LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 The Spirit of Labor
 
 'J'V II pi-^^-^^ 
 
 The 
 Spirit of Labor 
 
 By 
 
 HUTCHINS HAPGOOD 
 
 Author of '^The Autobiography of a T7uef" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 1907
 
 
 Copyright, 1907, by 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 Published February, i^O^ 
 
 The Trow Press, N. Y.
 
 TO MY FATHER
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter Pac 
 
 Preface 9 
 
 I. Early Youth 23 
 
 II. On the Road 35 
 
 III. Injustice and Love 54 
 
 IV. The Age of Reason 75 
 
 V. Trade-Unionist . 94 
 
 VI. Meeting the Employer . . . .119 
 
 VII. The Radicals 138 
 
 VIII. Organizer 167 
 
 IX. Delegate to New York . . . .189 
 
 X. Chicago Spirit and Its Cause . .210 
 
 XI. Social Amenities 220 
 
 XII. Argument With Boss . . . . . 235 
 
 XIII. An Anarchist Salon 262 
 
 XIV. Politics in the Federation . . . 293 
 XV. The Intellectual Proletariat . . 323 
 
 XVI. Some of the Big Men 348 
 
 XVII. Their Points of View .... 375 
 
 XVIII. A Ripe Letter 401 
 
 [7]
 
 Preface. 
 
 On and off for eight months I looked about 
 in Chicago, for a man. I was more fortunate 
 than Diogenes, for I found a great many of 
 them. But it was a long time before I discov- 
 ered the one I was looking for, and when I 
 finally laid hands on him, I found him other, 
 though far more interesting, than what I had, 
 like the German metaphysician, evolved from 
 my inner consciousness. 
 
 I had had several previous experiences 
 with the "human document" ; and had, in jour- 
 nalistic and literary experiments, attempted to 
 present my material in such a way that the 
 type and the individual should be at once por- 
 trayed. For this purpose the autobiography 
 seemed the best form. In that way, a whole 
 class with its ideals and conditions might be 
 expressed, and at the same time a definite per- 
 
 [9]
 
 Preface. 
 
 sonality vividly and sympathetically pre- 
 sented; the man and his environment could 
 thus speak for themselves. 
 
 This method seemed to work very well as a 
 means of expressing the world of crime, the 
 world of the stage, or any milieu not too com- 
 plicated and not too important. In my "Au- 
 tobiography of a Thief," the simple story, in 
 the first person, of a pickpocket's life, seemed 
 sufficient to give the reader a fairly complete 
 idea of the manners, customs and mental habits 
 of the professional criminal. The material of 
 professional crime is picturesque, in that it is 
 exceptional and comparatively unfamiliar. 
 It is also limited in scope. For all these rea- 
 sons, the very definite manner of the autobi- 
 ography is a vivid, central and adequate form 
 for the artistic expression of this material. 
 
 But when I became interested in the labor- 
 er, I found the problem a very different one. 
 At first, indeed, I thought the form of the 
 autobiography would be sufficient to suggest 
 the world of the workingman. I imagined 
 
 [ID]
 
 Preface. 
 
 that I should be able to find a man who would 
 occupy a sufficiently typical position and who 
 would be sufficiently expressive to enable me 
 to convey, merely by telling his story, as far as 
 possible in his own words, an idea of the con- 
 ditions, the ideals and the broad humanity un- 
 derlying the labor situation. 
 
 It seemed to me that I should be more likely 
 to find such a man in Chicago than anywhere 
 else. In the democratic Middle West of the 
 United States the common man is probably 
 more expressive than anywhere else in the 
 world. Labor, there, is more self-conscious 
 and socially, if not politically, more powerful 
 than elsewhere. The proletariat of America, 
 and more especially of the progressive and in- 
 tensely vital Middle West, is no real prole- 
 tariat, in the dumb and crushed European 
 sense, but in its hopefulness and early activity, 
 in the breadth of its interests; in its mental 
 joyousness and vitality, seems to have the qual- 
 ity of a Renaissance. 
 
 In my search for a man who stood at the 
 
 [II]
 
 Preface* 
 
 center of the labor world, I therefore went to 
 Chicago, the hot-bed of the Middle West, the 
 place where labor is most riotous, most ex- 
 pressive, where the workingman abounds in 
 his own sense and has formed an atmosphere 
 of democracy extending far beyond his own 
 class. There I at once came in contact with 
 so many vigorous personalities, that I was, for 
 a long time, swamped by the richness of the 
 human material. 
 
 I went to their saloons, T visited them in 
 their homes. I was astonished by their prac- 
 tical knowledge of mankind, I was fascinated 
 by their temperament and robustness and joy 
 in life, I was touched by their altruism and 
 feeling of human solidarity. I felt a kind 
 of class sweetness under their rough manners, 
 and also a class rebelliousness, a rebelliousness 
 which could not have arisen if they had not 
 been comparatively well-off, for the necessary 
 energy would otherwise have been lacking. 
 I saw how a new morality was forming on the 
 basis of a new public opinion different from 
 
 [12]
 
 Preface, 
 
 the past public opinion upon which much of 
 present law is based. One rather disagree- 
 able expression of this new morality was the 
 suspiciousness with which for a long time they 
 regarded me. They saw that I was, in their 
 meaning of the word, a parasite: I did not 
 work with my hands. I was therefore a mem- 
 ber of the capitalist class, they felt, and would 
 bear watching. One night, early in my Chi- 
 cago experience, I was set upon in a saloon 
 and slugged by friends of Sam Parks, about 
 whom I had in all sincerity and friendliness 
 expressed an unfavorable opinion. 
 
 This little episode hurt my feelings at the 
 time, and, incidentally, changed the shape of 
 my nose. But, after a few months, when I 
 had come more sympathetically to understand 
 the feeling of the men and the difficulties of 
 the leaders, I saw that I was at least ignorant, 
 if not unkind, when I expressed an absolute, 
 unmodified condemnation of a man like Parks. 
 And, although even now, I do not approve of 
 the manner in which the men in the saloon 
 
 [13]
 
 Preface. 
 
 expressed their sense of my unphilosophic nar- 
 rowness, I can realize that their action was 
 based upon some obscure feelings not entirely 
 unjust and brutal. 
 
 After a time, my friends became less sus- 
 picious, and pari passu more interesting to me. 
 But as the richness of the material grew more 
 apparent, the difficulties in the way of my task 
 became greater. The men with temperament 
 among them were intensely alive, so alive that 
 ^*art" seemed to them a mere trivial excres- 
 cence due to the superfluous well-being of the 
 capitalist class : and since, in their feeling, lit- 
 erature, history, art, law and religion, as they 
 are to-day, had for the most part originated 
 on the basis of an unjust social order, so these 
 things tended to keep the proletariat en- 
 slaved: they tended to cradle the mind and 
 senses and make man ignobly content with his 
 bonds. 
 
 So that my scheme for a book did not inter- 
 est them in the slightest not the real men 
 among them. They were too active to take 
 
 [14]
 
 Preface. 
 
 the contemplative point of view : they thought, 
 but their thought had the unformed and frag- 
 mentary character of action. And then, too, 
 as I have said, they distrusted the moral and 
 social tendencies of "culture." They were too 
 genuinely interested in themselves and the 
 "movement" to be able to see themselves as a 
 whole. They lacked variety, and though they 
 talked extremely well about the things that 
 interested them, they became stiff, inexpres- 
 sive and conventional when I induced them 
 to talk about their lives and their personal 
 opinions. The vanity of a pickpocket, the 
 sense for self-advertisement of a soubrette, eas- 
 ily lends itself to the egotism of autobiogra- 
 phy. But the active impersonality and seri- 
 ousness of a laborer lacks the pleasure in sub- 
 jective contemplation and in the recherche 
 of the ego which is of prime necessity in auto- 
 biography. 
 
 The world of labor is so big it has so 
 markedly not only the character of a great 
 human thing, but also connects itself so defi- 
 
 [15]
 
 Preface, 
 
 nitely with history and politics, it has so 
 many aspects, so many threads, that no one 
 man can possibly stand at the center of it. 
 That is another discovery, which, indeed, I 
 was rather slow in making, and another diffi- 
 culty in the way of my enterprise. I became 
 deeply interested in one man after another, 
 but in every case I found that either the man 
 was not sufficiently typical of what I imagined 
 the labor situation to be, or that he lacked an 
 interest in my work, or was not sufficiently ex- 
 pressive for my purpose. 
 
 At last, however, after being in Chicago for 
 several months, I did meet a man whose tem- 
 perament and character, and experience, both 
 as a type and as a person, seemed to combine 
 much that I wanted. I remember well the 
 occasion of our first meeting. It was at the 
 bar of the Briggs House. He stood, drinking 
 a glass of beer, and talking with energy and 
 rough irony to a couple of newspaper men, 
 about the teamsters' strike. I was immedi- 
 ately struck with his intellectual vigor, his 
 
 [i6]
 
 Preface. 
 
 free, anarchistic habit of mind, and the rough, 
 sweet health of his personality. We had a 
 long discussion about Tolstoi's ideas of "non- 
 resistance," about labor, about life. I found 
 him wonderfully expressive: he excited me 
 most pleasurably, and I made an appointment 
 with him for the next day. 
 
 He was too busy for me to see much of at 
 that time. He worked in the shop every day, 
 and his nights were usually given up to trades- 
 union activities, or to "radical" meetings, of 
 one kind or another. Soon after, I left town 
 for the summer. While away, I wrote my 
 friend, told him what I wanted, described as 
 well as I could the work that I had planned, 
 and asked him for his co-operation. He 
 wrote back a good-natured letter of consent; 
 and on the basis of that I returned to Chicago 
 in the autumn and spent there three of the 
 most interesting months of my life. 
 
 He lived in Austin, a suburb of Chicago. 
 I went to a boarding-house near by, so as to be 
 near him and his family. He was busier than 
 
 [17]
 
 Preface. 
 
 ever: he was a man of growing importance 
 in the Federation, he still actively worked in 
 the shop, his need of social pleasure was 
 strong and constant, and his "radical" friends 
 and activities were many. When I was with 
 him in the bosom of his family where I was 
 received with the utmost hospitality, or in 
 company with his trades-union co-workers, or 
 his "radical" friends, I found his talk always 
 expressive, significant and most interesting. 
 
 But I discovered to my disappointment that 
 I could not interest him in my work. He was 
 not at all interested in his autobiography or 
 in what I could make out of it; and it was 
 only when he thought himself working with 
 me that he was comparatively uninteresting. 
 He hated to commit himself to anything, or 
 to feel that, when once he was out of the shop, 
 he need do anything except enjoy his body or 
 his mind and temperament in the way he saw 
 fit. And no prospect of any material compen- 
 sation as a result of the work had any effect 
 upon him. I found him so thoroughly a man 
 
 [i8]
 
 Preface. 
 
 of temperament, that by excess, it precluded 
 the artistic results of temperament. 
 
 But, although we did not "hit it ofif" very 
 well in what we called our work, we got along 
 extremely well together in life. I became al- 
 most a member of his family, and came to oc- 
 cupy an acknowledged place in the circle of 
 his radical friends. I grew to be so much 
 interested in many of his companions, male 
 and female, and so thoroughly absorbed and 
 fascinated, that the need of making use of it 
 all seemed very remote to me. My own fam- 
 ily, however, beckoned to me from distant 
 New York, and I finally tore myself up by my 
 acquired roots, and departed. 
 
 The total result of my Chicago experience 
 was to make me feel that in this work the 
 autobiographical form must be given up. 
 The man and the subject was at once too in- 
 teresting, too significant and too inexpressive. 
 I was compelled to choose the more circum- 
 stantial, comprehensive, if slower, less vivid 
 and less exciting form of biography; to tell 
 
 [9]
 
 Preface. 
 
 about the man, his life, his friends, often quot- 
 ing his words, but sometimes resorting to my 
 own. The looser and freer form of biography 
 had the advantage of enabling me to bring 
 into the book a good deal in Chicago and its 
 people which is influenced and determined by 
 the character of America's intellectual pro- 
 letariat; although not immediately belonging 
 to the world of labor. 
 
 [20]
 
 The Spirit of Labor 
 
 [21]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 Anton, when I met him in the saloon of the 
 Briggs House, was thirty-three years old 
 old enough to have experienced a great deal, 
 and young enough to retain the excited point 
 of view about life. He is a woodworker, 
 making the best wages at his trade, and has 
 been in steady employment for some years. 
 That fact, however, has not limited his energy 
 in other ways. Of late he has become an im- 
 portant man in Chicago labor circles, and last 
 autumn was the Chicago delegate to the In- 
 ternational Labor Congress at Pittsburg. He 
 is the President of his local union, and in 
 trades-union matters very active in every way. 
 He is an effective speaker, and enjoys an in- 
 tellectual bout on the floor with any man. 
 He now meets men of all walks of life and 
 [23]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 finds it interesting to measure his strength 
 with theirs. He derives keen mental satisfac- 
 tion from contact with local philosophers and 
 "radicals"- and to their meetings he goes as 
 a relief from the more strenuous occupation 
 in trades-union matters. 
 
 The contrasts in the life of this working- 
 man have been marked. He began adult life 
 as a tramp, picked up a knowledge of his trade 
 on the road, and came in contact there, also, 
 with the injustice of organized society: this 
 made him think, and laid the foundation of 
 his later radicalism. Love for a girl came 
 in he had his great adventure and this took 
 him, eventually, away from the road. Chil- 
 dren came, and with them comparative fixity 
 of purpose, and the turning of the man's en- 
 ergy into the deepening of his social and in- 
 tellectual life. Many leaders in the labor 
 world, starting with sympathy for the "rank 
 and file," lose that sympathy when they be- 
 come leaders. But Anton has, at any rate 
 as yet, retained the essential qualities of the 
 workingman, although he is endowed with far 
 more energy and brains and character than the 
 average. This is partly due to the fact that 
 he still works in the shop, among the men, 
 [24]
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 and partly to his steadfast refusal to become 
 a "politician" in the movement. In the Fed- 
 eration meetings he is a free-lance, bold, ag- 
 gressive, terribly frank at times, v^ith a youth- 
 ful pleasure in shocking his companions, but 
 of sterling honesty and a deep joy in the truth, 
 because it is the truth, the exciting truth, no 
 matter if it hurts, no matter though it be quite 
 out of place. To express what he deems the 
 truth, in season and out, is to him almost an 
 emotional dissipation. ^" 
 
 When I met Anton in the Briggs House, his 
 face and manner indicated his character and 
 his experience. He has the powerful body of 
 the young mechanic not lithe or graceful, 
 but with the strength of a gnarled root. He 
 is short and thick-set, with stubbed and horny 
 hands; his head is a bullet, his brow broad, 
 his eyes large, deep, and kind; his voice big. 
 The lines in his face show a man who has 
 lived roughly: his life on the road was almost 
 as rough as they come. Yet his hard life has 
 not made his face hard. He is rough in man- 
 ner and in look; and his appearance shows 
 experience. But in spite of the many sordid 
 facts of his life, there is no suggestion of hard- 
 ness about him. He looks big and open, as 
 [25]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 he is. The sweetness and the roughness of 
 simple humanity are in his face. And he 
 meets men in this spirit often with brusque 
 roughness, but always with the essential re- 
 spect for others that sweetness gives. 
 
 This man was born abroad: as is the way 
 with the typical American workingman. His 
 home was in Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein. 
 His father was a house-roofer, a jolly fellow 
 who liked to drink too much and who caused 
 his family much trouble. He was a fat, round 
 person, a great story-teller, and great as a 
 father, for he had twelve children, of whom 
 eight died, through neglect, for the mother 
 was forced to go out working, and the children 
 were left to themselves. She washed for the 
 farmers in the neighborhood, often not return- 
 ing home till 2 o'clock in the morning, and 
 going away to work again at 6. 
 
 When the father went to America, to find 
 a home for his family, the oldest sister was 
 glad to see him go. He was in the way, she 
 thought. The wife cried, when he went, and 
 Anton prayed, for Anton was the only earn- 
 est Christian among the children. "When 
 mother was out working," he said "I always 
 waited till she came back, no matter how late 
 [26]
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 it was, so that I could say my prayers, before I 
 went to sleep. At that time I accepted every- 
 thing that the preacher said. I imagined that 
 his every remark was the essence of the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 He was a loving child, and by nature and 
 education had the patience and reverence that 
 is part of the laborer's character. "I was very 
 happy," he said, "when I could bring my 
 mother some pennies. I used to sing for them, 
 on the farms." It was the custom for the chil- 
 dren to stand at the back-door to beg for the 
 dinner that they were to take to school. In 
 the fall of the year, the farmers killed hogs, 
 and the children begged part of the meat, and 
 took it home. On New Year's eve the chil- 
 dren would go around the village, singing, for 
 coins and baked things. Anton was a favorite 
 on that night, for he was a good singer, and 
 had, as he said, "an unlimited amount of gall." 
 
 He went to the parish school where he 
 "learned religion," as he put it, and a little 
 mathematics ; also to swim, as that was a part 
 of the program of the government, to train the 
 boys for soldiers. He also learned to take a 
 beating with equanimity. 
 
 For the grown people in that village had 
 [27]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 many superstitions. One was a strong belief 
 in the need of beating little children. An- 
 ton's father, mother, sister and school-teacher 
 all beat him with great frequency. "My 
 father was good-natured," he said, "but bad 
 whiskey drove him to this brutality. In spite 
 of my religious tendencies, the slightest error 
 or mistake on my part would mean a sound 
 thrashing. The effect of the rod was to make 
 me want revenge, but not at that time so much 
 as later, for I thought I was born to work and 
 slave and be beaten that was the fundamental 
 doctrine of the Bible, as it was conveyed 
 to me." 1 
 
 Another superstition was the universal be- 
 lief in witches. The parents "grafted," said 
 Anton, "on this superstition, using it as a club 
 to keep us indoors at night. I imagined I 
 saw witches everywhere, and used to turn it 
 to account by frightening other children. I 
 remember getting under the house and mak- 
 ing horrible noises. I didn't see why I should 
 not make use of the witches, if my parents did. 
 But they objected to my graft, and my sister 
 beat me with a soup-bone." 
 
 One of the most vivid memories from his 
 childhood was of the insufficient food. Many 
 [28]
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 is the time he went hungry to bed, because 
 there was nothing to eat in the house. At 
 the best, the bill of fare was dry bread and 
 potatoes, salt lard and tallow in place of but- 
 ter. Once a year, "on Christmas, when the 
 birth of Christ was celebrated," he interjected, 
 satirically, "we had butter and white bread." 
 Meat was to be had only when the farmers 
 were killing. The mother used to go out 
 early in the morning for craw-fish, and would 
 also gather driftwood for the fires. 
 
 After the father had been away two years, 
 the family followed him to Clinton, Iowa, 
 where he had settled. They were only four 
 then ; the other children had died. The only 
 doctors in the village were the druggists and 
 the preachers, but probably the children would 
 have died anyway, from poor food and neg- 
 lect. "I was glad," said Anton, "to go to 
 America, for I thought I would not need to 
 beg there, and that I could get enough to eat." 
 
 "I enjoyed the trip across the ocean, for I 
 got extra food from the steward for doing 
 dirty work. The grub was awful filthy, but 
 there was enough of it. One day I went with- 
 out my extra rations, because I fell down- 
 stairs with a dozen bottles, and the cook 
 [29]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 thought he ought to discipline me. A boy 
 finds a moral teacher wherever he goes. This 
 world is said to be a bad one, but as for me I 
 find virtue everywhere, more's the pity. 
 
 "After nineteen days we reached New York, 
 very lousy from our steerage experience, and 
 landed in Castle Garden. The first thing I 
 noticed was a negro. I had never seen one 
 before, and I thought he was the devil. But 
 he told me his color was due to the climate, 
 and that I would soon be as black as he was. 
 As my youngest brother had been very ill on 
 the voyage, the doctor in New York sent him 
 and mother to a hospital for ten days, and the 
 other children to an orphan asylum. In this 
 place they put us through a course of gym- 
 nastics: we had all the exercises except stom- 
 ach exercises. The food, indeed, was little 
 and bad. Here, too, I got my regular beat- 
 ings. I began to think that I was owned by 
 the whole world and that everybody was good 
 but me." 
 
 When they reached Clinton, Iowa, they 
 found the father there doing much better than 
 he had done in Germany. He was driving 
 a beer wagon for a German brewer, and was 
 a great favorite with his employer, who 
 [30]
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 weighed four hundred pounds and enjoyed 
 the father's jokes. "Father was naturally a 
 great jollier," said Anton, "and that kind of a 
 man gets along in America." The brewer 
 drank a keg of beer every day and soon "died 
 of avoirdupois." Anton's father then became 
 bartender and afterwards saloon-keeper, and 
 prospered, because he told good stories and 
 knew when to treat and when to extort pay- 
 ment. 
 
 In this American town Anton went to school 
 more or less for two winters; and acquired 
 there the reputation of a bad boy. "The spirit 
 of protest," he said, "which is now developed 
 to a considerable extent, began to stir in me. 
 Whenever the teacher asked me why I was 
 tardy, I told her the truth, and the other boys 
 lied. So I was beaten and the other boys were 
 not; and this seemed to me unjust. One day 
 the school-teacher beat my little brother, and 
 I attacked the teacher, and the stove fell over 
 on us. Father took my side, and rescued me 
 from this affair. A few months before Easter, 
 when I was preparing for confirmation, the 
 teacher and the minister asked me, with a view 
 to finding out the effect of the religious teach- 
 ing, what I would do with my wife, if she 
 [313
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 were negligent in the household affairs. I re- 
 plied promptly that I would run away. On 
 another occasion I insisted there were witches 
 in the town. The teacher said there were not. 
 But as I had seen them with my own eyes, and 
 as my parents had told me these things existed, 
 I thought the teacher was a liar, and told 
 him so." 
 
 Finally the school became too warm for 
 him, and he left and went to work in a brick 
 yard at twenty-five cents a day. This was his 
 first experience as a workingman. He was 
 then twelve years old, and worked ten hours 
 a day, at turning and hacking brick, hurd 
 work, but he became the best turner in the 
 yard. He was a favorite with the boss, for 
 when work was slack he peeled potatoes for 
 the employer's wife. "I did this for a couple 
 of years, but my industry had no effect on my 
 boss. He took it as a matter of course. 
 Wasn't I getting twenty-five cents a day?" 
 
 Although Anton's father was working stead- 
 ily at this time, his mother still went out to 
 wash, and his sister worked as hired girl. He 
 had no holidays but Sunday, and so his life, 
 at twelve years of age, was almost all work. 
 "I don't think," he said, "that any one of my 
 [32]
 
 Early Youth. 
 
 family enjoyed life ; I am sure I did not, as a 
 child. Perhaps my father did, for he drank 
 heavily, and always had a good story to tell." 
 The father was the only one of them who lived 
 the life of the temperament. At least, he be- 
 longed to the poor man's club, and often 
 J talked eloquently to the men in the saloon. 
 
 When he was fourteen, Anton went to work 
 in a sash and door factory, where every man 
 and boy had his place like a machine. He 
 worked there on and ofif for eight years, mak- 
 ing window frames and nothing else. It was 
 monotonous work, and he learned little from 
 it.R "If I had never run away from home," 
 he said, "I would never have become a me- 
 chanic. The work there was too monotonous, 
 and the men took no interest in the boys and 
 did not teach them anything. I got fifty cents 
 a day for ten hours' work, and after six years 
 was getting only a dollar a day. But at that 
 time I did not think much about the wages. 
 I wouldn't have minded if it had not been for 
 the monotony of it. I became awfully bored, 
 which always happens to me when anything 
 lasts too long." 
 
 When Anton was sixteen, there was a strike, 
 under the auspices of the Knights of Labor. 
 [33]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 It did not involve his shop, but he at once felt 
 in sympathy with the purposes of the strikers. 
 It was a mob strike ; the strikers were not or- 
 ganized and they lost. This was the first 
 strike that came to Anton's attention. "But I 
 felt at once," he said, "that the other fellows 
 were in reality our enemies, and were trying 
 to get all they could out of us and give us as 
 little in return as we would accept. ^ 
 
 "Under the circumstances, I felt justified in 
 killing as much time as I could without being 
 discharged. The monotony of the employ- 
 ment and the greed of the employer took all 
 interest away from the work. So I organized 
 a number of boys into a kind of entertainment 
 society. We built a watch-house in the shop, 
 and while one boy acted as the look-out, the 
 others played cards, during the work hours. 
 We kept this up for months, but I was finally 
 caught and laid ofif a day. My father threat- 
 ened to thrash me if I didn't get my job back. 
 At that time my father was running the saloon 
 and I sometimes used to tend bar for him in 
 the evening. I was to do so on that night, as 
 the old gent was uptown. Instead, I left 
 home without saying good-bye to anybody, got 
 in a box-car half loaded with shelled corn, and 
 in a few hours I was in Chicago. I was then 
 eighteen years old." 
 
 [34]
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 On the Road. ^ 
 
 Now began a period of wandering, often 
 interrupted by brief returns to his family in 
 Clinton. He became one of the large class 
 of nomadic workingmen, so to speak, who are 
 as much hobo as laborer; indeed, many of 
 them more so, as they work only in order to 
 earn enough money for a "front," a suit of 
 clothes, and then restlessly pass on. 
 
 On this first trip he was in Chicago only a 
 short time. He boldly pretended to be a me- 
 chanic, but was discharged for incompetency 
 a few days after finding his first job. He then 
 washed dishes in a restaurant for a night or 
 two, but dropped this for a magnificent posi- 
 tion on a railroad at $1.40 a day high wages 
 for him, who lived at the time on 25 cents a 
 day. The old feeling of monotony inter- 
 rupted this lucrative work, and, after three 
 days, he quit and did not get his money. 
 
 Beating his way to Burlington, he worked
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 eight days as a woodworker, but was dis- 
 charged: he was not yet a mechanic. But 
 each time this happened, he was a little wiser : 
 knew a little more of his trade. Conditions 
 were slightly different in each shop, there was 
 greater variety than in the monotonous work 
 at Clinton, and, as time went on, he learned. 
 
 At Burlington he lost his watch, as well as 
 his job, and was "broke." Then he begged, 
 for the first time, and took another step to- 
 wards membership in Hoboland. Previously 
 to begging he had lived for two days on water- 
 melons that had burst and been thrown away. 
 At this time, he was very much discouraged. 
 He was willing to work, and saw the utter 
 lack of sympathy in the people he met. He 
 felt particularly the jealousy of the mechanics, 
 who refused to teach him anything. He per- 
 ceived that he was thrown entirely on his own 
 resources, and as he is naturally generous and 
 kind himself, he felt this coldness deeply. 
 
 He managed to beat his way in a box-car 
 to Cedar Rapids, and thence home, to Clin- 
 ton. His trip had not been a spectacular suc- 
 cess, but, when he reached home, he was, he 
 said, "as proud as a peacock." He felt he was 
 a hero and had been almost around the world.
 
 On the Road. 
 
 But the good people of Clinton "gave him the 
 laugh" for coming back so soon. "I stood in 
 the saloon," he said, "and tried to brag to the 
 other boys, but they could not see it that way." 
 
 He had been away two months, and was 
 glad to get back ; but the ridicule of the boys 
 and the need of work sent him away again in 
 four or five days. Without saying anything 
 to his family, he boarded another box-car and 
 was off for Council Bluffs. 
 
 In the box-car he met a tramp with a philo- 
 sophic turn of mind. He was a mechanic and 
 had had some good jobs. After Anton heard 
 this man talk, he vaguely felt that his life in 
 Clinton had been a narrow one, and that he 
 had had no real opportunities there. Dimly 
 it seemed to him, too, that his misfortunes, 
 somehow, were more profound and radical 
 even than that. "I didn't know anything 
 about Socialism," he said. "But I liked the 
 talk of that tramp. He made me feel that I 
 had been deprived of opportunities, that I had 
 been denied the right to live. The spirit of 
 protest grew stronger within me, though I was 
 not clear yet about anything. Even as early 
 as this I began to think that Christianity was 
 a humbug and that I had been hoodwinked. 
 [37]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 This tramp talked to me about unions, and I 
 felt the leaders must be heroes, all spotless." 
 
 At that time Anton had never been to a 
 union meeting, had never read a book, not 
 even a newspaper, and had never had a real 
 companion. The first "intellectual" man he 
 met was this box-car friend of his this hobo- 
 mechanic who had a sprinkling of Socialistic 
 ideas. The civilizing influence that "radical" 
 ideas have upon the entirely uneducated la- 
 borer is marked : a fact that will be abundant- 
 ly illustrated in the course of this narrative. 
 
 "This box-car," he said, "seemed to me 
 Paradise. My friend the Socialist talked like 
 an angel, and we sang the song 'Playmates 
 Are We.' He was a Carl Marx man, and was 
 friendly to unionism, for at that time there 
 was not so much antagonism between Social- 
 ism and trades-unionism as there is at present." 
 Anton traveled with the hobo for several 
 weeks: they beat, begged and worked their 
 way. When waiting for a train, they built a 
 fire, slept or talked, or fried steaks and pre- 
 pared coffee. The Socialist talked all the 
 time, and, although Anton has forgotten every- 
 thing definite that was said, yet he still regards 
 this man as his first friend. 
 [38]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 "I remember," he said, "that he was neat in 
 his dress, and that he carried soap and towels 
 with him in the box-car the only clean 
 tramp of my acquaintance. He also used to 
 beg often for a wash instead of a cup of 
 coffee." ^ 
 
 Anton tried to find a job at Council Bluffs. 
 He dropped into the Universal Exchange, a 
 saloon, and after being cheated by the saloon- 
 keeper, got a tip which led to a $3.5o-a-day po- 
 sition. He hired out as a first-class mechanic, 
 "on my gall," as he put it. When the foreman 
 saw what he was like, he paid him only $2 a 
 day, but that seemed very big to Anton. He 
 held this job only a short time, as usual. One 
 day he was making hand-rails for fancy stairs, 
 and, being "not even a second-class mechanic," 
 got excited when the boss was looking on, and 
 spoiled two feet of a rail. "The boss grabbed 
 me by the neck and took me to the office. He 
 was so mad," said Anton, "I thought he would 
 kill me ; but he had the kindness to pay me $5 
 for three days' work. So he did not cheat 
 me much." 
 
 The proprietor of a restaurant where Anton 
 ate had taken a fancy to him, and when he 
 lost his job in the factory, he got another as a 
 [39]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 waiter. Anton was a jolly singer and dancer, 
 and pleased the wife and daughter of the pro- 
 prietor, who offered him $8 a week and board 
 to stay with him. "It was easy work," said 
 Anton. "But it was monotonous, and the two 
 women, who were ugly, made love to me. 
 After a while, when they thought they had 
 claims on me, I found that monotonous, too. 
 So I juhiped on a box-car and went to 
 Omaha." 
 
 He took a trip South at this time, passing 
 rapidly from town to town, from one job to 
 another, from periods of begging and "bum- 
 ming" to brief periods of work. . If his nat- 
 ural restlessness was thus being intensified, 
 there was the compensation that he was rapid- 
 ly learning his trade. He was a quick, intel- 
 ligent boy, and he thinks he learned more 
 from these widely varying jobs than he could 
 have done through any careful system of ap- 
 prenticeship. During his wandering period 
 of seven years the longest stay he ever made 
 was four months, at Fort Worth. 
 
 Sometimes he was discharged because of in- 
 competence, more often because of his "inde- 
 pendence." Frequently he left because the 
 work became monotonous, and he desired to 
 [40]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 pass on. When he had a few dollars in his 
 pocket and a fairly good suit of clothes, it was 
 hard to keep him at his job. 
 
 "You are better treated at the beginning," 
 he said. "While a stranger you get more 
 recognition. They treat you with courtesy, at 
 first. But familiarity breeds contempt. You 
 wear out your welcome. When that stage 
 came, I generally moved. When I heard the 
 train whistle, my heart throbbed, and I wanted 
 to go. In the spring of the year I couldn't 
 sleep at night for thinking of the road, and 
 when the train pulled out, I generally got the 
 fever and went with it." 
 
 He came to know the "road" well, learned 
 to beg with skill, and met many hoboes and 
 "yeggs." What he learned from them helped 
 him to the art of handling men which he is 
 now turning to account in his trades-union ac- 
 tivity. "What one learns from the yellow and 
 the black will help you a lot with the white," 
 he quoted. 
 
 Workingmen who are engaged in any un- 
 stable work, such as printers, bricklayers, and 
 those working at railroad construction, often 
 become hoboes. They are not the real 
 tramps, whose technical name is "yegg." The 
 [41]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 latter have concluded that it does not pay to 
 work. To do so is dishonorable. They 
 therefore despise the hoboes, and will have 
 nothing to do with them socially. They are 
 the aristocrats of the floating population 
 more truly aristocrats than the aristocrats at 
 the top, for they can lose nothing: nothing 
 worries them, and they are more exclusive 
 than the Four Hundred. 
 
 Anton was often snubbed by these "swells" 
 of the road. From motives of curiosity he at- 
 tempted to become intimate with them, but 
 they would have little to do with him. Once, 
 when nearly starving, he met some yeggs sit- 
 ting about a fire and eating. They refused 
 to share their food with him. "Why don't 
 you go to work?" they asked, contemptuously. 
 Then they threw the victuals in the fire, de- 
 liberately. 
 
 "Those yeggs interested me," said Anton. 
 "But I never had a desire to be one of them. 
 I couldn't see their philosophy. They were 
 too cruel, too hard-hearted. They care for 
 nobody but yeggs. Solidarity among them is 
 absolute. They admire good thieves and 
 prostitutes, but even these are not admitted to 
 the inner circle. Their feeling of caste is aw- 
 [42]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 ful. It is much worse than that of the capi- 
 talist class. Like the capitalist class, they are 
 careful of their manners, too. They will steal 
 if they get a chance, but they won't beg at the 
 back door. They won't take the hand-out, 
 nor apply for work; nor will they wash dishes 
 or saw wood for a breakfast or an old coat. 
 There is only one way that a yegg can honor- 
 ably beg. He may size a man up and tackle 
 him in the street for money. He uses the 
 money for a place to "flop," in a lodging- 
 house. If any is left over, he will buy alco- 
 holic stimulants, but not food. That is dis- 
 graceful, to spend money for food, in a city. 
 If he really needs a meal, he will try for a 
 "chase-in" ; he will beg a meal ticket, which is 
 much more readily given away than a piece of 
 money. 
 
 "The yegg will have nothing to do with 
 women. He prefers boys, and in this way, 
 too, he is like some aristocrats. Sitting 
 around their fires, or smoking their snipes (to- 
 bacco picked up from the streets and re- 
 rolled) in a lodging-house room, they talk of 
 the kids they have met along the road: praise 
 this one's begging powers, that one's crooked- 
 ness, another's strength as a hold-up man or 
 [43]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 they tell of having met Phil Yegg in such a 
 place, Omaha Shin in another; and discuss 
 where the bulls (police) are most hostile. 
 They do not rush the can in the saloon, as the 
 hoboes do, but they sit together in the back 
 room of the lodging-house over a glass of beer, 
 and smoke their snipes. As long as there is 
 money in the crowd, there is no question of 
 who pays. As their taste for social pleasures 
 is identical in each one, there is no need of one 
 man having more money or spending more 
 than another. In this respect, they are Social- 
 ists or Communists. 
 
 "The yeggs are well taken care of by the 
 politicians. They go to places where they are 
 absolutely safe, such as some of the resorts pre- 
 sided over by Hinky Dink and Bathhouse 
 John, in Chicago; Bucket of Love, in St. 
 Louis; The Three Brothers, in New Orleans, 
 or Sailors' Home, in New York. Saloon- 
 keepers and politicians have no regard for 
 hoboes, but they know that yeggs are power- 
 ful because of their solidarity. A yegg never 
 forgets an affront, and his boycott is everlast- 
 ing and complete: it spreads like wildfire 
 throughout the world of the road." 
 
 One day I went with Anton to hear him 
 [44]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 make a speech on tramps before the Social 
 Science League, a Chicago organization of 
 "radicals." After describing the habits of the 
 yeggs, he made the following interesting ap- 
 plication : 
 
 "Whether we like or dislike the tramp, the 
 fact is he is here and is just as I have described 
 him. His aim in life is to escape labor, to be 
 a parasite. He makes a profession of that. 
 It is as dishonorable for him to go against the 
 rules of his profession as it is for a preacher 
 to work in a factory, a lawyer on a farm, or 
 a doctor behind a saloon bar. The yegg 
 is very similar to these other professional men. 
 While the one is supposed to serve justice, the 
 second to uplift morals, and the third to pre- 
 serve the health, the percentage of those who 
 confine themselves to these principles is so 
 small that it is almost invisible. The spirit 
 of commercialism has been a most potent fac- 
 tor in prostituting these professions. The 
 spirit of commerce appears to me very largely 
 directed to reaping the benefits produced by 
 the labor of others. He who is the most cun- 
 ning among the lawyers is considered to be the 
 greatest. He among the preachers who can 
 spellbind the best, attains to the most salary; 
 [45]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the doctor who can give the best reasons for 
 proving that artifice is better than nature, is 
 the most successful. The yegg has these same 
 characteristics. He is a cunning and shrewd 
 thief; and he plays on the emotions of others, 
 when he tells the wayfarer a hard-luck story; 
 the fundamental motive is always to escape 
 labor. The yegg very seldom criticizes the 
 methods of his fellow yegg. And this same 
 respect for the graft of the profession we see 
 in the ranks of lawyers, doctors and preach- 
 ers." 
 
 This speech was made long after Anton had 
 ceased to be a tramp. But he began, at this 
 early stage in his career, to form some of the 
 ideas which he was so fond of expressing at 
 a later time. He was not long on the road 
 before his religious ideas began to grow a lit- 
 tle vague; not that he had become definitely 
 sceptical as yet, but that this side of him re- 
 ceived no longer any nourishment. One sel- 
 dom meets a religious man on the road, or one 
 who has respect for the law. They feel the 
 necessity of opposing the law, because the law 
 opposes them. 
 
