were fast learning. And I too, the understanding 
 of a higher womanhood. I had begun to regard you 
 as the ministering angel, to lead and help, loved by 
 everybody, yes, everybody. So it is a money bargain? 
 A pretty little trap you have prepared. A fine leader 
 you would make of me. 
 
 AMY: Will, Will, you don t know what you are talking 
 about. 
 
 JUSTIN : Perhaps not. But you would make of me the 
 most dispicable name in all history was Judas who be 
 trayed for money. Every man, woman, and child would 
 point their fingers at me and say, "There goes the 
 man who sold us out." 
 
 AMY: Oh, William! 
 
 JUSTIN : A pretty smile and a bag of gold. The same old 
 game in the same old way. 
 
 AMY : Mr. Justin : How dare you ! Mine has only been a 
 personal interest. I wanted to spare you the humiliation 
 of arrest. 
 
 JUSTIN: Arrest! What are jails when liberty is shut in and 
 freedom denied? 
 
 AMY : Well, what can I do ? I swear that I did not mean to 
 do it, that I had no thought of compromise. (Justin 
 ponders.} But what shall we do? 
 
 JUSTIN : You and I must walk down out of the office and on 
 the street you to your automobile and I to the com 
 mittee that awaits me.
 
 28 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 AMY : Yes, Will, but promise me that you will not be reck 
 less. 
 
 JUSTIN : I promise to do my full duty, but I must tell all 
 that has happened here to the committee. 
 
 AMY: Then you compromise me? 
 
 JUSTIN : No, it is better that we speak the truth. If by the 
 truth we fall, it cannot be helped. Come. 
 (Exit Amy and Justin. Enter detective, business plac 
 ing a dictograph. Detective tries out dictograph.) 
 
 DETECTIVE: (Speaking) All right. We have come here to 
 demand our full rights. If not, a bomb shall blow up 
 the whole works. Report, read. 
 
 (Enter man with note book and reads as both walk 
 out. Enter Mr. Fulsom. Looks over mail. Telephone 
 rings. ) 
 
 MR. FULSOM: (At the phone) Hello! Oh, yes, that you, 
 Mildred? Yes. Yes. Yes. What is it? Yes. Don t 
 worry. Yes. I ll handle the situation all right. Yes. 
 Ha! Ha! So you don t want me to banquet these 
 laborites ! Ha ! Ha ! Yes. Very clever. What do 
 you deserve for that clever line? Well, what do you 
 want? Yes. Oh, well, yes. I know you are not beg 
 ging. Yes. No. No. Leave it to me. What s that? 
 Amy and that Justin man in the office! Yes. I 
 won t say you told me. I ll take care of the situation. 
 Bye-bye. 
 
 (Enter office boy with cards.) 
 MR. FULSOM: Send them in. (Exit office boy.) 
 
 (Enter committee of employers, Messrs. Lamb, Words 
 worth, Johnston and Compton.) 
 MR. LAMB : Good afternoon, Mr. Fulsom. 
 FULSOM : Good afternoon, Mr. Lamb. How are you all ? 
 (Shaking each by the hand.) Won t you be seated?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 29 
 
 (Men fake seats. Mr. Fulsom passes the cigars.} 
 
 WORDSWORTH : No, thanks. I don t smoke. 
 
 JOHNSTON: (Who is a little deaf.} My, my, what a howl 
 ing mob out there, the like of which I never heard be 
 fore. 
 
 COMPTON : (A man of large physique, rising out of his 
 seat and pounding the desk with his fist.} Well, if 
 that mob or any other mob thinks they ll make me do 
 anything against my free will, or surrender my con 
 stitutional right to do with my business and men as 
 I damn feel, I want to see it. 
 
 JOHNSTON : Yes, I want to hear it too. 
 
 FULSOM : Gentlemen, the situation is grave, very grave. 
 Industry is at a complete standstill, our investments 
 are jeopardized and the government at Washington, 
 growing more paternalistic every hour, insists that in 
 the interest of industrial peace, we avoid a repetition 
 of European upheavals and that we conciliate where- 
 ever possible and you know what that means. We pay. 
 
 LAMB : Those Washington politicians would soon have 
 us give up all our profits and fix for us a measly salary 
 for the pleasure of running the business. It s got so 
 that a wage is more respectable than a salary and those 
 labor fellows have got the government scared out of all 
 reason. 
 
 JOHNSTON: I just came from Washington and I did not 
 hear it. 
 (Enter office boy announcing the labor committee.} 
 
 FULSOM : Ask them to come in. (Exit office boy} Gentle 
 men, I think we had better be diplomatic, a little deli 
 cate about the situation, listen to their nonsense. 
 To pacify Washington, we can afford to make some
 
 30 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 minor concessions. When the actual carrying out of 
 the program is sought, that is different. I feel that the 
 government is with us and we can still rely on the 
 courts to protect our interests. 
 
 COMPTON : Courts or machine guns. I am for quick action. 
 (Enter Justin, Sandy, Mendel, Gallici, Schmidt. 
 Pause.} 
 
 JUSTIN : Mr. Fulsom, how do you do. Gentlemen, let us 
 introduce ourselves to one another and know each 
 other by our names. 
 
 FULSOM : Why, yes. This is Mr. Justin, Gentlemen. 
 
 JUSTIN: Gentlemen, my associates are McDonald, Mendel, 
 Gallici, and Schmidt. 
 
 FULSOM : Permit me to present Mr. Lamb, Mr. Words 
 worth, Mr. Johnston and Mr. Compton. 
 
 JOHNSTON: (To Sandy} I did not quite get your name. 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah 
 
 JUSTIN : Well this makes for democracy. 
 
 COMPTON : Satisfying to me if that s all you want. 
 
 (All are seated. Fulsom opens box of cigars with 
 
 union label, and passes them to labor committee.} 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah (Taking two, one of which he puts in 
 his mouth and the other in his pocket.} 
 
 JUSTIN : Very thoughtful, and the union label too. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (A typical German, speaking with a decided 
 accent.} Bah mit dem union labels. Ve is for a 
 sthronger kind of a union. Ve don t care for dem 
 fake unions. Gompers capitalistic American Federa 
 tion of Labor capitalistic unions. 
 
 JOHNSTON: Did I hear you say you don t care for unions? 
 Well, now, you are talking. You are talking. I ll hear 
 that.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 31 
 
 MENDEL: (A pronounced looking little Jew, the literary man 
 of the crowd who speaks without an accent.} You see 
 we are class conscious proletariats, recognizing no in 
 dustrial differentiation of any degree. Class distinction, 
 whether in industry or 
 
 JUSTIN : We ought not to enter into a discussion of that 
 kind just now. I am sure these gentlernAt are not as 
 yet interested. "^ 
 
 COMPTON : Do you not recognize the right to propeT0? 
 
 GALLIC: : (An Italian poet and musician, who speaks Tit&th 
 Italian accent.) No, no, de property. Property is de 
 curse of civilization. It darkens de soul, it takes away 
 de music from de song of life de poetry from natures 
 works 
 
 FULSOM : Gentlemen, let s get down to business. As chair 
 man of this meeting, may I ask that we proceed? 
 
 JOHNSTON: We see what? 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah 
 
 (Office boy enters announcing Dr. Reed.) 
 
 FULSOM : Have him come in. 
 
 (Exit office boy. Dr. Reed enters.) 
 
 DR. REED : Good afternoon, Mr. Fulsom. (Shaking his 
 hand.) Good afternoon, Mr. Justin. (Shaking hands 
 very cordially.) How do you do, gentlemen. Yes, I 
 know them all. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (Scowls at Dr. Reed s friendship for Justin.) 
 
 DR. REED: This is a fine day, gentlemen, and it surely is 
 good to see capital and labor get together. "Get to 
 gether" is the government s slogan for patriotism. 
 Misunderstanding or the want of understanding is 
 parent of most of our differences and disputes. 
 
 MENDEL: Class distinction, whether by label or brand, re 
 ligion or creed, is a species of competitive fallacy.
 
 32 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 DR. REED: (Turning to Fulsom) As chairman of this meet 
 ing, will you state its purpose? 
 
 FULSOM : Dr. Reed, since you brought about this meeting, 
 you should state its purpose. The employers are not 
 seeking it. We know of no concessions we can in 
 good conscience be asked to make. 
 
 DR. REED: The government, when it received intelligence 
 of the serious situation in our city, the suspension of 
 street cars, the closing down of business, wired me full 
 authority to act as mediator between the various fac 
 tions of employers and employees, and to bring about 
 a settlement if possible, a settlement by all means. The 
 government is very anxious, very, to avert a crisis, and 
 gentlemen, I hope you will act sensibly and get to 
 gether. Get together. It is the patriotic thing to do. 
 
 SCHMIDT: The last refuge of capitalism. 
 
 DR. REED : I shall merely sit here, hoping earnestly that you 
 will be able to come to an understanding without any 
 coercion on the part of the government. There will be 
 peace by peace, if that is possible; if not, then there 
 shall be peace by coercion. 
 
 COMPTON: Coercion! Not me. I shall stand on my con 
 stitutional guarantees. Where is your Fourteenth 
 Amendment? What s the use of celebrating the Fourth 
 of July. 
 
 DR. REED: You fail to understand that we are no longer a 
 nation for the individual, but individuals of and for 
 the nation. 
 
 MENDEL: That s a highly centralized constitutional patri 
 archy, and not an individualized unwritten moral de 
 mocracy which is the hope of our New Republic. 
 
 JUSTIN : Let s avoid any theoretical discussion.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 33 
 
 DR. REED: You are right, Mr. Justin. I am glad to hear 
 
 you say that. It is practical. Business, like every 
 
 philosophy, is a slow, tedious undertaking, more of a 
 
 trench digging than a word building affair. 
 SCHMIDT: Dat don t taste good to me. (Nudging Mendel 
 
 and pointing his finger scornfully at Dr. Reed.) 
 DR. REED : Let s get down to business. With the mob out 
 
 there, philosophy avails us naught. 
 GALLIC: : De rhythm of a surging sea of humanity. Oh, 
 
 soul inspiring! 
 
 COMPTON : Yes, and the policeman s club is 
 SCHMIDT: De police better not shtard anything like dat. De 
 
 proletariat is slow to shtard, but once he revolts 
 DR. REED : Gentleman, I presume we can begin our session 
 
 by listening to suggestions of the various committees. 
 MR. FULSOM : Our committee has no suggestions to offer. 
 DR. REED: Very well, Mr. Justin, I take it your committee 
 
 has some. 
 JUSTIN : Mr. Schmidt is secretary of our committee and he 
 
 will read them. 
 SCHMIDT: (Rising) I will say by vay of breface dat some 
 
 of de poinds ve may not press so hard providing you 
 
 grand us vat ve ask in de main. 
 COMPTON ; Don t be so sure. Concessions must come from 
 
 your side. 
 JUSTIN : Let s avoid any antagonistic spirit. After all, if 
 
 capital and labor can get together in the production, 
 
 why can t they get together in its enjoyment? 
 DR. REED : Splendid, Justin. Brilliancy sailing on a rational 
 
 sea. 
 SCHMI-DT : Ve assert fourteen poinds. First, ve vand a six 
 
 hour day. Den ve vand a minimum vage of ten dol-
 
 34 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 lars per day for men and women alike. Den ve vand 
 to choose our own foreman. 
 