 While in the South, on this trip, our hobo 
 did meet one religious man, but his religion 
 [46]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 took an industrial turn. He was called 
 Preacher Bill, and he was a confirmed hobo. 
 He would sit for hours and argue about poli- 
 tics and industrialism. He was a great agi- 
 tator, and was called "Preacher" because of 
 the enthusiasm and emotion he felt for the 
 cause of the workman and of the outcast. 
 
 These budding ideas, or rather feelings, for 
 tliey lacked the definiteness of ideas, made it 
 easier for him to beg and to lead a rather hard 
 life than it would have been otherwise. He 
 became a good "bummer," clever at getting a 
 dinner or a suit of clothes. I found out, from 
 my own intimacy with him and his associates, 
 that he certainly "has a way with women" ; it 
 is not a very gentle way, but it is effective, and 
 this served him on the road. One day he hid 
 his overcoat, his hat and his coat, and then 
 went to a house and begged for some clothes, 
 which he intended to sell. The good woman, 
 after a few minutes' talk, gave him a break- 
 fast, a suit of clothes, underwear, collar, ties, 
 shirt, shoes, and some money for a hat. 
 
 "Women like to be sympathetic," said An- 
 ton. "That is the way they get their graft." 
 
 After this good luck, Anton got a shave, 
 bought a hat, dressed himself well, and went 
 [47]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 to see his chum, who did not recognize him. 
 With this new suit of clothes "as a stall" he 
 went to New Orleans, where, some circus men 
 having got into trouble, he on his arrival, 
 was rounded up as a stranger, and, in spite of 
 his good clothes, put in jail, and given only 
 half a bologna sausage to eat. But it was as 
 good sleeping there as in a box-car. The jail, 
 indeed, is one of the hotels of the hobo. The 
 next morning he was discharged by the magis- 
 trate, and with him a yegg, who had been 
 "rounded up" at the same time, and whom he 
 had met in jail. This yegg did Anton the 
 honor of liking him, and conducted him to 
 Houston, Texas, to a headquarters of hoboes 
 and yeggs. Here numberless hoboes were 
 controlled by a few yeggs, who spent the ho- 
 boes' money and ate their food, but gave them 
 nothing in return. 
 
 Then he and his friend the yegg went to San 
 Antonio, where they met a bricklayer, a care- 
 less hobo, who had a job at the time, at his 
 trade, and was making good money. He had 
 just drawn his wages $35; it was Saturday 
 night, and as he liked the two strangers, he 
 took a box-car with them, and they all went to 
 Mexico. He and Anton treated the yegg as a 
 [48] .
 
 On the Road, 
 
 king. The bricklayer gave him all his mes- 
 cal, a kind of whiskey, which the yegg liked, 
 but which Anton found better adapted for 
 "killing lice than for drinking." It was on 
 this Mexican box-car that Anton discovered 
 the true reason for the yegg's friendship for 
 him. It was a reason which made Anton use 
 a knife, in order to defend himself, and which 
 determined him and the bricklayer to separate 
 from their distinguished companion. ^ *- 
 
 They made their way to Laredo, and there, 
 as in other Mexican towns, they found that 
 a little bad whiskey would bring them what- 
 ever they wanted. For a drink, they could 
 get, in exchange, food and a bed so large that 
 it contained the Mexican's wife and daugh- 
 ters, as well as themselves. It was not neces- 
 sary to beg in Mexico. There the people are 
 so poor that they give whatever they have. 
 
 A man who comes from the States is well 
 treated in Mexico. It is known that he is a 
 better workman than the natives. So when 
 Anton arrived in Monterey, without a "front," 
 thinking he would go to work, under favor- 
 able circumstances, he and the bricklayer sta- 
 tioned themselves before a restaurant. The 
 first man tackled was pleased with the young 
 [49]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 woodworker, gave him a meal, and a job at 
 $5 a day. The bricklayer obtained employ- 
 ment at $12 a day. This seemed like clover 
 to them both, and the bricklayer staid on. So 
 would Anton have done also, had it not been 
 for an accident. One day he was careless with 
 a machine and nearly killed a Mexican. He 
 realized the danger, jumped a box-car and 
 made for the States. He dropped off at the 
 first Texas town Beaver ran for the first 
 house he saw and was hospitably received by 
 a young widow, who in return for some gar- 
 dening, gave him money, clothes, and the best 
 of food. He staid with her four days, and his 
 motive for going was an indication of his pop- 
 ularity with the sex. "I didn't want to stay 
 there for good," he said. 
 
 "I never had much trouble with the 
 women," he remarked, not complacently, for 
 he is not given to that, but in his matter-of-fact 
 way. "I remember one time I was working in 
 Hammond for three weeks, because I wanted 
 a front to go to New Orleans. After I got 
 together a few dollars, I started, with a con- 
 tractor, for the big city. We struck the town 
 on the night of a masquerade ball; and we 
 went there on a lark. I was a good dancer, 
 [50]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 and met a young girl who introduced me to her 
 friends. The contractor presented me as the 
 superintendent of the plant at Hammond. 
 We met the girl's five sisters, brother-in-law 
 and mother. I suggested a supper, but a com- 
 mon place was not good enough for me, so I 
 told them to take us to the swellest restaurant 
 in town. The contractor feared he would 
 have to pay the bill and sneaked away. We 
 went to a fine French restaurant, and I had the 
 meal of my life, with all kinds of expensive 
 wines. I didn't pay a cent. They insisted 
 that I was the guest. I made a mash on the 
 little girl, and escorted her home ; went to dine 
 with them the next day, and the old lady of- 
 fered me a job in her clothing store at $50 a 
 month. I nursed it along for a while, for I 
 was stuck on the little girl. But I couldn't 
 keep up the game, as I had no trunk, no re- 
 sources, and had to lie every minute. So I 
 skipped." 
 
 On virtuously leaving the young widow at 
 Beaver, he went to Corpus Christi, where he 
 arrived the day before Thanksgiving. In ac- 
 cordance with his general custom, he stood be- 
 fore a restaurant, for a "chase-in," and there 
 met a man who was justice of the peace and 
 [51]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the leader of a band of minstrels. "When I 
 told him I was a theatrical man," said Anton, 
 "he was interested, and gave me a dollar. He 
 took me to the stage manager, whom I told I 
 had been stranded at Meridian. I passed my- 
 self ofif as a character singer and a black-face 
 comedian. 'Come up and rehearse,' he said, 
 and gave me shirts, collars and ties. At the 
 five o'clock rehearsal I was there, but as I 
 knew nothing whatever about music, I told 
 them I was very sensitive to my accompani- 
 ment, and that I must sing without music. I 
 passed the examination, and was engaged for 
 that night's performance. When the time 
 came for me to do my act, I went on and sang 
 without music. I had been introduced as a 
 stranded actor, and I took the house. I sang 
 *On the Bridge at Midnight,' and I had $14 
 thrown at me from the audience. After the 
 show, the minstrels crowded around me and 
 wanted me to stay two weeks, and would pay 
 my restaurant bills, washing, etc. The story 
 went around the town like wild-fire. They 
 more or less got on to me, and called me 'the 
 hobo-king.' That night we went around the 
 town serenading, followed by a big crowd. I 
 sang under a banker's window. He invited us 
 [52]
 
 On the Road. 
 
 in, gave us drinks, cigars, and handed me a 
 ten-dollar bill. I sang at the theater every 
 night. A lady in town took up a collection for 
 me, and this brought me in $15. A printer 
 made 500 copies of my songs, and I sold them 
 for about $20. A little Spanish girl made 
 love to me and gave me a shell fan. I was a 
 hero, the town was off the main line, and that 
 is one reason why they liked my line of the- 
 atricals. That's the first time I ever was an 
 actor. I wish I had stopped then. But I 
 tried it once more, a few weeks after that, in 
 San Antonio. I was with a bum crowd of 
 show people. One of them ran away with 
 the money and the audience threw potatoes at 
 the rest of us. We had to run away without 
 our trunks, to avoid being lynched." 
 
 [53]
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 Injustice and Love, 
 
 It was not long after this theatrical experi- 
 ence that Anton was arrested for the second 
 time. It was this second arrest that filled him 
 with the bitter feeling of social injustice. 
 "Life on the road," he said, "with all its 
 chance meetings with many men and ways of 
 living makes one tolerant of everything except 
 tyranny." And in the case of this second ar- 
 rest, he felt he had come in contact with tyran- 
 ny in its ordinary and commonplace, and, 
 therefore, particularly damnable, form. 
 
 It was at Fort Worth, Texas. He had 
 worked in the town before, and was well ac- 
 quainted there, but as he was now on the 
 tramp, and accompanied by two other hoboes, 
 he did not want to be seen by his acquaint- 
 ances. He and his two companions were eat- 
 ing lunch in a lodging-house near the stock 
 yards, when a drunken man invited himself to 
 partake of the food. He fell into a stupid 
 [54]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 sleep, and while in that condition was robbed 
 of seven or eight dollars by the two hoboes. 
 A boy, who had been sent for some whiskey, 
 returned at the moment of the robbery, and 
 reported the affair to the police. Anton and 
 the two hoboes were arrested on a charge of 
 larceny. The boy had said that the two ho- 
 boes had taken the money, and that Anton had 
 had no share in it. But the police arrested 
 him anyway as an important witness, and they 
 also suspected that he was in with the others. 
 A religious man for whom Anton had worked, 
 and who regarded him as immoral but honest, 
 secured a lawyer for $25, money for which 
 Anton wrote a letter home. 
 
 "I was approached by the police," said An- 
 ton, "and told that if I would 'tell the truth' 
 I would be released. In that town they get 
 so much for every conviction ; and if the police 
 and prosecuting attorney could get my evi- 
 dence against the other two, they were willing 
 to let me off. But I didn't see it that way. I 
 considered it blackmail on their part to threat- 
 en me with prison for a crime I had not com- 
 mitted, unless I would peach on the others. 
 Besides, I did not think these two hoboes had 
 done anything they ought to be put in prison 
 [55]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 for. They relieved the drunken man of some 
 money that was doing him harm. It did not 
 seem to me as bad a crime as the authorities 
 were guilty of in their action against me." 
 
 The judge declared that there was not 
 enough evidence against Anton to indict him, 
 yet it would be well to hold him as a witness 
 against the others. This, too, seemed to our 
 hero an arbitrary and unjust proceeding. In 
 the meantime, he was in jail with his com- 
 panions. Money had come to him from his 
 family, and with this money he was to pay the 
 lawyer. The latter visited them in jail and 
 said the State's attorney had agreed to make 
 it a county fine; that if they pleaded guilty 
 they would only be fined ; if not, they would 
 be kept in jail until October, and then tried. 
 Anton and his companions therefore pleaded 
 guilty, and Anton paid all costs. 
 
 "It was very repulsive to me to do this," he 
 said. *'I was weak in letting them blackmail 
 me in this way, but I didn't want to stay in 
 jj.il so long and then have a good chance for 
 from two to five years in the penitentiary." 
 
 For three days before the money came, An- 
 ton was forced to work on the county road, 
 chained and guarded with a carbine. When 
 [56]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 he was released, they gave him nothing for his 
 three days' work. He went to Fort Worth 
 and tried to get the fine remitted. After he 
 had paid the lawyer and the costs he was with- 
 out money, and could borrow nothing from the 
 judge, the lawyer or from the women who had 
 performed religious ceremonies in jail. But 
 a negro loaned him $3 which he afterwards 
 paid back and with this he went to Weather- 
 ford, Texas, where he found a job and worked 
 hard to save some money, with revenge in his 
 mind. He worked ten weeks and saved $100. 
 During that period he did not spend a cent for 
 beer or smoking tobacco; for nothing except 
 the bare necessities. 
 
 At the end of that time he bought a suit of 
 clothes ("you can do nothing with Christian 
 people without a front," he said) and returned 
 to Fort Worth. He went to the newspaper 
 office, and offered the editor forty dollars to 
 print his story of the arrest, and how the au- 
 thorities had urged him to plead guilty. But 
 the editor refused, of course. "This expe- 
 rience," he said, "pushed me on far towards 
 thinking. I began to believe that justice is a 
 farce, and worse than a farce." 
 
 Anton is very emotional about this episode, 
 [57]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 not merely because it formed a step in the evo- 
 lution of his social opinions, but because it 
 marked a very important step in the develop- 
 ment of his love affair. "It pushed him on," 
 as much towards "the great adventure," as to- 
 wards "thinking." 
 
 Little Maggie had been in love with him, 
 as she admitted to me, since she was fourteen 
 years old. She was a house-maid in his moth- 
 er's family, a German girl, intelligent and ca- 
 pable, full of life. She has played a much 
 more important part in her husband's life than 
 falls to the lot of most women, great as that 
 part usually is. 
 
 "I loved him at once," she said to me one 
 night, as she and I were sitting over her excel- 
 lent tea, her three children playing happily 
 on the kitchen floor, and her husband away on 
 important Union business. "I used to pray 
 God to protect him while in those dreadful 
 box-cars. He never staid in Clinton long, and 
 while he was away other boys paid attention to 
 me, and I kept company with some of them. 
 But as soon as Anton turned up from one of his 
 tramps, I dropped them all and flocked back to 
 him at once. I certainly did like my tramp. 
 My mother tried to get me to make up with 
 [58]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 some of the respectable boys who wanted to 
 marry me. One of them was a Minister of the 
 Gospel, but I couldn't see him for long." 
 
 It seems that the vagabond did not violently 
 return this devoted girl's affection for a long 
 time. He was busy "seeing the world." But 
 when he was in jail at Fort Worth he fell to 
 thinking about his real friends, and little Mag- 
 gie came up in his mind and senses. He was 
 twenty-one at the time, and had often been 
 back home for a flying trip. During these 
 brief visits, he had seen much of Maggie and 
 had regarded her as his "steady." But now, 
 in jail, he fell in love with her, for the first 
 time. He put the case to me, as follows : 
 
 "When I was in jail I was very lonesome 
 and homesick. I grieved considerably, and 
 Maggie came up always in my thoughts. She 
 had been told by her family that I was a vaga- 
 bond. She thought she ought to suppress her 
 feelings for me and keep company with some- 
 body who was more polite and steady. She 
 had thrown over a good many, for my sake, but 
 she did try to like a young preacher who never 
 smoked or drank anything stronger than lem- 
 onade. I thought of this preacher, now, in 
 jail, and I did not like the idea of him. So I 
 [59]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 wrote Margaret an appealing letter. That 
 letter was a pathetic confession. I never 
 wrote that way to any one else, and never but 
 once to her. Jail and thinking had made me 
 tender. I wrote it with absolute feeling. 
 I felt it was a crime to be in jail, guilty 
 or not, for I was brought up that way. 
 So I wrote to her, really for sympathy. I 
 asked her to overcome the prejudice against 
 me, I promised to lead a better life and 
 asked her to be my wife, j 
 
 'When she got the letter she was sick in 
 bed with pneumonia. The preacher went to 
 see her every day and took her flowers. He 
 never swore, but he chewed gum. She was 
 so ill that she thought he was very nice and 
 kind. He had a good education, but no wis- 
 dom, executive ability, or originality. He 
 was a man, who, while very much in love 
 with Margaret, did not possess the strength 
 or wisdom to temper his feeling with modera- 
 tion. That is necessary if you want the wo- 
 man to return your love." 
 
 "He was anxious to run after me," explained 
 Margaret, interrupting her husband's narra- 
 tive, "and so he made himself less attractive." 
 
 Maggie is a psychologist, too. 
 [60]
 
 Injustice and Love, 
 
 "She answered my letter," continued Anton. 
 "She did not know I was in jail, but thought 
 I was sick in a hospital. She wrote that my 
 letter had affected her deeply so much so that 
 her mother and the preacher noticed it. I 
 think they read the letter, but she won't admit 
 that. Sick as she was, she wrote me, and 
 stated that she was keeping company with the 
 minister. While she couldn't love him, she 
 might learn to like him, and she would al- 
 ways be a dear sister to me. Her letter was 
 pretty strong, and it made me lose hope. I 
 suppose I did not know much about the 
 women, then. If I had, I would have known 
 that I could have butted in." 
 
 And he did "butt in" a few months later, 
 as we shall see. He was to go home for a 
 double triumph the great one, that over the 
 minister, and a minor one over two fellow 
 workmen who had treated him badly when he 
 was working at Fort Worth, Texas, at a time 
 previous to his jail experience there. 
 
 There were two young men in Clinton who 
 had been schoolmates of Anton's and had 
 worked fourteen years in the shop where An- 
 ton had his first job in the wood-working line. 
 They had not been advanced in position or 
 [6i]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 wages, and were discontented, so they wrote 
 to Anton in Texas, and asked him to get them a 
 job. He wrote them to come, but when they 
 arrived, he found it was not so easy to secure 
 a job; for they were far from being good 
 mechanics. Anton had learned more about 
 the trade in two or three years of knocking 
 around than they had learned in fourteen years 
 in Clinton. He was then being paid $i8 a 
 week for nine hours' work a day, while they 
 had not even dreamed of a nine hour day and 
 their best wage had been $12 a week. They 
 knew that Anton had shown no marked abil- 
 ity in Clinton and they thought they would 
 do at least as well as he when they went to a 
 more favorable locality. 
 
 As he could find them nothing at Fort 
 Worth, he advised them to go to Dallas, where 
 the opportunities in the trade were much 
 greater. They did not have the nerve to go 
 alone : they were borrowing money from An- 
 ton at the time, and wanted to "stick." So 
 they asked him to go with them. "They were 
 home people," said Anton, "and so I picked 
 a quarrel with the foreman at my shop, and got 
 fired." 
 
 No sooner had Anton been discharged, than 
 [62]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 one of his friends tried for the vacant place! 
 "But he didn't know how to ask for anything," 
 said Anton, "he was too shy. I balled him 
 out, but overlooked it and went with them to 
 Dallas." 
 
 At that city they tried for a job every day, 
 sleeping in the woods at night. Each man 
 covered a certain section of the city, and they 
 met to report at a certain hour. On the second 
 day Anton found positions for two men, one at 
 $2.50 and one at $2 a day. Both he and the 
 man who wanted his job at Dallas worked at 
 i the moulding machine, and these jobs there- 
 
 fore fell to their lot. His friend claimed the 
 job at $2.50 a day and Anton agreed to it. 
 It was with the understanding that he should 
 pay 25 cents a day more towards supporting 
 the third man than Anton paid. - 
 
 The two went to work in the cotton gin mill. 
 As Anton had had some experience in that 
 variety of work, he made an impression on 
 the foreman and soon succeeded in getting a 
 job for the third man at $1.75 a day. But this 
 other noble companion of Anton's was dissatis- 
 fied because he got less than Anton and wanted 
 to quit. So Anton fixed it with the foreman 
 so that his friend might have his own place. 
 [63]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 This was done, and Anton looked for another 
 job for himself, and soon found one at $i8 a 
 week. Then both of his friends became jeal- 
 ous at once. 
 
 In the meantime, they were writing letters 
 to friends in Clinton, boasting that they got 
 $i8 a week. Anton finally got tired of 
 his provincial companions and went alone 
 to Houston, and then to Galveston, worked a 
 week, and then back to Houston, where for a 
 time he was out of a job. Here he had an- 
 other experience with man's proverbial grati- 
 tude. He came across a person whom he had 
 met on the street months before in Palestine, 
 out of a job and "bumming" it. He was 
 ragged, "broke" and hungry. Antoii got 
 him a breakfast, a drink, and a job in the same 
 factory where he was working at the time. 
 This fellow was a good mechanic and he soon 
 showed the foreman that only one man was 
 necessary, so Anton was discharged. 
 
 When Anton met this man later at Houston 
 he (Anton) had no position and little money, 
 while the other held a good position. "I 
 thought I would test the man," said Anton. 
 "So I asked him to give me a supper and a 
 bed. He apologetically said I could have 
 [64]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 supper but couldn't stay over night. I went 
 to eat with him, but with the spirit of revolt 
 I insisted on paying for the supper. When he 
 saw that, he got friendly, and took me to a sa- 
 loon. I bought him whiskey and beer, and 
 then before a big crowd of hoboes and yeggs I 
 gave him a d roasting, gave it to him good 
 and plenty, and he actually cried." 
 
 Anton wandered around several months and 
 after having his jail experience in Fort Worth 
 he returned to Dallas, where his so-called 
 friends were. One of them had lost his job 
 and they both wanted to go home. They did 
 not like the world, found it cold and forbid- 
 ding, and thought Clinton was big enough for 
 them. "And it was," said Anton. 
 
 He, too, longed to go home. He thought 
 he had lost Maggie, but he wanted to make 
 sure, and besides he had not seen his family 
 for a long time. So the three "bummed" their 
 way together. Anton wrote to his brother, 
 through whom he had learned of scandalous 
 letters his "friends" had written home about 
 him, and told him where to meet them. He 
 wanted someone to see these fellows in their 
 ragged shape, hoboing it, so that it might be 
 known at home how they had lied in their 
 [65]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 boasting letters. They met, and the brother 
 ''balled them out for fair," and they were 
 disgraced in the town. 
 
 When Anton reached his father's house, he 
 found a conspiracy on foot to get him married. 
 His father was succeeding in the saloon busi- 
 ness, and as his mother's early experience with 
 hardship had made her a superb economist, 
 the family had saved some money and conse- 
 quently their ideas of respectability had devel- 
 oped. The thought of their son Anton lead- 
 ing a careless and godless life on the road was 
 disagreeable to these good people. His 
 mother had had her eye on little Maggie for 
 a long time as a good wife for her son. The 
 girl was very industrious and this represented 
 all the virtues in the eyes of the old lady. 
 
 Anton showed plainly that he had been "on 
 the bum." His clothes were "not nice," as he 
 put it. The first thing his mother did was to 
 give him a new suit. It was the 2nd of July, 
 and they intended he should make a good 
 showing at the Sunday School picnic on the 
 historic Fourth. So his father gave him $4, 
 his mother $2, one brother $2,and his other 
 brother $2. His sister also contributed $2. 
 With $12 and a new suit he felt he could make 
 [66]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 a. magnificent showing on the 4th. When the 
 day came, the entire family bundled into the 
 old carriage and rumbled ofif to the picnic. 
 
 Maggie was at the picnic, with her fiance, 
 the minister. Anton thought her more beau- 
 tiful and desirable than ever, but he felt she 
 was not for him. He was determined, how- 
 ever, to show that he was alive anjrway, and 
 that he came very near being "it," as he ex- 
 plained it. So he sang a German song, to 
 the great delight of the crowd, and then 
 proved himself the best talker in the place. 
 He had had a wider experience in life than 
 any of the others, and his anecdotes were full 
 of raciness, his jokes were lively and up-to- 
 date. Besides he was looked upon as a little 
 immoral by the German Lutherans, and this, 
 if nothing else, fastened the attention of every- 
 body upon him. 
 
 He addressed no word to Maggie, but he 
 soon perceived that she was listening. This 
 gave him confidence, and the show of in- 
 difference. He began to see that the feel- 
 ing she had had for him might be on the point 
 of coming back. Two or three little Ger- 
 man girls, who admired this man who was so 
 well-dressed, so generous in his way of treat- 
 [67]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ing and so confident and varied in his talk, 
 asked him where he was going that night. 
 He replied in a loud tone, that he was going 
 to the German ball. 
 
 Maggie heard him, and decided to be there, 
 too. In the meantime Anton's mother had 
 given him an additional $2, so Anton turned 
 up at the ball, where the admission was $1 and 
 the beer free, prepared to make "an awful 
 showing," as he put it. 
 
 "I had a certain amount of wit," he said, 
 "was a good dancer and attractive to their 
 taste. The spirit of dignity would not allow 
 me to make any approach to Maggie." 
 
 He did, however, include her with several 
 other girls and fellows in a magnificent and 
 sweeping invitation to go with him to a wine 
 room; where, at Anton's expense, they had 
 beer and lunch. 
 
 "This made me a big fellow," he said. "It 
 overcame the tendency in the town to say that 
 I was broke. They guessed, when they saw 
 me spend the coin." 
 
 One of the girls passed the word to Anton 
 
 that Maggie was "all right." On this hint, 
 
 the young tramp asked Maggie for a dance; 
 
 and when they had returned to the hall and 
 
 [68]
 
 Injustice and Love, 
 
 were waltzing, he asked Maggie if she would 
 write a different letter now from that she wrote 
 three or four months ago. 
 
 "The coquettish answer came so quickly," 
 he said, "that I was surprised. She said she 
 did not need to write now, but could tell me 
 all about it. So I escorted her home from the 
 ball, and that settled it." 
 
 The next day, Sunday, Maggie had an en- 
 gagement with the minister. She kept it, but 
 brought him the sad news, and told him she 
 would be his sister. In the evening, Anton 
 called, and was received very coldly by her 
 father and mother, who preferred the man 
 who did not swear, drink or chew anything 
 but gum. 
 
 "But now," said Anton, with a touch of 
 pride, "they think I'm all right. When I 
 smoke in the house now, her old father says he 
 used to be just as bad, and when I drink, he 
 says, 'Boys will be boys that was the way 
 with me.' Now they are interested in me, 
 they cannot see anything bad in what I do." 
 
 A few months later, Anton and Maggie 
 were married. When he went for the mar- 
 riage license, he did not have a cent in his 
 pocket, or anywhere else. They lived, at first, 
 [69]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 with his parents, but soon Anton had a chance 
 to go into the saloon business. 
 
 "A brewery was interested in me," he said. 
 "As I was talkative, and had met many men 
 and knew how to get along with them, they 
 thought I would make good, if I did not give 
 away too many drinks." 
 
 He started in a business that had been closed 
 up six months, and for which he had to drum 
 up a new trade. The first month he ran $20 
 behind, the second month he made $60 over 
 all, and the third month he cleared over $125. 
 He understood the tramps and rough element 
 and knew how to treat them. On the night 
 his son Alfred was born, there was a very 
 rough crowd in the saloon, headed by a desper- 
 ate fighter, a bull-headed Andrew. Anton 
 made them a little speech, told them about the 
 great occasion, and said he would treat them 
 to music, cigars and cock-tails until midnight, 
 with the understanding that if there should be 
 a row, they would abide by his decision. 
 They drank a gallon of whiskey and half a 
 barrel of beer and then began eating the 
 glasses. But there was no fighting. 
 
 "The news that I could manage a bunch like 
 that traveled like fire," said Anton. "I 
 [70]
 
 Injustice and Love. 
 
 made an impression on the brewers, and the 
 biggest toughs in town began to respect me. I 
 had learned to deal with men on the road, 
 and it helped me in the saloon business just 
 as it helps me now in my trades-union ac- 
 tivity." > 
 
 A certain kind of rough delicacy is a qual- 
 ity marked in Anton's character. The brewer 
 was a stingy fellow who never wanted to treat, 
 and who insisted on having only his own beer 
 sold. That was a handicap to Anton, for he 
 often was forced to say that he did not have 
 the beer called for. One day this rich brewer 
 dropped into the saloon when there were fif- 
 teen or sixteen men there, drinking. 
 
 "He bought a bottle of beer," said Anton, 
 "and treated me. I felt sore that he didn't 
 call up the boys, so that I could introduce him 
 as a good fellow and help the business. So 
 I treated the crowd and said, sarcastically, 
 'Mr. 's brewery cannot afford to buy.' This 
 galled him so that he spent ten dollars in treat- 
 ing, but when the boys were gone, he called 
 me down hard. But a friend of his, who was 
 with him, said I was right commercially." 
 
 Soon after the business was recognized as a 
 success, a young fellow, son of the widow who 
 [71]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 owned the saloon, wanted to get hold of it. 
 So his mother raised the rent on Anton, who, 
 understanding the reason for it, got angry and 
 refused to renew his lease. Repentance came 
 almost immediately, but it was then too late, 
 and he was again out of a job. And now he 
 had a wife and child. He had the satisfac- 
 tion, however, of knowing that the business 
 soon ran down and that the widow went bank- 
 rupt. 
 
 Anton was forced to go back to the old fur- 
 niture factory, at $1.50 a day. It was very irk- 
 some to him to work for so little, after holding 
 so much better jobs throughout the country. 
 It hurt his pride, but the man is not vain, 
 and he recognized it as a necessity. But when 
 summer came, and work was slack, he was laid 
 off. He then "got the fever again," heard 
 the whistles blow, and in spite of his wife and 
 child, jumped on a box-car and was off for his 
 last tramp. His father wanted him to pay 
 his way, but this seemed to Anton a pure waste 
 of money. 
 
 It generally takes a long time for a radical 
 
 change to come about in a man if it ever 
 
 does. Anton loved his wife and certainly the 
 
 experience of marriage tended even then to 
 
 [72]
 
 Injustice and hove. 
 
 make him steadier. But it needed more in- 
 terests than those of family life to hold him 
 closely in one place. Those interests came at 
 a later time in Chicago : and in this combina- 
 tion of activities which have made him an in- 
 tegral and useful member of his society, his 
 family plays an important and interesting 
 part. To be sure, he needed a job, but his 
 going South just then was perhaps due as 
 much to the remains of a vagabond tempera- 
 ment as to necessity. 
 I He left Maggie in a difficult and trying 
 
 i position. During the time that Anton was in 
 the saloon business they had lived in a little 
 cottage where Af red was born and where they 
 had had plenty. With her skill in manage- 
 ment, industry and intelligence, they had been 
 decidedly well off and quite independent. 
 But now she and her child had to live again 
 I with her husband's family. And she had the 
 proverbial difficulties with her mother-in-law. 
 g^ As Anton's father became more prosperous he 
 p grew steadier in his habits, and did not drink 
 so much. But Anton's mother kept up the 
 habit of parsimony even though it had ceased 
 to be a necessity. She was practical and help- 
 ful, gave Anton and Maggie the clothes they 
 [73]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 needed and met all her duties and the neces- 
 sities of life. But life had been so hard for 
 her, that she did not understand the pleasant 
 aspect of things : she was tyrannical and fussy 
 and gave in a way that brought no pleasure, as 
 Maggie put it. She was one of those unfor- 
 tunate women who do their duty so sadly and 
 constantly that they receive no affection from 
 their own children and incur the active dis- 
 like of all others who are connected with them. 
 Whenever Anton sent money to Maggie from 
 the road, his mother locked it up for safe keep- 
 ing and doled it out as necessity required. 
 She was determined that nothing should be 
 wasted. Her part is the part played by many 
 a poor man and woman who have been the 
 mainstay of a family but even thereby have 
 deprived themselves pathetically of most of 
 the lovable qualities. 
 
 [74]
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 Anton's last trip on the road was in most 
 respects similar to its predecessors. He 
 worked at anything he found : waited at table, 
 washed dishes in boarding houses, worked at 
 his trade, gambled and "bummed"; spent a 
 night at ease in a Pullman car which was 
 empty, and had to jump in the morning when 
 the train was going fifteen miles an hour; 
 found many sympathetic ladies, and few good 
 jobs ; met yeggs and hoboes, and imbibed more 
 of the philosophy of the road. An anar- 
 chistic miner, with a gift of gab, made an im- 
 pression on him. But, at that time. Socialism 
 and anarchism were only names to him. The 
 words stirred his blood, but meant little. 
 
 A hobo always wants to move rapidly. He 
 has no engagements and no place to go, but 
 he is always in a hurry. So he sometimes 
 rides on the trucks of the passenger trains, 
 though it is dangerous and uncomfortable. 
 [75]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 In the box-cars, he is more comfortable 
 than the bloated millionaire travelling in his 
 parlor-car; for there the tramp can lie down 
 and smoke. But he is generally so restless 
 that he objects to the slow speed of the freight 
 train. 
 
 So Anton hurried on from place to place. 
 The thought of his family made him even 
 more restless than before. He was anxious to 
 get a job, but when once secured it did not 
 seem good enough for him. And, indeed, he 
 was now forced to take positions which he for- 
 merly would have sneered at. When a man 
 wants a place badly, he is generally paid 
 less than when he is indifferent. At New 
 Orleans he was hired at $1.50 a day, eleven 
 hours, by the same foreman who had formerly 
 paid him $3 a day; and now he was a skilled 
 mechanic. 
 
 "I was treated with this same generosity 
 wherever I went," he said. "You see, I was 
 not yet a Union man." 
 
 Yellow fever and the fear of quarantine 
 drove him from this job. While "on the 
 bum" he was introduced by a policeman to 
 an employer as a man out of work. The em- 
 ployer volunteered to give him a position at 
 [76]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 $1.50 a day, for 11 hours' work. He didn^t 
 dare to refuse, as otherwise the policeman 
 would have jailed him as a hobo. 
 
 "Certainly," he said, sarcastically. "It's 
 work I want, not wages, like all other men." 
 
 He turned up at the mill for work, "just 
 for curiosity," as he put it; worked twenty 
 minutes, went to the W. C. and forgot to go 
 back. On the street he met the policeman, 
 who thought he possessed a gift for gab. "I 
 jollied him along," said Anton, "convinced 
 him that I was a good fellow, and after I had 
 listened a long time to his wit, he advised me 
 to leave town. Instead, I went into a saloon 
 and began singing to a lot of steamboat men. 
 For this I was arrested as a disorderly char- 
 acter, and taken before the magistrate. I 
 made my plea straight, and so the judge felt 
 I was a hardened criminal, and sentenced me 
 to the stone pile. I ran away, but was caught 
 and served my ten days. The law doesn't like 
 music, apparently. But it is hard on a man 
 to have to remember that the law has nerves. 
 When I got out, I jumped on the night Flyer 
 and as we pulled out I saw four policemen 
 watching to see if there were any hoboes on 
 the train. I yelled the most insulting things 
 [77]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 I could think of ; we were going at full speed, 
 and had just turned around a block, and at the 
 curve was a house of ill-fame from the win- 
 dows of which two women of the town looked 
 down and enjoyed my jokes. They, too, hated 
 the police." 
 
 As the train passed through Whitecastle, 
 Louisiana, he saw the large sign of a sash and 
 door factory, so he dropped ofif, to try for a 
 job. The first man he met was an outcast 
 from the richest family in Clinton. *'He was 
 an aristocrat, and when at home used to run 
 around with the free element and drink," said 
 Anton. "But when he was thrown on his own 
 resources he quit the booze and with me at 
 Whitecastle, he drank only soda." Through 
 this young man Anton got a good job in the 
 sash factory and was enabled to send money 
 home, but after a few weeks, yellow fever be- 
 came general in Louisiana, and the factory 
 shut down. A shot-gun quarantine was in 
 force and Anton found himself out of a place 
 and unable to leave town. 
 
 Under these conditions, all he could do was 
 
 to amuse himself and wait. Books and even 
 
 newspapers were unknown to him. He did 
 
 not read at all. At a later time, he seems to 
 
 [78J
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 have rejoiced in his ignorance of classical cul- 
 ture. "My mind was not prejudiced," he 
 said. "I was not mis-educated. I was not 
 burdened with a common school education. I 
 was unperverted and radical ideas could take 
 a firm hold on me." 
 
 What he learned, he learned from experi- 
 ence ; and his experience during the period of 
 quarantine was largely that of a town loafer. 
 He "hung around" the hotel bar and billiard 
 room and played pool, at which he was an ex- 
 pert. He worked about the hotel and that, 
 with what he could make at pool, gave him a 
 living. On one occasion he had instructions 
 from his backers to lose the game. At first, 
 he allowed his opponent to distance him, but 
 the boasting of the latter and the applause of 
 the crowd made him forget that his backers 
 wanted him to lose; and he won by a close 
 margin. In consequence, he received only 
 $2.50 out of the $50 stakes, and all the sports 
 were down on him. They thought he had 
 won because enough "considerations" had not 
 been offered him. He was unable to secure 
 another game during his stay in the town. 
 The proprietor of the hotel gave him, how- 
 ever, another chance, and put him in charge 
 [79]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 of a saloon that was patronized by negroes. 
 "There," said Anton, "I had a chance to make 
 ten dollars a day, but my sympathy got the 
 best of my judgment. It was easy to graft 
 there off the drinks, polo, lunch, showing 
 favors about the women, etc., but my lack of 
 courage and my sympathy for the coon made 
 it impossible for me to succeed, although I 
 was very anxious to send money home." 
 
 This man never expresses ordinary snap- 
 shot condemnation of the ordinary immoral- 
 ity. It is in his eyes so closely connected with 
 property and the class-standards developed 
 from it, that moral indignation seems out of 
 place to him. But when it came to the point, 
 he was unable to do the human harm to some- 
 body that cheating or theft involves. 
 
 The morning after the first frost, the quar- 
 antine was raised. There was a general jubi- 
 lee and Anton sang songs and made a speech. 
 Then he took a train, on his way home, but 
 as he was broke and hungry, he dropped off 
 at the first town, for a bite. A woman put 
 him to work cutting wood ; he sawed wood for 
 lyz hours; she then called him to breakfast 
 which consisted of 2 biscuits, a cup of coffee, 
 and a little bacon. 
 
 [80]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 " I was mad enough to choke her," he said. 
 "She then asked if I had enough. 'Too 
 much,' I replied. 'Enough to last me a 
 week.' I avoided wood piles after that." 
 
 This lady was a Christian and wealthy. 
 The next morning Anton begged a meal, at 
 the house of some working people. The 
 woman cooked for him some sweet potatoes, 
 plenty of bacon, two eggs, two or three cups 
 of coffee, butter and biscuits. The contrast 
 impressed him. On the basis of a full stom- 
 ach he found a planing mill and began to 
 think the world was his again. The propri- 
 etor hired him at $2 a day. Anton worked 
 there three months and sent home $45 of his 
 wages. On Xmas day he spent two dollars 
 in fruit and candy and took the present to the 
 family of the working woman who had given 
 him so good a breakfast when he was in need. 
 He continued his way home, but at Belleville, 
 Illinois, came one of his most unpleasant ex- 
 periences. It was winter and the snow was 
 deep. He was sleeping in a rolling mill, over 
 the boilers. The men in the mill thought 
 they would have some fun, and took some 
 waste, saturated it with oil and lighted it. 
 The heat scared him and awakening suddenly 
 [81]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 he thought the whole building was on fire. 
 Without taking his shoes, which he had used 
 as a pillow, he jumped down, eight feet, and 
 rushed out in the snow, bare-foot. He went 
 into four different stores in the town, but they 
 all refused him shoes. Finally in another 
 rolling mill he secured some shoes and a place 
 to sleep. In the morning when the crews 
 were changed, he was discovered asleep by the 
 son of the superintendent. He and his father 
 landed on the sleeping hobo and nearly 
 pounded the life out of him, "for no reason at 
 all." 
 
 "I had a strong feeling," said Anton, "that 
 I ought to kill them. I started to do it twice, 
 but I thought of my wife and child. The 
 employees put me wise and I could easily have 
 settled them, but my courage failed me. I 
 ought to have done it. I am still sorry that 
 I didn't do it. When I got home, I told my 
 friends I had fallen off the train, to account 
 for my bruises." 
 
 That was Anton's last hobo experience. His 
 wife "seemed good" to him, when he returned; 
 and although, at times since then, he has heard 
 the whistles blow and his blood has been 
 stirred with the strange eloquence of the 
 
 [82]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 sordid road, the attraction has never been 
 strong enough to make him break loose. 
 
 "I returned to Clinton," he said, "a family 
 man and a sceptic, though not yet a free- 
 thinker. Hobo-life and experience with men 
 has taken the old faith out of me, but I had 
 not yet got any philosophy as a substitute." 
 
 His first duty was to find a job. He was 
 forced to "humiliate himself" by asking for a 
 position in the old factory where no boy could 
 learn a trade. The foreman referred him to 
 % the owner; he had been discharged so often 
 " and had made so much trouble that he would 
 not hire him on his own responsibility. The 
 owner gave Anton a lecture, told him that 
 since his father and brothers had worked there 
 he (Anton) ought to settle down. Incident- 
 ally, he spoke of his own brother, who was 
 running for congressman. Anton understood, 
 and promised to settle down. "I wanted a 
 job," he said, "but it didn't influence my 
 vote." 
 
 Maggie was overjoyed when she found that 
 Anton had a position in the town, although his 
 wages were only $1.35 a day. They moved 
 into a hut with a little yard where they could 
 plant their own potatoes. The floor in the 
 [83]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 kitchen slanted, but they paid only $3 a month 
 rent. 
 
 "I made it look cute ant! nice, anyway," 
 said Maggie. And I can well believe her. 
 For the first time I had the pleasure of tak- 
 ing my Sunday dinner with her, Anton and 
 the children (there were three of them, then; 
 this was several years later than this point in 
 the story), I was at once struck with the 
 cleanliness and well-being of the entire house- 
 hold. Maggie had no one to help her; she 
 did all the cooking and house-work, kept her 
 children healthy and perfectly clean, the 
 house as neat as her snow-white apron, the 
 garden productive and attractive, and set as 
 good a plain table as has been my good fortune 
 to know. In addition to all this, she did out- 
 side washing and did it well (for this also I 
 can vouch, for she did mine !) . Her work did 
 not seem to oppress her in the least; she al- 
 ways had plenty of temperament left over to 
 take an interest in her husband, his friends 
 and affairs, and to do a little reading on her 
 own account. She often went out to socials, 
 and sometimes ran into the house of a neigh- 
 bor for a good gossip. So, when she told me 
 that the little hut in Clinton where the family 
 [84]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 lived for a year was clean and neat, I readily 
 believed her. 
 
 Anton worked steadily in the old shop for 
 a year. It was a happy, domestic time. A 
 little girl was born, and, on his small wages, 
 everything went well. The energy he had 
 saved from the strenuousness of life on the 
 road, went into more definite intellectual life. 
 "The spirit of protest" a phrase of which 
 he is very fond, grew stronger in him. He 
 regretted that there were no unions in the 
 town, in his trade of woodworking, which was 
 the largest industry in the place. But his or- 
 ganizing talent had not yet developed; there 
 had been no opportunity for it. 
 
 There was an old man named Greenhill 
 working in the factory. Years before he had 
 met Robert Ingersoll in Chicago and had been 
 much impressed. IngersoU's clear, though 
 limited and narrow human scepticism, had 
 struck old Greenhill as the last word. With 
 this as a starter, he began to read "radical" 
 books. He subscribed to the Free Thought 
 Magazine and Truth Seeker, and Tom Paine's 
 Age of Reason was his Bible. 
 
 Greenhill saw that Anton was ripe for these 
 ideas, and at odd times in the shop, he under- 
 [85]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 took the younger man's education. The little 
 thing that started the ball rolling was a copy 
 of The Truth-Seeker. Greenhill dropped it, 
 in the ' W. C," "accidentally on purpose," and 
 Anton read it there. It contained a cartoon 
 attacking the principle of the Spanish- Ameri- 
 can War. As Anton was opposed to the war, 
 he subscribed to the magazine. In this way 
 it was that he discovered Greenhill to be a 
 "free-thinker," and their intimacy began. 
 
 "It was rather hard on Maggie, at first," 
 said Anton. "All our folks were Lutherans, 
 and she thought I was going to the devil. 
 But she tolerated it. I got the magazine 
 every week and Greenhill began coming to 
 the house. We talked about astronomy and 
 Darwin, and it was exciting, I can tell you, 
 to begin to get some little idea of the way 
 things really are. Greenhill felt most people 
 were still monkeys. Finally he showed me 
 Tom Paine's Age of Reason. This was the 
 first book I ever read through, and I read this 
 book many times. I used to read it aloud to 
 Maggie in the evening, and she got as much 
 interested as I was. We referred to the Ger- 
 man Bible and found the absurdities and con- 
 tradictions that Paine pointed out. I loaned 
 [86]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 it once to a Catholic who liked it so much 
 that he never returned it. I wish I had the 
 old book now. My father thought it was 
 awful. 
 
 "I began to hate the Church and its doc- 
 trines. I never let an opportunity pass to hurt 
 the feelings of the people in that God-ridden 
 town. There was a young fellow in the fac- 
 tory who was studying to be a minister. He 
 ran his machine next to mine and we used to 
 argue while at work. He tried to argue me 
 out of free thought, but I had him skinned to 
 death. I laughed at him, and it hurt him. 
 I hated him because of my disappointment; 
 for it was a disappointment to have everything 
 go up in smoke. I told him it was the God- 
 idea that had kept the workers in darkness and 
 ignorance and poverty. Maggie followed me 
 in these ideas like a child." ^ 
 
 "No!" said Maggie, indignantly, "I led the 
 way." 
 
 "The world," continued Anton, without 
 paying any attention to his wife's remark, "is 
 dominated by fear; and religion is its strongest 
 weapon. Tom Paine proves that. He goes 
 about it in such a mild way: it is grand. He 
 does not get excited, but he is uncompromis- 
 [87]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ing. *I believe in one God and only one,' he 
 starts out. ' I have hopes of happiness be- 
 yond this life.' As for me, I have hopes of 
 happiness in remaining dead. My hopes are 
 so strong that they overcome the fear of not 
 remaining dead. It is immaterial whether I 
 die soon, or late. I am all right as long as 
 the factory whistle doesn't blow; but when it 
 blows and it is time to go home, I am miser- 
 able." 
 
 "That is what he calls satire," said Maggie. 
 
 Whenever Anton talks philosophy, and he 
 does so constantly, he becomes merry. He 
 likes expression for its own sake. OnMag- 
 gie's remark, he said, stroking his son's head: 
 
 "Alfred is not a sentimentalist, like Mag- 
 gie. He is cold-blooded and stands by his 
 father instead of his mother." 
 
 "My passion for investigation along eco- 
 nomic lines was strong at that time," continued 
 Anton, "and I became interested in Socialism. 
 I met a Jew who ran a second-hand shop a 
 man who would rob his next door neighbor. 
 He was a Socialist soap-box orator. I used 
 to listen to him argue Socialism, for at that 
 time I was a listener and not a Butinsky. I 
 had very little to say, but I was very vindic- 
 [88]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 tive when I met a religious man. As a boy 
 I had been very religious, and now I was as 
 extreme in the other direction. The foreman 
 tried to lecture me and show me the evil of 
 my ways. Also, a young minister used to 
 advise me to read something useful, such as 
 bookkeeping, instead of Tom Paine. 
 
 "But I didn't care about them. I liked old 
 Greenhill, although he was a narrow-minded 
 man. His time was devoted to the interest of 
 killing God, and this tended to side-track him. 
 He was also a free-lover and a subscriber to 
 Lucifer. He had been married three or four 
 times. He was a good mechanic, and if he 
 had not had these ideas he might have been a 
 foreman. Foremen are generally ignoram- 
 uses. They know nothing about philosophy, 
 sociology, or economics. They feel it an 
 honor to be in the Church, and are nearly all 
 religious." 
 
 Anton, on being offered 30 cents a day 
 more, went to another factory in the same 
 town, and moved to another house, near his 
 new working place. He grew "more talka- 
 tive," as he expressed it, among the workmen. 
 He began to feel his intellectual superiority 
 to the rank and file, and tried to think, and 
 [89]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 to teach them something about the conditions 
 of labor. He soon had the satisfaction of 
 "breeding discontent among them," and the 
 foreman began to look upon him as a nui- 
 sance. One day he had a big boil on his neck, 
 and Maggie was ill with cramps in her feet. 
 So Anton did not reach the shop till noon, and 
 was discharged. This he felt to be unjust, 
 after they had induced him to leave his old 
 place and go to the expense of moving. He 
 realized his being late was only an excuse. 
 He had done his work well he was now a 
 fair mechanic but he talked too much 
 among the men. ^-^ 
 
 Anton determined that he would have a 
 verbal understanding with his employer. 
 The desire to "ball people out" with whom 
 he had quarreled is very strong in this expres- 
 sive workingman. So one Saturday he waited 
 for the employer on the road, and, on meeting 
 him, insisted that he should explain the dis- 
 charge. He did not reply, but swore out a 
 warrant of assault and battery against Anton, 
 who was taken before an old justice of the 
 peace. 
 
 "The justice was satisfied," said Anton, 
 "that the charge of assault and battery was 
 [90]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 not justified. He sympathized with me, but 
 this man was a boss, and part owner of the 
 factory. So he made me sign a document 
 pledging myself not to molest the boss, and he 
 fined me $5 besides. My father was very 
 angry, and wanted me to prosecute the man, 
 but my respect for the law was already so low 
 that I gave the idea no consideration ; but the 
 next day I went by the employer's fine house. 
 It was Sunday, and he was sitting on his ver- 
 anda. I balled him out for fair. I talked 
 so loud that all the neighbors could hear. I 
 explained to him how he took the bread out 
 of the mouths of women and children. I told 
 him I was going to Davenport to work, and 
 that if he queered me there by a boycott I 
 would kill him. I am now boycotted in Clin- 
 ton. I could not get a job there to-day, be- 
 cause of my agitation years ago." c 
 
 After ten or twelve days in Davenport, 
 where he could obtain no satisfactory job, he 
 returned to Clinton, with the determination 
 to take his family to Chicago. That would 
 give him a larger field, and he knew that he 
 could get nothing in Clinton. It was excit- 
 ing, too, the idea of settling in the big city. 
 
 So it was decided, and this decision made 
 [91]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 Anton's mother very anxious that his little 
 girl should be at once baptized, before she 
 was beyond the reach of salvation, in distant 
 Chicago. Maggie wanted to please the old 
 lady, and so Anton consented, somewhat 
 against his principles, and he went to engage 
 the minister, a German Lutheran preacher. 
 
 "He invited me into his studio, I believe 
 he called it. I told him my mission. He 
 asked me my name, place of birth, names of 
 parents, and what Church I belonged to. I 
 was quick and proud to tell him I belonged 
 to none. Why?' he asked. *I don't believe 
 in it,' I said. He was horrified and shocked, 
 arose and said he knew I must be a bad man. 
 I told him he had no reason to think so. He 
 said he had every reason. 'You are a damned 
 liar,' I said, in his own studio, where he 
 might have studied, if he had been so dis- 
 posed. Then he wanted to know why I de- 
 sired to have the child baptized. *I am more 
 tolerant than you,' I said. *I want it baptized 
 to please my mother.' 
 
 "I had started to go, but he asked me back 
 
 again and tried to argue with me. He turned 
 
 over many pages in the Bible, and I pointed 
 
 out the contradictions, as Tom Paine had 
 
 [92]
 
 The Age of Reason. 
 
 taught me, and laughed. He was shocked, 
 but talked three mortal hours. I admired his 
 perseverance. He asked who was the god- 
 father, and when he found that Maggie's 
 father was a Christian Scientist, he objected, 
 but the objection was not sustained. At first 
 he refused to come, but when I said I would 
 get an English preacher, he consented to help 
 us out. 
 
 "The night of the christening there was a 
 little beer in the house, and the wife was on 
 eggs all evening for fear I would start an ar- 
 gument with the preacher. I wanted to stand 
 by the beer keg and drink as a protest, but 
 Maggie would do anything to avoid trouble. 
 After the ceremony, the preacher called me 
 out, for a talk. I gave him mother's money 
 for the christening $3. He was pleased and 
 gave me a book called 'The Word of God and 
 His Enemies/ I suggested his taking along 
 with him Tom Paine's Age of Reason, but he 
 said he would just as lief have the devil in his 
 house. I remarked that the devil is more 
 tolerant than God, and always has been. I 
 was too prejudiced even to read his book." 
 
 [93]
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Trade- Un to n is t. 
 
 Immediately after the christening, Anton 
 went to Chicago alone, to find a job, and estab- 
 lish a home for his family. He took with 
 him his entire capital, consisting of one dollar 
 and thirty-five cents. He found employment 
 the first day at Carbon Brothers, Union and 
 Twenty-seventh streets. He was then re- 
 duced to thirty-five cents, had no money for 
 board or for tools. They put him on the 
 molding sticker, which is his favorite job. 
 Working next him was a Union man, who did 
 not ask him to join the Union, and paid no 
 attention to him. He was apparently afraid 
 that Anton would make a showing and was 
 jealous. This man, as Anton afterwards dis- 
 covered, was a prominent "lusher" in the 
 Union, and thought more of himself and of 
 whiskey than of the good of the cause. On 
 this, as on many other previous occasions, An- 
 ton had the opportunity to reflect on the lack 
 [94]
 
 Trade- Unionist. 
 
 of initiative in so many Union men. Up to 
 the present point in the narrative, he had 
 never been asked, or in any other way influ- 
 enced, to join the Union. He is deeply im- 
 pressed with the need of awakening the work- 
 ers to their own interests, partly through dis- 
 sipating their narrow selfishness and cow- 
 ardice, and partly through general education. 
 Anton worked in a shop for several months at 
 $1.75 a day, and during all this time no Union 
 man approached him, although he desired to 
 join. He was bitterly anxious now to im- 
 prove his wages. He paid $4.50 a week for 
 his board, and sent $5 every week to Maggie. 
 This was just squeezing along, and he felt 
 that if he could get better wages and bring his 
 family to Chicago, life would be much richer. 
 An opportunity to join the Union finally 
 came. It was after a long strike, and a stick- 
 er-hand was needed in a South Chicago fac- 
 tory, which was a Union shop. He went to 
 work at $2.50 a day, with the understanding 
 that he should join the Union. His wages 
 were reduced to $2.25 by the foreman, as he 
 was not yet a first-class mechanic. He could 
 not have been reduced below $2 a day, as that 
 was the Union minimum. His first wages 
 [95]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 went as the entrance fee to the Union. Con- 
 sequently, he was very hard up for a week or 
 two, but from the start he was an enthusiastic 
 Union man. From that time to the present, 
 a period of about seven years he has worked 
 with fair steadiness and at good wages, aver- 
 aging very much higher than anything he had 
 received before ; until now he has a job which 
 he has held for three years, at $3.50 a day. 
 The Union helped him in many ways, as we 
 shall see, but perhaps as important a way as 
 any was to help to steady him, to keep him 
 feeling a part of a society and not too much 
 of an individual. An increasing family and 
 greater circumspectness tended, of course, in 
 the direction of steadiness, but the Union was, 
 aside from the material benefit, an important 
 aid in his moral hygiene. ' 
 
 As soon as possible, he called Maggie and 
 the children from Clinton to a little flat of 
 four rooms on Nineteenth street, which he 
 hired for $9 a month; and they became defi- 
 nitely a part of Chicago life, Anton at once 
 engaging with steadily increasing interest in 
 the affairs of the Union. At the same time 
 he became a more effective, if not for some 
 time a more peaceful, man in the shop. In 
 [96]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 fact, his peaceableness has never been marked. 
 He can be very sweet and generous, but 
 neither in temperament nor in philosophy has 
 he the virtue of patience and endurance of 
 what he deems unjust or churlish. 
 
 He was assistant "straw" boss in the shop, 
 which, as he put it, "is next thing to nothing," 
 but which nevertheless marked an advance in 
 his trade and the consideration with which he 
 was regarded. The foreman was "a con- 
 ceited Irishman, generally drunk." Once, 
 when he was off for two weeks, Anton was put 
 in charge of his department, at wages of $2 
 a day. Another department foreman re- 
 ceived $2.75 a day. "He was," said Anton, 
 "an obedient slave to the interests of the 
 concern. If a man went to the toilet he 
 would go after him and make him hurry. 
 He was not a member of the Union, and had 
 no interest in anything except the work and 
 his wages. He was a narrow-minded man. 
 I had no use for this kind of foreman, but I 
 had to deal with him when I was in charge of 
 the other department. One day he told the 
 superintendent that some things had not been 
 properly made, and put the blame on me. The 
 superintendent started to raise Cain, and I 
 [97]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 flew off the handle and swore. The superin- 
 tendent pulled off his coat, and I got out of 
 my overalls. Then he discharged me. But, 
 when he got down stairs, he was cooler, and 
 evidently wanted me to ask to be allowed to 
 come back. *You ought to apologize,' he 
 said ; but I could not see it that way. I told 
 him he ought to treat all men with considera- 
 tion, and that there was as much logic in mine 
 as in his. When he found I wouldn't stay, 
 he wrote me a good letter to a factory on the 
 North Side, highly recommending me. But 
 that shop had no Union scale, and was a ten- 
 hour shop. So I didn't go there." 
 
 He was out of a job for several weeks. 
 Every day he went to the Union headquar- 
 ters, looking for work. It was in the winter 
 time and he was very short of money. He 
 was compelled, like the vast majority of work- 
 ingmen, to buy coal by the basket, and thus 
 pay more for it than the rich man does. On 
 New Year's Day there was no coal in the 
 house, and it was bitterly cold. Fortunately, 
 the next day, when it was 8 degrees below 
 zero, he found a job and went to work in a 
 shop that was "open to the air, but closed to 
 the scab." In this Union shop he received 
 [98]
 
 Trade- Unionist. 
 
 $2.25 a day for nine hours' work, good money 
 for him at that time, but he could not get 
 along with the boss, whom he described as 
 "an intolerant, brutal bastard," and left to go 
 into a non-union shop at $1.75 a day and ten 
 hours' work. 
 
 The immediate cause of his rupture with 
 the boss of the Union shop was a dispute about 
 extra wages. He had worked an hour and 
 twenty minutes overtime, but was paid for 
 only an hour. Anton kicked for more, and 
 the boss told him to go to the conventionally 
 hot place. 'Complain, if you like, to your 
 old business agent,' he said. I replied that I 
 would go to the Police Station instead and 
 have him indicted for larceny to the amount 
 of 50 cents. Then he got mad and threw a 
 half dollar at me, and said, 'Take it and git 
 out.' I sarcastically asked him to have a 
 drink. While I worked in that place I 
 thought the earth was not so big a Paradise 
 as some philosophers make out. Indeed, soon 
 after, this factory burned down." 
 
 Very unpopular factories sometimes have 
 this habit of going up in smoke. 
 
 In the non-union shop, where he was get- 
 ting only $1.75 for long hours, Anton did not 
 [99]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 feel himself much better off. "It was a rush 
 place," he said. "Instead of running 15,000 
 feet, I ran 50,000 feet on the machine. I was 
 too strong for that kind of a job and quit in 
 two weeks." 
 
 His brother married at this time, oppor- 
 tunely for Ahton, whom he invited to visit 
 him in Clinton, so Anton and Maggie and the 
 children made a trip home. Maggie staid on 
 for several weeks, but Anton was soon back 
 in Chicago, after a job, which he found at the 
 Union Headquarters. "The official head 
 scrutinized me, as he always did new men, to 
 see if I was a victim of alcohol. There are 
 many mechanics who drink, and they, of 
 course, are often laid off. The firm had sent 
 word through the walking delegate that they 
 wanted a sticker hand, and that job was of- 
 fered to me. The man whose place I got 
 was a drunkard. He had not showed up for 
 several days, and when he did come back to 
 the shop, he asked the boss to lend him a quar- 
 ter to get a drink. He was an excellent me- 
 chanic, but that was too strong, and he was 
 discharged." 
 
 The scale at this Union shop was $2 and 
 eight hours, and Anton, feeling well off, 
 [100]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 wrote Maggie to come back. He arranged 
 to meet her at the train, but it was the night 
 when the district council met, and he was be- 
 ginning to be deeply interested in debates. 
 He gradually learned to take the floor. "At 
 first I did not have much confidence in my- 
 self. Since then I have accumulated too 
 much." On this particular night he was to 
 meet a business agent, a radical, courageous 
 man, whom he liked. So Maggie and the 
 children slipped his mind: if not, he thought 
 they could take care of themselves. When 
 he returned to the flat at ii o'clock he found 
 all Maggie's bundles in front of the door. 
 She did not have a key, and had to go with 
 the children to a friend's house for the night I 
 
 "Anton," she said, "is an interesting hus- 
 band. He is very fond of me and the chil- 
 dren, but he likes to talk so much at the Union 
 that it makes him sometimes forget every- 
 thing else." 
 
 It was perhaps just as well, for Anton, dur- 
 ing Maggie's absence, had quarreled with the 
 landlord, and on that night all the things were 
 packed up, ready to be moved the next day. 
 "He was a mean bastard," said Anton, "and 
 told me all the fault was with the Unions." 
 
 [lOl]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 So they moved to a little flat of four rooms 
 over a grocery store, for which they paid six 
 dollars a month. 
 
 From this time, which was in 1900, An- 
 ton's activity in the Union grew rapidly. 
 From the start, he assumed a critical attitude. 
 "I was always suspicious," he said, "of those 
 who had more authority than the others. I 
 was naturally an anarchist, in the sense that I 
 distrusted all authority, though I did not 
 know it, at that time. I had, however, begun 
 to call myself a Socialist. I was too emphatic 
 about it, and made enemies." 
 
 After he had been in the Union about six 
 months, he was approached by several mem- 
 bers and ran for the position of delegate to the 
 district council of the woodworkers. 
 
 "I was willing to be a delegate," he said, 
 "yet I felt I could do more good by being 
 closer to the rank and file and remaining free 
 to criticize. I had a suspicion, like a good 
 many other members, that the district council 
 was not too honest. This was largely a mis- 
 take, and was educated into me as it was into 
 all Socialists by the Socialist press and propa- 
 ganda. At that time all Socialists' papers 
 bitterly attacked all labor leaders and called 
 [102]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 them grafters and fakirs. In my enthusiasm 
 I thought the Socialists could not be wrong; 
 and so I suspected the honesty of the central 
 organization. But I thought I might be of 
 service, though not very popular, in the coun- 
 cil, and so I ran for the position and was 
 elected by an overwhelming plurality. For 
 weeks I had attended the meetings regularly. 
 The men saw in me a peculiar, rough hon- 
 esty, and workingmen like that. I knew men, 
 and felt instinctively that it was best to ap- 
 peal mainly to the manhood in a man. Any 
 injustice, no matter how small, seemed to me 
 of the greatest importance and to constitute 
 a big question for consideration. This atti- 
 tude, natural to me, was popular with the 
 rank and file, and so I was elected. 
 
 "I felt very important for some time, and 
 thought I would make them all Socialists. I 
 understood nothing about politics, at that 
 time, and did not know how to scheme. I al- 
 ways acted extemporaneously, and the next 
 meeting, perhaps, I wanted to retract what 
 I had said or done. I did not go to the cau- 
 cuses, but I learned from experience. I was 
 so fierce and bold and frank that I was looked 
 upon as a danger to machine rule. I was 
 [103]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 under no obligations except to the rank and 
 file who elected me. 
 
 "After I had been a delegate for some 
 time, I discovered that a large majority of the 
 delegates were as honest as I, but I also saw 
 that they were more or less helpless. Some, 
 indeed, were unscrupulous at times, not know- 
 ing whether to advance their own interests 
 or the interests of the majority. 
 
 "There were two prominent walking dele- 
 gates who represented two very different 
 kinds of men, and there are many of both 
 kinds in the Unions. They were always 
 fighting each other. One was a crafty poli- 
 tician without any convictions, except the 
 need of holding his job and feathering his 
 nest; and the other was a man who believed 
 in the rights of man, who loved men, and who 
 worked for them. He was an anarchist. 
 This man had been chased out of Germany, 
 where he had been in the Reichstag, and in 
 New York had spent a year in Sing Sing be- 
 cause of a speech he made at the time of the 
 hanging of the Chicago anarchists. He was 
 a vigorous, positive character, and never 
 spoke in the council without success. He 
 was, and is, physically and mentally strong. 
 [104]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 I liked him for his hearty way, his courage, 
 and his love for men. 
 
 "The politician, his rival in the council, 
 was a thin fellow physically and mentally, 
 though very clever. He was also a positive 
 character. He was a cunning dodger who 
 sometimes believed in resorting to the jack- 
 knife. I was informed by the anarchist that 
 this politician went to the Bohemian district 
 and made a speech in favor of a certain judge. 
 I was disappointed to think that a man who 
 claimed to be a Socialist, and was active in 
 the trades-union movement, would support a 
 Democratic judge. As I was in doubt as to 
 the correctness of the story, I went to him di- 
 rectly and asked him point blank if the story 
 was true. He admitted that he had made the 
 speech, and wanted to know who told me. I 
 finally told him that my informant was the 
 walking delegate, his rival in the council. 
 Then the politician told me how it came 
 about. The judge in question had been very 
 lenient in cases involving strikers, pickets, vio- 
 lence, etc., and in the matter of fines, and 
 there were reasons to believe that he would 
 continue this favorable attitude, if our walk- 
 ing delegate would speak for him and solicit 
 [105]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 for him the political support of the working- 
 men. So the judge's friends had first gone 
 to a man high up in the affairs of the Inter- 
 national, a man deeply respected and admired 
 by all parties. He had refused to make the 
 speech or, in fact, to make a speech for any 
 judge. This thin politician was then ap- 
 proached, and he consulted the respected 
 leader who had refused. 'Do as you please,' 
 was the reply. 'I am not Anthony Com- 
 stock.' He then consulted his rival, the an- 
 archist, who said: 'It is more important for 
 you to use your own judgment than to do 
 right.' 
 
 "This was a very characteristic reply of 
 this anarchist member of our council. Every 
 woodworker knows this man. I love him. 
 He is a positive, heroic man, who does not 
 like graft and theft, but who knows there are 
 worse things. And that the kind of honesty 
 that is harped upon by the reformers is often 
 the most insidious wrong to the workingman. 
 This man refuses any undue luxury: he will 
 not drink champagne because it is too expen- 
 sive and unnecessary. He has high ideals, 
 and is an extensive reader along his line. He 
 never went to an English school, but he knows 
 [io6]
 
 'Trade-Unionist. 
 
 how to say *I give a damn' in the most ex- 
 pressive and independent way. He can go to 
 any strange town and arouse an ordinary 
 meeting with more lasting enthusiasm than 
 any man of my acquaintance. Once I heard 
 him, when a general organizer, .make a 
 speech at a town in Wisconsin. Previous to 
 his speech, he had read the town's directory, 
 picked out the names of the men whom he 
 thought could be reached, and wrote them 
 postal cards. The character of each man he 
 judged largely by his nationality Swede, 
 Pole, Irish, German, etc. He represented on 
 the postal cards that the meeting was social 
 and involved no responsibility to join the 
 Union, and no fear of losing their jobs. 
 Then at the meeting he picked out the men 
 he could use. He had been attacked in one 
 of the local papers as an anarchist, and in a 
 speech to the meeting he said, in reply : 
 
 " 'They call me an anarchist. I give a 
 damn for that. I admit I be an anarchist. 
 The only question is, what kind of an anarch- 
 ist. The Mayor of St. Paul am I dat kind 
 of an anarchist? Mr. Rockefeller dat kind 
 of an anarchist? Mr. Big Business Man, 
 who buys the law to help his business dat 
 [107]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 kind of an anarchist? If I am dat kind of 
 an anarchist, dey ought to chase me out of 
 town. But den dey can't, for den I have too 
 much influence. But do dey mean anodder 
 kind of anarchist? Do dey mean by anarch- 
 ist a pioneer in de labor movement? Is dat 
 de kind dey mean? If so, den I am an an- 
 archist, and glad of it.' _ 
 
 "That's the man who replied to the thin 
 politician that it was more important for him 
 to act independently than to ask advice about 
 something he ought to know. The thin man 
 thought that his rival, when he told me about 
 the speech supporting the judge, ought to 
 have given me the reasons ; and he wanted me 
 to speak against his rival in the council. But 
 I refused to do so. I told him, however, that 
 if the opportunity came I would roast him 
 (the thin delegate), and that would give him 
 an opportunity to explain his position. He 
 had to be content with that. I got this op- 
 portunity at a later time, as we shall see." 
 
 I myself have met this labor politician, 
 whom Anton speaks of above. And the dif- 
 ference between him and Anton is remark- 
 able. It does not lie in the latter's nature to 
 change fundamentally. No matter how 
 [108]
 
 Trade-Umonist. 
 
 "wise" he is becoming about political and 
 other methods, he remains at heart a work- 
 ingman. This is much more than can be said 
 of many of the other leaders. They are, as 
 he said, roughly divided into two classes 
 the enthusiast and the politician. 
 
 I was impressed over and over again, when 
 living among the mechanics, with a certain 
 kind of altruism, of a fairly wide-spread emo- 
 tion of solidarity, akin to the religious; for 
 when men band together in an effort to attain 
 things which they deem necessary to their 
 deepest material and spiritual welfare, they 
 are not far from conceiving of the movement, 
 at least in moments of self-consciousness, as 
 being from one point of view religious. The 
 point, indeed, always comes in the affairs of 
 men where selfishness, when the interests in- 
 volved are of the deepest moment, becomes to 
 a certain extent altruism. If we strive to at- 
 tain small things for ourselves, our action 
 seems selfish ; but if we strive for the highest 
 good to ourselves, our deep egotism is sympa- 
 thetically called altruism and assumes an emo- 
 tional relationship to religion. 
 
 The best men in the rank and file of the la- 
 borers have this feeling partly unknown to 
 [109]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 themselves, and they make many sacrifices to 
 it. In the case of the leaders, however, the 
 situation is different, in large measure, and 
 not so inspiring. I have no doubt that many 
 of them are honest men most of them are 
 honest as far as money is concerned but some 
 of them still seem to be workingmen at heart, 
 with an emotional interest in their class. An- 
 ton is one of these, and so is his friend, the 
 anarchist agitator. 
 
 Corruption is a subtle thing; one not al- 
 ways easily recognized by the uncasuistic 
 man. To keep clear of wrong requires intel- 
 ligence of a high order, as well as good will. 
 And the labor leader is subjected to tempta- 
 tions of a kind not easily seen as temptations. 
 By virtue of these he often becomes far less 
 fundamentally attractive than the class he 
 represents. 
 
 Several sets of circumstances bring about 
 this degeneration, for it is degeneration, of 
 the labor leader. As he acquires the feeling 
 of power, he tends to adopt some of the worst 
 methods of politics, and encourages the 
 growth of a public feeling often extra-if not 
 anti-legal. Several men in Chicago have 
 said to me things which indicated an apolo- 
 
 [IIO]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 getic, or even exculpatory, attitude towards 
 leaders convicted of bribery and other forms 
 of graft a kind of sentimentalism, rather 
 than sentiment for the cause. They often ac- 
 quire a rather unscrupulous willingness to 
 adopt the unjust methods of their opponents. 
 Demanding fairness and charity, they are 
 often inclined to show little of these qualities. 
 I have seldom met a class of men who are, in 
 some ways, as narrow-minded and as preju- 
 diced as the typical labor leader of the "po- 
 litical" type. 
 
 But this is not the worst. Narrowness, sus- 
 piciousness, an eager tendency to accomplish 
 good results unscrupulously, if necessary, this 
 is natural enough to men of little preliminary 
 training and not often of the best natural 
 quality for the best men do not, as a rule, 
 come to the top. And the essential justice of 
 the cause outweighs mere money dishonesty, 
 if the spirit be otherwise right. 
 
 But, worse than all these in its results, is 
 the moral change due to a different standard 
 of life. The labor leader lives well. He 
 spends well. He drinks, and develops the 
 luxurious needs of the class he is combating. 
 "I must spend 50 cents for my lunch, at the 
 [III]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 very least," said an admirable carpenter to 
 me. He gets in a habit of mind where he 
 will no longer work at his trade, even if he 
 gives up a position which ought to be merely 
 temporary. He becomes a "professional" 
 leader. Like the "professional" politician, 
 he tends to become inferior morally. He 
 loses sympathy with the class from which he 
 has sprung. Living no longer as they do, he 
 no longer genuinely feels their needs. On 
 the contrary, he is likely insensibly to attempt 
 to live still better, insensibly drifts in feeling 
 into the class supposedly hostile to the class 
 he officially represents. 
 
 He loses seriousness, temperament. I have 
 often talked with men in the rank and file who 
 fascinated me with their idealistic earnest- 
 ness, their simplicity and pathetic honesty; 
 but among the leaders temperament and seri- 
 ousness are more rare. I find the easy, good- 
 fellowship characteristic of the small politi- 
 cian, but little that suggests the virtues of the 
 laborer. There is nothing Millet-like about 
 many of them. 
 
 The importance of the laborers' representa- 
 tives remaining laborers at heart is obvious. 
 Otherwise, the organizations would become in 
 
 [112]
 
 Trade- Unionist. 
 
 time as aloof from the real interests of the la- 
 borers as the bureaucracy of Russia is aloof 
 from the interests of the peasants. 
 
 I have seen on many occasions a crowd of 
 labor leaders standing before a bar and spend- 
 ing money recklessly for drinks many dol- 
 lars would be spent by each man in the course 
 of one evening in this way. 
 
 They have the false ideals of drinking, 
 "treating," of doing things on a "big scale," 
 characteristic of the rich young college 
 buck or man-about-town. This is hardly 
 the spirit which tends to preserve what is 
 idealistic and humane in the labor move- 
 ment. 
 
 It is a case similar to what has, in the mat- 
 ter of the Russian-Jewish idealists, frequently 
 come under my notice in New York. These 
 people, many of them, came to America with 
 the finest ideals, with devotion to the cause of 
 humanity, with a love for Tolstoyan doctrines, 
 and with vividly "temperamental" expressive- 
 ness and earnestness. Soon, however, when 
 they began to "get up" in the world, they lost 
 their interest in the "movement," and men 
 who had been simple or prophetic workers 
 for a cause became merely practical and per- 
 [113]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 sonally ambitious, in a small manner. It 
 seems the way of the world. 
 
 No one condemns this kind of labor leader 
 as bitterly as do the real workingmen, 
 whether they belong to the rank and file, or 
 whether they are themselves leaders, but lead- 
 ers still emotionally devoted to the "move- 
 ment" men like Anton and his friend, the 
 anarchist walking delegate and organizer. 
 They do not condemn the "politician" so 
 much because of any "graft" he may be guilty 
 of. This is not so common as is generally 
 supposed, although being spectacular and sen- 
 sational it is what usually is emphasized in 
 the newspapers and in novels which are de- 
 pendent on the exceptional, the bizarre, on 
 "high-lights" for their effects. They rightly 
 feel that occasional theft is not so important 
 as the emotional backsliding from the cause. 
 They realize that men like Parks may be good 
 men, in the sense that they keep warmly dis- 
 posed to the interests of their class; and the 
 fact that such a man might be inclined to 
 "steal" from the class whom they regard as 
 robbing the workingmen in general, does not 
 seem to them to be of any great moral mo- 
 ment. 
 
 [114]
 
 Trade-Unionis 
 
 The great virtue is the virtue of fidelity to 
 one's constituents. And that is, indeed, the 
 origin of all social morality to live up to the 
 best public opinion with which you have come 
 in contact ^whether that public opinion be 
 with or against the existing law. 
 
 One night I met in Chicago a man who 
 well illustrated the deepest morality of a cer- 
 tain class. He was a criminal and an outcast 
 from every society except the society of thugs 
 and vagabonds no man in any class would 
 tolerate him. But he had been brought up 
 as a member of the working class, and, al- 
 though he had lost his position in that class, 
 yet he had retained the most essential of its 
 virtues, its feeling of organized solidarity and 
 its hatred of the "scab." 
 
 At first I was inclined to think that this 
 Chicago criminal was the worst human being 
 I had ever known; and my acquaintance 
 among people officially labeled "criminal" is 
 considerable. He talked about his deeds in 
 a natural, off-hand way. One could see that 
 the opportunity to talk pleased him, though 
 it was against his sense of form to show any 
 undue exhilaration or emotion. 
 
 At first, he seemed a little doubtful, a little
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 hesitant, not having made up his mind 
 whether I could really appreciate him or not. 
 But when he had hazarded a few bolts, and 
 found that I was apparently unmoved, he 
 launched complacently forth in a description 
 of his acts. He poured them out imperson- 
 ally, calmly, yet with obvious pride. 
 