 COMPTON : Stop right here. (Pounding his fist on the 
 table.) Stop right here. You might as well quit now. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat is not all ve vand de employer to be de 
 employee und de employee to be de employer und am 
 nesty for all political offenders. Ve vand de release of 
 Mooney und 
 
 JUSTIN: Excuse us, Gentlemen. (Calls committee aside) 
 That is not the program we agreed to present. (Com 
 mittee returns after heated discussion while employers 
 are seated and smiling.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Gentlemen, Justin und his secret conference 
 don t count und ve sthick to de original ideas of our 
 ideals. 
 
 JUSTIN : Gentlemen, I am sorry. 
 
 SCHMIDT: As chairman, you vill speak up for dat program 
 or 
 
 JUSTIN : Let s try to amicably adjust the strike. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vat do ve care for de strike de Revolution. 
 
 GALLICI : Yes, de dream of a soul s inspiration. 
 
 COMPTON : Oh, hell. Cut that out. How much of a raise 
 do you want? 
 
 DR. REED: (To labor group.) Gentlemen, now get down to 
 terms. Come. (To employers committee.) You 
 must make allowances, gentlemen. Be patient. The 
 government only wants what is right. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (angrily to Dr. Reed.) Dat s damned humbug. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Gentlemen, we are ready to listen again. 
 (All are seated excepting Schmidt who stands and 
 reads:) 
 
 SCHMIDT: To be sure dat all understand, let me read you 
 once more vat I read so far ve vand a six hour day,
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 35 
 
 a minimum vage of ten dollars a day, pay for men and 
 
 vomen alike in same occupations, choose our own fore 
 men, amnesty for all political offenders, und de release 
 
 of Mooney und 
 JOHNSTON: The release of money? 
 MENDEL: Yes, of money too. It shall not be horded as in 
 
 the capitalistic system for the oppression of the many 
 
 and employment of the few, but shall circulate and be 
 
 the communal property of all. 
 COMPTON: Well, I ll be damned. (Pounding his fist.) 
 
 Next I suppose you will want me to surrender my 
 
 business to you. 
 MENDEL: Why not? In the co-operative commonwealth, 
 
 there will be no such thing as private property. 
 JUSTIN : Gentlemen, we are ready to debate with you every 
 
 one of the points. 
 SCHMIDT: (To Justin) Now you show de true spirit of 
 
 de Soviet und Spartacus. 
 FULSOM : I am afraid there is nothing here for debate. 
 
 Without further conference we now and here turn down 
 
 every one of your demands in toto. 
 COMPTON : Oh, hell, with this damned nonsense. I move 
 
 we adjourn. 
 SCHMIDT: You better not adjourn. De hungry crowd vill 
 
 vand to know de results. 
 COMPTON: (Shaking his fist.) Is that a threat? Do you 
 
 think me a mollycoddle? If it is grape shot you want, 
 
 we are ready for 
 
 JUSTIN: So you are the advocate of violence? 
 COMPTON : Yes, I would shoot down every damn agitator 
 
 at sunrise. 
 
 JUSTIN : And every exploiter at sundown. 
 LAMB: I second the motion to adjourn.
 
 36 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 DR. REED: Gentlemen, gentlemen, please calm yourselves 
 and remain seated. Withdraw your motion for the 
 time being. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : I have recognized no motions. 
 
 DR. REED: Then remain? 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Yes, Doctor, we will remain out of respect 
 for you. 
 
 DR. REED: I have let you all have your say and remained 
 silent. I am afraid neither side understands nor de 
 sires to understand the other. 
 
 COMPTON : (Pounding the table with his fist.) Why, the 
 idea of our listening to their fourteen points of 
 anarchy. 
 
 JUSTIN : They merely balance your fourteen points of cap 
 italistic oppression. 
 
 DR. REED : If you have come here to fight out the merits of 
 your respective notions of society, I fear you will never 
 agree for your understanding of their fundamentals 
 are as different as the fundamentals themselves. We 
 are not here at the request of the government to 
 revolutionize. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Why not de Revolution now? 
 
 DR. REED: We are here to concilliate. The mob outside 
 represents the fever. It is always best to reduce the 
 fever before one operates. Mobs never build or ac 
 complish only destroy and devastate. Gentlemen, what 
 we want, what we need is to get together. There is no 
 doubt that the high cost of living necessitates a higher 
 wage and the inability to house and clothe and feed 
 properly by reason of it has whipped scorn into fury. 
 The dollar now has only a thirty cent purchasing 
 power. Let us, therefore agree as sensible men on a
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 37 
 
 minimum wage. That after all is the basis of con 
 ferences between labor and capital. Let s be practical. 
 MENDEL: Oh, a regular auction. How much is human 
 
 energy worth? 
 DR. REED : In holding fast to your theorems, which are not 
 
 even acceptable to the best of learned minds, Mr. 
 
 Mendel, you overlook the practical, the immediate 
 
 point. 
 MENDEL : Business is business. What we want is economic 
 
 independence of the proletariat and his political and 
 
 social Internationale. 
 DR. REED : As mediator, I shall insist that we stick to the 
 
 things for which we have met, for which alone we 
 
 should seek a practical, sane and reasonable solution 
 
 of the wage and hour problem. 
 SCHMIDT; Veil, veil, let us see vid your practibility vat you 
 
 do? 
 GALLICI : Practical how he kills de soul of de poet his 
 
 stomach. Stomach, forget de heart de stomach. 
 DR. REED : I desire to undertake to do that which I hoped 
 
 you men yourselves would do. 
 FULSOM : We are quite willing to follow you in your plans, 
 
 not saying we will accept them. 
 JUSTIN : And we are quite willing to accept them though we 
 
 may not follow them. 
 SCHMIDT: Ve accept nodings ve follow nodings only vat 
 
 is in accordance vid de universal demands of de Soviets 
 
 of de world. 
 DR. REED : To get to a practical conclusion, I am first going 
 
 to call upon the committee of employers to furnish me 
 
 with the following figures for the fiscal year ending 
 
 December 1st, last, of the total receipts from various 
 
 sources in their industry, of course. Second, the total
 
 ,38 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 salaries of officers. Third, the total wage. Fourth, 
 the total and itemized other expenses. Fifth, the 
 capital stock (a) actual (b) watered. Sixth, the 
 dividends paid. 
 
 COMPTON : You don t mean you are going to stick your 
 nose in our business? 
 
 DR. REED: The government will stick its nose into any 
 business if it finds it essential, and the government s 
 nostrils are trained to withstand any stench. 
 
 COMPTON : Do you mean the government has a right to 
 interfere in my personal affairs. Oh, hell. 
 
 DR. REED: The government does so now when it examines 
 your books to ascertain how much income tax you shall 
 pay. Surely it is inquisitorial, but it is necessary, you 
 do not deny. So the government has the same right to 
 look into your private affairs to see what wage you 
 shall pay. The government is not now and the war 
 we fought was not for profits but for humanity the 
 new conception of humanity. Men, not dividends 
 make the nation ; men, not dividends, won the war 
 for democracy, and men and not dividends shall be the 
 beneficiaries of this war. 
 
 COMPTON : These are fine sentiments, but how about prop 
 erty and business ? 
 
 DR. REED : The government does not seek to take your 
 business from you but does undertake from now on 
 that you shall not use your business oppressively. You 
 own your building, yet you may not set it on fire. You 
 have no right to use your property for the possible 
 ends of injuring other property. 
 
 COMPTON: How about life? 
 
 DR. REED: The same you cannot do with your life as you 
 will. Attempted suicide is a crime. To live a life that
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 39 
 
 shall bring physical or moral turpitude is a crime. 
 Your sins shall not be visited upon your progeny. That 
 is why the law steps in, because your life must not be 
 used to the detriment of other life. That is why we 
 have new child and other labor laws. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dey are humbugs. 
 
 DR. REED : Far from humbugs. 
 
 COMPTON : See, even they don t want them. 
 
 DR. REED: Oh yes they do. Mr. Schmidt says they are 
 humbugs because he believes the laws are inadequate, 
 that they are not properly enforced and that is true, 
 but these are mere human agencies which time and 
 patriotism will correct. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat is capitalistic, homeopathic doses. Vy dose 
 labor laws? Give us de institutions und ve vill run 
 dem und you vill vork dem und not as ve vork dem 
 und you take all de money und profits. 
 
 DR. REED: Mr. Schmidt, you and Mr. Compton are as far 
 apart as you can be both extremists in your views 
 and both present, impossible and rather anomalous 
 entities in a practical and rational age. Mr. Compton 
 is a practical money maker but he has not concerned 
 himself with the bigger problems of life. 
 
 COMPTON : Dr. Reed, I don t take to your compliment at all. 
 I understand my business. 
 
 DR. REED: Of course you do but it is the business of the 
 rest of society which we want you to understand. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Yes, und you don t understand us. 
 
 DR. REED: And as for you, Mr. Schmidt, you neither un 
 derstand your own business nor the business of any one 
 else. 
 
 SCHMIDT: I like dat. Vat do you mean? I have been a
 
 40 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 student of my business for years und years, und I am 
 a dinker und a public speaker too. 
 
 DR. REED : Well 
 
 JUSTIN : As chairman of our group, whatever else we may 
 do, let us lend our respect and courtesy to the doctor. 
 
 DR. REED : That is very fine of you, Mr. Justin, but it is all 
 right. I mean just what I say, Mr. Schmidt. You do 
 not understand your business because you never had 
 nor have you now any business. You do not under 
 stand anybody else s business because instead of devot 
 ing thought to putting one and one together, you have 
 been trying all your life, at least ever since you have 
 been meddling in other business, to figure out how to 
 separate them. 
 
 COMPTON : You are right, Dr. Reed : That is anarchy. 
 
 DR. REED: Let us avoid harsh terms. Mr. Schmidt, you 
 have a program without beginning or ending, purpose 
 or motive. You have ideas. You have placed them 
 upon wings, beyond the reach of man. Your whole 
 purpose is Sampsonlike to push apart the pillars to 
 visit vengence upon others, only in your blindness to 
 have it visited upon you. 
 
 DR. REED: You, Mr. Compton, and you, Mr. Schmidt, 
 represent the extreme of the extremes. 
 
 COMPTON : I certainly have a constitutional right to my 
 property und a natural right to my opinion. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Und ve have a natural right to all de property 
 and a constitutional right to our opinion. 
 
 DR. REED: The arrogance of private property and the ar 
 rogance of private opinion are the bane of our present 
 conditions. (To Mr. Compton.) Less than five per 
 cent of our entire population own over ninety per cent 
 of the wealth of this nation. Is not that a fact?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 41 
 
 COMPTON : But a much greater majority than ninety per 
 cent believes in and supports our right by law to such 
 concentrated private ownership. 
 
 DR. REED : Mr. Schmidt, how many comrades can you count 
 who openly and actively support your opinions for a 
 new government? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, veil, de actual dues-paying members, dat 
 is, comrades in good standing are not many, but ve 
 cound on many sympadizers. Oh, very, very many. 
 
 DR. REED : There you have it, gentlemen. It is oppression 
 from above and destruction from below, actually held 
 in the palms of a handful of people. No wonder the 
 nation is in unrest. What is needed is for the nation 
 to become a greater holder in the possessions of one 
 and a stronger filtering repository of the mental tinker- 
 ings of the other. 
 
 MENDEL : Ours is no tinkerings it is a science, mathemati 
 cally and scientifically demonstrable with a Q. E. D. 
 
 DR. REED: That is what you think but you start at the 
 wrong bottom just as private property tries to balance 
 itself at the wrong top. 
 
 COMPTON : You are not going to ask us to divide up ? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Divide up noding. In de new republic, ve take 
 it all. 
 
 DR. REED: (To Mr. Compton) The abuse of private prop 
 erty visited upon the multitudes is like that of a 
 Zeppelin bombing a non-comabtant and defenseless 
 people below. 
 
 JUSTIN : That is splendid. It is clearing up before me. 
 
 MENDEL: It is clearing up, nothing. It is only a simile, 
 illustrative in its expressiveness. 
 
 GALLICI : But it has de wings of a poet.
 
 42 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 DR. REED: You, Mr. Schmidt, and your underground 
 philosophy of a new republic are like a U-boat making 
 a way in the dark alley of the deep sea and torpedoing 
 unarmed ships freighted with human life. What is 
 the gain? Nothing. What the loss? All. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Dr. Reed, I begin to understand you. I do 
 really think it is our duty to get together. 
 
 LAMB : I sincerely endorse your stand. 
 
 JOHNSTON : I cannot endorse anything without my part 
 ner s consent. 
 
 JUSTIN : I feel that we can and ought to be able to settle 
 the strike. 
 
 SCHMIDT: No, dere is noding to settle unless it is settled 
 our vay. 
 
 COMPTON : I have nothing to settle. 
 
 DR. REED: Mr. Compton, suppose the government should 
 find, and it may not be at all improbable, that the con 
 duct of your business effects a monopoly of interests. 
 
 COMPTON : I will see my lawyer about it. 
 
 DR. REED : Never mind about your lawyer. That is a 
 conspiracy against the government which it prose 
 cutes unrelentingly. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (Swishing his hands.) Dat is just it. De op 
 pression of private owned property. 
 
 DR. REED : And suppose, Mr. Schmidt, that the government 
 should find that your New Republic has made overt 
 acts against our country. That too, is a conspiracy 
 which it prosecutes unrelentingly. 
 
 COMPTON : That is the upholding of the United States Con 
 stitution. 
 
 DR. REED: Exactly, Gentlemen. Uphold the Constitution 
 of the United States. Get together. Provide for a 
 decent wage and for improved working conditions. Re-
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 43 
 
 turn the mob to their recognized normal vocations. 
 Not that that alone will end the srife forever. 
 
 JUSTIN : Strife once begun is never ended until that which 
 is striven for is either totally won or lost. 
 
 DR. REED : It will give both sides a saner, more orderly 
 manner of getting together for the further considera 
 tion of making this a government, by, for, and of the 
 people in its truest sense in every field of understand 
 ing. 
 
 (Door opens. Amy rushes in and throws her arms 
 around her father and kisses him.} 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Amy. 
 
 AMY: Oh, Daddy, Oh, Daddy. I thought I would never 
 see you alive again. Oh, Daddy. 
 
 MR. FULSOM: Amy, what is the matter, speak? 
 
 AMY : Daddy, for God s sake come away from here : It is 
 It It is your life they are after. 
 
 VOICES: What do you mean. 
 
 DR. REED: Amy be calm. 
 
 (Justin tries to give her a glass of water. Amy, seeing 
 Justin, spurns the offer and assumes boldness and de 
 fiance.} 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vat shenenagin. 
 
 AMY: (Cold and collected.} I visited Mr. Justin by ap 
 pointment at this office an hour ago. I pleaded with 
 him to forsake this mad leadership of a wild mob. He 
 would not. 
 
 MENDEL : That was right, was it not ? 
 
 AMY: With much heroics he said he dared not turn a 
 Judas. The mob needed him. 
 
 DR. REED: Go on, Amy. Take it easy. 
 
 AMY: He pleaded with me to go home, to leave things to
 
 44 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 him. I did. He promised there would he no happen 
 ings of any kind. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (To Gallici} Vat, who told her of de Revolution. 
 
 AMY : No sooner did I get home than a strange voice called 
 me on the phone and hastily said, "You think this 
 Justin is square. He just got you out of the way. He 
 has designs on the life of your father." Eather let s 
 
 SCHMIDT: Und you did not recognize his voice, did you? 
 
 AMY : No, I did not. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil. (Dr. Reed gives him a sharp look and 
 Schmidt turns his head away.} 
 
 AMY : Daddy, I tried to get you but could not, so I hastened 
 here. Let s hurry away from here. 
 
 JUSTIN : I swear upon my honor that whoever it was that 
 telephoned you must have been some private detective 
 the old game of 
 
 AMY: You with your honor, your ideals, your notions, 
 your talks and talks for the underdog, with professions 
 of love for all mankind, you sham, bold arrogant agi 
 tator. It is easier to agitate than to do. There in your 
 club with men who have failed in life, you meet in 
 common hatred for all who have something. All your 
 soft words, your formulas, your axioms, and visions 
 are a cloak for plunder and murder. 
 
 DR. REED : Amy, you had better not speak. 
 
 AMY: I will. You had the idea to get me out of the way 
 that I might not be here and see you at the head of 
 the mob. You, you did not want me to see you as the 
 beast. 
 (Dr. Reed holds up hand to Amy, silencing her.} 
 
 JUSTIN : I protest my utter innocence. Gentlemen, I am 
 innocent of any designs and have no such knowledge.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 45 
 
 (All turn azvay from him. Dr. Reed waves his hand to 
 Justin and he stops.) 
 
 AMY : Oh, Doctor, how can you associate with that mob of 
 hoodlums ? Why did you ever take me to their haunts 
 of mental hell in their social cesspools? Why, they 
 will kill you too. Oh, Daddy, let s get away. (A bomb 
 explodes.} 
 (Alarm and confusion.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: (In sotto voice to Gallici, with a smile.} De 
 Revolution. 
 
 JUSTIN: My God, this must be the work of detectives and 
 the employers association. 
 
 AMY : So whoever informed me was a private detective ? 
 How did you know a private detective would inform 
 me? What wonderful premonition. Well, you ex 
 plain that to the judge. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dose damned capitalistic courts. 
 
 JUSTIN : I am mystified. I protest my utter innocence. 
 
 DR. REED: Justin, give me your hand. (They shake hands.} 
 As an American, it is my duty to give you the benefit 
 of any reasonable doubt and I will. I shall believe you 
 innocent until you are proven guilty beyond a reason 
 able doubt. 
 
 COMPTON : Innocent. Hell, hanging is too good for them. 
 
 JUSTIN : Thank you, Doctor. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Let s get away. 
 
 AMY : Not now. 
 
 (CURTAIN)
 
 ACT III
 
 ACT III. 
 
 Scene : The capital seat of the New Republic. Club ^g| 
 Room of the United Social Workers Propaganda Circle 
 of International Justice. 
 
 (Appropriate hangings, a bookshelf of radical litera 
 ture, three small tables, four playing skat at the first 
 table Schmidt being one of the players; second table, 
 tivo Russians playing sixty-six; at the third table, 
 two men and two women are playing cards. At a long 
 table, the secretary is doing her work and men and 
 zvomcn are reading and talking. As the curtain goes 
 up, the phonograph plays, "The Marsailles," Galilei 
 accompanying the music with his violin. Sandy Mc 
 Donald is playing the mouth harmonica. As the song 
 ends, the secretary removes the record and conceals it 
 between the tiuo layers of her chair seat and places 
 thereon another record. The , room is filled with 
 smoke. The surroundings are totally void of any sex 
 deferences, but this must not be confused with the 
 demimonde spirit of hilarity, the result of drugs and 
 intoxicants, but rather a strain of depression, the men 
 tal autotoxin of men and women who have taken a 
 distorted view of society.} 
 
 SCHMIDT (To Sandy) : Drow dat mout-organ out of de 
 vindow. 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah 
 
 SCHMIDT: Organ dat is church-capitalistic. 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah. 
 
 (Sandy raises the zvindow and throws it out.) 
 
 A VOICE: What s that record you just put on?
 
 50 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 SECRETARY: That is the dirge of the old republic, (laugh.) 
 (Comrade LaBuy takes her vanity glass and powder 
 puff. Schmidt sees it.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Comrade LaBuy, come right here. Vat? Give 
 me dat shtuff. 
 
 (She gives him the vanity glass and puff. He throws 
 the puff into the cuspidor and steps on the vanity glass 
 and breaks it.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dere, you are not preparing yourself for de 
 guillotine of de French Revolution. For de New Re 
 public it is unnecessary. 
 
 GALLICI: (To SCHMIDT.) It is de wonderful. 
 
 (LaBuy returns to her card table. Schmidt returns to 
 his place. A fight breaks out at the table of the two 
 Russians. They grab each other by the throat and 
 struggle over the table. Comrade Babinski has the best 
 of Comrade Bolzekoff and strikes him in the face, cry 
 ing out, "Moshenik." "Moshenik.") 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat s enough. Get up. I say, let go righd avay 
 quick. 
 
 (They don t seem to hear him. Schmidt walks around 
 until his eye catches that of Babinski. The wrestlers 
 immediately get up.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, Comrades, vat is de matter? 
 
 BABINSKI : I caught Comrade Bolzekoff cheating. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Und for dat you choke him? 
 
 BABINSKI : But cheating is against the constitution of the 
 New Republic. 
 
 SCHMIDT: But ve are still living in de old. Plenty of time 
 yet, und it is not wrong to break de present laws. 
 