 He had originally been a workingman ; and 
 even now he takes a job when there is nothing 
 more lucrative to do. And he still has 
 friends among the honest laborers, who, al- 
 though they do not approve of his ways, some- 
 times use him, according to his account, to 
 "smash" a scab or two. He has been very 
 useful to some of the violently inclined among 
 the labor unions. But this, although there 
 was some money in it, was after all a labor 
 of love. It enabled him to function natu- 
 rally, and also to do a good turn to society. It 
 seemed a small thing, even to me, who at that 
 time was unfamiliar with a certain set of eth- 
 ics, in comparison with some of his other ex- 
 ploits. 
 
 These exploits are largely unmentionable. 
 
 His mode of life has not been "nice" at all. 
 
 He has not only "done" people openly in 
 
 broad daylight on State street and other thor- 
 
 [ii6]
 
 Trade-Unionist. 
 
 oughfares, but he has been effective in the ex- 
 pedition of other people, men and girls, to 
 another world. His treatment of the women 
 in this and other respects has been abomina- 
 ble. In this connection, a certain method of 
 making money which he has occasionally 
 adopted does not look well, even when merely 
 thought of. 
 
 He told me these things with great assur- 
 ance, without enthusiasm, without circumlo- 
 cution. He did not seem to feel the necessity 
 of delicacy in expression. His countenance 
 is open and frank, and his blue eyes are inno- 
 cent and he talks right on. 
 
 At first I had been guarded in what I said 
 to him. I did not wish, for several reasons, 
 to imply any disrespect. I knew that there 
 was such a thing as honor among thieves, al- 
 though personally I have found it only with 
 the help of a microscope. I am convinced 
 that it represents what the German thinkers 
 call "a vanishing moment," only. However, 
 after he had revealed pretty thoroughly his 
 ways, I felt it was no longer necessary to be 
 guarded. Here, apparently, was a man 
 whom it was impossible to insult. He prob- 
 ably had no sensibility. 
 
 [117]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 So, among other things, I asked him if he 
 had ever been a "scab" or had worked for the 
 corporations. For a moment he looked as if 
 he would strike me. But all he did was to 
 throw up his hands, and say in a deeply hurt 
 tone: 
 
 "Oh, no. I may be bad, but I'm not as bad 
 as that. That is against my principles." 
 
 I pacified him as soon as possible. I said 
 I did not understand. Even yet, I had not 
 fully realized the strength of the social law; 
 "Thou shalt not be a scab." Public opinion 
 that can so deeply influence the code of a man 
 like that is indeed a real thing. To him it 
 was the first and only commandment. With- 
 out that he would have been utterly lawless 
 and utterly lost, utterly without principle. 
 His morality was the deepest morality of his 
 early companions. They, of course, had 
 other virtues, but only the essential virtue re- 
 mained with him. And to that he seemed 
 true. 
 
 [ii8]
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Meeting the Employer, 
 
 A STRIKE, which had been on, over the 
 eight-hour day, for several months, gave An- 
 ton the opportunity he had been looking for, 
 to bring before the council the matter of the 
 thin politician's speech. At that time the 
 eight-hour day held in thirty-two of the Chi- 
 cago shops, while in the fourteen unorgan- 
 ized shops the working time was nine hours. 
 The employers of the thirty-two eight-hour 
 shops felt they were competing at a disad- 
 vantage with the nine-hour shops, and sent a 
 request to the Union to appoint a conferring 
 committee. They desired the men to send a 
 committee of six, to talk the matter over with 
 the employers' committee of the same num- 
 ber, and see if they could not arrive at a set- 
 tlement, and stop the strike. 
 
 The men, at the meeting of the council, 
 passed a resolution to appoint a committee to 
 meet the employers; and the thin politician 
 [119]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 and Anton were two of those elected to 
 serve. Anton at once arose, and protested 
 against the thin politician being on the com- 
 mittee. 
 
 "He is unworthy," said Anton, in his speech 
 before the council, "of serving on such an im- 
 portant committee. He, at one time, in his 
 official capacity as walking delegate, made a 
 speech in favor of a certain judge in the 
 Democratic party." 
 
 The thin politician was on his feet imme- 
 diately with a sweeping denial, and a demand 
 for the name of Anton's informant. 
 
 "I gave the name," said Anton, "and 
 then he and the anarchist, who was present, 
 thrashed the matter out. There is more to 
 this later on, but for the time the thin politi- 
 cian was sustained as a member of the com- 
 mittee. I had satisfied my conscience, how- 
 ever, and had kept my promise." 
 
 The strike of the woodworkers had begun 
 several months before the conferring commit- 
 tees had been formed. The trade agreement, 
 entered into two years earlier, provided for a 
 nine-hour day, $2 minimum scale of wages, 
 absolute closed shop, apprentice system, and 
 the inauguration of the eight-hour day on 
 [120]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 February ist, 1900. All the factories, with a 
 solitary exception, had agreed. The men de- 
 manded a ratification of this agreement, but 
 the bosses insisted on going back to the nine- 
 hour day. They were willing to pay for the 
 extra hour, but the men felt it was important 
 to maintain the principle of the eight-hour 
 day. The employers felt themselves stronger 
 than they had been, for at that time there was 
 going on a building trades lockout, and it 
 looked as though the men would be defeated, 
 and if the trades were defeated it would be 
 a blow to the woodworkers. 
 
 Anton worked at the time just previous to 
 the strike in the sash and door factory of C, 
 E. Petersen, who was "a monument in the 
 Employers' Association," and he was also ac- 
 tive in politics. A little while before the 
 strike, Petersen called a meeting of his men 
 and made them an address, an account of 
 which is thus given by Anton : 
 
 "He told how much the trade had lost as 
 the Unions had got more privileges, but he 
 did not tell how he had been able to build his 
 factory larger and larger. He told how he 
 had charitably built homes for his employees, 
 but he did not dwell on the rent he charged 
 [121]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 them. He did not fail to tell them that in 
 case of a strike he had the power to put them 
 out of their homes, but that he was too good 
 to do so. At the close of his lecture he said 
 he liked his men and would love to pay high 
 wages and maintain the eight-hour agreement 
 and keep closed shop, but that, unfortunately, 
 if Bryan was elected business would be para- 
 lyzed and he would be unable to keep his 
 agreement. He asked the men to give an 
 opinion. They all sat silent, as the rank and 
 file always will, so I spoke up and informed 
 him that all of his men had voted in favor 
 of the old agreement, which provided for an 
 eight-hour day, at a certain date. I told him 
 that all of the men were satisfied with their 
 employer and their wages; that Bryan's elec- 
 tion was almost impossible, and that, if he 
 were elected, it would make no material dif- 
 ference, that the political parties were all 
 alike. 
 
 He had referred in his speech to the busi- 
 ness agents as 'the hoodlums downtown.' I 
 assured him the men had not listened to the 
 'hoodlums,' but if they had they would have 
 accepted the nine-hour day instead of being 
 against it. As it was, they had taken the reins 
 
 [122]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 in their own hands and voted against the nine- 
 hour day. 
 
 "Petersen did not like my attitude. He 
 thought I was a Butinsky. He started to go 
 away, and met the thin politician, who had 
 been in the meeting and had heard himself 
 referred to as a 'hoodlum.' But Petersen ex- 
 tended his hand cordially, and so did the 
 walking delegate, and I set them both down 
 as hypocrites. I used this to advantage when 
 the strike came on in impressing the men." 
 
 At the beginning of the strike, Anton had 
 been made captain of the pickets. "I was 
 fearless," he said, "and I also had enough dis- 
 cretion for the position. My duty was to tell 
 the rank and file of pickets what to do. They 
 were to watch the shop, inform all scabs that 
 a strike was on, and show them what their 
 obligations to the community were. They 
 must persuade these men by peaceful means, 
 if possible; but they must be persuaded: they 
 must see the light. Often the only way to 
 make them see the light was to make them 
 fear something more than they feared going 
 hungry." 
 
 The strike in Anton's shop lasted only a few 
 weeks: the men lost, and when Anton ap- 
 [123]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 peared for work, he was politely informed 
 there was no place for him ; but when wanted 
 he would receive a postal card. He knew 
 he would never be wanted. 
 
 It was after the strike in the shops remain- 
 ing out had lasted several months that the em- 
 ployers had called for the meeting with the 
 men's committee. Petersen, Anton's employ- 
 er, was there, and a Mr. Von Flatten, who 
 said the first word for the employers. 
 
 "We feel," he began, "that as the strike has 
 lasted so long, and as some of the shops have 
 accepted the nine-hour day, our shop cannot 
 grant the eight-hour day; if we did, we could 
 not compete in the trade. We should have 
 to close our mills and get out of town." 
 
 "I got up," said Anton, "and made for Mr. 
 Petersen. I remarked that I, as one member 
 of the committee, felt no confidence in the 
 committee of the employers ; that I questioned 
 their sincerity, and their honesty. At this 
 one of the bosses, a good man named Lock- 
 wood, grew very indignant, and said his hon- 
 esty had never before been questioned. I was 
 waiting for a little incident like that, so I 
 apologized and said that perhaps my remark 
 was too sweeping; that I, as a matter of fact, 
 [124]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 referred to one member of the committee, Mr. 
 Petersen. I then balled him out. I told the 
 committee that I had been in his employ be- 
 fore the strike; that he had had a meeting 
 with the men and had told them he was satis- 
 fied with the attitude of the organization, and 
 would keep his agreement, but that he now 
 wanted to break it. Mr. McKinley had been 
 elected, and Bryan defeated, and now there 
 was no reason why Mr. Petersen should not 
 keep the old agreement, according to his own 
 statement. While I was speaking Mr. Peter- 
 sen was nervous and excited, and the other 
 bosses were tickled. Petersen said I had mis- 
 understood and misconstrued him. I said: 
 'Mr. Petersen, it is too late now. Your men 
 voted for Mr. McKinley. If they had known 
 how you would act, they wouldn't have voted 
 as they did.' This incident gave me great 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "The result was that our committee made 
 out a report recommending a nine-hour day. 
 This I refused to sign, as I had been so in- 
 structed by my local. Yet I felt the position 
 of the bosses was peculiar, because of the nine- 
 hour day being already accepted by some of 
 the shops. When, in the meeting of the 
 [125]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 Union, they applauded my opposition to the 
 nine-hour day, I got up and foolishly said 
 that, while I voted in accordance with their 
 instructions, I wanted no applause, for I 
 thought they had better accept the inevitable 
 and consent to the nine-hour day. There was 
 a storm of disapproval at that. It was far 
 from popular, and was the beginning of my 
 internal fights in our Union." 
 
 The issue was left to a general referendum 
 vote, and the nine-hour day accepted by a 
 small majority; and so the strike was lost to 
 the men. The nine shops which had been 
 lost went back to ten hours, and, as always 
 after a lost strike, the membership of the 
 Unions dwindled and there was pretty gen- 
 eral discontent. All the officers who had 
 been in power during the strike were defeated 
 in the next election, except the thin politician, 
 partly because his local was the biggest in the 
 city, and partly because he had trimmed suc- 
 cessfully during the fight. 
 
 The anarchist organizer had, during the 
 strike, been outspoken against the folly of 
 holding out at this time for an eight-hour day, 
 when the conditions of organization did not 
 warrant it. He was therefore very unpopu- 
 [126]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 lar. After the men had returned to work, a 
 charge was trumped up against him that he 
 was short $24 in paying out strike funds. He 
 handled, during the strike, from $2,000 to 
 $5,000 every week. For this man to steal 
 $24 seemed to any one who knew his character 
 an utter impossibility. But the rank and file 
 are extremely suspicious of their leaders. 
 Sometimes they have good reason to be, but 
 they are generally unreasonable, even when 
 right, and in this case they were unreasonably 
 wrong. 
 
 A trial board of five was appointed to try 
 this burly, honest and vigorous man. But the 
 board did not have the courage to find either 
 for or against him: they were afraid to ac- 
 quit him, because of the popular prejudice, 
 and they were too fair to find him guilty. 
 So they recommended that the council should 
 decide. Anton made a vigorous fight against 
 the cowardice of this trial board; and the 
 council re-committed the decision back to the 
 board, which again showed an incapacity to 
 decide. The council then discharged the 
 board and elected another. When the an- 
 archist was summoned before this second 
 board, he did not appear, knowing that the 
 [127]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 proceedings were out of order. He made as 
 an excuse his being absent from the city on 
 the business of prosecuting three Union men 
 for scabbing. The board tried him, with him 
 and his witnesses absent, and brought in a ver- 
 dict of guilty. Anton, in the council meet- 
 ing, fought vigorously against the illegitimacy 
 of these proceedings. The President of the 
 council left his chair to state on the floor his 
 belief in the insufficiency of the evidence on 
 which the conviction rested. In spite of that, 
 this President voted, when it came to the roll- 
 call, in favor of sustaining the decision of the 
 board. Only four or five members of the 
 council had the courage to go in the face of 
 popular feeling and vote against a decision 
 that was unjust and irregular. The power of 
 the crowd is strong enough in the country's 
 politics, but this case would indicate an im- 
 mediate reference to popular passion in the 
 affairs of the Union that is quite as strong as 
 anything in our general politics. 
 
 The defendant appealed from the Wood- 
 workers' Council to the General Council, 
 which reversed the decision and ordered a 
 new trial. A trial board of three, one se- 
 lected by the Woodworkers' Council, one by 
 
 [128]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 the General Council, and the third elected 
 by the two appointed, found the anarchist or- 
 ganizer innocent of the charge, and he \yas 
 acquitted. 
 
 Anton has a great deal of sympathy for the 
 rank and file. He thinks their emotions can 
 be trusted, but not their intelligence. The 
 unscrupulous demagogue or the hypocritical 
 reformer can lead them with ease, if he is 
 willing to observe their unreasoning passions. 
 Here was a splendid man, who had for years 
 labored in their interests, and yet whom they 
 suspected of having stolen twenty-four dol- 
 lars! 
 
 He had, indeed, early in his American ca- 
 reer, refused to have anything to do with 
 trades-unionism: he was a fiery Socialist, and 
 always spoke from a soap box or in the shop. 
 But when he gave up Socialism, because of 
 its "intolerance," and became a theoretical 
 anarchist, he started in to work for the 
 Unions, with the "general strike" as his slo- 
 gan; and knocked fiercely at the ballot and at 
 the efforts of the Socialists to get hold of the 
 Unions and lead them into politics. He made 
 one of the most important speeches against 
 the Social Democratic party: a general atti- 
 [129]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 tude that has now become the slogan of the 
 American Federation of Labor, where the 
 Socialists are very unpopular. 
 
 This anarchist was a splendid organizer; 
 he organized the first interior finish shop in 
 America, and being in New York when the 
 woodworkers started to organize in Chicago, 
 they sent to New York for him. Three years 
 later, the same Union that sent for him wanted 
 to run him out of town, because they thought 
 this devoted man had misappropriated $24! 
 At an earlier time he had resigned as busi- 
 ness agent, because of the hostility of the Ger- 
 mans, whose clannishness he had opposed. 
 Immediately after his resignation the Union 
 lost 2,000 members by a foolish strike. They 
 went out when they were not strong enough. 
 It was, as Anton put it, "a strike of enthu- 
 siasm. They struck just because their cause 
 was just and that's no reason to strike at 
 all." 
 
 After that strike, this anarchist organizer 
 made a proposition to return to Chicago and 
 take hold and help the Union to recover its 
 membership, but on the condition that he be 
 placed in a position of absolute autocracy. 
 The organization would not accept that. "I 
 [130]
 
 Meeting the Employer, 
 
 also opposed it," said Anton, "though I ad- 
 mired the man immensely." 
 
 "I admired him especially because he was 
 a fire-brand, and yet because of his usefulness 
 and originality was tolerated in the Federa- 
 tion. He never takes the floor till he is ready 
 to fight. I have heard him shout, over and 
 over again, to the President: 'You must do 
 this. You shall do this.' He is an autocrat 
 by nature, but he hates injustice and intoler- 
 ance. He bluffs the ordinary workingman. 
 The crooked man is afraid of him. Yet he 
 does not expose the politicians if they help the 
 work of organization. That is the main 
 thing. But they fear him because they know 
 he has only one purpose. It may seem queer 
 that an anarchist should be so much of an 
 autocrat. But this man is an individualist, 
 and that is why he is an autocrat and an an- 
 archist. In organizing he would prefer to 
 pay one man $ioo a week than ten men $io a 
 week, if the one man was active. He works 
 for the mass, but he does not believe you can 
 work with the mass. I have not met a strong 
 man in the trades-union movement who would 
 not admit anarchism as an ideal and yet 
 every strong man is an autocrat. 
 [131]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 "Sometimes I love to see a machine or a 
 man working hard. And I love to see this 
 man talk. When he is speaking he sweats 
 like a Polar bear in mid-summer. He calls 
 his wife 'Mike.' She is an old German 
 woman who cannot speak English. He is 
 very kind to her, gives her money regularly, 
 and won't look at another woman. Yet she 
 feels she is a martyr, because he is away on 
 the road so much, organizing. He consoles 
 her by pointing to his victories: how, after 
 many years' struggle, he always comes out on 
 top. He thinks this ought to satisfy her. He 
 will never forgive you if you step on his 
 corns. He will only talk about trades-union- 
 ism or anarchism. Maggie likes to have a 
 man talk to her, or at least look at her, but he 
 won't. You can generally trust a man like 
 that. No man on earth can get a secret from 
 him. His great object is the movement. He 
 never votes, always says 'damn the rank and 
 file,' but really works for their benefit." 
 
 Anton was rapidly losing his interest in 
 Socialism. He was probably influenced a 
 good deal by the general spirit in the Unions 
 which was averse to making the movement a 
 political one, based upon a distrust of politics 
 [132]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 in general. It is likely, too, that the striking 
 and picturesque figure of this anarchist organ- 
 izer made a deep impression on him. One 
 of his deepest passions is an abstract love for 
 toleration, and this he seemed to see in the- 
 oretical anarchism. His growing experience 
 in the actual affairs of organizations had made 
 him distrust government, and at the same time 
 feel the necessity of it. This tended to give 
 him that balanced, psychological attitude that 
 is never consistent, but usually intelligent, and 
 which he associates practically with philo- 
 sophical anarchism. He saw that politics 
 was too likely to determine the actions of the 
 leaders and folly that of the rank and file. 
 
 "At this time," he said, "I was still a So- 
 cialist, but a rather uncertain one. My So- 
 cialist friends were surprised because I felt 
 I could not endorse a man purely and simply 
 because he was a Socialist. He must have 
 unionism and manhood and good-fellowship, 
 too. They could not understand my motives 
 for doing things. They thought I ought to 
 look on Socialism as something holy. They 
 were so narrow that I began to question their 
 philosophy. I began to be sceptical about 
 Socialism, just as I had been sceptical about 
 [133]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 religion and politics. I saw that Socialism, 
 too, was political, and liable to the same nar- 
 rowness. I championed the anarchist organ- 
 izer before I knew him, and when I came to 
 meet him, his ideas took a strong hold on me. 
 My attitude for justice hurt me with the 
 Union, for a time. After the fight in the 
 council I found considerable opposition. I 
 invited great disfavor because I was foolish 
 enough to stand for only what I knew to be 
 right, and for a time I lost ambition in that 
 direction. I had assumed that the central or- 
 ganization was capable of greater things, but 
 their treatment of this sincere man sadly dis- 
 appointed me. 
 
 "I saw that politics were more predominant 
 than reason. I saw that the central body was 
 controlled by politics and the rank and file 
 by sentiment and emotion. I had more tol- 
 erance for the sentiment than the politics. So 
 I stuck to the man and went to every meeting 
 and was again elected as a delegate. By de- 
 grees I came back to my old standing, but I 
 came back a sceptic, not trusting anything, but 
 hoping for everything. One incident that 
 made me so as much as anything was a deal I 
 learned of, proposed by the thin politician to 
 [134]
 
 Meeting the Employer, 
 
 my friend the anarchist. I will not say what 
 it was, but it was a proposal not altogether 
 honorable. The anarchist told him that un- 
 der no circumstances would he be willing to 
 do anything of that kind; that while he was 
 as much dissatisfied with the damn rank and 
 file as anybody, yet it was the only thing 
 worth working for. The other man felt 
 cheap to have made a proposition which as- 
 sumed that the anarchist was as corrupt as he. 
 I got wind of the matter, and, as on a former 
 occasion, I went to the thin politician and told 
 him that I could not sit as delegate in a coun- 
 cil representing the rank and file unless every 
 delegate knew this story about the chief busi- 
 ness agent, in whom the rank and file put its 
 trust. I insisted that he should tell the coun-* 
 cil, and he promised to do so, but many 
 months passed and he did not do it. 
 
 "There came an election of business agents 
 and I was a candidate. I was defeated. I 
 stood purely and simply on the emotional 
 side, thinking at that time that honesty and 
 good-will were all that were necessary to be 
 business agent. The thin politician was re- 
 elected, and I waited patiently for him to 
 make the statement I had required of him. 
 [135]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 But he did not do so. So, when the board of 
 business agents reported that they had selected 
 this man as the chief business agent, I got up 
 in the council and protested, and objected to 
 his being chief business agent until he made 
 a statement to the council about a story that 
 had been circulated. You could have heard 
 a pin drop in the council that night. 
 
 "He got up and told the facts, partly ad- 
 mitting that he had been guilty of a breach 
 of confidence towards the organization; but 
 he made a kind of threat to me. He said I 
 had used my knowledge of the affair as a 
 knock against him in the election, and that if 
 I undertook any such knock again he would 
 knock me, threatening physical force. I 
 wouldn't stand for the bluff ; I got up and said 
 that I had been absolutely fair with him: I 
 had gone to him directly with the story and 
 not to anyone else. If he had heard that I 
 was 'knocking' him, he ought to have come 
 directly to me, and asked if it was true. He 
 then grew angry and said if I did not keep 
 my mouth shut something would happen. I 
 then informed him I was his superior, both 
 mentally and physically. There was no man 
 in the council, I said, who could make me 
 [136]
 
 Meeting the Employer. 
 
 keep my mouth shut by reason of a threat. 
 I branded as a lie the charge that I had circu- 
 lated stories about him, and challenged him 
 to produce a single witness in evidence of the 
 truth of what he had said." 
 
 These experiences tended to disgust Anton 
 with political organizations, and the Social- 
 ists, of whom one was the thin politician, 
 seemed to him to be as ready for deals as any 
 one else; not that he so much objected to a 
 deal practically, it was rather a matter of 
 temper and mind with him. He wanted 
 something more admirable and attractive, less 
 small and sordid. He saw that these organi- 
 zations of workingmen had some of the same 
 drawbacks that obtain in the larger organiza- 
 tion of society with which he had come in 
 disagreeable contact as a tramp. 
 
 [137]
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 It was at this time that Anton came in con- 
 tact with the Chicago Liberal Society. It 
 was composed of atheists, free-thinkers, "rad- 
 icals" of all kinds. The word "radical" is a 
 common one in Chicago. In it a great deal 
 of what is most significant to-day of the Mid- 
 dle West of the United States, and of what 
 is most progressively American, is embodied. 
 It is a vague word, implying extreme democ- 
 racy, implying also an attitude of criticism 
 towards many of the institutions founded on 
 a capitalistic order of society. It is a much 
 more "respectable" word in the Middle West, 
 or at any rate in Chicago, than in the East. 
 Not only in labor circles and in out-and-out 
 of Socialistic and anarchistic groups does one 
 often hear this word used with approval, but 
 also in the university set, in the social settle- 
 ments, even in business and professional life. 
 The newspapers, to a limited extent reflectors 
 [138]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 of the people's temper, show in a hundred im- 
 plicit ways the degree to which the radical 
 ideas of the common people have affected all 
 grades of society. 
 
 Wherever there is a lack of cultured train- 
 ing combined with vitality and vigor of feel- 
 ing and thought, there are likely to be socie- 
 ties half-baked and on one side ridiculous in 
 character pseudo-scientific, spiritualistic, 
 based upon a strong but not definitely 
 worked out spiritual life. In Chicago there 
 are innumerable clubs and societies of this 
 kind. Masonic Temple is supposed to be the 
 seat of a hundred religious or emotional, sci- 
 entific or social faiths. The basis for all these 
 faiths is the labor situation. Most radicals 
 are either working people or else persons who 
 have come in contact with the feelings and 
 ideas evolved by the laboring class, and have 
 come to express them. 
 
 The Chicago Liberal Society was a society 
 of this kind. Anton was thoroughly in a 
 frame of mind to enjoy a gathering of this sort 
 it gave an opportunity for the emotional 
 needs of the workingman to assume an intel- 
 lectual and scientific shape, no matter how 
 crude and imperfect. Ih the Unions it was 
 [139]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 all business or definite struggle of one per- 
 sonality against another; it was good to escape 
 from these inexpressive, serious gatherings 
 and go to hear a lecture or some philosophical 
 aspect of the labor or social situation. An- 
 ton, with his keen senses, his keen intelli- 
 gence and his love for debate, thoroughly en- 
 joys himself in these gatherings. In them 
 there are, of course, many of the "long- 
 haired, anaemic, over-gentle sort. Into these 
 Anton likes to stick pins. He sympathizes 
 with many of their ideas he feels that 
 through them he and his class are being ex- 
 pressed, and he enjoys thoroughly the more 
 intelligent ones among them, but he sees 
 their limitations. He is keen in the detection 
 of shams, and when he finds himself dealing 
 with a tender imbecile of the "radical" variety 
 he is like a bull in a clover fidd: his voice 
 becomes loud and his words are rough. Mag- 
 gie cautions him not to break loose but she 
 wouldn't love him so much if he didn't! 
 
 One of the first of Anton's experiences with 
 the Chicago Liberal Society was a lecture by 
 Clarence Darrow. Anton immediately per- 
 ceived that here was a man voicing many 
 of the sentiments and "protests" that he had 
 [140]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 vaguely felt. In another field this tended to 
 have the same influence on his critical faculty 
 as the reading of Tom Paine's Age of Reason. 
 Darrow, indeed, is a man wonderfully typical 
 of one aspect of the life of the Middle West 
 to-day dreamer, practical man, lawyer, poli- 
 tician, friend of labor, friend of women, 
 friend of literature and of experiment! A 
 rich personality, often distrusted, generally in- 
 consistent in all but humanity, too complex 
 to be philosophic, but a gathering point for 
 all the "radical" notions of the time. Signifi- 
 cant, indeed, it is of Chicago and of the Mid- 
 dle West, that a man like this can flourish and 
 occupy a position of respectability and prac- 
 tical importance. In some communities he 
 would be merely laughed at; in others he 
 would be forced to become an out-and-out Bo- 
 hemian. But'in Chicago this interesting man 
 is pretty nearly appreciated at his proper 
 value; for, although he is regarded as "dan- 
 gerous" by the ultra-conservative, and as 
 "crooked" by the pure idealists, and as "im- 
 moral" by the inexperienced ladies of blue 
 stocking tendency, he occupies, nevertheless, 
 a position of suflicient respectability to enable 
 him to work and live to the best advantage. 
 [141]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 Interested as Anton was in these gatherings, 
 it did not prevent him from exercising his crit- 
 ical faculty. A little before the lecture which 
 meant so much to him, a member of the local 
 Union of which Anton was the President, 
 died, leaving a widow and six children in ab- 
 solute destitution. While he was ill, he re- 
 ceived $4 a week benefit for thirteen weeks 
 before his death. His widow received $75 
 for his burial. This was barely enough for 
 that purpose. She asked Anton to assist her 
 in raffling of her husband's tools. In the 
 Union meeting he, as chairman, called for a 
 voluntary committee for this work. The re- 
 sult was $87.75 for tools worth about ten dol- 
 lars. Then Anton went to the shop where 
 the deceased had worked, to try to get some 
 money from the employer. He himself had 
 worked there soon after his arrival in Chicago 
 and had been discharged, so it was with some 
 pride that he introduced himself as the Presi- 
 dent of Union 67. The employer recognized 
 him and was at first inclined not to give him an 
 audience. 
 
 "But I knew he was a Jew," said Anton, 
 "and I immediately branched into philosophy 
 and put in my opposition to Christianity. So 
 [142]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 he wrote me out a check for $25 for the 
 widow. I went to her with this money and 
 also the raffle money; found her in three lit- 
 tle miserable rooms in Halsted street. The 
 six children were lying and walking all over 
 the floor, and the baby was in a chair along- 
 side the tub where the mother was washing. 
 She cried when I gave her the money. 
 
 "While I had been engaged in selling the 
 tickets, I appeared at the Masonic Temple 
 one night where a lot of the bug-house cranks 
 and free-thinkers had got together to expose 
 their irreligious matters in a religious way. 
 [Anton himself often talks in a way that 
 makes him subject to his own satire.] It was 
 the Chicago Liberal Society, now dead, and 
 was composed of men and women of Lofty 
 Ideals. I felt sure that these people would 
 assist me in such a worthy cause. The Church 
 would not, though the widow had been a mem- 
 ber for years. She had neglected to send the 
 children to Sunday School regularly, for the 
 Sunday School does not want children who 
 have not good clothes. So poverty kept the 
 children home and when the father died, the 
 Church would do nothing. 
 
 "The Free-thinkers, however, I thought 
 [143]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 would do something. I had been a member 
 of the Society for some time, had taken part in 
 the discussions and was known. I spoke to 
 the President and the trustees and asked them 
 to let me have the floor to explain the circum- 
 stances and ask the audience to contribute. 
 That was a more effective way than to ask 
 each one separately and would save time. 
 The President ran a book store, and that was 
 really the reason why he was a member of 
 the Liberal Society. He wanted them to buy 
 his books liberally. That was the only lib- 
 eral thing about him. So he told me that he 
 would like to accommodate me, but there were 
 other things more important. They would 
 not let me have the floor and I was horribly 
 disappointed. My spirit of protest became 
 aroused again, and I wondered if there was 
 anything right anywhere. I went around 
 among the members and sold about twenty 
 tickets. I waited for an opportunity to make 
 an expose of their hypocrisy. They made a 
 display of being opposed to the Church be- 
 cause it enslaved humanity, but when it came 
 for them to show any superior feeling, they 
 failed to make good." 
 Anton perceived another instance of human 
 [144]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 weakness and self-interest in this matter of the 
 tools. An affectionate Irishman won the raf- 
 fle. He was a common laborer, not a member 
 of the Union. Finding that most of the im- 
 portant tools were missing, he thought he had 
 been "done" and went indignantly to Anton, 
 and scolded him: said he had thought better 
 of the Unions than that. Anton went to the 
 woman, who cried, and said that a member of 
 the Union Committee had picked out the best 
 tools and intended to keep them. They were 
 fortunately still in the house, and Anton, after 
 telling the woman not to let the tools be taken 
 away, went to the man who had tried to steal 
 them. This man was always suspicious of the 
 honesty of the Union officials. 
 
 "I balled him out," said Anton, "and told 
 him I would prefer charges against him in 
 the Union, if he took the tools. Then I went 
 to the Irishman from whom I wished to hide 
 the guilt of our member, in order not to dis- 
 turb the man's sympathetic inclinations to- 
 ward Unions. I told him a mistake had been 
 made and he would find the tools at the wom- 
 an's house. He was tickled to death. I did 
 not expose our member in the Union meet- 
 ing on account of his wife and children. He 
 [145]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 was an awful ugly fellow, a brutal shaker- 
 hand. He was so meek morally that he im- 
 agined he was strong and tried to roast every- 
 body else on the score of dishonesty." 
 
 The lecture of Mr. Darrow's which made 
 so great an impression upon Anton was on 
 "Crimes and Criminals" and seemed to the 
 workingman to be much nearer the truth than 
 the current ideas on the subject. After his 
 lecture, Mr. Darrow announced the coming 
 of Prince Kropotkin, who was to lecture be- 
 fore the Society; he was to speak on Modern 
 anarchism. ^ 
 
 "I was still a Socialist," said Anton, "but a 
 wavering one. I had a strong appetite to 
 understand anarchism, and I was eager to hear 
 this lecture. But yet I could not resist the 
 opportunity to protest. Mr. Darrow re- 
 quested that a certain woman present should 
 sell tickets for the event, and the chairman put 
 the request before the Society. I arose and 
 forced recognition from the chair and said : 
 
 "Mr. Chairman, while I have no objec- 
 tion to granting the request of Mr. Darrow 
 for a purpose of this kind, yet I feel inclined 
 to protest against this manner of granting spe- 
 cial privileges. When I requested the priv- 
 [146]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 ilege, a few weeks ago, of saying a few words 
 to the Society, to induce them to help a poor 
 woman, the floor was denied me. I feel cer- 
 tain that my mission was far more urgent and 
 necessary than the intellectual luxury of hear- 
 ing Mr. Kropotkin; although it would not 
 have brought as much honor to the Society. 
 I stand here and say that I think our President 
 is as much a hypocrite now as ever.' 
 
 "Then came the gavel, but I continued, and 
 said : * I'll be glad to hear Kropotkin, and, 
 although I desire to expose the hypocrisy of 
 the President of the Liberal Society, I am still 
 capable of being unselfish enough to hope that 
 he will remain President as long as he is en- 
 gaged in the book business.' 
 
 "He blushed. I was so unruly and crude 
 and unrefined that it put him in a difficult and 
 peculiar position. After the meeting I went 
 to the secretary and told him to take my name 
 off the list of membership. I told him I was 
 opposed to the Church because of its hypoc- 
 risy; and that if I belonged to a Society that 
 had a hypocrite for its President, I too 
 would be a hypocrite. A man is a man, after 
 all, whether he is the President of the United 
 States or only the President of the Liberal So- 
 [147]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ciety. They are very much alike. The So- 
 ciety is dead now; it broke up because of being 
 split into factions and everybody seeking 
 places of honor, money and graft. The So- 
 ciety was like the Unions, the Churches, and 
 everything else. It is the same old story." 
 
 Anton, however, was very anxious to hear 
 Kropotkin, and to have the workingmen hear 
 him, so, one evening coming from work, he 
 went to Mr. Darrow's office and asked him 
 for tickets. Mr. Darrow was interested, gave 
 him twenty tickets and asked him to try to get 
 the workingmen to go to the lecture. ''Sell 
 them if you can," he said; "if not, give them 
 away. No need to make an account." An- 
 ton succeeded in interesting several Union 
 men, and when the night of the address came, 
 the laboring world was well represented. An- 
 ton's account of the lecture is as follows : 
 
 "Mr. Darrow introduced Kropotkin with 
 the remark: 'In Russia they exile their 
 prophets. In this country we hang them. 
 [This was in reference to the execution of the 
 Chicago anarchists.] He then gave an ac- 
 count of Kropotkin's life, said he had been of- 
 fered the world if he would suppress his in- 
 clination to champion the masses against the 
 [148]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 classes. He was of the aristocracy of Russia 
 and could have been prominent in the govern- 
 ment, but he preferred to cast all this aside. 
 
 "Then the old gentleman spoke, to a packed 
 house, in every chair there being a copy of 
 Free Society. I vs^as terribly interested, for 
 he dwelt on something new and very sympa- 
 thetic. He told of the waste of energy there 
 is in labor, more wasted than profitable labor. 
 He emphasized strongly the great waste of 
 labor in making the implements of war, which 
 is government murder. He spoke of the prin- 
 ciples of anarchism and socialism and 
 sketched the history of the struggles of the 
 working classes in Europe. He stated that 
 the American workingman ought to be thank- 
 ful for the opportunities here in land and tim- 
 ber and natural resources ; that the soil seemed 
 to contain all that was necessary for life, vigor 
 and happiness. He thought that if the work- 
 ingmen in America were as energetic in ef- 
 forts for freedom as they were in Europe, 
 they ought here to be more successful. If the 
 American workingmen failed, they them- 
 selves would be largely responsible for it, he 
 said. He made a strong point against the 
 British government because of the war with 
 [149]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the Boers. Here the applause was great, and 
 Mrs. Potter Palmer and other conservative 
 people who were there clapped their hands. 
 But right after the applause, he made a similar 
 remark about Uncle Sam's treatment of the 
 Philippines. The audience continued to ap- 
 plaud, but with not so much vigor. He then 
 said it was very easy for Americans to criti- 
 cize the government of Russia ; but when you 
 attack the government in the land in which 
 you live, you are then regarded as an anarch- 
 ist. This speech made a deep impression 
 upon me, and I became far more interested in 
 anarchism. 
 
 ''I took home with me a copy of Free So- 
 ciety. I was interested in it, and decided to 
 investigate. Kropotkin's lecture had been so 
 great a contrast to what I had heard of an- 
 archism. I thought anarchists were all red- 
 handed devils. I had the common concep- 
 tion. I saw advertized in Free Society Jean 
 Grave's Moribund Society and Anarchy and 
 I went to the editor of Free Society, Mr; 
 Isaak, and bought copies of this book to dis- 
 tribute among my friends. I went by the 
 house several times before I got courage to go 
 in. I thought there might be bombs in the 
 [150]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 house. Finally I went in and met Isaak's son, 
 who is hard of hearing. I imagined he might 
 only be pretending deafness, and that he was 
 dangerous. He invited me to go up-stairs to 
 see his father, but I was suspicious, and 
 thought it was a trap. So I bought twelve 
 copies and went away. I found out after- 
 wards that they were much interested that a 
 workingman should come voluntarily. 
 
 "I took these twelve copies of Grave's book 
 to the Union meeting and distributed them. 
 They began to call me an anarchist. I was 
 rather proud of it. At that time I was 
 President of my local and had to sign a 
 document favoring the building of battleships 
 by Union men. This act was repulsive to 
 me even then, even from a Socialist stand- 
 point. 
 