 BABINSKI: Even if it affects a comrade? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vat is de difference? Aren t you playing a 
 capitalistic game for capitalistic money ?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 51 
 
 BABINSKI : But if one has not the new humanity, and if the 
 nature does not change, how can he be fit for the New 
 Republic ? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Human nature vill not change now, but ven 
 de New Republic comes, de new human nature vill 
 come too. 
 
 BABINSKI : Thank you, Comrade Schmidt : I did not under 
 stand it that way. (Turning to Bolzekoff.} I apolo 
 gize to you most sincerely, Comrade Bolzekoff, and 
 now, ah ah I can cheat too. In the capitalistic 
 system, we are all mosheniks. I never thought of that. 
 The system is a cheat and we all can cheat. 
 (Schmidt returns to his table. The players bid.} 
 
 SCHMIDT: Comrades, its a guxer. 
 
 GALLICI : ( Watching the game, bends over to look at 
 Schmidt s hand.} 
 
 SCHMIDT: Och! De sphagetti, mit garlic, again. 
 
 GALLICI : In de New Republic, we may eat and drink what 
 we will without de reproof. 
 
 SCHMIDT : But ve are still in a capitalistic atmosphere. 
 
 GALLICI : De New Republic De inspiration. 
 
 SCHMIDT: But dis is not. 
 
 (He turns to play. Mankin approaches Schmidt and 
 touches him on the shoulder gently.} 
 
 SCHMIDT: Comrade Mankin, vat is it? 
 
 MANKIN: The judge told me this morning that unless I 
 give eight dollars a week for my children, he will send 
 me to the work house. 
 
 SCHMIDT: How can I help? Do you dink I run de capital 
 istic courts too? Dose judges are only loafers. Vy 
 don t you pay it und be done mit it ? 
 
 MANKIN : My dues and extra assessments to the New Re 
 public don t leave me enough to buy a pair of shoes.
 
 52 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 (Shows torn shoes.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Who reported you? 
 
 MANKIN : My capitalistic wife, Comrade Morgan. She 
 goes by that fellow s name. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Comrade Morgan, come here. 
 (Comrade Morgan comes.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vere do you live now? 
 
 COMRADE MORGAN: I live on Pearl Street with Comrade 
 Trensky. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Are you divorced? 
 
 COMRADE MORGAN : I am surprised at you. Comrade 
 Schmidt. We don t recognize divorces. That is what you 
 say. It is capitalistic. Don t you tell us in your lectures 
 on the New Republic, we can live with as many hus 
 bands and change them as often as we like ? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Yah, yah, but vy did you report him? 
 
 COMRADE MORGAN : I did not report him. The policemen did 
 and they took my three kids and sent them to the 
 orphans home and the judge ordered Comrade Mankin 
 to contribute to their support. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vy don t you keep de children? 
 
 COMRADE MORGAN : Don t the constitution of the New Re 
 public say that children are the property of the state? I 
 stand on the new constitution. Let the state support 
 them. 
 
 MANKIN : But you know, only the oldest and the youngest 
 are my children. 
 
 COMRADE MORGAN : Did I kick because you have a child with 
 Comrade Dorkin s second wife? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, dere is consolation for you, Comrade 
 Mankin. In de New Republic, dere vill be no court 
 save dat of your conscience und den you vill not have 
 to pay alimony. You vill do as you like.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 53 
 
 Schmidt sits down to play cards once more. Mendel 
 
 approaches him.) 
 MENDEL : Come Comrade Schmidt, give that hand of yours 
 
 to someone else. I must talk to you. 
 SCHMIDT: (Laying down his cards and getting up.) Yah, 
 
 Yah. 
 MENDEL: Comrade Schmidt, I would be very cautious 
 
 about what you say and do tonight. 
 SCHMIDT: For vy? 
 MENDEL : In the first place, you and I ought to be grateful 
 
 to Justin because his acquittal also freed us. Besides, 
 
 you know he was entirely innocent. 
 SCHMIDT: Grateful? Dat is capitalistic. One is grateful 
 
 for charity, but vat ve deserve, ve don t have to be 
 
 grateful for. 
 MENDEL : But if it were not for the assistance of Dr. Reed 
 
 and Miss Fulsom, we would now be in prison. 
 SCHMIDT: Bosh mit all dat. He has fallen for a capitalistic 
 
 skirt und is trying to proselyte us. He vill be no good 
 
 to us any more. 
 MENDEL: But don t forget, Comrade Schmidt, that Miss 
 
 Fulsom has already contributed thousands of dollars 
 
 for our suffering European widows and orphans funds. 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, aren t ve de sufferers? 
 MENDEL: Justin said he refuses to stand any longer for 
 
 direct action. 
 SCHMIDT: Dat is vy ve put him on trial. Dat is vere de 
 
 pinch is. He is yellow. Ve can t trust him no more. 
 MENDEL: But let s reprimand him only and not expel him. 
 SCHMIDT: Comrade Mendel, I am surprised at you, de 
 
 author of de code of de New Republic, und you mit 
 
 vour boasted mathematical exactness.
 
 54 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 MENDEL: But in dealing with a comrade, there must be 
 
 some consideration shown. 
 SCHMIDT: No, und furder, I dink dat dat doctor is no good, 
 
 und I do not dink ve vill ever convert dat Fulsom girl. 
 MENDEL : But you convert her money and she has been good 
 
 financial backing. 
 SCHMIDT: In de New Republic, ve von d need her financial 
 
 backing. 
 GALLICI : (Stepping up.) But you make de law of de New 
 
 Republic as unmerciful as of de old. 
 
 SCHMIDT: But it vill be interpreted by me und dat is dif 
 ferent. 
 MENDEL: Comrade Schmidt, I tell you, you are making a 
 
 mistake. 
 SCHMIDT: Vat I say goes. I stand de consequences. Come, 
 
 you must be a Spartacus. Individuals is of no account. 
 
 (Mendel steps aside.) 
 GALLICI: (To Schmidt.) Comrade Schmidt, I have been 
 
 thinking that we should add a new term to our consti 
 tution. 
 
 SCHMIDT: (Impatiently.) What is it? 
 GALLICI : That we creat a master comrade. 
 SCHMIDT: Und ven I die, vat vill become of it? 
 GALLICI : Then we will strike it from de constitution. 
 SCHMIDT: Den it is all right. You know, Comrade, I al- 
 
 vays like you. I (gets very close and intimate with 
 
 Gallici. ) 
 GALLICI: Then you don t mind I eat Spaghetti with de 
 
 garlic ? 
 
 SCHMIDT: Eat all you vant, Comrade Gallici. 
 GALLICI : My, de way you run de New Republic with such 
 
 discipline and order. What noble inspiration.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 55 
 
 SCHMIDT: Und have dem change de constitution right avay, 
 yah? (Sits down at his card table.} 
 (At the second table, there is again trouble between 
 Comrades Babinski and Bolsekoff.} 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, veil, vat is de matter now? (Gets up from 
 his table.} 
 
 BABINSKI : I cheat because we was playing a capitalistic 
 game, because you say it is proper, and now he don t 
 want to pay me the money I won because he says I 
 cheated. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vat s wrong about dat? 
 
 BABINSKI : But I won. 
 
 SCHMIDT: De refusal to pay a capitalistic debt is not dis 
 honorable. (Schmidt returns to his card table.} 
 
 BABINSKI : Excuse me, Comrade Schmidt. I never thought 
 of that. What foolish memory I got. Comrade Bol- 
 zekoff, I sincerely apologize to you. 
 
 GALLICI : It hurts my soul, my inspiration. All I hear to 
 night, Comrades, is money, money. What is de matter 
 with our comrades tonight, Comrade Schmidt. 
 (At the big table, Comrade Sampson, secretary of the 
 club opens a letter and reads} 
 
 "Eli, Nevada, March 222, 
 
 Comrade McDonald, when one stutters with his speech, 
 does he also stutter with his pen? 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah 
 
 SECRETARY: I don t know whether it is March 2 or 22 
 
 SANDY : Ah 
 
 SECRETARY: Never mind, it s another day already. (Reads} 
 Enclosed rind $5 for the defense of Justin and the rest. 
 
 SCHMIDT : De rest ! Dey speak of Justin as dough he was 
 de whole show.
 
 56 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 SECRETARY: (Continuing to read.) "I am hoping for the 
 freedom of all. Yours for the New Republic and jus 
 tice, John M. Paterson. P. S. Send an organizer here. 
 We are ready for a good sized branch." 
 
 MENDEL : Well, he has the spirit, but I cannot see that he 
 shows any comprehension of the new philosophy. 
 
 GALLICI : But de spirit moves de comprehension like de 
 zephyr de leaves. 
 
 MENDEL: Oh, that sphagetti ! 
 
 GALLICI: De intolerance of de comrades is a relic of cap 
 italism. 
 (Secretary opens another letter.) 
 
 SECRETARY: Here s a money order for $12.04. 
 
 NELSON: (A Norwegian.) We ought to have an account 
 ing of all the money. I would like to know where all 
 the money goes. I am paying, paying all the time. 
 
 SECRETARY : I don t have to account. I can do as I please. 
 I suppose you will soon want one of those capitalistic 
 certified accountants to go over our books. 
 
 NELSON: (Boisterously.) I don t know. I want to know 
 where the money goes. I am from Missouri. 
 
 MENDEL : Missouri. Missouri. In the New Republic 
 there is no such state. 
 
 (Enter Emma Gold, dressed like a man save for a skirt 
 which she immediately unhooks and takes off, and rolls 
 down the leggings of her trousers.) 
 
 EMMA: There, with William Tell, I can speak. "Once 
 again I am free." (Holding up the skirt.) That 
 damned capitalistic hobble shall perish with the birth 
 of the New Republic. Long live the New Republic. 
 
 THE ENTIRE CLUB: Long live the New Republic. 
 
 GALLICI : Oh, Comrade Emma. I love you. I want to 
 kiss vou.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 EMMA: (Extending her hand.} How many times did I 
 tell you. Only my hand after one of your noodle din 
 ners. 
 
 GALLIC: : But you are so perfectly rhythmical, and besides, 
 Section 6 of de Code proclaims that women are de 
 property of de whole nation. 
 
 EMMA: Yes, but I am going to propose an amendment 
 that eating sphagetti with garlic shall constitute an un 
 lawful assault 
 
 SAN-DY : Ah ah 
 
 EMMA: There is no ah ah about it. Garlic never stut 
 ters that way. 
 
 GALLIC: : But, Comrade Emma, you are de love of 
 
 EMMA: Love! Ha. Ha! Freedom, ah freedom! Wife, 
 capitalistic institution. A species of private property. 
 All women of the ages of 17 to 32 belong to the com 
 rades and will receive from the state an allowance of 
 $23 per month. 
 
 MENDEL : You understand my constitution. 
 
 EMMA : It shall not be the child of the parent, not the wife 
 of the husband, but of the state. Freedom! Freedom! 
 Let passion reign and hypocrisy fall. 
 
 GALL:C: : But can I not drink at de same well more than 
 once ? 
 
 EMMA: The appetite is the expression of nature s hunger. 
 (Schmidt leaves his card table and turns to Emma and 
 greets her affectionately. Gallici observes it with jeal 
 ousy.) 
 
 EMMA: Comrade Henrico, you are showing a capitalistic 
 disposition, jealousy. Oh! Oh! 
 
 GALLICI : Yes, we try to feel de whole philosophy of de 
 \ T ew Republic, but I cannot quite feel de right of leav 
 ing what is my own.
 
 58 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 (Throwing a kiss at her and turns away.} My bambino. 
 I love him and I feel bad zat I shall have to abandon 
 him to de state. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Spartacus would never act like dat. 
 
 EMMA: Comrade Henrico, what you call love is only false 
 sentiment. Why not love all human beings ? Why con 
 fine your love to but a few? 
 
 MENDEL : The whole problem is mathematically demonstra 
 ble to its logical conclusion. 
 
 GALLICI : But take de sentiment away and you have no 
 expression of de soul. 
 
 MENDEL: All imagination. Capitalistic. They starve you 
 that you may imagine banquets. They enslave you that 
 you may imagine freedom. In the New Republic, the 
 imagination shall have reached full realization. Then 
 we shall speak out our true thoughts. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, it is time to get down to business. 
 
 EMMA : Yes, but before we proceed with the course of bus 
 iness, I have here a code letter from our comrades in 
 Russia. 
 
 ALL: From Comrades? 
 
 EMMA: Yes, it was just given me by a Finnish comrade who 
 arrived on the Rotterdam, and the police caught him 
 ten minutes after he left my house. 
 (She takes a letter from her rear trousers pocket and 
 turns it over to Comrade Schmidt.) 
 
 EMMA: You are the only one who has the key to the code. 
 Comrade Justin, Dr. Reed, and that woman are in the 
 outer room. Let s go to it. 
 
 SCHMIDT : Veil, I vill comrade him no more after tonight. 
 
 SECRETARY : I call the meeting to order. 
 
 GALLICI : I nominate Comrade Gold as chairman of de 
 meeting.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 59 
 
 SECRETARY : No other nominations ? 
 
 (Comrade Gold takes the chair, straddles the bench in 
 man-fashion and places in her mouth a pipe which she 
 takes out of the mouth of one of the comrades.} 
 
 EMMA : Comrades, the meeting shall come to order. I move 
 that Comrade Justin be asked to come in so that he 
 can be present at the proceedings, in accordance with 
 our code. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Und den I move dat his capitalistic vitnesses 
 come in too. Let dem see de fairness of a comrade s 
 trial. 
 
 EMMA: Let them also enter. 
 (All three enter.} 
 
 EMMA: Takes seats. Comrade Secretary, read the charges 
 against Comrade Justin. 
 
 SECRETARY: (Reads} "I, Alexander Schmidt, comrade in 
 good standing, prefer the following charges against 
 Comrade Justin. First, in refusing to accept the 
 $10,000 which was offered by Amy Fulsom, the capital 
 istic daughter of a capitalistic employer preceding the 
 general strike of last year, which is in violation of our 
 Code, Section 14, subdivision 5, which reads, It shall 
 be lawful to take, by any means, the property of a 
 capitalist. All capital is the accumulation from the 
 exploiting of labor and any means of diminishing 
 capital is but to restore labor to its original element of 
 freedom. Second, in accepting capitalistic support, 
 moral and financial, in his trial before a capitalistic 
 court on a charge of conspiracy in connection with the 
 bomb explosion on the day of the general strike, being 
 in violation of Section 19, subdivision 2, which reads, 
 when any comrade is put on trial before a capitalistic 
 court upon any charge of a capitalistic offense.
 
 60 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 SCHMIDT : Conspiracy is alvays a capitalistic offense. 
 SECRETARY: (Reads) " He should assert the righteousness 
 
 of our cause and issue a defi and manifesto. 
 SCHMIDT: De more ve fill de chails, de worse for capitalism. 
 SECRETARY: (Reads) "All of which is submitted. Yours 
 
 for the New Republic, Comrade Alexander Schmidt." 
 GALLICI : But Comrade Schmidt, were we not on trial with 
 
 Comrade Justin? 
 
 SCHMIDT: But Justin pleaded not guilty. I stood moot. 
 GALLICI: But according to court rules, standing mute is de 
 
 same as pleading not guilty. 
 SCHMIDT: I can t help how de capitalistic courts interpret 
 
 it. I stood moot. 
 EMMA: We are going to give Comrade Justin a chance to 
 
 prove his innocence. 
 AMY : To prove his innocence ! In our courts, they must 
 
 prove them guilty. 
 SCHMIDT: Comrade Chairman, I move dat you admonish 
 
 de voman to shpeak only ven she is shpoken to. In 
 
 our courts, ve never accuse until ve are certain of de 
 
 guilt. 
 AMY : But I am sure you are mistaken, just as I was when I 
 
 accused Justin. 
 EMMA: Don t interrupt. 
 GALLICI : Sante Maria, let de soul speak out. It is nature. 
 
 It is beautiful. 
 
 JUSTIN : I plead guilty to both charges. 
 EMMA: Do you wish to be heard? 
 JUSTIN : As you will. 
 EMMA: Secretary, take his affirmance. 
 SECRETARY : Do you affirm on your conscience as a comrade 
 
 that you will speak the whole truth and conceal 
 
 nothing?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 61 
 
 JUSTIN : Comrades, I did not care to come here for I know 
 that your verdict is already sealed against me. I 
 brought Dr. Reed and Miss Fulsom at their solicitation 
 Miss Fulsom having a desire to explain her part. She 
 thinks you will consider me honorable for my part in 
 the strike, as the courts have already done. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, den dem capitalists have more faith in us 
 den you. 
 
 JUSTIN : Because they have not learned to know you as I. 
 I too had faith in you once. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, de idea! 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, you claim to fight against injustice and you set 
 up a regime of injustice of which no capitalistic insti 
 tution from the age of the inquisition, down through 
 the French Revolution and Ihe prisons of Russia, ever 
 dreamed. 
 
 EMMA: You better keep to the point. 
 
 JUSTIN : Regardless of what you do, I shall always adhere 
 to my faith. 
 
 MEN-DEL : Faith, faith, it is not faith we want. It is mathe 
 matical demonstration. 
 
 JUSTIN : In the very hope of a great freedom, you champion, 
 you seek to destroy every human instinct. You regu 
 late until we are herded like so many cattle. You 
 deaden the soul. In your war upon the savagery of 
 capitalism, you hang up another savagery befitting the 
 primitive age. You are all wrong. No woman with a 
 woman s instinct,, will make common property of her 
 self, and none with the first touch of mother love will 
 go through her travail only to deliver her child to the 
 community nursery. 
 
 GALLICI : Sentiment is de music of de human soul. It is 
 not all mathematics.
 
 62 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 EMMA: But, Comrade, why did you not take that $10,000? 
 
 JUSTIN : Because when I read myself into your creed, I be 
 lieved I was making strides for better and nobler things. 
 Bribery is the sordid bait of capitalism. Was I as a 
 comrade to take the money which was offered me? 
 What would the giver have thought of me? I would 
 rather have the good opinion of one woman than all 
 her wealth. To have accepted her offer and then betray 
 her would have been doubly rotten. I knew the giver 
 did not understand the seriousness of her offer. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Bah, dese capitalistic honors. You accepted 
 capitalistic bail. 
 
 JUSTIN: Yes, I am guilty of accepting bail and aid and 
 comfort from one who first believed me guilty of that 
 dastardly explosion of the murder of eleven innocent 
 men, women, and children, and who later became con 
 vinced of my innocence. 
 
 SCHMIDT: You are sure it was only dat dat helped to ac 
 quit you, because you were innocent? 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, and helped to free you and the rest. I hope 
 the fiend who destroyed those lives is not here, though 
 sometimes I think I see him before me. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, if you know, speak up. 
 
 JUSTIN : I shall not speak until I know beyond a doubt. This 
 violence has hurt the cause. It has taken us from the 
 field of activity, sent us to jail, broken the strike, and 
 all was lost. 
 
 MENDEL : In the law of nature, nothing is ever lost. So in 
 our movement. 
 
 JUSTIN : I am sure whatever else you think, you owe a 
 deep sense of gratitude to Miss Fulsom. 
 
 SCHMIDT: All dis is capitalistic sentiment. De comrade has 
 gone back on our principles.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 63 
 
 EMMA: Do you want us to hear from your friends also? 
 
 JUSTIN : It is all a waste, Doctor. Of no use, Miss Fulsom. 
 The tyranny of your creed reeks with injustice. 
 
 SCHMIDT: You come here to explode your heresies. I vill 
 not tolerate it. >^> 
 
 AMY : I should like to say something. 4L 
 
 MENDEL: Since she is not a comrade, we cannot take^er 
 affirmance under Code Section 4, Subdivision 1. 
 
 GALLICI : But I am sure dat from such a lady nothing but 
 de truth will come. 
 
 SCHMIDT: With such maudlin sentiment, vat vill become 
 of our New Republic? 
 
 EMMA: (To Amy) You may make a short statement. 
 
 AMY : Ladies, Gentlemen, and Friends : I am the guilty 
 one. On my own initiative, I offered Mr. Justin the 
 money. In every word and action, he has always been 
 honorable. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Yes, honorable to you und your institutions, but 
 not to de New Republic. 
 
 AMY: I fail to interpret your dream. 
 
 MENDEL : It is not a dream, but a mathematical science. 
 
 AMY: Without honor, there can be no republic. It was I, 
 misinformed and in haste, acting upon that mysterious 
 telephone call (Dr. Reed looks at Schmidt, and 
 Schmidt turns away.) In my natural love for my 
 father. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Capitalistic love fader, child. 
 
 AMY : To save his life, I made the accusation in good faith. 
 The only retribution I could make was to right the 
 the wrong, to free the innocent. 
 
 MENDEL : The science of the New Republic springs, not 
 from sentiment but from calculation. We have elimi 
 nated sentiment from our fundamental concepts so that
 
 64 THE BOLSHEVISTS. 
 
 we always proceed from premise to conclusion by the 
 mathematical route. 
 