 "A member of the Machinists' Union, an 
 anarchist, asked me why I signed it, if I didn't 
 want to. I couldn't tell him. I couldn't ex- 
 plain my position to him, any more than I 
 can explain life. I was President of the 
 Union and it was important to extend Union 
 principles everywhere. Life is so made that 
 nothing can be consistent it seems. 
 
 "Yet if we never try to be consistent, we are 
 [iSi]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 certainly no better than grafters; not that 
 grafters are necessarily very bad." 
 
 Anton now began to attend the meetings of 
 the Philosophical Society. At first he was al- 
 most afraid to say "good evening" to them, 
 as he thought they represented an astonishing 
 amount of learning and intelligence. But, as 
 he gradually took part in the debates, he found 
 it a good school. It helped him in the Union 
 meetings, to make his points. In these phil- 
 osophical meetings, he felt he was learning 
 something; while in the meetings of his Union 
 the main considerations were practical and 
 warlike measures by one class against anoth- 
 er. Maggie always insisted that Anton went 
 to the Unions to have a good time. This is 
 only partly true; I have often seen him in 
 a position where he gave up the opportunity 
 of going to the Masonic Temple and exciting 
 himself temperamentally and intellectually in 
 debate, for the calmer, more business-like and 
 generally quite unexciting Union meeting, 
 which he regarded as his duty. 
 
 A few months after Kropotkin's talk, An- 
 ton became what he calls "an anarchist." 
 With him, this faith is an attitude of mind, 
 the expression of general class unrest, rather 
 [152]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 than definite affiliation with a group or any 
 definite philosophical tenets. In this respect, 
 Anton is typical of a great many of the more 
 intelligent and active laboring men. The ex- 
 tent to which emotional anarchism obtains 
 among the mechanics is very great. Many 
 men who occupy a conservative and impor- 
 tant position in the Unions are at heart what 
 they call anarchists. One of the high officers 
 of the American Federation of Labor took oc- 
 casion, during the meetings of an International 
 Labor Congress, which took place some time 
 after the period of this narrative, to reprove 
 Anton because of the boldness with which he 
 gave expression to anarchistic principles on 
 the floor of the meeting. "We are all anarch- 
 ists," he said, "but what's the use of shouting 
 about it?" 
 
 A few nights following the death of Presi- 
 dent McKinley, Anton was attending a meet- 
 ing of the Union. After the meeting, Anton 
 and several other officers went, as usual, to a 
 saloon. They talked about the assassination, 
 Anton, an enthusiastic Socialist, and a sceptic- 
 al Scotchman who never committed himself. 
 While they were talking and drinking, a stran- 
 ger who seemed to be under the influence of 
 [153]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 liquor came up to them and asked a pointed 
 question as to what they felt about the assassi- 
 nation. The Socialist, who was a Swede, 
 said; "Well, I don't know. I sorry he dead, 
 but I sorry he capitalist." The stranger then 
 asked the Scotchman, who replied: "My 
 God, I was just going to ask you. What do 
 you think?" Then the stranger put the ques- 
 tion to Anton, who "was rather sceptical as to 
 the justification of his butting in." But he 
 replied: "I would have as much and per- 
 haps more sympathy for my neighbor if he 
 were killed than for McKinley. I should 
 feel sorry for his wife and children." 
 
 This reply did not suit the stranger, and he 
 cried out that Anton was an anarchist. There 
 was great confusion in the saloon and it 
 looked like a fight, until the Scotchman gave 
 the stranger the signal of the Masonic Order, 
 and then it was all right. 
 
 Anton had become sufficiently known as an 
 anarchist to make Maggie nervous about 
 what might happen to him, in the excitement 
 following McKinley's assassination. So she 
 burnt up the copies of Free Society, Jean 
 Grave's book and some Socialistic papers; 
 fearful that her husband might be arrested, 
 [154]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 Anton "was disappointed," as he expressed 
 it, at this, for at that time, in the first flush of 
 his anarchistic faith, he would have welcomed 
 arrest. At a later time now he is much 
 cooler about all theories. Now that he is 
 more of an anarchist, in the sense of being 
 more of a sceptic, he is far less of a propa- 
 gandist. He is now as sceptical about an- 
 archism as he is about any other system of 
 running the world's affairs successfully. 
 
 Even at that time he felt the logical diffi- 
 culties of his faith; for with him it was a 
 faith, just as his early religion had been. "I 
 had difficulties," he said, "in calling myself 
 an anarchist and yet not being able to justify 
 my position theoretically. I saw that system 
 and force were necessary: that we had to em- 
 ploy both these things in the Union, and yet 
 it did not affect my feeling. Anarchism cap- 
 tured my fancy for it seemed the strongest 
 protest against economic and social injustice. 
 It seemed more humane and sympathetic than 
 anything else." 
 
 Vague as his anarchism was, it seemed to 
 get him into trouble; first with his family; 
 then with the law, indirectly. 
 
 "I was lacking in tact," he explained, " told 
 [155]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 my position to a young man from Clinton 
 who was visiting in Chicago. When he went 
 back to Clinton he told everybody I was an 
 anarchist. My brother wrote me I would 
 soon be a victim of the hangman's noose, and 
 he appealed pathetically to me to change my 
 ways. He had no effect on me, whatever, for 
 I felt I was far above him in every way. 
 Mother, too, wrote me. She seemed to think 
 that I would be in the pen and that this was 
 the logical result of a hobo's career. I was 
 very sorry that mother thought I was an an- 
 archist, according to her conception of the 
 word. As for my brother I wrote him and 
 showed him where he got off at. I gave him 
 several quotations from the Bible and told 
 him that if he carried these out he would be 
 an anarchist, too. They felt sorry for Mag- 
 gie, had it all fixed that I would die a dog's 
 death, but it has as yet failed to materialize. 
 
 "At this time, I was always out with my 
 neighbors. I was always discussing union- 
 ism, socialism and anarchism. I used to bore 
 people terribly and they didn't like me. I was 
 brutally frank, and the police, at this time, 
 as before and since, were disagreeable to me. 
 One afternoon I saw a large crowd at 59th 
 [156]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 Street and Center Avenue and I discovered 
 three policemen roughly arresting two young 
 fellows. One of them was intoxicated and 
 used rough language, but this did not seem 
 to me sufficient cause for arrest. I said 
 sarcastically, * It seems to require three po- 
 licemen to arrest two kids.' One of the po- 
 licemen, who was drunk, grabbed me and 
 said: 'Come along and I'll teach you a lesson.' 
 So they put me in a patrol wagon and would- 
 n't let me notify the wife, and took me to the 
 police station. The crowd held an indigna- 
 tion meeting but it came to nothing through 
 lack of organization. I noticed, when in the 
 police station, that one of the young fellows, 
 who was the son of a State Senator, received 
 a great deal of consideration. He was not 
 booked, but was sent home. I was booked for 
 disorderly conduct, and I and the other fel- 
 low were put in jail. 
 
 "I finally got telephonic connection with a 
 Union saloon-keeper and asked him to get 
 me out. In the meantime, my wife was won- 
 dering what had become of me. About ii 
 o'clock at night a policeman rapped with his 
 club at her door and hollered: 'I'm a police- 
 man come to tell you your husband is in jail 
 [157]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 and wants you to come and get him out.' 
 This was typical of the delicacy of the or- 
 dinary cop. It was a shock to her, as she 
 thought I had been arrested as an ordinary 
 anarchist. She went to the saloon-keeper and 
 then they came to the jail and bailed me out. 
 
 "I got busy, and found the man I had made 
 the remark to. He promised to appear as a 
 witness in the trial on Monday. But the po- 
 liceman was busy, too. He laid the law down 
 to this Swede, my witness, and told him not 
 to come down to testify. Before the trial 
 came up on Monday I met the young fellow 
 who had been arrested with me. He had a 
 card addressed to a detective in that precinct. 
 The card came from a rich coal-dealer and 
 
 said: 'This young man, Mr. ^ is all 
 
 right.' The detective told him what to do, 
 to plead guilty and look sorry. I, however, 
 would not plead guilty. I was too indig- 
 nant. When the case was called the police- 
 man made a mild charge against the young 
 fellow, and he was discharged. When I 
 came up they handed me a jury- waiver. I 
 started to read it aloud. That was awful. 
 The young fellow and the detective pulled my 
 coat, to no avail. I wouldn't keep quiet. I 
 [158]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 signed it, when I had read it. Then the po- 
 liceman made his charge, stated he had told 
 me to go home three times, and had then ar- 
 rested me. I pleaded not guilty. The prose- 
 cuting attorney asked me if I meant to in- 
 sinuate that the officer of the law was telling 
 a falsehood. I said, no, that was not my in- 
 tention, but I had noticed, I said, that on that 
 night the officer of the law was not sober, and 
 his memory therefore might not be entirely 
 accurate. What I said was received with 
 scorn, but the Judge said, as I didn't look 
 like a tough, he would only fine me $5 and 
 costs. I asked him if I was fined because I 
 wasn't tough. He said if I didn't keep still 
 he would fine me $25. They took me away 
 and put me in the Bull Pen. I was indig- 
 nant and the spirit of protest arose in me. I 
 got to the telephone, and reached the Union 
 Headquarters. The business agent came and 
 paid the fine. 
 
 "I went to the saloon-keeper who had 
 bailed me out, and told him the story. He 
 was indignant and said he would fix the po- 
 liceman, who was under obligations to him. 
 When I applied for work, I was discharged 
 for not appearing on Monday. I had lost my 
 [159]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 job, had paid a fine, and Maggie was dis- 
 couraged, all because I had said a sarcastic 
 thing to a policeman. Suppose some capital- 
 ist had said the same thing to a cop. Do you 
 think the cop would have arrested him? Not 
 on your life! But a workingman is different. 
 Maggie roasted me for fair; said I could 
 never hold a job because I was too blunt and 
 aggressive. She also said some hot things 
 about the copper. 
 
 "The next time the policeman went to the 
 saloon, my friend raised Cain with him; 
 told him I was the President of the Union 
 and a thoroughly honest working man. The 
 policeman said I was to blame for insulting 
 the integrity of the Court by making a de- 
 fense. But he was sorry, for the saloon- 
 keeper had influence, and that night I met the 
 policeman in the saloon. He said he was 
 very sorry and would get me my job back. 
 He took me to my old employer and told him 
 a lie and the employer said we would have to 
 see the foreman who had discharged me. 
 The foreman ' had it in ' for me. He had 
 formerly been a member of the Union and 
 was a great grumbler. When he got the po- 
 sition as foreman he withdrew from the Un- 
 [i6o]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 ion. When he asked to have his resignation 
 accepted, I had roasted the living life out of 
 him. I said I was sorry that a man of such 
 independence of character, such an unsuc- 
 cessful grumbler, should take the position of 
 foreman and therefore lose an opportunity of 
 using his w^onderful talents against the em- 
 ployers ; he couldn't grumble any more with- 
 out losing his job: what a hardship I 
 
 "So when I came to work under him he 
 took the first opportunity to discharge me. 
 But now, thinking the employer, the police- 
 man and the saloon-keeper (three great pow- 
 ers) were for me, he re-instated me in my 
 position. Then I went to the foreman and 
 called him every name in my vocabulary, and 
 quit. I needed a job, but the spirit of re- 
 venge was strong in me and at that time I was 
 all revolt. I knew Maggie would roast me, 
 but I could not help it. ^ 
 
 "The policeman was now very friendly and 
 said he would try to get my money back. He 
 called on Maggie and apologized. But the 
 wife gave him her opinion of him, and pic- 
 tured to him the hardship he had caused. 
 He had a wife and three children and he 
 started to cry like a child. While the wife 
 [i6i]
 
 The Spirit of I jab or. 
 
 was satisfied with that, I was not, and started 
 to propagate some of my ideas on him. So I 
 asked him if a police officer ought to make 
 any distinction between one man and another, 
 except the criminal and the law-abiding 
 classes. I asked him if he didn't think that 
 I and other law-abiding citizens were unsafe 
 on the streets as long as there were two or 
 three policemen who did not know them. 
 He admitted that if he had known me, he 
 wouldn't have done it. He grasped at my 
 meaning for he said : ' The socialists are all 
 right, but there are not enough of them.' He 
 arranged to meet me the next night at the sa- 
 loon and take me to where I could get my 
 money back. We met there a Swedish sa- 
 loon-keeper, political boss of the Swedes in 
 that neighborhood, who immediately took ad- 
 vantage of the situation in order to get my 
 political support. 
 
 "Why didn't you tell me about Anton,' 
 he said to the policeman. 'I have known 
 about him for years, though I have not had 
 the pleasure of meeting him.' I had been 
 his invisible friend, so to speak. The police- 
 man, at the Swede's suggestion, took me to 
 the house of a man who was the boss of the 
 [162]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 County Central Committee. When I met 
 him I recognized him as a former President 
 of the Building Trades Council during the 
 lockout of 1900. He was a delegate to the 
 Chicago Federation of Labor and knew me 
 knew me not so much as a woodworker as 
 in my character of Socialist and a man who 
 knew something of the inside working of the 
 political machine. He was afraid of me, and 
 said if the fine had not been recorded, the ac- 
 tion could be rescinded by the same Judge. 
 He was very guarded and made arrangements 
 to meet me at the saloon. There he treated me, 
 but said he could do nothing. He sprung 25 
 tickets on me for the Carter Harrison Mas- 
 querade Ball, at 50 cents apiece. The Union 
 I belonged to was largely composed of Scan- 
 dinavians, and this Swede boss thought I 
 might be of use, so he gave me the tickets. 
 He said he thought Unions could do more 
 good if they were in politics. I was to get 
 a job as garbage box inspector at $4 a day, 
 if I worked for the cause. I took the tickets 
 to the next meeting of the Union. I told the 
 story before a crowded meeting, told them the 
 politician's game, and tore up the twenty-five 
 tickets, that went around the ward for four 
 [163]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 or five months. The policeman thought I 
 was unwise, but whenever he met me, he in- 
 sisted on shaking hands, and on buying me 
 a drink." 
 
 *'That winter I became a candidate for 
 business agent. I was all emotion and enthu- 
 siasm. I had a certain amount of courage 
 and a little scattering of information. I still 
 thought all that was needed was to be honest 
 and sincere. If I had known more about the 
 movement I would have known I had as much 
 chance to be elected as the Lord himself." 
 
 All these events strengthened Anton in his 
 emotional anarchism, but also tended to make 
 him see that, when it came to action, it was 
 necessary to make use of the machinery there 
 was at hand. But even then, when he was 
 President of the Union, had a wife and three 
 children and had had much experience with 
 men, he still permitted himself the luxury of 
 losing his job in order to satisfy his tempera- 
 ment. It was about this time that he ac- 
 cepted the offer of a job in Oak Park, rented 
 a house in the neighborhood, and when he 
 went to work, was told another man had been 
 hired in his place. 
 
 ''I was taken aback and nonplussed at 
 [164]
 
 The Radicals. 
 
 first, but recovered myself, took my overcoat 
 off, and told the employer I thought he was a 
 
 and I could lick him. He said he 
 
 would give me $5 extra for my inconvenience. 
 
 I told him to go to , packed my tools, and 
 
 asked him how he would like to be in my po- 
 sition. I said if I didn't have more sympa- 
 thy for my wife and children than he had for 
 the men, I would blow his brains out. I 
 called his attention to the fact that he went 
 to Church every Sunday, was opposed to ly- 
 ing and yet would place a man in a posi- 
 tion where he was forced to lie or go hungry. 
 When I should apply for work in another fac- 
 tory the first question asked me would be, 
 'Where did you work last?' If I should act 
 according to the Sunday School I would have 
 to tell the truth. The next question would 
 be, Why did you leave?' I, being influ- 
 enced by your religion, would have to say, 
 'fired for incompetency.' While most of you 
 employers like a truthful man, nearly all of 
 you would let him go hungry under these cir- 
 cumstances.' I made an impression on his 
 daughter, who was in the room. She was a 
 pretty girl and when she looked at me she 
 blushed. 
 
 [165]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 "He finally gave me a letter of reference, 
 which I used against him. I asked him, in 
 front of the girl, if that was his signature. 
 He said yes. I said, 'that signature means the 
 calling of a strike in your own shop. I will 
 present it to the Woodworkers' Council and 
 demand a strike, as you have discharged me in 
 favor of a non-Union man, without other 
 cause, as this letter proves.' He flushed and 
 charged me with ingratitude. He had the 
 nerve to do that, but I went to the next meet- 
 ing of the Union, told my story and requested 
 them to instruct their delegates to the Coun- 
 cil to authorize the walking delegate to de- 
 mand from the employer a re-imbursement or 
 re-instatement, and I put my bill at $25. It 
 was carried, and taken to the Council, which 
 voted unanimously in favor of it. The next 
 Monday I and the business agent went to Oak 
 Park, and interviewed the employer. The 
 business agent pointed out that the agreement 
 provided for no discharge without cause, and 
 that the employer's letter showed there was no 
 cause. The employer refused to re-imburse 
 me, and then the business agent said he would 
 call the strike. Whereupon the employer 
 shelled out the money and I accepted it." 
 [166]
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Organizer. 
 
 This temperamental play on Anton's part 
 meant no work for several weeks, and often 
 nothing in the house to eat. But he was a 
 strong, young fellow, and his wife a strong, 
 young woman, and very competent, and the 
 children were as robust and strong as young 
 oaks, and they all liked to buck the world. 
 And the feeling of solidarity is so great in 
 the Trades-union World, that they knew they 
 had the sympathy and if need be the material 
 aid of thousands behind them. Then, both 
 Anton and Maggie liked so much to talk 
 and talk to one another, that every event, 
 untoward or favorable, gave them food for 
 expressed thought. They are remarkably 
 frank and honest to one another think aloud. 
 "I could not live with Maggie," said Anton, 
 "if in the long run I could not tell her 
 everything that ever happened to me." And 
 Maggie, for her part, said, "I could not live 
 [167]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 with Anton if he were like the men they call 
 good husbands, if he always staid home at 
 night, and did not need to work and live 
 and have pleasure among many men and 
 women; when he is home, there is always 
 something interesting to talk about. He is 
 so full of life, always something doing. It is 
 good to live with him." 
 
 So the idle time passed without too much 
 hardship, and Anton's next job was an inter- 
 esting one. One day he saw an advertise- 
 ment for a "sticker-hand" in West Chicago, 
 which was at that time "a hot-bed for 
 scabs." 
 
 There was not a Union shop in the town. 
 Maggie at first objected. She saw that in 
 this "scab" town Anton would agitate and 
 probably get into trouble. So, previous to 
 taking the job, he had a talk with the foreman. 
 He explained that he was a Union man, and 
 that while he was willing to do his duty dur- 
 ing work hours, he insisted, after the whistle 
 blew, on talking to his fellow men, in the way 
 he thought was right. The foreman ap- 
 proved of Anton's position. He was in favor 
 of Unions himself, though he did not dare to 
 tell the men so. He liked Anton, and offered 
 [i68]
 
 Organizer, 
 
 him $3 a day, the largest wages he had yet re- 
 ceived. 
 
 So he moved his family to West Chicago, 
 and began his first important work as an or- 
 ganizer, in a town that knew no union prin- 
 ciples and had no Union shop, in any trade. 
 
 "An organizer," said Anton, "must under- 
 stand human nature ; and particularly the lim- 
 itations of human nature. He must be an 
 expert in the art of getting men together with- 
 out their suspecting why. He must over- 
 come the Idea of 'I-will-if-you-will.' He 
 must be a good speaker, a good fellow and 
 have unlimited patience. He must speak 
 clearly and to the point and inoffensively." 
 
 During work and after work and in the 
 evening, Anton talked Unionism to the men 
 in this non-Union shop. He had not been 
 there two months before he began to make an 
 impression. 
 
 "I made such good headway," he said, 
 "that I received the earnest opposition of the 
 German Lutheran preacher. One of the firm 
 in my shop was a director in the Church and 
 a large contributor. When he and the 
 preacher saw what my views were and that I 
 was agitating for the Union, they quietly told 
 [169]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 such of the men as were Church members to 
 be shy of me." 
 
 Anton's first convert was the young fellow 
 who worked as his helper. He had been in 
 that shop seven years and then was not a me- 
 chanic. The man who had had Anton's place 
 had taught this young fellow as little as pos- 
 sible; and the boy felt it. Anton, however, 
 showed him every thing about the trade he 
 could ; but while he taught him the business, 
 he also taught him Unionism and Socialism. 
 "I could not go as far as anarchism with a 
 young fellow like that," he said. 
 
 The German Lutheran preacher, however, 
 had fewer scruples than Anton, for, perceiv- 
 ing that this young man was being influenced 
 by the agitator, he gave the young fellow a 
 book "The Greatest Enemy of God Is The 
 Labor Movement." This book was written 
 right after the Haymarket Riots, and was only 
 one of a number of books and pamphlets 
 which represented the Labor Movement as 
 the Arch-enemy of Mankind. The boy im- 
 mediately took the book to Anton, who read 
 it and "showed the kid the inconsistencies and 
 the abundant fallacies it contained, and gave 
 him other antidotes." 
 
 [170]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 In the meantime, Anton had been working 
 systematically with the other men in the shop. 
 "I got them all to agree with me, individually. 
 Then I got up a discussion at the noon-hour 
 and no one opposed my arguments ; for if they 
 had, I could have exposed them, as they had 
 agreed with me individually. After about 
 three months, I called a meeting at my house, 
 but did not tell them why I wanted them. 
 Nine of them came that night. I opened a 
 case of beer and told them my mission. 
 'There is no use hiding the thing any longer. 
 There is nothing to be ashamed of. I have 
 talked to every one of you and you all agree 
 in the necessity of a Union. All sign your 
 names and give me a dollar.' 
 
 "They were speechless, but after talking it 
 over for an hour, and Maggie bearing her 
 share in the talk nobly, one of them finally 
 signed, and then the others did. I immedi- 
 ately sent to Chicago for a charter; so that 
 the Minister would have no show. I made 
 all arrangements for a meeting on Sunday, 
 and in the meantime got the signatures of the 
 other nine men in the shop there were eight- 
 een in all. I went to the Mayor and asked 
 him to let us have the City Hall for a meet- 
 [171]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ing. I jollied up the Justice of the Peace who 
 wanted money and needed to make friends 
 with everybody. He helped me with the 
 Mayor, but his Honor said the council would 
 have to act on it. I went to the Postmaster, 
 who was a politician, who promised to get 
 us Oddfellows' Hall, and we made arrange- 
 ments for Monday night. 
 
 "When I went to the shop Monday morn- 
 ing I found the Preacher had been at work. 
 He had called a meeting of the Church 
 directors and trustees for that night. Three 
 of my men were trustees in the Church and 
 in this way he intended to prevent them at- 
 tending our meeting. They came to me, and 
 I told them we would put off our meeting 
 till Tuesday night; I encouraged them and 
 told them the Preacher would not oppose us 
 after we were successful; that is the way of 
 the Church. We had our meeting and I was 
 elected President and a skunk named Jones 
 Secretary. Dues were placed at 50 cents a 
 month. 
 
 "This was the first Union ever formed in 
 this town, and the news spread like wild-fire. 
 The Secretary wanted the back-room of a sa- 
 loon for our regular meeting place, but I was 
 [172]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 opposed to this ; it was not dignified enough. 
 So we hired a nice place at $2 a meeting. 
 Tom Kidd, a big man in our International 
 Union, wrote and congratulated me on form- 
 ing the Union, and asked me what my ex- 
 penses for organizing were. I was tickled to 
 death to get this endorsement, and wrote him 
 that my bill was nothing, but if he were so dis- 
 posed, he could send us two Union-made gav- 
 els, of black ebony, one of which I wanted to 
 give to the Oddfellows for lending us their 
 hall and one to the Brotherhood of railroad 
 trainmen, whose good-will we desired. The 
 railroad men were indifferent, but the 
 Oddfellows let me make a speech of presen- 
 tation, in which I explained the purposes of 
 Unionism." 
 
 The effects of organization were almost im- 
 mediate. It was a ten-hour day shop, but as 
 there were no lights, it had been the custom 
 to work only nine hours in the winter time. 
 A few days after the Union was formed the 
 employers announced a uniform nine-hour 
 day. The men had made no demands, but 
 they already occupied a position of greater 
 prestige. Anton's next step was to get the 
 men to appoint an agreement committee. 
 [173]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 His difficuties in teaching the men to act for 
 themselves are thus described by him : 
 
 "In the meeting I expected some one to 
 make the motion to appoint the agreement 
 committee. We had talked it all over before- 
 hand. Not a single man took the floor or 
 moved in that direction. I did not feel quite 
 justified in stating the thing from the chair, 
 and when no further business came up, I ad- 
 journed the meeting. Immediately every- 
 body wanted to know why the committee had 
 not been appointed. I replied that no one 
 had made the motion. One was afraid of the 
 other and wanted me to bear the burden of 
 responsibility in case of the bosses' discrimi- 
 nation against them. 1 told them they would 
 have to call a special meeting, as otherwise 
 it would be too late to lay our demands be- 
 fore the employers at the time we had ex- 
 pected. This they did, in the same hall, on 
 the same night. When this meeting was re- 
 convened I pointed out the difficulties in the 
 way of wage workers bettering their condi- 
 tions, and showed them that their own actions 
 had demonstrated that they were not as free 
 as some of the politicians told them they were. 
 The fact that they feared losing their job was, 
 [174]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 I said, a compliment neither to them nor to 
 their employer, as their only crime was to act 
 for a shorter work day. I suggested that 
 some one make a motion to appoint the com- 
 mittee, not because I feared to take the re- 
 sponsibility of doing so, but so that we could 
 be sure it was the unanimous choice of the 
 meeting. That was done, and when they 
 came to nominate their committee, it was a 
 foregone conclusion that I should be chair- 
 man. The Secretary of the Union was a great 
 dollar and cent man. He thought more of a 
 dollar than of human life. He emphatically 
 declined to serve on the committee, for a rea- 
 son that I afterwards discovered. I pointed 
 out to him that he could not constitutionally 
 decline. He appealed and I refused to recog- 
 nize his appeal, on parliamentary grounds; 
 informed him he could not appeal from the 
 Constitution. He was elected by one vote, 
 and had to serve on the committee, much to 
 his disgust." 
 
 The men wanted Anton to "break the ice" 
 in the demand they were about to make 
 namely that the nine-hour day with the same 
 wages as obtained in the ten-hour day should 
 be adopted. One day, after he had eaten his 
 [175]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 lunch, Anton went to see the employer, leav- 
 ing the men "on eggs" in the shop. He pre- 
 sented his credentials, "sat on a chair with- 
 out an invitation," and said that though the 
 boys had formed a Union, it was not a sign 
 of discontent with their employers; that he 
 thought organization would be for the benefit 
 of both employer and employee. The em- 
 ployer replied that he had no objection to 
 Unions as a principle: he realized, he said, 
 that there ought to be a shorter day, but he 
 pointed out the injury done by strikes, and 
 "pictured the gloomy side in general." An- 
 ton replied that while it was true that strikes 
 often did harm, the employers were frequently 
 responsible for them; that this Union was 
 organized to strike only in the last resort and 
 consequently a meeting with the employer 
 was desired by the committee. To this the 
 employer readily consented. 
 
 At the meeting the demand of the commit- 
 tee for a nine-hour day with the same wages 
 they had received under the ten-hour day was 
 readily granted by the employers, but they 
 thought that the few men who were paid as 
 high as 30 cents an hour under the ten-hour 
 day, should receive 33 cents instead of 33 1-3 
 [176]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 cents an hour under the new arrangement, and 
 that the 1-3 cent an hour should be added to 
 the wages of the men who were paid the least. 
 Anton objected, on the ground that in that 
 case it was really the more highly paid men 
 who were paying the others, rather than the 
 employers. Jones, the man who had objected 
 to serve on the committee, sided with the em- 
 ployers, and said this proposition ought to be 
 laid before the Union. This was done, but 
 in the meantime Anton discovered that Jones 
 was getting higher wages than was known to 
 the Union and his objection to serve on the 
 committee and his sympathy with the employ- 
 ers was thus explained. The men voted to 
 accept no reduction of wages in any case ; and 
 then the employers maintained that if they in- 
 creased the scale of wages all around they 
 would be paying more wages than the shops 
 in Chicago, on account of the expense of haul- 
 ing the material. 
 
 Anton determined to investigate and see if 
 this contention was true. But Jones again op- 
 posed him and this time Anton lost his temper 
 and said that if Jones let it leak out that An- 
 ton was making this investigation he would 
 use physical force, that it was the only thing 
 [177]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 to do with such a selfish coward. He then 
 went to Chicago, and ascertained that the 
 West Chicago shop was paying less rather 
 than more than the other shops. He had the 
 figures exactly and with these he was soon able 
 to get what he wanted from his employer. 
 It was a complete victory for the men. 
 
 The general effect of this victory was 
 marked. There came to the town a general 
 demand for Union made goods. When An- 
 ton first went to West Chicago there were no 
 Union made cigars in the place. After the 
 Woodworkers Union was organized, every to- 
 bacco store had Union made cigars. Anton 
 was a great man in this city of 2,000. The 
 men were grateful to him for the extra hour 
 of leisure in which they could till their gar- 
 dens or develop their social natures. 
 
 For example, there was an old German 
 common laborer, who got $1.40 a day. He 
 was very religious, and when Anton began his 
 activity, was much opposed to him. 
 
 "He was a good old fellow," said Anton, 
 "but he thought I was lost to Paradise. He 
 was afflicted with rheumatism and as his work 
 was to carry large planks I had to help him. 
 I had charge of the lumber and on rainy days, 
 [178]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 when his leg pained him, I arranged for him 
 to work inside. He was very economical. 
 For lunch he had a couple of crusts, a soup 
 bone, or a piece of bologna; and a cup of 
 coffee. Whatever crumbs were left he would 
 wrap up in the same paper and take to his 
 chickens. He thought I was wasteful be- 
 cause I did not save all my bread, so I used 
 to give him my crumbs, to take home to his 
 chickens. After I had succeeded in organiz- 
 ing, the old gent could go home an hour 
 earlier to his chickens. He saw that I was re- 
 sponsible for the change, and began to think 
 well of me. Then I told him how the minis- 
 ter of his church had opposed the forming of 
 the Union. He was dumbfounded at that, 
 and sorry, but told me with tears in his eyes 
 that I was all right and no matter what the 
 minister said the result showed for itself. My 
 object in calling his attention to the act of the 
 minister was to secure his influence in 
 strengthening the unionism of his two 
 nephews, who were not sufficiently in doubt of 
 the infallibility of the Bible and who there- 
 fore showed signs of luke-warmness to our 
 organization. 
 
 "One of these nephews had been injured 
 [179]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 while working for the N. W. R. R. company 
 so that he was laid up for ten weeks and his 
 efficiency lost for life. The minister made 
 the settlement between him and the company 
 $200 when it ought to have been $5,000. 
 After paying his own doctor's bill he was $90 
 in debt at the end, and unable to get a job. 
 This is what the minister of God did for him. 
 I showed up to the old uncle the hypocrisy of 
 ministers and the greed of corporations when 
 I heard of this injustice. I also went to 
 Chicago and consulted Mr. Darrow, and 
 asked if the matter could not be re-opened. 
 He said the claim was outlawed, but he made 
 use of the case in his articles in The American 
 on the injustice of the great corporations and 
 their puppets the lawyers. I was a great ad- 
 mirer of these articles : they were so sarcastic : 
 he always took a dig at the lawyers, although 
 he was a lawyer himself." 
 
 In the fall, following the victory of Anton's 
 Union, there was a State election for gov- 
 ernor, and also a village election, and the poli- 
 ticians started after the Labor vote. The man 
 who ran the railroad station lunch counter was 
 an alderman. 
 
 "One day," said Anton, "this man came to 
 [180]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 the factory in a buggy with a salooti-keeper 
 who was also a deputy-sheriff and the prince 
 of gamblers of West Chicago, and cunning to 
 obtain the dollar. They sent in a box of 
 cigars to the foreman and asked him to pass 
 them around to the men, with their compli- 
 ments. I was opposed to politicians of that 
 kind, and I also noticed that there was no 
 Union label on the cigar-box. I went to the 
 boys, who each had received a cigar. Their 
 minds had been sufficiently agitated against 
 non-Union goods and also against the cheap- 
 ness of the politicians. I pointed out to them 
 the fact that their intelligence had been un- 
 derestimated, and each man took his cigar and 
 nailed it on the wall. 
 
 "That went like wild-fire all over the town. 
 It was their own idea, that's the beauty of it. 
 Their political opponents made good use of 
 this story. The next day the candidate for 
 Mayor came to the factory with Union made 
 cigars, and boasted of it. When I told him 
 we were opposed to politicians, he said he 
 gave the cigars not to get votes but just to 
 meet the boys. The following Saturday, just 
 before election, the saloon-keeper came 
 around, to get our good-will in favor of his 
 [i8i]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 candidate for Mayor; told us how kind the 
 man was and how much he had done for the 
 laboring class. I told him I was not con- 
 vinced that this man was friendly to the work- 
 ing men, but that if he could prove it, I would 
 acknowledge it. So I and three of the bo)^ 
 met the alderman in the gambler's saloon. 
 Mr. Alderman was half -drunk, bought drinks 
 and cigars and started to apologize for his 
 blunder in the matter of the Union cigars. 
 He thought I was 'it' and that he had to con- 
 vince me. When he was through with his 
 talk I said it was difficult to believe that a 
 man had such an awful strong feeling towards 
 the workers and so seldom showed it, and 
 when he did show it, did it just before 
 election. I asked him if he did not think 
 the Unions had done much towards raising 
 the standard of living for the workingmen, 
 and in abolishing the sweat-shop, etc. He 
 answered, 'most assuredly, of course, most un- 
 doubtedly,' and put about fourteen emphases 
 on it. The sheriff was on to my game, but 
 he could not butt in. Then I asked the can- 
 didate if he did not think Union labor rep- 
 resented the certainty of greater cleanliness 
 in the material than non-Union. This he ad- 
 [182]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 mitted frankly and with tremendous drunken 
 emphasis. 
 
 " 'Then,' said I, 4f you really sympathize 
 with the cause, why is it that you didn't assist 
 the Workers by purchasing Union made 
 cigars?' 
 
 "He thought I had reference to the particu- 
 lar cigars that were nailed on the wall, and 
 started to apologize again, but I interrupted 
 him and said that I was willing to admit it 
 was only a mistake provided he could take 
 us to his lunch counter and show us one box 
 out of the twenty-four that bore the Union 
 label. 
 
 He realized partly that I had him, but 
 he was so drunk that he took us to the lunch 
 counter. Sure enough he did not have a sin- 
 gle Union label cigar. 
 
 " 'As far as I am concerned,' I said, 'I am 
 not convinced that you are over-burdened in 
 your interest for the cause of the wage-work- 
 ers.' 
 
 "When election came he got the lowest 
 vote of anybody on the ticket. The City 
 Mayor who had refused to let us have the 
 hall was also badly defeated. He would not 
 speak to me fof months. I was tickled to 
 [183]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 death and filled with glory. The friends of 
 the defeated shunned me." 
 
 Anton, although he is a trade-unionist, felt 
 that the interests of the workingmen were op- 
 posed to the interests of the employers: al- 
 though to a certain extent he felt that the 
 labor situation was the crux of a class strug- 
 gle, yet he has never carried this feeling as 
 far as the Socialists. He oftens makes fun 
 of the "class conscious" man and is as fully 
 alive, or almost so, to the weaknesses of the 
 workingman as he is to those of the employer. 
 Though he is belligerent and fiery, he can see 
 good in a man, even though he be an em- 
 ployer. This was shown during his life at 
 West Chicago, when he was apparently the 
 big man of the town. 
 
 One of the employers of the shop where 
 Anton worked, the shop he had organized, 
 was told by his doctor that he would have 
 to live on a farm, on account of his health. 
 One day, at the lunch hour, he went to the 
 men and told them he was going away. 
 
 "He was a kindly man," said Anton, "and 
 
 he began to cry. He told about how hard 
 
 he had worked to build up the business and 
 
 said that if the men had not treated him so 
 
 [184I
 
 Organizer. 
 
 well, he could not have been so successful. 
 His emotion touched the feelings of the men. 
 They could hardly make a reply. After work 
 I called a shop-meeting of the boys and we 
 arranged a surprise party for the employer, 
 took up a collection and bought a diamond 
 stud as a present. We had enough money 
 left for beer and cigars. Then we all 
 marched together to the man's house. He 
 was completely surprised and much moved. 
 I had been appointed to speak, and I said: 
 'Mr. Toastmaster and friends: No one is 
 more responsible for our presence here to- 
 night than you, Mr. Skinner. Therefore I 
 shall direct my remarks to you in particular. 
 Neither the millions* of a Rockefeller nor the 
 wisdom of a Shakespeare coupled with the 
 experience of a Darwin could obtain for any 
 man that feeling of fraternity that bounds 
 within the breasts of all who are here, for 
 you, Mr. Skinner. Neither was it because 
 you were an employer, for employers have 
 gone out of business before and the men have 
 been glad of their departure, but rather be- 
 cause your daily avocation in life and your 
 attitude towards your fellow men were con- 
 sistent with that principle that is so lofty, 
 [185]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 equal rights to all and special privileges to 
 none. Whether consciously or unconsciously 
 you have demonstrated the philosophy of 
 Tom Paine when he said : 'The most formid- 
 able v^eapon against error of all kinds is rea- 
 son.' We are pleased to have worked with 
 you, to have associated with you and I feel 
 sure that your spirit of toleration will ever re- 
 main an influence with all of us and make us 
 more considerate to our fellow men. Though 
 you have risen far above the average in the 
 industrial world, yet you have always ab- 
 stained from that dignity clothed in hypocrisy 
 which fails to have any sympathy with those 
 who perhaps are more unfortunate. We have 
 never known you to discriminate against any 
 man because of his religious beliefs, nor be- 
 cause of his political affiliations, and it is 
 men of your character and temperament who 
 are the forerunners of the ideal society, where 
 man's inhumanity to man will be reduced to 
 the minimum and human happiness elevated 
 to the maximum. This has ever, in all ages, 
 been the song of the poet and the dream of 
 the philosopher. You can rest assured that 
 while we regret to have you leave us, yet it 
 would be extremely selfish on our part not to 
 [i86]
 
 Organizer. 
 
 be cheerful under the circumstances, since it 
 is better for you to go. As an evidence of 
 our appreciation we give to you a small token 
 of our affection; may it be a sign to you and 
 to your friends and family, when you have left 
 this village, that they who knew you best, 
 your employees, can say truthfully: *He has 
 gone, but he was a man.' " 
 
 "He cried like a child before I got half 
 through. Then we sang songs and drank 
 beer. I really loved that man. He was ex- 
 actly what I said. My speech was printed in 
 the West Chicago paper and went all over 
 town. Maggie was as proud as a peacock 
 when she saw it in the paper, and sent it 
 home to Clinton. Then they thought in Clin- 
 ton I was not so much of a hobo after all. 
 Everybody thought it was a fine speech to be 
 made by a man who worked in a factory. 
 The Woodworker printed a mere statement 
 that I had presented a diamond stud to the 
 employer and my radical friends in Chicago 
 were horrified at the thought that I had 
 turned a complete summersault in my attitude 
 towards the bosses. The radicals are in some 
 ways as narrow-minded as the majority of the 
 capitalists." 
 