 GALLICI : But de heart has soul, not mathematics. 
 AMY: I merely came here to prove that William never be 
 trayed labor, and all its gains in wages and hours have 
 been through his efforts. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Gains. Dat is vat de American Federation of 
 Labor vould call gains. A few cents more in vages, 
 ten minutes more for lunch. Gains. 
 AMY: But do you not hold to the laws of evolution? 
 SCHMIDT: In de New Republic, it is de Revolution. 
 MENDEL: Well, we can under Section 19, subdivision a, 
 
 exonerate him if the members of the board 
 SCHMIDT: Vat, after he pleads guilty and his only evidence 
 
 is from capitalistic vitnesses? 
 
 EMMA: Dr. Reed, do you wish to say something too? 
 DR. REED : I am afraid, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are wast 
 ing very much trouble quibbling over dreams. You 
 ought to be bending your energies toward an immediate 
 betterment of conditions. 
 EMMA: Doctor, you may proceed. 
 
 DR. REED : You are like all the rest of the many that I have 
 seen over and over again on the other side. Instead of 
 getting together, correcting the immediate wrongs of 
 society, you are engaged in quibbling, trying to change 
 nature, trying to change the natural relations between 
 men and women. You remind me of the builders of 
 the tower of Babel. Do let me have the Bible so that 
 I may read that chapter to you, that you may see 
 more clearly the force of the simile. 
 
 SCHMIDT: De Bible ve don t keep. Ve don t keep any 
 capitalistic literature here.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 65 
 
 DR. REED: You are mistaken. Whatever we are, it is the 
 literature for all times. The builders of the tower, in 
 trying to reach heaven to the seat of God, found them 
 selves in a maze of confusion. Now you, in trying to 
 build away from the natural, are too in a maze of con 
 fusion. You preach the abolition of home, of privacy, 
 of parentage. Why, even the hen that hatches her 
 brood, stands protector over them, giving them shelter 
 under her wing. Yet you attempt to destroy by an 
 ukase of your creed, the very first law of nature, to 
 feed and protect its own. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Oh, ve understand doing dat, only ve vill do it 
 collectively dat is all. 
 
 DR. REED : Motherhood is not a collective institution. It is 
 individual. 
 
 MENDEL: But, Dr. Reed, you don t understand Comrade 
 Schmidt. It is mathematically demonstrated and sta 
 tistically proven beyond equivocation that under our 
 present system, thousands of children are daily begotten 
 into the world without the pale of marriage and thou 
 sands more within lawful wedlock who die in infancy 
 because of poverty and neglect. 
 
 DR. REED : I grant you that, but it is still the struggle for the 
 preservation of the finer human instincts which the 
 ages have left glorious in song and sentiment and which 
 may yet be realized. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat is all, it s song und sentiment. 
 
 DR. REED : And you without sentiment, would have mothers 
 as beasts in the stall. Even in the stable they cry for 
 their young ones taken from them. Human grief has 
 an enduring memory. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat too is founded on sentiment. 
 
 AMY : Without sentiment, life would be barren.
 
 66 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 SCHMIDT: (Sarcastically.} Veil, Miss, in our present 
 capitalistic system, you are vorth so much on the mar 
 riage market. Under our New Republic, you vould 
 be de property of us all. 
 
 (Justin jumps up, grabs Schmidt by the throat, chokes 
 him. Excitement. Sandy runs to Justin s aid. The 
 chairman pounds with her gavel. Order is restored.} 
 
 DR. REDD : Let s have no more of this. 
 
 SCHMIDT: I get you arrested. 
 
 DR. REED: What, you would invoke the capitalistic law? 
 
 JUSTIN : Now let me speak for I am done with you for good. 
 What do I care for your trials, your heresy tribunals? 
 I see it all, you deluded fools and parasites. 
 
 MENDEL: Parasites? 
 
 JUSTIN : Yes, parasites. The capitalist parasites upon non 
 productive values ; you, upon the credulous. 
 
 MENDEL : That is hardly logical. 
 
 JUSTIN : Logic or no logic. It is here. You scheme and 
 connive. You hate the unions of labor. You scab on 
 their strikes and when called to account, you give the 
 credulous, the glib explanation that they are merely 
 capitalistic. 
 
 SCHMIDT : But is dat not correct? 
 
 JUSTIN: Damn you, no. First you create disturbance and 
 then you gloat over the strikers loss because out of their 
 bitterness, you may have won another comrade. You 
 plead with their slender purses that you may keep alive 
 your cheap agitators. 
 
 DR. REED : They neither work nor spin. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Dat is Bible stuff. 
 
 JUSTIN : It won t hurt you to listen to some of that. 
 
 DR. REED : Perhaps he prefers Shakespeare.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 67 
 
 SCHMIDT: He, too, is capitalistic. Does he not speak of the 
 toiler as a man with chapped hands und 
 
 JUSTIN : There, you misguided fools. You distort an isolated 
 expression to fit into your mad fallacies. 
 
 DR. REED: On terra firma. 
 
 JUSTIN : You preach a higher rationalism, and yet yours is 
 nothing more than a perverted intellectualism ; you seek 
 to thwart every hope that turns to the ideal. 
 
 MENDEL : But have we not solved all our doctrines with the 
 exactness of mathematical deductions? Cold reason is 
 true philosophy. 
 
 JUSTIN : Your mathematics to the dogs and your philosophy 
 to the winds. Until I met you and your philosophy, I 
 was a man. In hours of meditation, many a time I 
 traveled back to my childhood days ; they took me back 
 to my mother s arms the first instinct of a child, 
 mother love. 
 
 GALLICI: Wonderful sentiment. 
 
 JUSTIN : The dreams of boyhood To arms the first in 
 stinct of youth. 
 
 SANDY: Ah ah (Pointing to his breast.} 
 
 JUSTIN : In my fancies of majority manhood love, home, 
 wife, with little ones about my knee the first instinct 
 of a man. These three instincts clung to me until I 
 met you. (He takes from his hip pocket a portfolio 
 and from it a locket. It is his mother s face. He kisses 
 it and proceeds.} Mother, I shall never do it again. 
 Until I came here, I never forgot to kiss you good 
 night since the angels took you from me. (He hangs 
 it on his watch chain.} There, Mother, you are with 
 me once more. Thank God, I have back my mother 
 love. 
 (Mendel weeps.}
 
 68 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 SCHMIDT: Vat is dat? You too in de grandmudder class 
 of funeral mourners? 
 
 MENDEL : This is the fortieth anniversary of the massacre 
 of my mother in Kiev at the anti-semitic riot. I 
 tried hard to have the mathematical analysis of our 
 New Republic keep it down, but I can t now. I just 
 can t. 
 
 DR. REED: The awakening of a soul that had fallen asleep 
 in the man beneath the cover of his mathematics. 
 
 JUSTIN: I served my country. What did you do? You 
 aggravated the errors of the government and distorted 
 them until I looked upon our country as a chamber of 
 crime and horror. The errors we shall correct, but 
 the government we must not destroy. 
 
 DR. REED : That is fine. This government of ours shall not 
 perish from the earth. 
 
 JUSTIN: (Takes his military insignia which he had 
 secretly pinned on the inside of his vest and fastens 
 it conspicuously on his coat lapel.) There, my good old 
 pal, (Gently touching the insignia) never again shall 
 I desert you. Forgive me. 
 
 GALLIC:: (Observes that Justin had also seen military ser 
 vice in Italy.) Oh, de exquisite sentiment. De music 
 of patriotism. It was in de cause of de Italian Ir 
 redenta. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Hu! Dem Italians. Dey always flop. You never 
 keep dem for an ally for long. 
 
 JUSTIN : I am through with you and all your frauds. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, who keeps you? You can go und Mendel 
 und Gallici. De New Republic vill live mitout you. 
 
 JUSTIN: Yes, Herr Schmidt, I go where I shall be a man 
 among men. God has come back to me.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 69 
 
 DR. REED : William, you have come back to God. 
 
 AMY : Will, I am proud of you. 
 
 JUSTIN : It is not the God of Christian, Jew, or Moham 
 medan. It is the God of all men in the real brother 
 hood, the commonwealth of love. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil, is dis a revival meeting at de very seat of 
 de government of de New Republic? 
 
 DR. REED: No, but the sun rays of reason have penetrated 
 the closed shutters of your political abyss. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Nefer. Nefer. 
 
 DR. REED : You may try your Sovietism in Russia, your 
 Spartacusism in Germany, your Bolshevism every 
 where, but as long as men like Justin, Mendel and Gal- 
 lici are amenable to reason and thereby reclaimed, our 
 republic will live. 
 
 SANDY : Ah ah 
 
 DR. REED: Yes, and you, too, McDonald. 
 
 (Justin tears up his membership card and throws the 
 pieces on the table.) 
 
 SCHMIDT: I vill stand for no resignations. I expell him. 
 Give him the brand of Cain against our New Republic. 
 (Justin makes a dash for Schmidt. Dr. Reed steps 
 between.) 
 
 DR. REED : Justin, that makes you a patriot to our country. 
 Even the first apostle of the New Republic was obliged 
 to borrow an expression from capitalistic literature. 
 
 SCHMIDT: Veil 
 
 (Enter outer guard excitedly) 
 
 GUARD : The police, a raid ! 
 
 DR. REED: (To Amy.) Be calm. 
 
 ( The Secretary starts the phonograph which plays The 
 Star Spangled Banner. Dr. Reed, Justin, Sandy, Men-
 
 70 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 del, Gallici, and Amy stand at attention. All others 
 indifferent. Police enter) 
 
 SERGEANT O FLARITY : Well, I be damned. Bolshevikies 
 playing the Star Spangled Banner. I got your camou- 
 blarney. You re under arrest. 
 
 (CURTAIN)
 
 ACT IV
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 Scene: Same as Act 1. 
 Time : The next morning. 
 
 (Mrs. Fisher is now Mrs. Fulsom. Enter Butler and 
 Maid. ) 
 
 BUTLER: Hi say, Jeannette, it was certainly some commo 
 tion with them bloomin hextras. The telephone ringing 
 and ringing and the flock of reporters trying to break 
 in, and me all alone, putting them off. 
 
 MAID : I shall recommend you for the croix de guerre. 
 
 BUTLER : Hi say, Jeanette, what a scandal. Hi wonder how 
 the new mistress will take it. She is quite uppish, you 
 know. 
 
 MAID : You old sniffer, your nose is always scenting scandal. 
 
 BUTLER : Ha ! That s where a butler makes imself hin- 
 valuable. It s his hold hage he has to be looking hafter. 
 (Making advances to her, trying to embrace her.) 
 
 MAID : Old age you ll never reach if you don t let me alone. 
 (Pushing him aside.} 
 
 BUTLER: Hi say, Jeanette, what do you say if we get mar 
 ried? 
 
 MAID: (Sarcastically} Oh, so sudden. 
 
 BUTLER : Well, hi never had time to pick me courage out of 
 me safety box before. 
 