 [187]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 In that little gathering at the employer's 
 house a great deal of humanity was repre- 
 sented. There were Germans, Swedes, Irish, 
 Scotch, English, Americans, Bohemians, 
 Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, 
 Congregationalists, a Salvation Army man. 
 Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, People's 
 Party men and an anarchist. The anarchist 
 was Anton, the most important figure on that 
 occasion, and the most tolerant. They all 
 differed in everything except in the need of 
 Unionism, and even the employer agreed with 
 them on this point; and in the essential feel- 
 ings of kindness and of human solidarity. 
 
 [i88]
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 "Nothing on earth," said Anton, "could 
 stop the workers, if they were active in their 
 own interests. Only about thirty per cent of 
 them are organized, and of this thirty per 
 cent only about four per cent are active ; and 
 of these four per cent only about one per cent 
 are really aggressive. If one-third of those 
 who are now organized were active, the eight- 
 hour day would be universal in four years. 
 It would be as irresistible as an earthquake." 
 
 Anton's feeling for the need of activity ac- 
 counts for a good deal of his anarchistic, as 
 well as of his general trades-union agitation. 
 The laboring masses, he feels, are inert and 
 need constant prodding and pricking. The 
 great thing is to make them morally uncom- 
 fortable, if not with the truth then with ex- 
 aggerations of the truth; to rouse them to a 
 sense of their opportunities and excite them 
 with a prospect of more abundant life. I 
 [189]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 often found him in a mood when he would 
 express himself very one-sidedly and ex- 
 tremely and unjustly; but it was due quite as 
 much to his desire to "get a rise" from the 
 phlegmatic mass as to his balanced conviction ; 
 for in calmer moods he would think and talk 
 more justly. He never seems, however, to 
 enjoy himself so much as when he throws a 
 moral bomb, so to speak, either at a conserva- 
 tive capitalist, a politician, a minister or a 
 timid or slow-going laborer. 
 
 He was, apparently, especially aggressive 
 during his West Chicago experience. "In 
 the meetings," he said, "I went the limit. 
 I used to attack government on every occa- 
 sion. I wanted to take away the deadening 
 of the routine. When a man has worked in 
 the shop all day, turning out with the help 
 of machinery something that does not interest 
 him, that has no variety in it, he wants a 
 change when he gets out: he wants to express 
 himself, he wants to express anything that has 
 feeling, whether it is logical or not. 
 
 "One night I took the insane asylum as my 
 subject. A man was present who was a heavy 
 drinker, a non-resisting character and very re- 
 ligious. It was right after the expose of the 
 [190]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 Kankakee asylum outrage, where the warden 
 had made an insane woman pregnant. This 
 religious drunkard was so touched by my re- 
 marks that he began to weep like a child. 
 He felt that he had been partly responsible 
 for his own daughter's insanity. I had tried 
 in my speech to show what the asylum would 
 be in a state of free society where the insane 
 were treated for the benefit of the insane, and 
 not locked away so as not to interfere with 
 money-making and other noble interests of 
 the sane in a state of free society. He induced 
 me to meet his minister, whom he represented 
 as a kind of Christ. So the next Sunday night 
 I went to Church, as I did not feel like going 
 to the Saloon. I was conspicuous in the au- 
 dience, because my sense of honesty prevented 
 me from rising when the others rose, or kneel- 
 ing when they kneeled, for I did not want to 
 deceive them. 
 
 "After the meeting, the minister shook my 
 hand, and asked me if I was a Christian. I 
 said I would like to answer by asking him a 
 question. 'Are you a Christian?' I asked. 
 I saw by his face and the faces of the women 
 that my question was considered improper. 
 He said he was a Christian, and then I re- 
 [191]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 plied: *I am a Christian as far as society per- 
 mits me to be and perhaps to a small: degree 
 further.' I called his attention to what he 
 had said in his sermon: he had prayed that 
 there be none within the sound of his voice 
 who would gather in dens of the devil and 
 under the influence of sinners. 
 
 " *It is a little unkind of you/ I said, 'to 
 insist that anyone who associates with sinners 
 is very different morally from the people in 
 the Church. I am not aware that you are 
 running a boarding-house. There are many 
 who have to stop in boarding-houses and 
 hotels which are filled with sinners. I my- 
 self have slept in box-cars, and I find the 
 classification there is the same as in hotels, 
 boarding-houses and churches. Will you sug- 
 gest to me where I may stop to-night, as my 
 family are not in town and I am staying at 
 the hotel, which is full of sinners. Don't you 
 think, sir, that every man and woman is con- 
 trolled to a very large extent by their environ- 
 ment? To what extent can a common labor- 
 ing man who receives from $1.50 to $2 a day, 
 and has a family of from two to six children, 
 to what extent can he choose the locations of 
 his home? Is he not forced to live in a locality 
 [192]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 of so-called vile people, or infidels or unortho- 
 dox? It is a question of rent, of making both 
 ends meet. Therefore the income determines 
 largely the child's environment. It is very 
 hard for me to accept a religion or a creed 
 that overlooks these things, and when a child 
 grows up in such surroundings, the Church 
 condemns and criticizes it and society sends 
 it to jail or makes it work for small wages, 
 because it has not learned anything. The 
 course of this child in life is sufficiently pain- 
 ful, but after the end of this miserable ex- 
 istence, the Church sends it to Hell. It is 
 impossible for you, sir, even faintly to imagine 
 the great satisfaction I feel in being absolutely 
 certain that this is mythical, pure and simple.' 
 That settled him and the audience, too. He 
 told me to go to the hotel and think it over. 
 I actually felt like telling him that if most 
 Church people had to choose between clean 
 beds and sinners on the one hand; or lousy 
 beds and Christians on the other hand, they 
 would take the sinners every time. But I 
 didn't want to embarrass him too much; es- 
 pecially as I began to see, and had for some 
 time, that nobody in West Chicago was inter- 
 ested in my line of thought; except the work- 
 [193]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ing people. I could explain to them and they 
 were sympathetic, because they felt my pas- 
 sion for human solidarity in all my talk. But 
 otherwise I was very much alone. Even the 
 more belligerent of the workingmen some- 
 times joked me. 'The anarchist,' said a Pol- 
 ock once, in the meeting, 'will never get 
 elected.' He reminded me of the policeman 
 who told me he liked the Socialists, but that 
 there were not enough of them." 
 
 He "took a fall," too, out of the County 
 Commissioner of Charities. He raised in the 
 Union a subscription of $50 for a laborer 
 with a bad leg, and then went to the com- 
 missioner with a petition. That functionary 
 looked glum, and said that the board of chari- 
 ties took care of those cases. Anton replied 
 that the board evidently overlooked some peo- 
 ple who were in need. "I have come to the 
 conclusion," said Anton to him, "that if the 
 poor did not look after the county commis- 
 sioners, those commissioners could not go so 
 often to California on a vacation; the work- 
 ing people support you fellows just as they 
 do the lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians 
 and all the other grafters, but if you are called 
 upon to help the poor, you regard the matter 
 [194]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 as pure charity." Anton really seemed sur- 
 prised that the county commissioner got angry 
 at this and said he had been insulted. "I 
 told him I was sorry he was county commis- 
 sioner. I sympathized with him to that ex- 
 tent." This conversation was circulated 
 about the town, and at the next election, the 
 county commissioner lost his job. 
 
 It was not long after this that Anton, too, 
 lost his job and went back to Chicago. Jones, 
 the obnoxious secretary of the Union, had be- 
 come foreman and had resigned his position 
 in the Union. With this man Anton could 
 not work harmoniously. *When he became 
 boss," said Anton, "he was tyrannical. He 
 was a dollar and cent man and was not a good 
 mechanic. He had no judgment, not the 
 slightest idea of how to approach men, to get 
 the best results. He was therefore unpopular 
 and I liked to ball him out. On Labor Day 
 I went home to Clinton with my family for a 
 visit, and did not return till the following 
 Wednesday. Then he started to raise Cain; 
 and told me to do what amounted to four 
 days work in one. I told him if he was a 
 mechanic he would know it was impossible. 
 Then I called him everything I could think of 
 [195]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 in the way of cheapness. The only thing that 
 could influence him besides money, I re- 
 marked, was the Pope. *I have some hope 
 for you,' I said, 'for not even the Pope can 
 move you as far as the dollar, and I have 
 more respect for the American dollar, bad as 
 it is, than for the Pope of Rome.' He got 
 white as a sheet, and I threw off my overalls 
 and quit." 
 
 Anton did not have a dollar in the world, 
 when he thus impulsively quit work in West 
 Chicago. Easy as it seemed for him to throw 
 off his overalls, it was not such a simple mat- 
 ter as formerly. He was gradually striking 
 his roots. The influence of Maggie was a 
 steadily regulating one. He had become a 
 good mechanic, thirty years old, and his blood 
 was cooler, so that he felt more and more the 
 responsibility of his family; and of his work 
 in the Union. 
 
 He quit work in West Chicago on a Satur- 
 day morning; and on the following Thursday 
 he secured the position he has held ever since. 
 It is a good job in every way, the best he has 
 ever had. The wages are good, the foreman 
 is congenial ; and the new local he belongs to 
 is composed of some of the most vigorous 
 [196]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 men in the labor movement. His work as 
 an organizer in West Chicago had given him 
 a reputation among active labor men in the 
 city; and he had not been in Chicago two 
 weeks when he was elected delegate from his 
 local to the Chicago Federation of Labor. 
 
 It was at the time when the trouble be- 
 tween the Woodworkers and the Carpenters 
 was to come up before the Federation. "As 
 I had considerable gift of gab and some pol- 
 icy I was made chairman of the Woodwork- 
 ers' delegation," he said, "and then there 
 came a long, technical fight, about jurisdic- 
 tion." I will not follow him in this fight. 
 It was very complex and not at all inspiring, 
 as it involved no general principles and only 
 small politics and local jurisdiction interests, 
 Anton, although he was very active for the 
 Woodworkers, whose organization the Car- 
 penters were attempting to absorb, felt keenly 
 the routine and ungenerous character of the 
 proceedings. During the course of his three 
 or four years' experience in the Federation he 
 has often taken the floor to protest against the 
 tendency of that body to waste its energies 
 in unimportant jurisdictions fights when so 
 many broad principles of labor policy de- 
 [197]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 manded the most vigorous and united atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The President of the Federation at that 
 time was a Carpenter, and the result was that 
 "the machine" was against the Woodworkers, 
 who were finally worsted in that particular 
 phase of the fight which had been going on 
 all over the country between these allied 
 trades. As far as Anton was concerned, his 
 vigorous speeches in the Federation helped 
 materially to bring him into general notice as 
 a rising man in the local labor situation ; and 
 not long after he was elected Chicago dele- 
 gate to the New York Convention of Wood- 
 workers. 
 
 "In that convention," he said, "I had a 
 distinct advantage over those delegates who 
 had a political mind. I was not a demo- 
 crat, a republican nor a socialist, and so I could 
 reason from more than one point of view. 
 If a man is an anarchist and does not carry 
 things too far he has a great practical ad- 
 vantage in debate over everybody else. They 
 put me on the most important committees and 
 I soon saw that my area of thought was 
 broader than most of the men I came in con- 
 tact with. I had by that time met the promi- 
 [198]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 nent radicals, men like Turner and Isaak; and 
 I had heard Darrow and read his books and 
 speeches in labor cases, and I found more and 
 more a narrowness in the trades-unionist 
 that took away from me my pleasure in the 
 movement, but not from my interest in it. It 
 seemed important, but not so exciting as at 
 first. In several of the committees I sent in 
 a minority report to the convention; I found 
 considerable jealousy in the other committee 
 members, but I had the satisfaction of having 
 the convention reject the majority reports and 
 accept mine, the minority report. 
 
 "But I made one speech that was a failure. 
 I had invited some of my radical friends in 
 New York to hear me. Isaak was there then, 
 and Emma Goldman. I felt at that time 
 that these people were superior to me intellec- 
 tually, and that thought cast a damper over 
 me. I can speak best in a mass meeting of 
 workingmen where none of the speakers are 
 superior to me. The Union is a great field 
 for experience in speaking and in debate, and 
 I afterwards learned to speak before the radi- 
 cals in Chicago with confidence. But I was 
 rattled on that occasion in New York and by 
 my speech almost destroyed the good impres- 
 [199]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 sion I had made by my committee reports. 
 Afterwards, I saw a good deal of Emma 
 Goldman, and while I respect her courage 
 and her energy, I think her ideas are too wild 
 and too religious. She is of a very positive 
 disposition and believes that her theory is just 
 right and everything else just wrong. I have 
 my own troubles with this positiveness, too, so 
 I can't be too hard on her." 
 
 Anton is interested in almost anything hu- 
 man which shows itself honestly and squarely 
 to him. He is filled, of course, with the criti- 
 cism of our social organism shared with him 
 by every intelligent workingman. He is in- 
 terested in many things that seem half-baked, 
 but he is nevertheless not blinded to their limi- 
 tations or to the charm of other and possibly 
 better things. He is alive in every way. 
 The "radicals" are interesting to him mainly 
 because they express although generally in 
 an anaemic way some of the principles which 
 he as an active worker feels are beginning to 
 form in the heart of the people. But person- 
 ally, when he is among them, he is like a bull 
 in a clover field. They are gentle, quiet, pale, 
 reasonable within their limitations, rather 
 monotonous; he is stormy, aggressive, varied, 
 [ 200]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 complex, sometimes vulgar, more often fine 
 and truly delicate, often above their heads 
 though his language is ungrammatical. He 
 frightens and puzzles them. He goes to them 
 largely as a change from the activity of his 
 trades-union life and also because he loves 
 the ideal of freedom. 
 
 During this brief stay of his in New York, 
 his character made a keen impression on peo- 
 ple whom I afterwards met in that city. One 
 of them, a woodworker, too, and an anarchist 
 in tendency, a heavy drinker, a man utterly 
 careless in habits and dress, and most repul- 
 sive on first acquaintance, but afterwards fas- 
 cinating because of his- ideas, never-failing 
 temperament and genuine experience, spoke 
 to me of Anton as "a powerful fellow." 
 
 "The real 'radicals,' he said, 'are in the 
 labor movement; those hanging on the outside 
 began with the movement, too, but then be- 
 came too weak for it. Anton has too many 
 ideas to please the theoretical anarchists who 
 have lost touch with life. My experience is 
 that the radicals make a mistake in neglecting 
 the trades-union movement. If they are 
 trades-unionists they can have a hall to speak 
 in undisturbed by the police. If you can talk 
 [201]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 sense there, they will listen to you no matter 
 how radical you talk. You can't talk high- 
 falutin, but some men have the gift of 
 saying things simply. Most anarchists get 
 their words from books, so when they talk 
 they are high-falutin; but if they would talk 
 right, they could say everything they want, in 
 the trades-union meetings; for the trade- 
 unionists accept all radical ideas, if they are 
 not labeled, and are not high-falutin. 
 
 "It is natural that all radical ideas should 
 start with the working class. Serfs and slaves 
 think more than anybody else. The other 
 people don't need to think. Give a man a 
 job and he generally stops thinking. They 
 think all together because there is solidarity 
 among them. Each man's thought is the 
 thought of all. There is solidarity among 
 them because they are weak. Ants get to- 
 gether, but lions remain alone." Anton is a 
 man who expresses the laboring man at heart, 
 with more energy and intelligence than most 
 of the radicals, partly because he is near them 
 and works with them. 
 
 Yet this vigorous-minded workingman felt 
 abashed when called on to speak before peo- 
 ple of more education but many of them of 
 [ 202 ]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 far less vitality of thought. His failure in 
 the speech seemed to have impressed Anton 
 more vividly than anything else in his visit 
 to New York. 
 
 When he returned to Chicago, he found 
 that his prestige was still greater, and they 
 wanted him to run for business agent. "I 
 had a good position," he said, "but to be busi- 
 ness agent would mean a money sacrifice ; for 
 a business agent has to spend money like water 
 in the saloons. Maggie was opposed to my 
 running; but I wanted to have the experience, 
 and thought I could be a better agitator if I 
 could spend all my time at it, and not need 
 to work in the shop. So I ran for business 
 agent, and although I was popular, I was de- 
 feated, as I had been before, and for the same 
 reason. I was too independent. I was con- 
 vinced that the office should seek the man. 
 I had a contempt for political tricks. It was 
 repulsive to me to ask for anything. 
 
 "Soon after that I was elected President 
 of my local Union, against my wishes. I did 
 not want the office, and nobody else did. I 
 thanked them, in a speech, for giving me an 
 office I did not want. It was in many ways a 
 disagreeable job. The workingman can main- 
 [203]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 tain order in Church or in a lodge-meeting. 
 But in a local Union he thinks he is the whole 
 cheese, and will do as he pleases. It is hard 
 for the President to keep order. My Union 
 was composed of 1,400 men of mixed nation- 
 alities; and there is a very rough element 
 among them. There was an Irishman who 
 gave more trouble than anybody else. He 
 was always drunk at the meetings and ill- 
 tempered. He was an interrupter and was 
 willing to vote money out of the treasury to 
 help a friend. He used all kinds of dirty, 
 vile language, and previous Presidents had 
 not been able to manage him. 
 
 "This Irishman had an idea he was respon- 
 sible for my election and asked me to make 
 him door-keeper, who gets 35 cents every 
 meeting. I told him that the first time I 
 presided I would make a statement before the 
 Union on what the conduct of the meeting 
 should be. On that occasion I recommended 
 dispensing with a regular door-keeper, that 
 the chairman appoint a sergeant-at-arms every 
 Monday and that he act without being paid ; 
 so much would be saved for the treasury. All 
 agreed, except the old Irishman. Hence- 
 forth, he was opposed to me, for he wanted 
 [204]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 that money for three whiskeys every meeting. 
 I informed the men that I, as President, 
 would forget that I had any personal friends. 
 I thanked them for the honor of electing me 
 to an office that nobody else wanted, but I 
 hoped that time would never come when the 
 President of a local Union would be a salaried 
 officer; they should always select a man who 
 could command their respect, but remember 
 there were times when it was a crime for the 
 presiding officer to have the respect of certain 
 men. I told them I should enforce the laws 
 of the Constitution, bad or good, and then if 
 they did not like them, they could repeal 
 them. 
 
 "A certain question was being discussed, 
 when the old Irishman, who was tipsy, got up 
 and wanted to talk. I banged the gavel, tell- 
 ing him he must confine himself to the ques- 
 tion. The custom had been to repeal any 
 fines inflicted by the chairman for actions that 
 were out of order. The Irishman knew that, 
 and would not sit down. He called me So- 
 cialist, anarchist and tyrant. I appointed a 
 committee of three to escort him from the hall. 
 They tussled with him, he agreed to behave, 
 and was given another chance. Soon after- 
 [205]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 wards, he arose and took a similar aggressive 
 and unparliamentary attitude. I appointed 
 the committee again, and they threw him out. 
 Always after that he was very gentle, and the 
 meetings were orderly. One can be an an- 
 archist in theory, as a protest, but when it 
 comes to do the work, there must be order. 
 
 "My anarchism helped me to make an im- 
 pression. I began to meet the big fellows, 
 men like John Mitchell and Sam Gompers, 
 and I found that my acquaintance with radi- 
 cal ideas, slight as it then was, helped me with 
 these men, no matter how conservative they 
 were and they always seem more conserva- 
 tive than they are in reality. There is 
 no conception so close to trades-unionism as 
 anarchism, for in these Unions there are so 
 many different elements, nationalities, creeds 
 and ideas that there is no common ground 
 except anarchism; provided they don't know 
 it. If the anarchist, that is, the extreme pro- 
 tester, does not call himself an anarchist, he 
 occupies in the trades-unionism a logical and 
 strong position, but he must not advertise it." 
 
 Anton's growing importance in the move- 
 ment was shown by his election as President 
 of the Woodworkers' Council, which repre- 
 [206]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 sented all the local Unions in the city. In 
 this position he continued to act with his 
 usual independence. Soon he had the walk- 
 ing delegates against him because of his re- 
 fusal to extend them special privileges on the 
 floor of the council. 
 
 "I was strong," he said, "with the rank and 
 file, because I used my sarcasm against the 
 officers who tried to perpetuate their posi- 
 tions. I was weak with the officers for the 
 same reason; and they to the end will always 
 get the victory, for they keep at it, from mo- 
 tives of business or ambition, while the crowd 
 is moved by impulse which soon dies away. 
 
 "It was about the time that Darrow's Open 
 Shop was published; and it caused many a 
 discussion in our Union. I sold 800 copies 
 of it, and the talk it made did as much good 
 as the actual reading of it. The men like to 
 discuss this question as much as the employers, 
 and they both regard it as a moral issue ; and 
 yet that is silly. It is simply a question of 
 power and advantage. The bosses yell that 
 every man ought to have a chance, and that 
 the shops must be closed to nobody; while the 
 men maintain that it is immoral for the men 
 to be so blind as not to organize. The bosses 
 [207]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 are more hypocritical about it, for they say 
 they want the open shop for the benefit of the 
 non-Union men. It is to laugh, and every- 
 body knows it." 
 
 Anton, after the part he took in the Car- 
 penter-Woodworker debate, became active in 
 the affairs of the Chicago Federation of La- 
 bor, and was appointed a member of the 
 organization committee and at a later time of 
 the charter committee. His experience as an 
 active worker in this central labor body was 
 not one conducive to a purely optimistic way 
 of looking at the situation. "A great portion 
 of the worst element," he said, "is elected to 
 the offices and committees. Things are bet- 
 ter now, but there was a time when the Presi- 
 dent of the Federation always drifted into a 
 political job. Office in the Federation was a 
 stepping stone to politics. This was largely 
 due to the ignorance of the politicians; to 
 that is due the prestige of the labor grafter, 
 for the average trades-unionist has very little 
 political influence, a thing the politicians are 
 very slow in learning. 
 
 "The fear of expose tends to give certain 
 men influence, the Lily Whites, the reformers 
 who do doubtful good and are often really 
 [208]
 
 Delegate to New York. 
 
 dishonest. Nearly every politician howls 
 against the graft of the others, so that unless he 
 can mention names, he has little influence as 
 a reformer he is not dangerous to the 
 crooked politician. I was known to be against 
 the machine element, whether it was a graft- 
 ing element or a so-called reform element. I 
 was against the machine as a machine. It 
 was not democratic and did not satisfy me as 
 an anarchist." 
 
 [209]
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause. 
 
 It was at about this point in his career that 
 I first met Anton. He was then President of 
 his local, President of the Woodworkers' 
 Council, and active delegate to the Chicago 
 Federation of Labor; it was just previous to 
 an important strike of the Woodworkers, to 
 the Madden reform fight in the Federation, 
 to the personal conflict which led up to An- 
 ton's election as Chicago delegate to the In- 
 ternational Labor Congress at Pittsburg. 
 The great Teamsters' strike was under way; 
 Mayor Dunne was in the midst of his mu- 
 nicipal ownership efforts, and "labor" was al- 
 most the only topic of talk in the town. The 
 city was bitter in its side-taking; and yet I 
 was impressed with the relative broadness 
 and toleration extending through the social 
 sections; impressed with the way the working- 
 man, the "common " man had imposed his 
 point of view to a relatively great extent upon 
 [210]
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause. 
 
 the entire comunity. Here, indeed, the la- 
 borer is more at home than is the rule in cap- 
 italistic communities. It is the only big city 
 I know where he has made an atmosphere for 
 himself. Here he begins to abound in his 
 own sense, and to feel the excitement of 
 thought. Here he can nourish his personal- 
 ity, can express himself. Here he has his 
 clubs, his centres of activity, and he is filled 
 with democratic hope. More than all, here 
 he has communicated his needs and his ideals 
 to the general community, so that his laws and 
 the laws on the statute books are not always 
 in harmony. 
 
 The effect of expressive labor in Chicago 
 was noticeable to me everywhere. In the 
 University, in the newspapers, in the social 
 settlements, in the public charities, in the 
 newest kind of politician, a relative sympathy 
 for the man who works with his hands is in 
 one way very apparent. 
 
 Take any Chicago personage of importance, 
 whatever his profession or his position, and 
 somehow or other he has been influenced by 
 the spirit of the intellectual proletariat. One 
 of the younger deans of the University is the 
 most complete anarchist of my acquaintance. 
 
 [211]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 "Sociology," in all its branches, is the great 
 subject of the place. Young literary men 
 like Herrick and Friedman dwell with in- 
 sistent sympathy upon the emotional and 
 aesthetic demands of the "people." An im- 
 portant young banker is an emotional socialist. 
 A young newspaper man with strong "capi- 
 talistic" backing and tradition was put into 
 an important office in the city hall by the won- 
 derfully broad and democratic Mayor: this 
 young man resigned, to follow out the cause 
 of socialism, to which faith he had come dur- 
 ing his term in office. 
 
 An important lawyer and politician of the 
 city is Clarence Darrow, a man who in his 
 practical activity and his literary work, has 
 been very deeply influenced by the implicit 
 ideas of the working class. He is radical, 
 idealistic and practical at once and because 
 of his interest in human psychology and in the 
 idealistic future often appears as a crank or 
 worse. He is inconsistent with the incon- 
 sistency of the struggling, unclear proletariat 
 whose ideas and impulses he sympathetically 
 grasps. 
 
 Even the kid glove reformers (Anton 
 would call them "The Lily Whites") are 
 
 [212]
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause, 
 
 more cognizant of what is going on below 
 than they are in the East. A Chicago re- 
 former is a real, plain man. William Kent 
 is the ideal reformer of the capitalist class: 
 practical, radical, conservative, humorous, 
 whose honesty is so thorough-going that it 
 sticks out with inspiring positiveness in every- 
 thing he does and says. About him is some- 
 thing of the down-rightness and plainness of 
 the man-in-the-street. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of 
 the power and influence of the proletariat 
 in the big western metropolis is given by the 
 personality and the work of Miss Jane Ad- 
 dams, who, in Hull House, has formed a kind 
 of salon, an exchange of ideas, where all the 
 surging social conceptions find expression. 
 
 The salons of history were limited. The 
 ideas of the laboring classes hardly found an 
 expression in them. Philosophers thought for 
 the crowd, who were out of sight and un- 
 known. The fact that the most democratic 
 exchange of ideas which has ever attained 
 respectability centres about the personality 
 of a Chicago woman, is not an accident. I 
 doubt if Jane Addams could have been 
 evolved anywhere else in the world. 
 [213]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 She has been an important factor in putting 
 the different social classes in touch one with 
 another. She can do emotional justice all 
 around. She understands the troubles of the 
 rich as well as of the poor. Her instinctively 
 psychological insight gives her sympathy even 
 with the morally outcast. Wonderful, in- 
 deed, is her emotional tact. She is curiously 
 and delightfully free of sentimentality. It is 
 as a rule difficult to talk of oppression and 
 moral degradation without a show of indig- 
 nation. But she carefully refrains from any 
 snap-shot moral judgment. She is not, in the 
 banal sense, a "reformer," or a worker. Her 
 great function is social: she has established, 
 like the French women of the eighteenth 
 and early nineteenth centuries, a salon of a 
 high order; here is established an atmosphere 
 where ideas of importance derived from the 
 interests and passions of many different men 
 and many different sections of societv are ex- 
 changed. 
 
 In her I felt only one interest in the hu- 
 man being who had something serious to do 
 or say a never-ceasing helpfulness to all who 
 want to work or live seriously, and therefore 
 at present a great liking for the laboring 
 [214]
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause. 
 
 class. "I am interested in trades-unionism," 
 she said to me, "because it is the only thing 
 which to-day seems to have any religion 
 in it." 
 
 Another remarkable woman in this city is 
 less of a public character than Miss Addams, 
 and I shall therefore not give her name. But 
 she is a woman who on occasions has exerted 
 a strong influence in Chicago. She has an 
 adventurous and investigating turn of mind. 
 She likes to explore life and to delve into the 
 interesting personalities of the town. It was 
 she who acted as a wedge in settling the great 
 butchers' strike, and who discovered the hor- 
 rible state of things in the stock-yards; the 
 knowledge of which was wielded by her and 
 others as a club to force the packers to send 
 away the disreputable strike-breakers. 
 
 She makes her own living in one of the pro- 
 fessions. She is clever in her work, but she 
 does not like it. She does it from necessity 
 and grudges every moment that she devotes 
 to it. It takes away from her real interests. 
 It takes away from the amount of time she 
 can give to the strangely keen pleasure of 
 "getting next" to the character, passions and 
 purposes of others. 
 
 [215]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 She is as much interested in the outcast and 
 the thief as she is in the pillar of society and 
 the reformer. But she is particularly inter- 
 ested in the laboring man and his destiny. 
 "These men," she said to me, "are fine fel- 
 lows, but they all need elbows." She is the 
 elbow, not only of the labor leader, but of the 
 town in general. She tried to work on Shea, 
 at the time of the teamsters' strike, with as 
 much calmness of mind as on the good Mayor. 
 With the latter, of course, she succeeded bet- 
 ter, and has been influential in the adminis- 
 tration. A member of the remarkable school 
 board, she has worked consistently on almost 
 ultra democratic lines. Nothing interests her 
 as much as "the people." And about them 
 she is curiously imaginative. 
 
 Her woman's susceptibility to emotional 
 democracy may be due in part to the circum- 
 stances of her childhood. Exposure and pri- 
 vation, intimate personal contact with hard- 
 ship and mere humanity probably rendered 
 her more impressionable to the ideas of a class 
 to which she, in fact, does not belong. She 
 is capable of a great usefulness as a stimu- 
 lant, as an expresser and the ideas she ex- 
 presses are curiously dependent on the in- 
 [216]
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause. 
 
 stinctive ideas and emotions of the proletariat. 
 
 One of the most vigorous and influential 
 persons in the city is a woman who has made 
 herself into a labor leader, has organized the 
 teachers. She has been a great factor in the 
 political and economic life of Chicago. She 
 carries to excess the virtues and perhaps the 
 faults of the belligerent labor leader is ter- 
 ribly "class conscious," as Anton would say. 
 But she derives her power from the remark- 
 ably widespread influence of the ideas of la- 
 bor of the ideas which come from below. 
 
 The strongest feuilletonist, logically the 
 ablest editorial writer in America, is Louis 
 Post, a Chicago editor. He is also one of 
 the most "radical" men in the country. I 
 heard him denounce, with passion, in a ring- 
 ing public speech. Judge Holdom's sweeping 
 decision giving almost unlimited power to the 
 employers, through injunctions making or- 
 ganized labor practically illegal. He ap- 
 pealed to the workingmen to go to the ballot, 
 to rid themselves of such utter injustice. 
 "Such tyranny," he said, "can only be opposed 
 with bullets or ballots. In this country, we 
 have the opportunity to resort to ballots." In 
 the East, they would call this cultivated, good 
 [217]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 and able man an "agitator." But the senti- 
 ment of the laborer is mighty enough in Chi- 
 cago to estabish an atmosphere in which men 
 like Post occupy a respectable, almost a con- 
 servative position. On the same platform, 
 the same day, Anton spoke, and showed no 
 more indignation than Mr. Post, although he 
 said: "This judicial decision cannot be 
 obeyed by the workingmen of this city." 
 
 While in Chicago, I had the pleasure of at- 
 tending the meetings of the- "Lunch Club," 
 composed of men of the best character and 
 with the deepest interest in "civic" affairs. 
 An important settlement worker, a leading 
 Socialist editor, a banker with Socialistic tend- 
 encies, the prominent lawyer, politician and 
 author I have referred to, a young and sound 
 lawyer, one of the most gifted of the Western 
 novelists, a newspaper man of high standing, 
 a progressive priest, the young commission- 
 er of Public Works, these were some of the 
 members. The talk was always about some 
 matter of public concern and the general 
 ideas resulting from such consideration. In 
 the tone of the most conservative of these men 
 of good position, and some of them of inde- 
 pendent means, there was a marked "radical- 
 [218]
 
 Chicago Spirit and Its Cause. 
 
 ism," a markedly emotional interest in the peo- 
 ple^ an inspiring sentiment of democracy. 
 
 Wherever I went in Chicago, and I went 
 everywhere, the ideas I heard expressed were 
 preponderantly "democratic," preponderantly 
 on subjects vaguely called "sociological"; ex- 
 pressed with energy and often with distinc- 
 tion. For several months after my arrival in 
 Chicago I saw these "leading" people mainly: 
 it was before I had become well acquainted 
 with the laboring people themselves. When, 
 however, I had met Anton and his friends, 
 whom I have yet to describe, I felt myself 
 to be in the presence of the source of the 
 ideas in which my cultivated friends were so 
 much interested. It seemed that the ideas 
 and feelings most prevalent in Chicago's in- 
 tellectual and serious circles began with the 
 laboring class, and were expressed best by the 
 intellectual proletariat. Moreover, I found 
 that in this class, where these feelings and 
 ideas originated, the expression of them was 
 more direct and warmer; if less logical and 
 balanced, it was more real, so real that it 
 was fascinating. At this point, therefore, be- 
 gins my direct observations of Anton and his 
 friends. 
 
 [219]
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 A LITTLE while after our meeting, Anton in- 
 vited me to a Sunday noon-day dinner at his 
 house on the West Side the first of a long 
 series of visits. There I met Maggie and the 
 three children. I found a house perfectly 
 clean, a garden well-cultivated, the children 
 healthy and well-cared for, a well-cooked din- 
 ner, and Maggie, the spirit of it all, without 
 assistance, and yet pretty, young-looking and 
 cheerful. She took intelligent part in the 
 conversation at the table. The talk was frank 
 and full, and dealt with the facts of the team- 
 sters' strike and with labor and social matters 
 generally. I was deeply struck with the vi- 
 tality and charm of the entire family. I had 
 naturally enough at that time, due to my lack 
 of experience in this direction, a feeling that 
 the conventional education of college and of 
 well-to-do conditions generally puts a wide 
 intellectual difference between the so-called 
 
 [220]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 educated man and the vigorous man of the 
 people who learns from experience and ob- 
 servation. But I was soon to find myself so 
 absorbed by my experiences with this family 
 and their friends that it is now a common- 
 place thought with me that "culture" has 
 many paths by which it is reached, and that 
 it is only the extraordinary person who attains 
 it at all. Certainly many of the American 
 mechanics possess this quality in its essence to 
 as great a degree, at least, as the man of so- 
 called education, though these mechanics do 
 not often think so. They are overpowered 
 with an often baseless sense of inferiority. 
 
 "Education," said Maggie, regretfully, 
 "helps you to know anybody you want to." 
 This was a true word, and shows where the 
 real limitation is social. 
 
 Maggie and Anton and their trades-union 
 and radical friends, although they feel the so- 
 cial injustice, are not under the illusion that 
 people who are educated are necessarily think- 
 ers or in any way really superior to them- 
 selves. I heard Anton, in one of his speeches 
 before the Social Science League, say: 
 
 "I don't know that people who are profes- 
 sional thinkers or philosophers or students do 
 [221]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 all the thinking; perhaps other people who 
 are at work have an opportunity to think that 
 the other fellows have not got." 
 
 Anton, when tired by the routine of the shop 
 and of the trades-union activities, goes to the 
 "radicals," and by the more free and subtle 
 among them is refreshed and encouraged. 
 One night he and I talked till midnight with 
 an aesthetic person about literature and art. 
 On account of Anton's lack of specific educa- 
 tion our facility in shades of expression was 
 impressive to him, but not at all discouraging, 
 and it did not need to be ; for when there was 
 a connecting point, his ideas came rich and 
 red in response. He seemed to me much 
 nearer to reality than my learned friend or I, 
 and so in a better position to think, if, after 
 the day's work, he had enough energy left 
 over. 
 
 Some of the women of Chicago have "taken 
 Anton up," but they are sometimes shocked 
 by his frankness, and as his nature is really a 
 sweet and humane one, the sensibilities of the 
 women do not seem too well founded. 
 
 "The women object to my language," he 
 said. "They object to my saying damn and 
 hell. They claim to be interested in the 
 [222] 
 
 i
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 trades-union movement, and yet they often 
 stick on little things. How can they expect 
 to have the workingman use any language but 
 his own? Why, for such a trivial thing, do 
 they criticize? Why not get out and hustle 
 for a cause they claim to be right and forget 
 to be finnicky? It is the same way with some 
 of the 'gentlemen.' If they find the work- 
 ingman has some bad habits, if he is rough and 
 not refined, or if he is sometimes unscrupulous 
 about money, they lose their interest in the 
 cause. But the cause is just as important, in 
 spite of these things, perhaps more important 
 because of them. 
 