 MAID : You better put it back. You may need it for an 
 other time. 
 
 BUTLER : Is this a refusal ? 
 
 MAID : Worse, It s a throw-down. Can t you see, you old
 
 74 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 idiot, that I have been engaged for over two years? 
 (Showing her ring.) 
 
 BUTLER: But you can t be engaged forever. 
 
 MAID : You needn t bother, Mr. Charity. My boy is sailing 
 for home. They have kept him with the army. (Reads 
 letter to herself.) He comes soon. Then I give my 
 notice. 
 
 BUTLER : How hinteresting ! I ope e is sound and healthy. 
 
 MAID : You need not worry. Every bit of him come back 
 fine. 
 (Enter Mr. Fulsom.) 
 
 FULSOM : Good morning. 
 
 MAID AND BUTLER : Good morning, Mr. Fulsom. 
 
 FULSOM : Wilson, bring me the morning paper. 
 
 BUTLER: Its on the table there ready for you, sir, I am 
 sorry 
 
 FULSOM : That will do, Wilson. 
 
 WILSON: Yes, sir. (Exit) 
 
 FULSOM : Jeanette, is Miss Amy up yet ? 
 
 MAID: Yes, sir, she is dressing. 
 
 FULSOM : Tell her I want to see her and have Wilson 
 phone Dr. Reed that I should like very much to see 
 him. 
 
 MAID: Yes, sir. (Exit) 
 
 (Mr. Fulsom picks up the morning paper and reads:) 
 
 FULSOM : Bolshevists arrested. Plot against the United 
 States government unearthed. Among those caught in 
 the raid were Dr. Charles Reed, an authority on 
 Bolshevism and a mediator for the government; Amy 
 Fulsom, daughter of Robert Fulsom, millionaire; Wil 
 liam Justin, the labor agitator, and others. $40,000 in 
 certificates of deposit and secret code found on person 
 of Alexander Schmidt.
 
 75 
 
 (Fulsom crushes and throws paper aside in anger. 
 Enter Mrs. Fulsom.) 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : It is a fine mess we are in. I wonder what 
 my friends will say. 
 
 MR. FULSOM: Here is the paper. (Picking it up.) 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : I don t want to read the nasty news. (Look 
 ing in her beauty glass.) It s telling on me already. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : There, there, dear. You will be all right. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : That s poor consolation. Why couldn t Amy 
 have thought of our position before she got into such 
 a mess? 
 
 (Door bell rings. Butler announces Kingston. King 
 ston enters. Exit butler.) 
 
 KINGSTON : Why, good morning, Mr. Fulsom, and you, 
 Mildred. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Hello, Harold. Isn t the scandal awful ? 
 
 MR. FULSOM : (Bowing} Isn t this unusually early for you 
 to be up? 
 
 KINGSTON: Yes. Ha! Ha! Yes. But my valet shook me 
 out of bed and said I must read the morning paper at 
 once. It was such a clever thing, very clever, that I 
 thought I would come over and congratulate Amy. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Congratulate ? Why, Harold. You of all 
 persons ! Have you lost your sense of social poise ? 
 
 KINGSTON : No, not exactly, but I could never get into any 
 such clever mix-ups and be of service to the govern 
 ment like Amy. Unearth a plot! 
 
 MRS. FULSOM: Service? Always to the government. But 
 how about service to me? What will our friends say? 
 
 KINGSTON : Why, Amy will be lionized all the more now. 
 (Enter Amy. Kingston runs to her.) 
 
 KINGSTON : Good morning, Amy. Congratulations. 
 
 AMY: (Nods laughingly) What for?
 
 76 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 KINGSTON: Your luck. Why didn t you invite me? 
 
 AMY: Morning, Daddy. (Lovingly kissing him. Her fath 
 er is angry and does not return the kiss.) Very well, 
 Father. I shall not kiss you again until you come and 
 kiss me. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Come Amy. (He throws his arms around 
 her and kisses her.) Why don t you cut out your 
 pranks and settle down to the things suitable to your 
 station? You ought to be thinking of marriage. 
 (Kingston is abashed.) 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : There you go, Robert. You are about as 
 stern as a day old chick. 
 
 AMY: Good morning, Mildred. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Good morning. How utterly selfish of you 
 to get mixed up with such a horrid crowd of workmen. 
 I wish you would call me mother at least in company. 
 
 AMY : Harold is not company ; he is just an old friend 
 making an informal call. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Harold never does anything informally. 
 
 KINGSTON : No, I can t say I do. I am very exact about 
 all my affairs but last night s really made me act on 
 the spur of the moment. Perhaps I should have 
 thought it over and sent a note of sympathy. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : There, Harold. I knew if you were awake 
 long enough, your sense of propriety would come back 
 to you. 
 
 AMY : Then, let us understand that I shall never call you 
 mother until I feel like it. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Very well. Mr. Fulsom, let your daughter 
 insult your wife in your very home. But what can you 
 expect when she associates with the plumberman and 
 the like. 
 
 AMY: (Enraged, clenching her fists.) See here. I ll not
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 77 
 
 (The door-bell rings. The butler announces Dr. 
 Reed.} 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : What does he want here this early hour ? 
 
 MR. FULSOM: I sent for him. (Exit Butler.) 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : After last night s horrible escapade, I do 
 not think our home should be open to Dr. Reed. 
 
 AMY : Dr. Reed enters or I leave. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Have it your way, my dear. I have tried 
 to do my best for you, but you are losing Harold (look 
 ing at Harold) and your other men friends because of 
 your common associates. I am relieved of all future 
 responsibility. 
 
 AMY : Thanks. Your ideas of life and mine are vastly 
 apart. (The butler enters and remains.) We both 
 have father. In all other thing we are different. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : The idea ! Wilson ! 
 
 MR. FULSOM: (As butler is leaving.) Ask the Doctor to 
 come in. (Exit butler.) 
 
 AMY: (To Mrs. Fulsom.) What I do and say need not be 
 a secret from anybody. 
 (Enter Dr. Reed.) 
 
 DR. REED: Good morning. Good morning everybody. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Good morning,, Dr. Reed. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Good morning, Dr. Reed. 
 
 KINGSTON : Good morning, Dr. Reed. 
 
 AMY: Doctor, good morning. (Running up to him.) 
 
 DR. REED: (To Amy.) I hope you rested well. 
 
 AMY: Never better in my life. 
 
 DR. REED: Then my little girl likes adventure? 
 
 AMY : It was great. 
 
 DR. REED: I am glad you take it that way, but I would 
 rather have avoided it. The publicity, I felt, would be 
 especially offensive to your mother.
 
 78 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Thank you, Doctor. Amy seems to lack 
 that finer sense of appreciation. 
 
 DR. REED: If so, it is not without compensation. Amy has 
 gained a world of knowledge and wisdom. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : That does not hold a husband in our set. 
 
 AMY : Knowledge or wisdom never held a social non 
 entity. 
 
 HAROLD : Amy 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Maybe you would like to be a daughter of 
 the revolution. 
 
 AMY : I am not ashamed to say it in the presence of Harold. 
 (Turning to Harold.) Before I was born, Father was 
 poor, a plumber. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Amy! (Kingston is surprised.) 
 
 AMY : Yes, and you were the daughter of a small country 
 merchant before your first marriage, and he went bank 
 rupt feeding your social aspirations. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM: (Greatly agitated.) How dare you! 
 
 AMY: And Kingston s grandfather was a common salt 
 digger and his uncle was arrested in connection with 
 army frauds in the Civil War. Kingston s wealth is 
 tainted. A daughter of the revolution should know 
 pedigrees, my dear. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Have you lost your reason ? 
 
 KINGSTON : The idea ! The very idea ! 
 
 AMY: But that does not make you folks one bit better or 
 worse. Those I love, I love, and those I don t, I don t. 
 I did not say it to hurt you, but it was all true. 
 
 KINGSTON : Thank you, Miss Amy, I must be going. I 
 have an engagement. I am changing valets. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Harold, you must understand Amy is all 
 upset. I do regret this scene. And you, Dr. Reed, will 
 pardon us?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 79 
 
 DR. REED : I understand. Amy has been very charitable to 
 
 me. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : How s that ? 
 DR. REED: In forgetting my pedigree. I worked my way 
 
 through college as a waiter. 
 MRS. FULSOM: Really, Doctor? Marvelous. 
 AMY: (To Mrs. Fulsom} As though you did not know. 
 
 (Maid enters.} 
 MAID : Please, Mrs. Fulsom, the cook wants to see Miss 
 
 Amy. 
 
 AMY: Let her come in. (Exit maid.} 
 MRS. FULSOM : What ? In the parlor ? 
 A.MY: Why not? 
 
 (Cook enters all dressed in her wedding outfit.} 
 COOK : Excuse me, Miss Amy. 
 AMY: Good morning Cookie. What is it? 
 COOK : I was just goin to tell yez that I am askin to be 
 
 excused so I ken go to me weddin at Father Murphy s 
 
 church. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : And I suppose you will ask us to attend. 
 AMY: And why not? God bless you, Cookie. Tell me 
 
 where you are going to live and I ll send you a three 
 
 piece parlor set for a wedding present. 
 COOK : A parlor set ? May the Holy Virgin bless and kape 
 
 you forever. 
 
 (Mr. Fulsom and Dr. Reed laugh. Mrs. Fulsom 
 
 frowns. Observing her, Mr. Fulsom sobers up. Dr. 
 
 Reed continues to laugh.} 
 AMY : And who is your lucky man ? 
 COOK: Shall I bring him in? 
 AMY: Yes. (Exit cook.} 
 MRS. FULSOM : Oh, horrors ! Come Harold, let s leave 
 
 this democracy.
 
 80 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 (Exit Harold and Mrs. Fulsom. Amy waves her hand 
 
 at Harold as he goes. Cook opens the door and shouts.) 
 COOK: Come in, Sandy. Do yez hear me? 
 
 (Enter Sandy dressed in his wedding outfit.) 
 DR. REED AND AMY: Why hello, Sandy. (Each grabbing 
 
 him by his gloved hand and shaking it.) 
 SANDY: Ah ah (Fulsom laughs.) 
 DR. REED: (To cook) So this Bolshevik is going to have 
 
 a regular church wedding? 
 COOK : There will be no bullshevikism in the bosom of me 
 
 family. It s the shellaleh for him that s thinkin that 
 
 when I am around. 
 SANDY : Ah ah 
 DR. REED: Miss McGinnis what is your understanding of 
 
 Bolshevism. 
 COOK : Bullshevikism is Socialism doin the shimmey. 
 
 (All laughing) 
 SANDY : Ah ah 
 DR. REED: Go on, Sandy. Take your time. We will wait. 
 