 "One time, at a ^radical' meeting, a lady 
 was shocked at my language, and said: 
 'Now, Mr. Anton, you would be good for the 
 cause if you did not say such words ; you say 
 damn, you say hell.' The truth is, I like to 
 shock these anarchists, free-lovers, anthropol- 
 ogists, mystics and cranks who gather at these 
 'radical' meetings. Some of them are sensi- 
 ble and thoughtful, but most of them are aw- 
 ful faddists. 
 
 "At this meeting I thought I would be an 
 irritant, a part I often played in these meet- 
 ings. In the labor meetings I am serious. I 
 [223]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 am a tyrant there and try to accomplish 
 things. But in the radical meetings I enjoy 
 myself and try to stir people up. On this oc- 
 casion, I defended cigarette smoking against 
 the speaker of the evening, and also attacked 
 the Church. He said that cigarettes had a 
 tendency to confuse the mind and destroy the 
 morals. 
 
 I got up and protested in the name of 
 humanity and decency against Mr. Sercombe 
 putting together in his argument the cheap 
 politician. Carter Harrison, and the great 
 philosopher, Tom Paine, both of whom he 
 quoted as against cigarettes. I also re- 
 marked that it was singular Mr. Sercombe 
 should have &o great a horror of cigarettes and 
 at the same time so great an admiration for 
 Clarence Darrow, who was a cigarette fiend. 
 Under another heading, I remarked that re- 
 ligion was tyrannical; as it was preached in 
 the pulpit, it was the author of vice, crime and 
 vulgarity, and that Christ was responsible. 
 This was an extreme statement, and I made it 
 only to irritate the anthropologists. As they 
 were studying Man, I thought I would give 
 them one to study. A lady got up, red with 
 horror, and said: 'I respect the rules of this 
 [224]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 society, so I refrain from answering one of the 
 critics,' meaning me. 
 
 "The next Sunday I seized an opportunity 
 in the meeting of the Anthropological Society 
 to say that I also respected the rules of the 
 society, provided they did not come in contact 
 with my psychology and individuality. 'In 
 that case,' I said, 'while some may prefer 
 others, I prefer myself.' In that society they 
 always hold their breath when I get up to 
 speak. They don't know what I am going to 
 say next. 
 
 "The same lady who objected, said, at an- 
 other meeting: *I am very much pleased to 
 be able to get up to speak in behalf of the 
 workers. It pleases me very much to say that 
 I, in my youth, was a hard-working girl, and 
 ever since I met my beloved and was married 
 by the laws of God I have given much atten- 
 tion to workers in and out of Unions ; I have 
 felt that the poor non-union man who is cut 
 off from society needs more consideration 
 even than an ordinary criminal.' 
 
 "I got up at this point and said: 'Mr. 
 Chairman, for Christ* s sake how long have 
 we got to listen to this stuff?' 
 
 "Even a freak can speak before this society 
 [225]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 or before the Social Science League. In both 
 these societies they have some good speakers, 
 and the purpose of the gathering is a good 
 one, namely, the education of the workers to 
 a sense of their rights ; but the trouble is few 
 workers go there, while the chairs are taken 
 by a lot of long-haired cranks instead. I 
 liked to put them to a test to see how much 
 they believed in free speech, which they were 
 always shouting about. Maggie, being a 
 woman, is softer than I, and didn't like the 
 way I swore and talked in the meetings. So 
 she put them next to the reason I did it, just 
 to get a 'rise,' and after that they took me more 
 coolly. 
 
 "But I could always get a 'rise' out of the 
 lady I have spoken of. One night a wood- 
 worker, a friend of mine and an anarchist of 
 the thoughtful kind who have read and who 
 do not talk nonsense, made a speech before 
 the Social Science League, in which he tried 
 to show that many great men of the past and 
 many cultivated men to-day have been, and 
 are, imbued with anarchistic ideas. The lady 
 was tickled to death that the speaker could 
 define anarchism in such a way as to make it 
 seem nice and respectable, and so she said: 
 [226]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 *I am very glad to-night to say to you that I 
 also have been an anarchist unconsciously. I 
 accept anarchism, if so defined, and I thank 
 God for it.' 
 
 "That gave me my opportunity. I got up, 
 and said: 'I have met many men and women 
 who have blasphemed the Deity, but I never 
 until to-night met anybody willing to undergo 
 the responsibility of thanking God for creat- 
 ing anarchists. If anarchism is what it is, 
 and if there are any people who have become 
 anarchists, God is the last man who is entitled 
 to any credit for it. I for one would prefer 
 to give the credit to the devil, who has done 
 some things that are good.' 
 
 "She thought that was awful. She and the 
 others think they understand poetry, society 
 and philosophy. Why can't they understand 
 me? Why get angry?" 
 
 Anton goes everywhere in his flannel shirt. 
 He presides at his own table in one, goes 
 to the meetings in one, and takes pride in it 
 as a symbol of his class. He is most at home 
 with his coat off, a suspender strap around his 
 robust body, no necktie, and on the point of 
 hurling some bomb-like words at an opponent. 
 On the subject of dress, he said: 
 [227]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 "I acquired a bad habit when I was a hobo 
 the desire to dress well. At that time I was 
 obligated, for I had to make the best appear- 
 ance, or I would not have been able to beg or 
 get a job. But now it is different. I am in- 
 dependent and don't need to dress. I am in- 
 dependent of all but my employer. If he 
 wanted me to wear a tie in the shop, I prob- 
 ably would. Capitalists and clerks have to 
 dress for business reasons, but I don't have to. 
 All really civilized people from Tolstoi to 
 Wagner believe in the Simple Life. I al- 
 ways preside over the Union meetings in a 
 blue flannel shirt." 
 
 Anton likes his joke, and has his moments 
 of workingman's downright lightness. He 
 added, on this occasion: "You made a great 
 impression on Maggie, the other evening, 
 when I had gone out, but you wore a flannel 
 shirt." 
 
 At these "radical" gatherings there are 
 many free-lovers, and anti-free-lovers, and 
 they often take one another by the hair, fig- 
 uratively speaking. 
 
 "Some of these women," said Anton, "liked 
 me. They thought I was handsome, vigor- 
 ous and had nice ways, but they wondered 
 [228]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 why I swore. I promised them to give a rea- 
 son some time. My opportunity came once 
 when a woman spoke on license versus lib- 
 erty. I got up, after her speech, and said 
 some of my friends had corrected me on vari- 
 ous occasions about using profanity. I did 
 so, I said, in order to please both my ultra 
 radical friends and also my ultra conservative 
 friends. I had been raised, I said, more than 
 a Christian, but had been surrounded by infi- 
 dels, that I had a marriage certificate, but a 
 free-love inclination ; I therefore knew that if 
 I conducted myself in the conventional man- 
 ner and did not swear, that all the goody- 
 goody women would fall completely in love 
 with me; and, as my capacity was limited, I 
 could best introduce moderation in their 
 hearts by using profanity and thus checking 
 them." 
 
 Anton, in spite of the joking tone of the 
 above, is in reality very attractive to women. 
 His temperament, energy, idealistic vehe- 
 mence, and even his rough sincerity, appeal to 
 them. I had opportunity to see how many 
 of the "radical" women pursued him. He 
 was not too offish, and would sometimes yield 
 gracefully, but Maggie, who knew everything, 
 [229]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 always knew that she had the best of Anton's 
 heart, mind and temperament So she for- 
 gave not only the trades-union activity that 
 took him from home at night, but even his in- 
 terest in other women. 
 
 "I told her nothing at first," said Anton, 
 "but I learned better, and when I told her 
 everything, she had become more radical, and 
 she understood better and did not mind when 
 I was out. At a later time she went further 
 than I did in radical theory, but her natural, 
 womanly conservatism and our frankness to- 
 gether kept her from putting her ideas into 
 practice. Once she asked me if she ought not 
 to make an experiment. She had been hear- 
 ing so much free-love talk that she began to 
 feel that she was out-of-date. I told her she 
 was a fool to do anything she did not want to 
 do, just because of a lousy theory that was go- 
 ing the rounds. So she didn't. 
 
 ''Maggie used to wonder why I did not no- 
 tice this and that, why I did not pay her little 
 attentions and talk polite to her. But I leave 
 that for conservative men who stay at home. 
 I talk to her, instead, and she likes it." 
 
 Maggie was there, as Anton and I talked, 
 and she said, at this point: 
 [230]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 "If I have to marry again, I don't know 
 where I can find another like you; and I 
 couldn't stand a home man." 
 
 "She is a wise woman," said Anton, "and 
 she knows the best way of managing a restless 
 fellow like me. The other night I had been 
 to a Union meeting and something came up 
 about policy I wanted to talk over with Mag- 
 gie. That evening I dined in town, and 
 [Julia, one of the free-love ladies who are 
 prominent at the radical meetings, wanted me 
 to take her to hear a Pentecost lecture. When 
 I told her I had an engagement with Maggie, 
 she sneered, and said: 'You are a slave to 
 your wife. You only pretend to be a free- 
 lover.' *I am not a slave to you, anyway,' I 
 said, and I went home. 
 
 "This lady, whom I call Julia, has quite 
 an important position among some of the rad- 
 icals. She is not pretty you have seen her, 
 and you know and she is not original or 
 amusing. It is by virtue of her free-love that 
 she gets her position. That is an easy graft 
 with some of these people. For instance, a 
 young machinist asked me one day to take 
 him to a free-love meeting. He is a regular 
 buck, and I knew that he did not care about 
 [231]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the principles of freedom. It was license he 
 wanted. So I said to him : *I don't want to 
 force potatoes on people who want oranges.' " 
 
 I saw "Julia" several times, and found her 
 very serious and much interested, though in 
 an unillumined way, in all social problems, 
 and particularly in everything that touched 
 upon the welfare of the working class, to 
 which she belonged. She worked in the fac- 
 tory, and in the evenings improved her mind 
 by going to the radical meetings and listen- 
 ing to the lectures. Her "free-love" was part- 
 ly induced, no doubt, by her temperament, but 
 it was also influenced by the general "spirit 
 of protest" against all capitalistic institutions, 
 including marriage. She was not at all se- 
 ductive, but she took herself so seriously, and 
 was taken so seriously by the people with 
 whom she associated, that she seemed a person 
 of the utmost respectability. 
 
 "I was conservative," said Anton, "for a 
 long time about sex. These ladies used to 
 get mad at me on that question. But no mat- 
 ter how conservative I was, what. I said was no 
 more ridiculous than what they said. I be- 
 gan to feel more broad and tolerant on this 
 subject after I came to know Isaac and his 
 [232]
 
 Social Amenities. 
 
 wife and family well. Maggie and I found 
 these people so refined and gentle and good 
 that we came to be tolerant to their theories 
 of anarchy and free-love. They were wild 
 about children, and that went straight to Mag- 
 gie's heart." 
 
 "They talked," said Maggie, "so frankly 
 and so sweetly about things I thought ought 
 not to be talked about that I got to feel they 
 and their ways of seeing things were right, at 
 least in part." 
 
 When one takes into account the narrow- 
 ness of the ordinary laborer's life; how lack- 
 ing in it are the elements of "sweetness and 
 light" in the intellectual sense, one cannot 
 wonder at .the eagerness with which the more 
 energetic among them grasp at any opportu- 
 nity to broaden their mental horizon. Their 
 method of thinking often seems crude and 
 anti-social, and yet even the extreme anarchis- 
 tic activities are educating and refining in 
 their influence. Certainly one has abundant 
 opportunity of observing that those laborers 
 who have come under Socialistic or anarchis- 
 tic influences are much more "civilized," more 
 interesting, more alive and progressive, than 
 those who live exclusively the routine and un- 
 [233]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 stimulating life of the wage-worker. Who 
 can wonder at the fact that the need of excite- 
 ment, if nothing else, forces many of these 
 men and women to adopt ways of feeling and 
 thinking which are not without danger to the 
 present organization of society? 
 
 [234]
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 The agreement between the Woodwork- 
 ers' District Council and the planing mill 
 operators of Chicago expired in February, 
 1905. Anton was at the time President of 
 the Council, and in the negotiations tending 
 towards a new agreement which ensued, he 
 took a leading part. The general method of 
 procedure on the part of the men was for a 
 committee to draw up an agreement, present 
 it for approval to the Council, and then refer 
 it to the referendum for the approval of the 
 rank and file; and it would then go to the 
 employers. On this occasion no demand for 
 increase of wages was made, except in the case 
 of one shop, where the wages were lower than 
 in the others. A continuance of the closed 
 shop agreement, which had been in force, was 
 insisted upon by the men, while the employers 
 made a stand for the "open shop," which at 
 that time was "epidemic" among them. 
 [235]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 In previous years the men's committee se- 
 lected to present the agreement to the employ- 
 ers consisted of the board of business agents, 
 four salaried men; but as the employers' or- 
 ganizations became more general, the employ- 
 ers in many instances complained that the 
 board of business agents did not represent the 
 wishes of the rank and file. So of late the 
 policy has been for a committee of five men, 
 w^orking at their trade, to accompany the busi- 
 ness agents in the negotiations v^ith the em- 
 ployers. _ 
 
 On this occasion, however, as it was known 
 that the men "stood pat" for the closed shop, 
 the first meeting with the employers was held 
 by the business agents alone. "The bosses' 
 chairman," said Anton, "wanted to know im- 
 mediately why the rank and file was not rep- 
 resented. He was sure that the open shop 
 idea would meet with the approval of the 
 men. 
 
 The business agents reported the matter to 
 the Coiincil, and a committee of five men, 
 working at the trade, was appointed. This 
 committee, on its return from the meeting 
 with the bosses, recommended to the Council 
 a compromise, but the Council "sat on" the
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 committee and "stood pat" for the closed 
 shop. 
 
 "I was not on that first committee," Anton 
 said, "and I severely criticized them for their 
 timidity. One of the committee resigned, and 
 I was put in his place. In the committee 
 meeting, before we went to the bosses, they 
 made me spokesman, and I laid the law down. 
 A business agent tried to tell me what to say, 
 but I cut him short, and said that I would 
 accept the responsibility of my own words, but 
 would not use his. 
 
 "When we got before the employers' com- 
 mittee, I began my remarks by saying that 
 we had no authority to enter into a final agree- 
 ment without referring the matter to the or- 
 ganization, but that the men stood for the 
 closed shop ; we felt it was reasonable in itself, 
 and that to change it at this late day, after it 
 had been in force for several years, was un- 
 reasonable. I quoted two recent court deci- 
 sions sustaining the legality of the closed 
 shop. 
 
 "The Chairman for the bosses replied, said 
 
 that if the agreement must be referred back 
 
 to the Union, they could accomplish nothing; 
 
 he insisted that the closed shop was illegal, 
 
 [237]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 and that the employers might have damage 
 suits on their hands, and he laid stress on what 
 he called the moral point of view: said the 
 closed shop was immoral. In answer, I said 
 that the employers were responsible for tak- 
 ing away the autocratic power of the business 
 agent in making agreements; that the em- 
 ployer, through the press, had continually 
 fulminated against the business agent, or, as 
 they called him, the walking delegate, whom 
 they claimed would do as he pleased without 
 reference to the wishes of the rank and file in 
 bringing about a settlement. And now they 
 inconsistently objected because the committee 
 must refer to the organization. In regard to 
 the alleged illegality of the closed shop agree- 
 ment, I showed them two distinct decisions 
 rendered about the closed shop, one in New 
 York and one in England, and then I referred 
 them to that part of President Roosevelt's 
 message to Congress where he says, in effect: 
 'There can be no question of the legality of 
 organized workers refusing to work with such 
 men as are not members of the Union. This 
 may or may not be a moral right, that depends 
 on the conditions in the special case.' So said 
 the President. 'I, personally,' I added, in 
 [238]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 support of the moral right of the closed shop, 
 'should reasonably be the judge of whom I 
 shall work with, as far as I have the power. 
 Will you deny me the right of refusing to 
 work with an anarchist or with a brute negro, 
 or any other undesirable character?' I chal- 
 lenged them to show one instance where the 
 law compels a man to work with such asso- 
 ciates. I pointed out many cases where em- 
 ployers had discriminated against men by rea- 
 son of their color: porters on trains are all 
 negroes, section men in some parts of the coun- 
 try are all Chinamen. No man questioned 
 the employer's right to hire whomsoever he 
 pleased or discriminate against anybody he 
 wanted to. 
 
 " 'I assure you,' I added, *our organization 
 has no particular objection to your hiring non- 
 union men. We want to be fair, however, 
 and to notify you in time, that if you do hire 
 non-union men, you cannot hire us. To us, 
 non-union men are undesirable associates, and 
 we will not work with them.' 
 
 "The bosses' spokesman interrupted me at 
 this point and said he would waive the legal 
 right, but asked me if I did not think there 
 was a moral question involved. 
 [239]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 " 'Yes/ I replied, 'there is a moral question 
 involved. I quite agree to that. I hope you 
 will pardon me if I try to show you the light. 
 Ninety-nine out of one hundred workingmen, 
 when talking among themselves, are favor- 
 ably inclined towards Unionism. But they 
 have two objections to joining the Union. 
 One is the fear of incurring the disfavor of 
 the employer, and the other is the cost, fifty 
 cents a month in dues and sometimes assess- 
 ments which may not directly benefit them. 
 The result is that, after a fair analysis, the 
 principal objection of the workingman to join- 
 ing the Union is founded on stupid selfish- 
 ness, ignorance and cowardice. 
 
 " 'In view of the fact that human beings are 
 more susceptible to the bad, the mean and the 
 selfish than to the good and the unselfish, it is, 
 in my opinion, decidedly immoral to allow 
 one or two men in a shop to lead eighteen or 
 twenty to become more selfish rather than 
 more humane. For these reasons I quite 
 agree that there is a moral side to this ques- 
 tion, and that, morally, the trade-union, and 
 especially the closed shop idea, have been 
 great factors for human good. 
 
 " 'The employers' committee have appealed 
 [240]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 to my sympathy. Your spokesman has asked 
 me to defend your case. This is an admission 
 of weakness. But for me to do anything on 
 this committee except to reason for the inter- 
 est of those I represent would be satannical, 
 and I would not be worthy the respect of an 
 honest opponent. I am thoroughly convinced 
 of the justice of our case, and while I would 
 not like to see a strike, I feel I would be a 
 coward and a hypocrite to tell you that I 
 would advise the rank and file in any other 
 direction. I believe the balance of this com- 
 mittee agrees with me, but if they were all 
 opposed, I would still go before the rank and 
 file in their mass meeting and say, like Teddy, 
 'Boys, you are right; stand pat.' 
 
 "I addressed my remarks to the spokesman, 
 and I noticed that, while I corrected him, the 
 other bosses had a smile on their faces. He 
 was too much of a self-appointer, and was not 
 popular. The meeting adjourned, and the 
 next day the secretary of the Lumber Dealers' 
 Association came to the office of the Wood- 
 workers and wanted to know where that young 
 fellow, Anton, worked. He wanted a closed 
 shop, and liked what I had said. The open 
 shop would mean more bother to him. He 
 [241]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 told me in confidence that my argument had 
 met with the approval of all the bosses, except 
 the spokesman. In our mass-meeting on Sun- 
 day every man voted in favor of the closed 
 shop. So at the next meeting with the em- 
 ployers, I told them that we now had the 
 power to act definitely, and would accept the 
 bosses' signature to the agreement we had 
 drawn up. It was in substance an ultimatum, 
 and they agreed to our terms, the closed shop. 
 "That finished that discussion, and things 
 had been settled without a strike, but soon 
 after a dispute about wages arose in another 
 branch of the trade, interior trimmings. We 
 asked for an increase of two cents an hour for 
 all the men employed, instead of the usual 
 demand to raise the minimum scale. I was 
 spokesman when we presented our request, 
 and the bosses nearly fell dead. They took 
 three hours to picture their poverty, and we 
 came to no understanding. The men, at a 
 mass-meeting, sustained our position, and 
 when we met the bosses again we agreed on a 
 compromise, namely, that the present scale of 
 wages should continue for six months, at the 
 end of that time one cent an hour increase, 
 and another cent increase at the beginning of 
 [242]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 the second year. This committee recom- 
 mended this agreement to a mass meeting, but 
 the men rejected it with considerable criti- 
 cism, as it concerned only the minimum scale 
 and did not apply to all the men. One old 
 Scotchman made the charge that the commit- 
 tee was polluted. 
 
 "So we had to report to the bosses that the 
 men would not accept the compromise agree- 
 ment. Then the bosses insinuated that it had 
 been their intention of giving this increase all 
 around, instead of merely applying to the 
 minimum scale. That was a lie, and it made 
 me raving mad. I got up before the com- 
 mittee of the bosses and said: *In the mass- 
 meeting our committee has been accused of 
 being polluted, and here the bosses accuse us 
 of being fools. I am absolutely certain that 
 the bosses' chairman stated most emphatically 
 that they would not, and could not, make the 
 increase apply to all the men. Personally, I 
 feel that our committee should now stand pat 
 on the original demand, so that we cannot be 
 misunderstood, either by the bosses or by the 
 rank and file.' I was awfully angry. But 
 the chairman of the employers apologized, 
 and they agreed to make the raise apply to all 
 [243]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the men. This we submitted to the mass- 
 meeting, but without recommending it, and it 
 was carried by one vote. So that settled that 
 dispute. 
 
 "There was one member of our committee 
 who had an ambition to be a walking dele- 
 gate. He was a demagogue, who always ap- 
 pealed to the rank and file. He sat in the 
 discussion with the bosses and did not say a 
 word, but in the mass-meeting he got up and 
 supported the demands of the employers ; but, 
 when he saw how the men were feeling, he 
 switched around. I made up my mind to 
 give him a good flaying, and in the next Coun- 
 cil meeting I showed him up, balled him out 
 for fair, showed his cowardice for a whole 
 half hour. That killed him completely in the 
 movement. He has never been heard of since. 
 In the Council he could not play to the gal- 
 leries, as he could in the mass-meeting. 
 
 *'The next negotiations we had with the em- 
 ployers led to a strike, which we lost. It was 
 in another branch of the trade, the bar fixture 
 workers. Their agreement with the bosses 
 expired July ist, 1905. Their committee de- 
 manded an increase of ten cents an hour all 
 around. It was in reality a stiff thing to ask, 
 [244]
 
 ^Argument With Boss. 
 
 as in other cities no such wages were given as 
 those we demanded, and the bosses maintained 
 that, if they gave these wages, they could not 
 compete. But the men were in a peculiar 
 frame of mind. Two years before that time 
 the bosses stood pat and said they could pay 
 no more wages, but the men, after being on 
 strike ten days, gained what they demanded. 
 So the men thought the present attitude of the 
 employers was also a bluff, and that they could 
 turn the same trick again. Some of the lead- 
 ers, of course, knew better, and that it was 
 foolish to strike at that time; and many of 
 these leaders did what they could to affect 
 the mood of the men, but to no avail. 
 
 "We had seven meetings with the employ- 
 ers and could not make them yield an inch, 
 so we called a mass-meeting of the men. It 
 was jammed, and disorderly, and there was a 
 large majority in favor of a strike. So the 
 committee returned to the bosses, and I said: 
 'You cannot blame the rank and file for being 
 sceptical when they are told by their employ- 
 ers that, for competitive reasons, wages can- 
 not be raised. This is, at all times, the con- 
 tention of the employer, and his manner of re- 
 ply to the Union, regardless of wages, hours 
 [245]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 or conditions. It is always the same old 
 story : you cannot compete. If you would say 
 this only at times when it was true, you would 
 find the men ready to believe you. But you 
 always say it, true or not. You are like the 
 boy that yelled wolf too often. 
 
 " 'The employer in Milwaukee,' I contin- 
 ued, 'pay twenty-five cents an hour, and yet, if 
 the Union asks for a cent an hour more, which 
 is five cents less than you pay in Chicago, his 
 objections are based on the same grounds as 
 yours: he cannot compete. If we point out 
 to him the fact that the Chicago employer 
 pays twenty-eight cents, and the men in Mil- 
 waukee ask for twenty-six cents only, he re- 
 plies that the Chicago employer has three dis- 
 tinct advantages, facilities for transporta- 
 tion, an enormous lumber market, and access 
 to labor and to the best mechanics. If, there- 
 fore, conditions are so much better in Chi- 
 cago, according to the employers in other 
 cities, it is reasonable to assume that wood- 
 workers would be immigrating here from 
 time to time, while as a matter of fact, and 
 according to the report of the labor statisti- 
 cian at Springfield, there are not a hundred 
 woodworkers in two years who came to Chi- 
 [246]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 cago from these other woodworking centres.' 
 Then I pointed out the advantages of work- 
 ing in small cities. The bosses bluffed that 
 they would move their business to places 
 where the men were more reasonable. I said 
 we would move there, too; that we also did 
 not like high rents and the nervous turmoil of 
 the city. 
 
 "I added that I would like evidence sup- 
 porting their contention that they could not 
 compete. The biggest employer on the com- 
 mittee arose majestically, and asked me to 
 come to his office, and he would show me doc- 
 umentary proof. I said, if I went alone, it 
 would look rather suspicious. But, previous 
 to the mass-meeting, I went to his office; he 
 gave me a cigar, and then showed me his 
 books and price lists, and claimed he had re- 
 duced his prices twenty per cent. I discov- 
 ered from the books that eighteen per cent 
 of the twenty per cent reduction was in plate 
 glass and mirrors, and I pointed out to him 
 that we had nothing to do with the manufac- 
 ture of glass: we were woodworkers. He 
 gave me an economic business talk, which 
 meant everything or nothing, and then said: 
 'Now, Anton, there is no use talking. If the 
 [247]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 boys insist on this advance, there is going to 
 be a strike.' 
 
 "Then, in a low tone, he added: 'I be- 
 lieve that if this matter was properly ex- 
 plained to the boys, they would not want to 
 strike. I'd give a thousand dollars if I could 
 address that mass-meeting and state the case 
 from our point of view; or, if some one else 
 would do it for me.' He had previously em- 
 phasized my influence with the men. I took 
 him up, to see how far he would go. 'Per- 
 sonally,' I said, 'I am in favor of giving you 
 the floor to explain your side, provided, of 
 course, that one of our men answer by show- 
 ing our side. Who would that man be?' he 
 asked. *I think I shall be the man,' I replied. 
 'My God, Anton,' he exclaimed, 'you are not 
 going to take the floor and encourage the men 
 in these demands?' 'I can't be expected to do 
 anything else,' I said. 'I am a woodworker, 
 and I represent the men. Besides, I don't 
 think a strike will be detrimental in the long 
 run. The rank and file can learn only 
 through experience, and perhaps this experi- 
 ence is necessary at this time.' He then said 
 that he could not speak before the mass-meet- 
 ing, as he had no authority from the other 
 [248]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 employers. What he meant by all this I shall 
 not explain. It would be guessing, though 
 it might be guessing pretty shrewdly. 
 
 "At the mass-meeting the men voted to 
 strike. Everything possible was done to pre- 
 vent it, but when the rank and file become 
 passionate there is no use trying to argue with 
 them, as long as the organization is demo- 
 cratic and there is such a thing as the refer-, 
 endum. The mass often acts foolishly, and 
 this whole matter of organization is at bot- 
 tom only a question of education. It is edu- 
 cating the working people, and the fact that 
 they make mistakes is no argument against it. 
 It is an argument for it, for it shows how 
 much in need they are of experience. 
 
 "The machinery got to work and put forth 
 every effort to prevent the actual calling out 
 of the men. Tom Kidd used his big influ- 
 ence, and the State Board of Arbitration did 
 what it could. In this board I had very lit- 
 tle confidence. I was President of the Coun- 
 cil, and the Board of Arbitration invited me 
 and others to a swell dinner at $io a head. 
 This made me suspicious. I felt it was a re- 
 flection against my manhood. They tried to 
 get me to use my influence against the calling 
 C 249 ]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 of the strike. I stood pat and would not do 
 it. There was no guarantee that the bosses 
 would submit to arbitration. So this matter 
 fell through. Then a shop meeting in every 
 factory involved was called, the object being 
 to get an expression from every man, an ab- 
 solute referendum. The total vote was 1,858 
 out of a possible 2,000. Sixteen hundred men 
 voted in favor of striking, so there was noth- 
 ing else to do. The strike was called July 
 ist, 1905, and every man of the 2,000 went 
 out. The men were so enthusiastic that they 
 voted no strike benefits should be paid for the 
 first two weeks. 
 
 "After the strike had been on for a couple 
 of weeks, the State Board of Arbitration made 
 an effort to get the employers' committee and 
 our committee to confer in reference to a set- 
 tlement. Both committees were willing to 
 meet, but did not want to admit it. So the 
 State Board arranged a meeting with diplo- 
 macy. It did not appear that either side 
 wanted it. The lawyers of the employers 
 were at the conference, the special reason for 
 the lawyers is that they never commit the em- 
 ployers to anything, and the employers are so 
 busy that they cannot meet men who have 
 [250]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 more than the average information in the eco- 
 nomic field, for labor is generally right, so 
 they employ the lawyers, who can harp on 
 technicalities. 
 
 "I was spokesman of the committee. There 
 were six employers present, one of whom wore 
 a star, indicating that he had been sworn in 
 as a deputy sheriff. He was the meanest of 
 the bosses. There were not enough chairs, 
 and I sat down in the only rocking chair, feel- 
 ing that I was able to make myself at home 
 in a foreign land. The employers' lawyer 
 began to speak, but I interrupted him, and 
 said I wanted to speak first in order to put our 
 committee in a light that would not be mis- 
 understood. 
 
 " While we have no particular objection,' 
 I said, 'to meeting with this deputy sheriflP 
 (pointing to the employer with the star), yet 
 we want it distinctly understood that we are 
 no more criminal than the men we are meet- 
 ing.' 
 
 "The employers notified us that unless their 
 terms were met by the men, they would not 
 admit any longer the principle of the closed 
 shop, and would not recognize the Union, and 
 offered to give us a day's grace to think it 
 [251]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 over, in the interests of peace, as they put it. 
 I sarcastically thanked them for this great 
 concession of a day, and called their attention 
 to the fact that the Union existed, not because 
 they wanted it, and that it would continue to 
 exist, whether they wanted it or not. 'Ninety- 
 nine men out of a hundred,' I said, 'prefer to 
 trust to the strength of the organization rather 
 than to the generosity of the employer, and, 
 as long as they feel that way, there will be a 
 Union, whether you recognize it or not.' 
 
 "The conference came to nothing, and the 
 strike went on. It was clear to the leaders 
 that the strike would be lost; but the temper 
 of the men was such that it could not be 
 brought to an immediate end. The men's 
 treasury was being depleted, and the employ- 
 ers, knowing this, helped the process of bank- 
 ruptcy by sending the riff-raff of the teams- 
 ters' strike to our men to attempt to obtain 
 money to get home with, claiming they had 
 been imported, not knowing there was a strike 
 on, by the employers. But we got on to that 
 game. Once, eighteen men came to us and 
 said they had been imported from Buffalo to 
 come to Chicago, and when they arrived here 
 they found they were to be used to break the 
 [252]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 strike. They wanted $150 from us with 
 which to return to Bufifalo. We questioned 
 them closely; asked them how it happened, if 
 they were in sympathy with Unionism, as they 
 claimed, that they did not get suspicious 
 when they saw advertisements for so many 
 men. 
 
 We examined them as to their mechanical 
 qualifications and soon saw there was not a 
 mechanic in the whole eighteen. While we 
 were strongly inclined to give them the 'edu- 
 cational test' (a good beating), yet, realizing 
 that their lack of skill made them compara- 
 tively harmless, and that only economic dep- 
 rivation would have made them capable of 
 such an undermining hold-up game, we in- 
 formed them with a measure of sarcasm that 
 if they would go to work for these employers 
 they would materially help our cause by 
 showing how difficult it was to get mechanics, 
 even from Buffalo. While we appreciated, 
 we said, that they were hard up, and would 
 like to help them, yet we had men of our own 
 on the streets, and in this case we felt charity 
 began at home. Then we let them go, fol- 
 lowed, however, by one of our detectives. 
 He traced them to the headquarters of the 
 [253]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 employers, and left a letter for the bosses, 
 previously prepared by us. 
 
 "In this letter we said: We thank you 
 for your great consideration in sending us 
 these men. While we woodworkers regret 
 that you are forced to search the slums of for- 
 eign cities, yet we realize that mechanical 
 woodworkers are scarce; and to show our 
 good will, and thus to spare you any unneces- 
 sary expense, we write this letter to indicate 
 to you the folly of spending more money in 
 that way. Respectfully submitted, 
 
 " 'Mechanics.' 
 
 "After that the employers sent us no more 
 men, and we were left to paddle our own 
 canoe, a task which grew more and more dif- 
 ficult. During the strike there was very lit- 
 tle complaint because of hunger. There were 
 two or three cases where wives came to our 
 headquarters and complained because their 
 husbands did not bring their strike benefits 
 home. In these cases the executive board de- 
 cided to give the benefit directly to the wives. 
 The men, as a rule, got along pretty well. 
 The business agents provided places where 
 the men could sit, play cards, and drink beer 
 [254]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 from the can without giving their pennies to 
 the saloon-keepers, who would get their pat- 
 ronage when they went to work again. In 
 that way, much discontent was overcome. It 
 required nearly $4,000 to make one strike pay- 
 ment to the men in our shop. The money 
 was spread on tables, open to view, and yet 
 never a penny was lost or stolen. Enthusiasm 
 and fellow-feeling generally rules during a 
 strike, even if the men have to look for work 
 elsewhere. The feeling is so intense that it 
 is now almost impossible for a leader to sell 
 out after the strike is on. It is suicidal for 
 the leaders to show the least sign of weakness. 
 There is certainly 'graft' at times, but it is ex- 
 aggerated by the newspapers, which are gen- 
 erally controlled by the employers. The 
 leader knows that to advise men to give up 
 while the battle is on is absolutely disastrous 
 to his prestige. I know of a case where the 
 board of business agents, four in number, had 
 decided to go before a mass-meeting of the 
 strikers, who had been out on strike ten days, 
 and recommend them to accept a compromise 
 offered by the employers. In this case I felt 
 the business agents were justified, both from 
 the dollar standpoint and from the standpoint
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 of maintaining the integrity of the Union. 
 The men had demanded an increase of three 
 cents an hour in their wages, and after the 
 strike had continued ten days, the employers 
 ofifered two cents increase, and the business 
 agents advised the men to accept this proposal. 
 The men rejected the suggestion of the busi- 
 ness agents, and three hours after voting it 
 down the employers completely capitulated 
 and signed the agreement. The rank and file 
 are extremely suspicious, not only of the em- 
 ployers, but also of their own leaders, no mat- 
 ter how honest they may be or how long they 
 have worked in the interest of labor. 
 
 "The strike went on until one of the busi- 
 ness agents reported in the Council that the 
 superintendent of the big plant of Brunswick- 
 Balke had expressed himself as in favor of 
 the closed shop. The superintendent thought 
 it necessary for the employers to win this 
 fight, but he dreaded the idea that perhaps 
 the result would be the open shop ; he did not 
 relish the prospect of having in his shop 750 
 employees whom he would have to discipline 
 through his own efiforts, without the assist- 
 ance of the Union. In the closed shop it is 
 practicable for the Union to check the erratic 
 [256]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 discontent and the unjust discrimination 
 against one another, among the men, from the 
 purely stupid, selfish point of view. If one 
 employee is unjust to another, redress can be 
 obtained from the organization through the 
 shop steward without recourse to the super- 
 intendent. The employer or his representa- 
 tive is thus relieved of the burden of adjust- 
 ing differences between one employee and an- 
 other. A man will stand a lot of abuse from 
 another man before he will appeal to the fore- 
 man. That is more or less disgraceful, but 
 where the Union rule? are in vogue, there is a 
 shop steward, an official of the Union, whose 
 specific business it is to look after such mat- 
 ters, and a complaint to him is considered 
 proper a complaint against either another 
 workman or against the employer. Experi- 
 ence has shown that, especially where the shop 
 is a large one, the Union is far superior to the 
 non-union shop in harmony and order. 
 
 "The superintendent of the Brunswick- 
 Balke concern therefore hinted that if a com- 
 mittee with full power was selected to make 
 some proposition more favorable than the 
 original one, a settlement might be arrived 
 at. This was done; a committee of thirty- 
 [257]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 six, selected from the various shops on strike, 
 was appointed, the most ridiculous and im- 
 politic thing, in my judgment, that they could 
 have done. The committee was altogether 
 too large. It was like the weakest element of 
 an army going to the strongest element of the 
 enemy and proposing peace. A strong ele- 
 ment in a labor union is the man highly 
 skilled in his trade, who has a reasonable 
 measure of information and a fair power of 
 expression. Another strong element is the 
 man who is selected as walking delegate. 
 His strength lies in not being under obliga- 
 tions to his employer. He is paid by the 
 Union. 
 
 "But both these elements were absent from 
 this committee of thirty-six, which had full 
 power to act. If the rank and file had any 
 tact at all, they either would have rejected en- 
 tirely the proposition to delegate the full 
 power to a committee, or else they would have 
 preferred a committee of the strongest char- 
 acter. The only reason for selecting the com- 
 mittee of thirty-six was the suspiciousness al- 
 ways lurking in the rank and file. They pre- 
 ferred the honest fool or simple coward to a 
 strong man whom they suspected, without 
 [258]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 realizing that men, no matter how dishonest, 
 cannot do worse than a committee of fools. 
 
 "It was in reality the fault of the business 
 agents. They were too weak to point out 
 these facts fearlessly to the rank and file, for 
 fear it would not be taken in good grace. It 
 is difficult for the leader to tell the crowd the 
 truth. But it is certainly true that the auto- 
 cratic labor leader is more likely to get re- 
 sults than the democratic leader. When the 
 power is centralized, as it is, comparatively 
 speaking, in the Miners* and Carpenters' 
 Unions, the employers can be approached 
 more effectively. The delegate is then re- 
 sponsible to a body of men (the Council), 
 who are much superior to the rank and file 
 in observation and the power of initiative. 
 To an office of this kind efficiency rather than 
 good-fellowship generally elects. 
 