 Tell us what you have been trying to say for the last 
 
 half year or so. 
 COOK : And shure he says more than Ah ah to me. He 
 
 can shpake when we are alone, can t you Sandy ? And 
 
 if he shtutters with his tongue, he don t with his arms. 
 
 Do yez Sandy? 
 DR. REED : Go on Sandy. 
 
 SAN-DY : Ah ah I w-wont h-have t-to d-do a-any mo- 
 more t-t-talkin s-since I h-have M-M-Mary T- 
 
 thank y-you. 
 COOK: If I wait till he gets through shputterin , we ll be 
 
 late for the weddin bells, I be thinkin . 
 AMY AND DR. REED: Good luck. Good luck. 
 
 (E.vit cook and Sandy. Enter Mrs. Fulsom.)
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 81 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Well, I hope now the burlesque is over. 
 Robert, how can you tolerate such vulgarity under our 
 roof? 
 
 DR. REED : Come, sit down, Mildred. Just be at ease. Get 
 out of your decollette and into a nice easy morning 
 sack of thinking pretty, of course. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Doctor, another of your sermons, I suppose. 
 
 DR. REED : Yes, it is all about the high society of our 
 republic, and the low society of theirs. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : I am in the pew. 
 
 DR. REED: Pardon me if I remark that your attitude to 
 wards these humble souls is not, shall I say, very broad ? 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : I trust you do not consider them in our class. 
 
 DR. REED : Certainly not. You represent opposites ex 
 tremes. Without the least offense really, they are of 
 value to society. The instinct of mother is there. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Am I to be blamed if I did not have chil 
 dren? 
 
 DR. REED: Blamed? A properly regulated society would 
 impose upon a perfectly normal healthy woman with 
 out children, both punishment and ostracism. So you 
 see, on the question of children, you and the Bolshe 
 vists are in true accord. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : When you speak of Bolshevists, I presume 
 you refer to the plumber man s society. 
 
 AMY : Your classification of him does not offend me in the 
 least. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Doctor, I am listening to you. 
 
 DR. REED : Their society and yours, though opposites, are 
 identically alike in results leading to the same unhappy 
 ending. They look upon children as mere encum 
 brances. When a child comes, it is thrust upon the 
 state. There is no home. The cradle is in the bar-
 
 82 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 racks. Do not society women throw off the duty of 
 children? They interfere with their social affairs. If 
 they come,, they are reared in the nursery by a nurse. 
 Thus you see the instinct of motherhood is smothered 
 in both extremes. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Then you would deprive us of our free will? 
 
 DR. REED: That is just what your opposites say. Govern 
 ment is restraint upon personal desires. You, when 
 you find it restrains, endeavor to cheat the law. 
 They, when they find it restrains, want to abolish the 
 law. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Leaving this delicate question which we 
 women alone should answer, what other monstrous 
 similarity would you strike up between us and those 
 vagabonds ? 
 
 DR. REED: In good society, when husband is tired of 
 wife, and wife is tired of husband divorce court 
 a little publicity, nasty of course, but soon forgotten 
 the divorce bills, alimony bill, lawyers bill. Then so 
 ciety announces, Mrs. Smith, who obtained her divorce 
 from Mr. Smith, naming Mrs. Brown as co-respon 
 dent, will wed Mr. Brown just as soon as the decree 
 is made permanent and Mrs. Brown, who obtained 
 her decree from Mr. Brown, naming the well-known 
 Mrs. Smith, will likewise wed Mr. Smith upon the 
 rendering of the decree permanent. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Why not ? The law allows it. 
 
 DR. REED: Yes. Now the vagabonds, as you call them, 
 don t wait for courts and lawyers and alimony. They 
 just come and part without ceremony. It is part of 
 their direct action. But both means forbode ill one 
 under the sanctity of the law the other in its violation. 
 Too much direct action. Too much indirect action.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 83 
 
 The one began in a violation of law ; the other, without 
 law. Both, however opposite in scheme, are same in 
 effect. Selfish parents in one case and a rotten state 
 in the other. "Suffer little children to come unto me." 
 One is doing society in apachee, the other in decollette. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Please go to another point, Reverend Reed. 
 
 DR. REED : Very well. I am ever ready to please my flock. 
 You sanction the right to accumulate all the property 
 in the world in one person, if it were possible. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Surely you don t deny anyone that right. 
 
 DR. REED: Even to the exclusion of whatever its effect 
 upon the rest of the world? 
 
 MR. FULSOM: Why not? It is according to law. 
 
 DR. REED: Well, the others would take all your property 
 and the right to it from you. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : You mean they would deny me the right to 
 own property? 
 
 DR. REED : Surely. Why not ? If you would not deny any 
 one the right to accumulate all the property, why not 
 deny anyone any right to any property? 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But that is not in accordance with law. 
 
 DR. REED : Well, under their law, it would be. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : I see. 
 
 DR. REED: Under present conditions, one may strike any 
 bargain with another seeking work taking advantage 
 of there being plenty out of work driving a bargain 
 for a wage that is not decently sufficient. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But is not that the legal right to contract ? 
 
 DR. REED: Under our democracy, this should not be 
 the law. No one should be suffered to work except for 
 a wage suitable to decent American standards. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But that would not give one any choice for 
 individual development.
 
 84 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 DR. REED : Under their regime, no man would have a right 
 to work under any kind of contract. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : You mean to say he would have no right to 
 bargain to determine his hours of employment or his 
 wage? 
 
 DR. REED: The state would do the bargaining for him. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But that would leave no liberties at all. 
 
 DR. REED: That s exactly it. In one case, the individual 
 may monopolize for himself all the opportunities of 
 life. In the other, the state does it. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Intolerable. 
 
 DR. REED: Precisely, and we have not exhausted the sub 
 ject by any means. By the wage paid, we automatical 
 ly determine their status. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But, Doctor, each one has a chance to get out 
 of it. 
 
 DR. REED : One in a million. The average human is neither 
 fortunate nor brilliant enough to extricate himself. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Well, how is it to be avoided ? 
 
 AMY : And under their regime, they would by law standard 
 ize dress, food, hours of recreation, like so many 
 soldiers. 
 
 DR. REED: No, like so many convicts. 
 
 AMY : Extremes leading to the same chaos. 
 
 DR. REED: The product of intolerance at both ends. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : There must be a remedy. I never gave it 
 thought. 
 
 DR. REED: That s it. In looking after your own, you have 
 let government drift, grudgingly paying taxes, much 
 of it wasted, of course. Do you wonder at this rising 
 tide of unrest? 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Doctor, are personal rights to be swept 
 away?
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 85 
 
 DR. REED : Personal rights, as those of property, are founded 
 in traditional idealism. But the malefactors let s be 
 less harsh, the accumulators have substituted self for 
 idealism almost unconsciously. (To Mrs Fulsom) So, 
 you and Comrade Gold of your sex are stubborn op- 
 posites, each refusing to leave your mistaken position 
 to approach the center of reason. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Oh, Robert. I won t be named in the same 
 breath with that woman. 
 
 DR. REED : Pardon me. I merely said you were opposites 
 and both are wrong. There s William Justin and Amy, 
 who were stubborn opposites until by contact they had 
 opportunity to learn the errors of their theories. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : That nasty agitating plumber man. 
 
 AMY : See here, Mildred. You shall not say that. 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : So I see, another new alliance, another 
 choice bon-bon for the tattlers Amy Fulsom, 
 daughter of Robert Fulsom, leader of society, weds 
 William C. Justin, plumber and labor leader. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Mildred ! 
 
 AMY: Father, I have not been asked; if I were, I should 
 feel honored. As for Mrs. Fulsom, she is your wife. I 
 seek neither her counsel nor aid. Will Justin is one 
 thousand per cent superior in every way compared with 
 our social friends. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : But, Amy, think what it means. 
 
 AMY : Well, I would not be invited to Mrs. Vanderlee s card 
 party nor Mrs. Golden s dinner nor Mrs. Van Loon s 
 ball. 
 
 (Door bell rings. Butler announces "Mr. Justin." 
 E.vit Butler.) 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Who sent for him ? 
 
 AMY: I did.
 
 86 THE BOLSHEVISTS 
 
 MRS. FULSOM : Robert, I am leaving you. It is your affair. 
 
 Arrange for my immediate trip abroad. I shall not be 
 
 subjected to further humiliation. 
 
 (Exit Mrs. Fulsom. Enter Justin. Amy and Justin 
 
 affectionately greet each other.) 
 AMY: So glad, Will. 
 
 JUSTIN: (Taking her hand.) Thank you, Amy. 
 DR. REED: Good morning, Justin. 
 
 MR. FULSOM : Good morning, Mr. Justin. How do you do? 
 JUSTIN : Mr. Fulsom, I cannot tell you how deeply grieved 
 
 this newspaper notoriety for your daughter 
 MR. FULSOM : So you feel in a measure responsible. 
 AMY : Father, he is not. I assume all responsibility. 
 MR. FULSOM : Are you and Amy betrothed ? 
 JUSTIN: No. 
 AMY: No. Father. 
 MR. FULSOM : Then, Mr. Justin, for the happiness and 
 
 peace of my household, I am going to ask you never to 
 
 see my daughter again. 
 AMY : No, no, father. 
 DR. REED: Mr. Fulsom, perhaps you are right, but it is 
 
 only fair that you be more specific. 
 MR. FULSOM : Very well. Mr. Justin, you are a radical. 
 
 You cannot understand her life and she cannot yours. 
 JUSTIN: That would have been true a time ago, but not 
 
 now. 
 
 DR. REED: Mr. Fulsom, their minds have met. 
 MR. FULSOM : That sounds very well on paper, in books, 
 
 but it won t do in real life. 
 DR. REED: Let us see, Mr. Fulsom. Look back to your 
 
 struggling days. Your ambition was to be rich and you 
 
 have fulfilled it. But is it bringing you happiness? 
 
 Come, let s go to the library and talk it over further.
 
 THE BOLSHEVISTS 87 
 
 (They get up and go and on their way out.) (To 
 Mr. Fulsom) What matters it if the whole world dis 
 agrees, if they two agree? (Exit Dr. Reed and Mr. 
 Fulsom.) 
 
 JUSTIN: Amy, I had better go. Perhaps your father is 
 right. 
 
 AMY : Don t go, Will. 
 
 JUSTIN: Amy, do you really want me to stay? 
 (Amy nods her head.) 
 
 JUSTIN : And are you conscious of all the consequences 
 that come with an unforgiving father? 
 
 AMY : Yes, Billy, for when I was a little girl, my nurse 
 read me the story of Cinderella. I always envied that 
 poor little thing, and now, after all these years, I am 
 dreaming of Cinderella again. 
 
 JUSTIN: (Embraces Amy.) And me? 
 
 AMY : Yes, dear, and you. 
 
 ( CURTAIN)