 "This democratic committee of thirty-six 
 met the bosses' committee and agreed, without 
 a protest, to everything proposed to them. 
 The chairman of this grand committee put his 
 tail between his legs like a whipped cur and 
 said nothing. The strike was called off and 
 the men completely defeated. If, however, 
 this last meeting had been well managed we 
 [259]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 would probably have secured some conces- 
 sions. As it was, however, we did succeed in 
 maintaining the closed shop and the organiza- 
 tion intact; although, as a general rule, when 
 a strike is lost, the Union is likely to be dis- 
 integrated. Funds and hope are gone, and it 
 needs both, and energy in addition, to build 
 the organization up again. 
 
 "One great trouble in the calling and man- 
 aging of strikes is this infernal preaching of 
 the necessity of honesty. It is preached by 
 all the moralists, by all the theorists, and by 
 all the politicians, but not by the real labor 
 leaders not because they don't believe in 
 honesty, but because of the terrible disadvan- 
 tage it places the workman in. The rank and 
 file generally recognizes inability as the best 
 evidence of honesty. If you are aggressive 
 and a good speaker, they are suspicious. 
 They are taught that honesty is the most im- 
 portant thing but it is not the most important 
 thing. They have been hoodwinked so often 
 by everybody that they distrust intelligence. 
 And yet the labor movement is far more in 
 need of intelligence than it is of honesty. Of 
 honesty we have enough and to burn. An 
 honest man, if he is not strong, can get noth- 
 [260]
 
 Argument With Boss. 
 
 ing from the employers, while a dishonest man 
 can do no worse ; he cannot reduce your wages. 
 So why not be gamblers and take the men with 
 qualifications regardless of whether primarily 
 honest or not?" 
 
 Anton himself is as honest as the day. He 
 feels the excitement of honesty, of telling the 
 truth in place and out. But his feeling of the 
 relative unimportance of honesty is natural 
 enough, and is shared by many of the more 
 active labor leaders. They feel that the hon- 
 esty of the present day, as embodied in present 
 law and custom, puts their class at a disadvan- 
 tage. They see that a man may be called hon- 
 est and yet be humanly unkind and funda- 
 mentally unfair. And the "crooked" deeds 
 of men like Parks they cannot deeply con- 
 demn, for he was, they think, sincerely inter- 
 ested in, and helpful to, the wx)rking class. 
 His sins were sins against the morality formed 
 to strengthen the capitalistic class in what 
 they unfairly possess so they think. Feeling 
 sceptically about all law, they tend to look, 
 when it comes to a moral judgment, at the en- 
 tire upshot of a man's actions and life. If on 
 the whole he is useful to the big mass of his 
 fellow men, he is on the whole a good man. 
 and "property" sins are very venial sins in- 
 deed. 
 
 [261]
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ^An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 One night Anton and I were working in 
 my room. He was telling me about some of 
 his experiences, over our beer and cigarettes, 
 when he suddenly pushed back his chair and 
 said, as he often did say it was lamentably 
 frequent with him in our work together: 
 
 "I don't feel like work to-night, Hapgood. 
 I don't like to be tied down to anything. It's 
 bad enough to have to work all day in the shop 
 at routine work, but then to tie myself down 
 to you three times a week at night seems like 
 voluntary slavery. I hate to think there is 
 anything I have to do. It is a wonder to me 
 I have held my job so long. Even yet, when 
 the springtime comes, I hear the whistles blow 
 and want to change scenes." 
 
 I had learned to know his mood, and to 
 
 know that if I insisted on anything his back 
 
 went up against it immediately. He hates to 
 
 be urged, to be invited, even. When not at 
 
 [262]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 work he likes to live altogether the life of the 
 temperament. So when he suggested on that 
 night to go out and call on Terry and Marie, 
 I said, very cheerfully, "All right." More- 
 over, I had not met Terry and Marie, or as 
 yet any of the more interesting among the 
 "radicals." So I was particularly cheerful in 
 my assent. 
 
 He led me to a "slummy" place on the 
 West Side. We groped our way up a dark 
 staircase and into a small, bare apartment, the 
 only furniture of which was three beds, usu- 
 ally occupied, as I afterwards found, by four 
 or five persons; a table and a few chairs. 
 Everything indicated extreme poverty, but the 
 floor was clean and there was a kind of awk- 
 ward attempt at neatness shown in the general 
 appearance of the place. 
 
 On the table in the front room there were 
 three or four books. On this first visit I no- 
 ticed a collection of Bernard Shaw's plays, a 
 volume of Ibsen and a copy of Spencer's 
 "First Principles." A dark-haired, anaemic- 
 looking, but striking and noble-faced girl was 
 reading "Mrs. Warren's Profession" as we en- 
 tered. An equally anaemic, but intelligent- 
 appearing man was lying on the bed, smok- 
 [263]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ing a cigarette. They received us with sim- 
 plicity, offered us cigarettes, and we engaged 
 in talk about literature, and society, and mor- 
 ality. In the course of the evening others 
 came in, of the same kind, and I found this 
 place was a kind of salon, where people of a 
 certain sort met and discussed ideas. 
 
 They all called themselves anarchists, phil- 
 osophical anarchists, as distinguished from 
 the violent, bomb-throwing kind. They were 
 a curious, gentle lot, in manner and appear- 
 ance. Anton and I seemed like barbarians in 
 comparison. They believed to a large extent 
 in "non-resistance," and would not hurt a flea. 
 They were obviously lacking in energy, and 
 altogether seemed like an extremely harmless 
 eddy in the current of social life. They 
 talked about the "conservative" people with 
 mild contempt, but were not inclined, appar- 
 ently, to carry on propaganda with any force. 
 They did not seem to have the energy for it. 
 They seemed to desire mainly to be allowed to 
 live as they please, with as little social re- 
 straint as possible. 
 
 "I like to live in the slums," said Terry, the 
 man on the bed, "for there is more freedom 
 there than anywhere else. Your neighbors 
 [264]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 are neither proper nor inquisitive, and com- 
 paratively speaking, you can do as you like." 
 
 Terry had been a skilled mechanic, a tan- 
 ner, and had worked hard at an earlier period. 
 Indeed, all these people belong to the labor- 
 ing class. They come in contact with eco- 
 nomic hardship or injustice and then they go 
 to the extreme of theory and become anarch- 
 ists. Terry had worked for many years so- 
 berly and industriously. He is a man of very 
 unusual intelligence. One day he became 
 aware, he said, that he was being exploited, 
 and he quit; and he has never worked at his 
 trade since. That was about twelve years ago. 
 Before quitting work he had never read, but 
 then he began to read and think. He began 
 with Tolstoi, and Kropotkin, and Tucker, 
 and Spencer, and became familiar with the 
 local turn put to these ideas by Clarence Dar- 
 row. He became also a student of poetry and 
 literature, and this instinct and love for the 
 beautiful in expression limits to a certain ex- 
 tent his anarchism. 
 
 "There is no such thing," he said, "as the 
 
 purely economic man. If there were, I 
 
 would be an absolute anarchist. But man 
 
 lives not only on food, but on sentiment and 
 
 [265]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 on ideas and on beauty. So whatever we may 
 say against government, we must accept a part 
 of the traditions of history and of literature." 
 
 He has decided, however, that it is wrong 
 to work for society, so he lives in a garret on 
 crusts, beer and high thoughts. He lives with 
 the dark-haired, interestingly temperamental 
 and passionate girl, whose name is Marie. 
 She is many years younger than Terry, and 
 her life has been typical of the woman an- 
 archist. 
 
 She began to work in the factories when she 
 was ten years old first in a lead factory 
 where the lie burnt her fingers to the marrow. 
 She worked ten hours a day for two dol- 
 lars a week money badly needed by her 
 mother, who was married to a drunken me- 
 chanic, always out of a job. She worked in 
 other factories, always hard and always at 
 low wages. It hurt her health, and when she 
 was sixteen she became rebellious, was ready 
 for almost anything. She threw herself into 
 the arms of a lover, a young fellow of her own 
 age, and thought she was happy, although she 
 kept up her hard labor. 
 
 A year afterwards she met Terry, who had 
 already been an anarchist and garret philoso- 
 [266]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 pher for many years. He took her to his 
 salon and read Swinburne to her. 
 
 "It was the happiest moment of my life," 
 she said. "I saw that life had some beauty 
 in it, and I loved Terry at once. I left the 
 young fellow, who meant nothing to me, and 
 have been living with Terry ever since. You 
 may think it strange, as I am only twenty- 
 three now, and that was five years ago, and 
 Terry is forty-six. I like young men, too, 
 but Terry has meant life to me." 
 
 She quit the factory, and the two have lived 
 in the garrets of Chicago's slums ever since, 
 reading, smoking, thinking. But how? may 
 be a natural question. ^ 
 
 There was another woman present at this 
 gathering when I first met the anarchists of 
 Chicago, whose life and character explained 
 how Terry and Marie can live as they do. 
 Katie is her name, and she loves "Culture," 
 though she can satirize it, and has none of it 
 herself. It is through her love of "Culture" 
 that Marie and Terry can live as they do. 
 
 She is a cook, very witty and lively, but en- 
 tirely ignorant of literature. She thinks 
 Terry and Marie are charming, as they 
 really are and great in every way. Katie is 
 [267]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 a sport, though an uneducated one, and so she 
 "keeps" Terry and Marie. That is to say, she 
 supports them out of the $9 a week she makes 
 as cook in a Chicago restaurant. She works 
 all day, while they read, smoke, drink and 
 talk; then she comes home, at night, with 
 something to eat, looking forward to a few 
 hours of pleasure, with her two cultivated 
 ones. She is a devoted, willing slave, while 
 they are the aristocrats of the slums aris- 
 tocrats who express the philosophy of the 
 rebellious proletariat. That philosophy is 
 anarchism; as it is rebellion against the in- 
 stitutions, not against the ideals, of mankind, 
 they do not like this dependence, this parasit- 
 ism on another human being. But it is easy 
 to accept devotion. 
 
 "I do not like to be a parasite," said Terry, 
 "but I don't see what's to be done about it. 
 I would work if I saw any work worth do- 
 ing; and if I could work for something except 
 organized society. After all, I live on one 
 person who supports me voluntarily, while 
 your capitalist lives on thousands who are 
 forced to work for him." 
 
 He and Marie recognize the inconsistency 
 of their attitude. They do not claim to be 
 [268]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 virtuous, but they cannot see but what all 
 society is organized on at least an equally un- 
 just and parasitic basis. 
 
 On the night of my first meeting with Terry 
 and Marie, he and I talked mainly about 
 poetry and literature and abstract concep- 
 tions of justice and I found him, then, one 
 of the subtlest, most self-consciously psycho- 
 logical spirits I have ever known full of per- 
 versity, but wonderfully logical about it all 
 this man who had never had a school edu- 
 cation, but who had thought independently, 
 though often in my opinion wrongfully, about 
 life. He had had not only his experience as 
 a mechanic, his experience as a rebel, but 
 also a career of unusual deprivation and 
 toughness, and the result was not what might 
 have been expected. Instead of finding a 
 rough, uncouth and violent personality as a 
 result of all this, I found myself in contact 
 with a man of excellent manners, of a subtle 
 and experienced mind, of a marked and rela- 
 tively consistent individuality. 
 
 As I saw more of him and I became, 
 
 through some weeks, a regular visitor at his 
 
 salon my impression was confirmed. There, 
 
 over the beer and cigarettes, I sat often with 
 
 [269]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 him and Marie till long past midnight, fasci- 
 nated by his experience, his character and his 
 expressiveness; and by the girl's emotional 
 nature and untrained capacity for expressing 
 an idea in an artistic way. 
 
 Maggie and Anton feel the charm of these 
 two beings, although to their active natures 
 the far niente attitude is not agreeable. Said 
 Maggie: "Terry is a fine man, a beautiful 
 character. He talks to everybody so sweetly. 
 He listens to what a child will say, and is very 
 good. There is only one thing I have against 
 him. He won't work. He gets cast-down 
 and drinks; but he never drinks much except 
 when he works. He tried being a drummer 
 for a while, but was a failure because he could 
 not sell things to people when they didn't need 
 them. He don't like to come to our house be- 
 cause I work so hard it reminds him he doesn't 
 work, and he is sensitive about it. Marie 
 doesn't want Terry to work, for then his 
 tongue is violent. Work does not agree with 
 him." 
 
 Marie says the same thing; she does not 
 want Terry to work, although she is often 
 hungry and has often to go without her cigar- 
 ettes. "He is in a bad mood when he works," 
 [270]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 she said. Once, however, late at night, when 
 Marie's tobacco was all gone, and there was 
 no way of getting more, she burst out against 
 Terry, and said he couldn't even keep her sup- 
 plied in cigarettes ! He seemed cast-down by 
 this and sad, and she repented and explained 
 to me how much Terry really did exert him- 
 self. 
 
 "It is not an easy thing," she said, "to get 
 along without working. Terry has to be very 
 clever to do it. It takes skill, more skill than 
 to work." 
 
 She certainly loves this man who has meant 
 freedom, thought, poetry, refinement to her. 
 She has taken, of course, his ideas, but into 
 them she has put her own individuality and 
 given them a characteristic turn. He has 
 taught her many things one thing, to be a 
 "free-lover." Though she loves Terry, she 
 likes other men, and Terry encourages her 
 to be what he calls absolutely "free." She 
 carries out his ideas with completeness; and 
 does not find it a hardship. But she is very 
 jealous of Terry, if he shows any inclination 
 for another woman's society. 
 
 "Yes, it is inconsistent," she admitted, "but 
 our logic does not count when our fundamen- 
 [271]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 tal feelings are aroused. Terry does not mind 
 what I do that is his affair. It is very fine 
 in him, but I don't think it is very wise. Per- 
 haps I would be better if he were jealous. 
 But I mind what he does, I can tell you. 
 Theories don't count in these things. We 
 'radicals,' in spite of all our theories, are as 
 jealous and human as anybody, perhaps a lit- 
 tle more so." 
 
 Anton likes Terry and Marie, and he finds 
 it attractive to be with them. But he is aware 
 of their limitations. Going back with him, 
 after this visit to the salon in the garret, he 
 said: ^ 
 
 "I cannot see how Terry can live as he does. 
 It is true, working for a living is not what 
 it is cracked up to be. It is foolish to work 
 unless one has to or unless one has a higher 
 aim ; as the Socialist I met in the box-car years 
 ago used to say: nothing is necessary except 
 the luxuries. And Terry and Marie get the 
 luxuries of thought. They are aristocrats, 
 but they pay too much for it. Terry hates 
 posing. He is not an egotist and he talks 
 about the subject. But I can't afford to be 
 with these people too often that is, the better 
 ones among them. It would take away from 
 [272]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 my activity in the trade-union movement. 
 The anarchists are so intellectual, they say, 
 what's the use? And that is discouraging to 
 a man who wants to accomplish things. The 
 anarchists are all right at least Terry is 
 when it comes to thinking, but they are prac- 
 tically very unreasonable. They are in this 
 respect like the Socialists. One of them said 
 to me not long ago : 'You are a trade-union- 
 ist every day in the year except election day 
 and then you are a scab, for you don't vote 
 with the Socialists.' The trouble with these 
 people is that they think there is no way of 
 doing things but their own. They are always 
 roasting me because I am a trades-unionist. 
 The Socialists shout that trades-unionists are 
 corrupt, and the anarchists say everybody but 
 themselves are corrupt. It's fierce. And 
 yet I must see a good deal of these people. 
 They have free thoughts and some of them 
 think more than the average workingman. 
 
 "Many of them feel bitter just because they 
 are superior mentally. Very few of the un- 
 derpaid, day laborers feel bitter about things. 
 The kickers you will find among the intelli- 
 gent mechanics. The laborers hope to go to 
 heaven.* Their condition of poverty is so 
 [273]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 abominable that they are busy keeping soul 
 and body together and don't think about eco- 
 nomic conditions. They accept God, and 
 don't think." 
 
 Anton and I had left the car, and were 
 walking past a church, near his home. He 
 pointed to the building, and said, with bitter- 
 ness : "Damn that. It was that that kept me 
 back. It was that that said to me it was re- 
 ligious to be poor, that work is a blessing, and 
 contentment is good and all that tommyrot. 
 If we working men don't look after ourselves, 
 nobody will, not even God. We must organ- 
 ize, we must fight, to get what men and women 
 ought to have, to make life any good. And 
 we are roasted for this, not only by the min- 
 isters but by the anarchists who don't believe 
 in doing anything except being good, except 
 perhaps sometimes throwing a bomb, to draw 
 attention to how good they are. < 
 
 "Of course, it is not a question of starving," 
 he went on. "Not for most of us. But it 
 is almost better to starve than not to have a 
 great deal more than what is absolutely neces- 
 sary. A laborer with a large family gener- 
 ally quarrels with his wife. During the en- 
 tire day his mind is centred on the dinner 
 [274]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 hour. No time to think. At least, there is 
 not affection in these homes, as a rule. They 
 have no time to be interested in each other. 
 The man, if a drinker, spends more than he 
 ought to, and that creates discord. Most of 
 the children stand by their mother; but if she 
 puts up with a man who is extremely careless, 
 that has a tendency to make the children think 
 he is not as bad as he really is ; and that gives 
 them wrong ideas. So it is bad anyway. 
 Conflicting ideas assassinate the love of man, 
 wife and children. 
 
 "It is easy to be an anarchist, if one thinks. 
 But if a man wants to act, he can't be a con- 
 sistent anarchist. The whole thing can be 
 traced back to economics, to this matter of 
 dollars and cents. The more a man sees the 
 injustice of wealth, the harder it is to work. 
 Terry kicked so hard that he quit work, and 
 is now a leisure-class person. He is now a 
 capitalist without capital. He thinks eco- 
 nomics less important than literature, because 
 he possesses literature and doesn't possess 
 money. But you can't get the average man 
 interested in literature. 
 
 "You can improve the average man, how- 
 ever, 'by giving him more money. He then 
 [ 275 ]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 will become capable of better things. When 
 I used to get only $i6 or $17 a week and had 
 to support a family, I found life was not 
 what it is cracked up to be. I could not de- 
 velop my family and social instincts; couldn't 
 ever buy a newspaper. Such a life makes a 
 man stupidly selfish. But these last few 
 years, when I have made a few dollars more, 
 I have developed my social instinct, a desire 
 to read and think. It makes all the differ- 
 ence, I can tell you, a few dollars a week." 
 
 A few nights after that, Anton, Maggie and 
 I went to an anarchists' "social"; where I 
 met the whole "bunch" of the more extreme 
 of the Chicago radicals. I found that they 
 all were working people, or had been with 
 the exception of the anarchist poet, an Amer- 
 ican of bourgeois family who had become 
 what Anton calls the "King of the Anar- 
 chists." 
 
 The social side at this meeting was indeed 
 strong. I had never been to a gathering of 
 people who seemed so much at home together. 
 It was first names everywhere, kisses and em- 
 braces. The beer flowed freely, speeches 
 were made about liberty and love, everybody 
 kissed everybody else's girl, and all were 
 [276]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 happy. The ordinary conventions of con- 
 servative society were removed. Extreme 
 naturalness was the note, and yet it all seemed 
 very harmless. They were working people 
 who had decided to have a very good time in 
 their own way; if they could not transcend 
 the social conventions, they could at least cut 
 under them. In spite of all this freedom, 
 however, the women were gentle and intelli- 
 gent; there was not a suggestion of tough- 
 ness about the occasion. They were all peo- 
 ple with ideas; so much is an idea loved in 
 that society that a man rich in these cerebral 
 concomitants finds himself very popular with 
 the women it is a surer way to succeed 
 with them than unlimited ducats and gaiety. 
 The men and women genuinely love ideas, 
 temperament and poetry. There is no fake 
 about it, as is often the case in conservative 
 society, if indeed there is any desire for it at 
 all there. 
 
 Terry and Marie were present, dressed in 
 their best, which was very simple. Marie 
 was looking for H , who had not yet ap- 
 peared. "I wish he would come," she said, 
 enthusiastically. "Why, you know, he is a 
 man who was imprisoned for a long time in 
 [277]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 Austria because of his political ideas. He 
 also escaped from an insane asylum. He is 
 a genius, full of character. I love him 
 dearly. I would rather live w^ith him in jail 
 than with an ordinary man in luxury." Her 
 deep, large dark eyes shone intensely. In her 
 look was the aesthetic side of the fanaticism 
 which brings joy to the revolutionist. 
 
 Soon after, H appeared. He kissed 
 
 warmly all his friends, including Marie, who 
 introduced him to me. But at the moment 
 he saw a man dancing with a dark Jewish girl, 
 who worked in the factory and was in love 
 with the Poet. v 
 
 "Excuse me," said H , excitedly, "I see 
 a damn fool over there. I must go and kiss 
 
 him." A little later I asked H what he 
 
 meant by admiring a man whom he thought 
 a fool. "All good men are fools in this 
 world," he said. "They pass for fools with 
 conservative people. I love only those peo- 
 ple who do the unwise thing. If a man suc- 
 ceeds, he is not a fool, and is not for me. I 
 never knew a man with brains and sympathy 
 combined who was not a fool. That man is 
 one of them, and that is why I love him." 
 
 H is a journalist woking now on a Ger- 
 [278]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 man anarchist paper in Chicago. He has 
 been a feuilletonist in Vienna and other Ger- 
 man cities and his talk reminds one in tone of 
 Jugend and Simplicissimus. He and Terry 
 and I foregathered at the improvised bar, and 
 he spoke of his imprisonment: "My ten 
 years' imprisonment did me great good," he 
 said. "I had a chance to be alone and to 
 think things out. No one has a right to call 
 his soul his own until he has been imprisoned. 
 'You treat political prisoners (anarchists) 
 worse in America than they are treated any- 
 where else in the world. You treat them like 
 common felons. In England, they are treated 
 much better. You get the worst things from 
 England, and leave the best. The English 
 are really tolerant. Their police don't run 
 into jail for disorderly conduct men who are 
 making speeches, anarchistic or otherwise, or 
 publishing papers about sex or government. 
 But here they do. In England, they have no 
 trouble with the anarchists, for they let them 
 talk and write as much as they want. The 
 English are away ahead of the Americans in 
 real toleration and sense of justice. Look at 
 the execution of the anarchists in Chicago. 
 That could not have happened in England. 
 [279]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to be free any- 
 where. I cannot be free in what I write even 
 in our anarchist newspaper. I must be a 
 hypocrite even there. I must write on the 
 level of the small bourgeois intelligence. It 
 is a fierce world." 
 
 The three of us talked about Anton. I 
 praised him warmly and said: "He has not 
 read much, and knows nothing about litera- 
 ture, etc., but he is a real personality, one who 
 is able to get into life and when in, to think 
 about it with point." H would have em- 
 braced me, so enthusiastically did he agree 
 with this remark. "The real people," he 
 said, "are among the active workers. There 
 is no doubt about that. There would be 
 nothing in socialism or anarchism if it were 
 not for the workers. There wouldn't be any- 
 thing, anywhere, if it were not for the work- 
 ers. Sometimes all this strength, sweetness 
 and vigor of the class is shown in one man 
 who can talk. Such a man is Anton." 
 
 Then he spoke, rather slightingly, of the 
 Anarchist Poet, who was present at the social, 
 very attentive to all the women. This poet, 
 
 B , is sometimes called "King." He is 
 
 not of the working class, but goes among the 
 [280]
 
 An Anarchist Salon, 
 
 "radical" people of that class. He likes to 
 eat and drink, perhaps excessively, and in 
 other things of the sense is distinguished. 
 He talks poetry and dresses and looks aes- 
 thetic. The women all like him, because they 
 think he represents beauty and idealism. A 
 factory girl is in love with him and follows 
 him around like a dog to all the meetings. 
 He prides himself on his power of capturing 
 women. The real working people look up to 
 him, because he seems to have what they have 
 not education and a grasp at what they feel 
 
 are the higher things. But H ^ was right 
 
 when he said this poet was inferior to his ad- 
 mirers. "They like him," he said, "because 
 they are good people, with high ideals, not 
 because he is." 
 
 There is no love lost, however, between 
 Anton and the poet, B . For Anton, al- 
 though he is an idealist, yet is a shrewd per- 
 son, made keen in the detection of fakes from 
 his experience in life. He sees through B.'s 
 superficiality as a man, although he is imposed 
 upon by his "genius," and his poetry. He 
 quotes often with approval Katie's way of re- 
 ceiving him, when he comes to see Terry and 
 Marie. Katie is the shrewd cook, and she 
 [281]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 calls B , "the potato poet" and always has 
 
 potato soup for him. She sees, too, that 
 B is a mere sensualist, not really inter- 
 ested in the movement, interested only in get- 
 ting as much as he can from the radical 
 women, whose ideas render them susceptible 
 to poets, and from the "comrades" among the 
 men, and give them only his genius and his 
 egotism in return. This seems to Anton and 
 Katie like a big graft; they are perhaps the 
 two hardest workers in the "radical bunch" 
 and in some ways have the keenest vision; 
 though one is a cook and the other a wood- 
 worker; but instead of "through," read "for." 
 
 "B told me," said Anton, "that his book 
 
 of poetry would have the union label on it. 
 He said it at least twelve times. If he knew 
 what I think of him he wouldn't say it. He 
 claims to love mankind, but he is an awful 
 sponger on the radicals, who treat him as a 
 comrade. He works them in return, for they 
 all think him great. He will go round to 
 the houses of the working people, eat and 
 sleep with them, and even ask for things that 
 are not in the house. He takes everything, 
 and gives nothing. Once he gave a blow-out, 
 said it was going to be something great. 
 [282]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 When we got there we found sandwiches and 
 beer, not enough of that, five cents worth. 
 He had the gall to hold the beer up to the 
 light, to show us how good it was I He thinks 
 because we are mechanics he can treat us as 
 he likes. 
 
 "He goes around coolly taking the wives 
 and comrades of other men, and these men are 
 often grateful, he is such a genius. They call 
 him the King of the Anarchists, but I called 
 him the Limit in Gall, the very essence of 
 brass. How jealous he is, too! If the 
 women show any interest in any other man, 
 he is miserable. If he were a better man, he 
 would be a better poet, I believe, though I 
 don't know much about that." 
 
 Several devoted slaves of the Poet, besides 
 the factory girl, were there; one man, almost 
 the most idealistic and enthusiastic and un- 
 selfish personality I have ever met. He longs 
 to sacrifice himself. His greatest pleasure, I 
 believe, would be to be put into prison for 
 the sake of an emotional idea. He has been, 
 has done, everything; has worked with his 
 hands, in a book-store, has been a publisher; 
 has experienced all the faiths; when a Free 
 Baptist, he was arrested for preaching on a 
 [283]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 soap-box in Chicago, and spent a night in jail. 
 He gives to all he can, but his emotion is 
 stronger by far than his intelligence, which 
 however is not slight. He married a woman, 
 loves her and her boy, by another man ; gives 
 her the freedom which he does not take in any 
 essential way. The result finally is that she 
 now loves a man of stronger, more selfish, 
 more brutal character than her poor husband. 
 There is no need, she thinks, to care for the 
 sensibilities of such an unselfish man fool, 
 she probably thinks him in her heart. And 
 a fool he is, in H's sense of the word, but he 
 is a fool now who is miserable. The situa- 
 tion is tearing his heart out, but it is against 
 his sense of justice and freedom to object. So 
 he simply suffers. It is a striking case of 
 what frequently happens in this "radical" so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Men and women try frequently because of 
 their ideas to live "tolerantly," as they call 
 it, but they too often find that their "funda- 
 mental emotions" as Marie puts it are 
 far stronger than their ideas. And then 
 there is tragedy. On the night of the social, 
 this little man was as gay as a lark. Every- 
 body likes him and he went lightly about, 
 [284]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 dancing and making himself agreeable; and 
 drinking more than was good for him. 
 
 He has a practical turn, in spite of his ideal- 
 ism ; makes more money than any of the other 
 extreme radicals. Whenever anything is to 
 be organized, he is called upon. This social 
 was for the benefit of one of the two anarchis- 
 tic weeklies in Chicago The Demonstrator 
 "which does not demonstrate," as Anton 
 put it. In this enterprise the little man is an 
 active spirit. He is active, too, in making 
 possible the weekly meetings of the radicals 
 in Masonic Temple called the Social Sci- 
 ence League. He was active in securing a 
 room in that building, and many of the rad- 
 icals bitterly objected, called him an "aristo- 
 crat." They wanted a West Side garret to 
 meet in, thought it more consistent with the 
 cause of the proletariat. Many of the more 
 extreme of the sect refuse to attend the Sun- 
 day night meetings. They regard the whole 
 thing as a fake, because of the "swell" sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 One of the most interesting men at the so- 
 cial was like Anton, a woodworker, and 
 worked at his trade. He, again like Anton, 
 had more fibre and calmness and strength 
 [285]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 than the rank and file of the anarchists. He 
 talks well, and reasons, not emotionally, but 
 coolly; and in character he is balanced, toler- 
 ant and kind. He is a learned man among 
 them, school-masterly in look, and talks in a 
 slow, deliberate way. His character has not 
 the emphasis and vigor of that of Anton, but 
 it is steadfast and firm. Jay has led a varied 
 mechanic's life has been a blacksmith and a 
 carpenter, as well as a woodworker. He is 
 a stow-a-way from Ireland, but has apparently 
 nothing Irish in his character. At one time 
 he was a walking delegate in New York and 
 has written trades-union and anarchistic 
 pamphlets. His anarchism began at the time 
 of the Chicago riots. When he saw the bod- 
 ies of the eight anarchists who had been 
 hanged, and felt the "organized injustice" of 
 the act, "something happened" to him. He 
 was deeply moved, and he has felt differently 
 about governments ever since. 
 
 It was only the other day that I received 
 a letter from Jay. I had written him that I 
 intended to speak at the International Con- 
 gress of Criminal Anthropology at Turin, and 
 he thereupon wrote me, in part, as follows : 
 
 "I must comfess I am greatly at a loss to 
 [286]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 know what criminology really is. It does not 
 seem to me there is anything basic in it. Are 
 some men born with a propensity to violate 
 the rules of the game of society; or do they 
 acquire the habit through contact with their 
 environment? I don't think heredity has 
 been modified in the least by society. If the 
 postulates of evolutionary science are correct 
 it took countless ages for man to reach his 
 present state of development. From the 
 standpoint of biology, civilization is merely 
 a check on the natural instincts of man, which 
 lead him to satisfy his desires wherever he 
 can, without regard to conventions, his only 
 question being, 'Can I make it and get away?' 
 "Every man is born a criminal born with 
 desires, and cares only that they be satisfied. 
 Heredity says, 'Go and get the things you want 
 wherever you see them!' Society says : 'Hold 
 on, Bill, I have made rules you must observe 
 in the getting.' It is quite clear the only 
 question remains as to whether or not the in- 
 dividual will observe the rules is, how heavily 
 do the rules press upon him. If the beaten 
 path of civilization is level, and has plenty of 
 eating-houses along the way, the chances are 
 many to one that the individual will be a 'law- 
 [287]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 abiding citizen.' But if the path is paved 
 with cobblestones and there is a policeman at 
 the door of every eating-house who forces the 
 weary traveler to keep moving, and refuses 
 him even a 'hand-out,' the chances are strong 
 that he will wander from the virtuous path 
 and seek his bread in other ways. He is 
 caught, clapped into jail, and the criminolo- 
 gist sees at once, in the shape of his ear, of his 
 head, or what not, signs that tell him this 
 man has criminal propensities. Of course, 
 the criminologist can only study the poor, 
 half-witted or unfortunate 'criminal' who hap- 
 pens to get caught, and he prescribes for him. 
 If he sees in him a propensity to murder only, 
 why, get him a job in a slaughter house 
 if to be out at night, make a night watch- 
 man out of him. I believe crime is a social 
 disease, and should be treated as such. If 
 your criminologist will go and study the en- 
 vironment that the 'criminal' passed through 
 on his way to the jail, he will be getting 
 nearer the cause, not why men are criminals, 
 but why they do not become honest, law-abid- 
 ing citizens. I think that in so far as crimi- 
 nology is a part of social science, it is of much 
 value to mankind, but if it is pursued as a 
 [288]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 study of individual characteristics and pro- 
 pensities, it is not worth any more than the 
 study of astrology or palmistry. 
 
 "It seems to me the whole question of civi- 
 lization is one of environment modifying the 
 natural or savage instincts of mankind. I can 
 not see how anyone not a believer in the the- 
 ory, or rather the poem, of special creation, 
 can take issue with that proposition. If this 
 be true then the duty of the true friends of 
 Humanity is to direct their energies toward 
 making society as serviceable as possible to 
 the individual; that he may be compensated 
 for his change from savagery, and be con- 
 verted into a true friend of civilization. Get 
 your criminologist to study the causes that 
 make men criminals, and you will have done 
 enough for any one man. 
 
 "I didn't intend to say but a few words on 
 this subject, but I feel deeply at the way the 
 subject is being handled by the surface philos- 
 ophers and wooden scientists. At any rate, 
 since you are going to the conference, the 
 ideas of a criminal upon criminals may not be 
 harmful to you. Esther is busy as usual ex- 
 pounding that which is in her. Her soul is 
 filled to the brim with the joys that are to 
 [289]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 come when the criminals and criminologists 
 will all be civilized." 
 
 This letter is a good example of the kind 
 of speech that Jay makes at the Social Sci- 
 ence League, or at other "radical" gatherings. 
 He is of the better and sounder type of the 
 radical agitator. Anton admires and respects 
 him, and often finds him a job at his trade, 
 for Jay is not as active or as resourceful as his 
 friend. 
 
 Esther is what Jay calls his "companion." 
 She is a beautiful Jewess, and was present 
 with her handsome children at the social. 
 She is melancholy and affectionate and gentle 
 and sensual, and has had an unhappy experi- 
 ence with men. She left her husband some 
 years ago, "because we didn't develop to- 
 gether." And Jay and his wife separated for 
 the same reason. Then these two met, and 
 each discovered that the other had "high 
 ideals." 
 
 So they very simply began to live to- 
 gether. They have a great respect for one 
 another, and Jay is so tolerant that Esther's 
 "longings" are completely satisfied, even when 
 they lead her away from Jay for weeks at a 
 time. But Jay's soul is fortified and tested: 
 [290]
 
 An Anarchist Salon. 
 
 he is not emotionally vulnerable, like the poor 
 little Free Baptist publisher. 
 
 After the social was over, the "bunch" went 
 round the corner to a chop-suey joint, and 
 over tea and the conventional Chinese dish, 
 we talked philosophy, and love, and psychol- 
 ogy and scandal until three in the morning. 
 Anton and Maggie, Terry and Marie, Jay 
 and Esther, the Poet and a few others, and 
 in and out of the talk, in the values put on 
 life, in the point of view, in the prejudices, 
 crudities, enthusiasms and hopes expressed, 
 there stalked, in the incoherent background, 
 the silent, though significant figure of the 
 Working Man. His spirit gave meaning to 
 it all. 
 
 There is a distinct, though rather anaemic 
 charm about these gentle anarchists these 
 proletarians who develop a consolatory phi- 
 losophy and work out a natural and intimate 
 social life. In one of his books, Anatole 
 France writes : 
 
 "Last week an anarchist comrade visited 
 me. I love him because, never yet having 
 had any share in the government of his coun- 
 try, he has preserved much of his innocence. 
 [291]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 He wants to upset everything only because he 
 believes men naturally good and virtuous. 
 He thinks that, freed from their poverty, 
 freed from their laws, they would get rid of 
 their egotism and their wickedness." 
 
 [292]
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Politics in the Federation, 
 
 Anton has had enough share in the govern- 
 ment of trades-unions, in the workings of poli- 
 tics and in the passionate clashes of ambitions, 
 to be less innocent in experience than the an- 
 archist friend of Anatole France. It has not 
 taken from him his ideals, but it serves to 
 make him very different from his anarchist 
 associates. He is a man, vigorous, tolerant, 
 passionate, inconsistent, generous, hopeful, 
 rough, kind and gentle; to a certain degree 
 practical and cognizant of conditions. 
 
 Comparatively recent events in Chicago, in 
 v^hich he played a part, have served to make 
 Anton realize that facts have their compul- 
 siveness, and that the function of the ideal is 
 often only that of a tonic: that anarchism is 
 what may be called a tonical attitude towards 
 life, an emotional cock-tail, so to speak, which 
 serves to stimulate one's interest in ideal 
 things and thus exert, on the whole, a useful 
 [293]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 influence in reducing the unhumorous serious- 
 ness with which many people, given up to rou- 
 tine and convention, regard the fallible insti- 
 tutions of men. 
 
 Keen as Anton is to see the limitations of 
 anarchism, he is equally keen in feeling the 
 weakness of a merely practical movement if 
 it is not allied with an emotional idealism. A 
 high-minded and useful newspaper man of my 
 acquaintance, one who has worked with dis- 
 tinction for many years on a Chicago paper 
 and has written every week comment on the 
 labor news which is invaluable to all students 
 of the subject, was slugged one day, after at- 
 tending a meeting of the Chicago Federation 
 of Labor, the probable cause being that a cer- 
 tain corrupt labor politician did not like the 
 impartial and critical tone of the writer. 
 Commenting on this occurrence, Anton, who 
 is a friend of the newspaper man and respects 
 his honesty and ability, said: 
 
 "He is a fine fellow, but he got his medi- 
 cine. He is always saying that there must not 
 be any socialism or anarchism in the move- 
 ment, that trades-unionism methods, and they 
 alone, must be strictly adhered to, and of 
 course he wants trades-union methods without 
 [294]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 graft and crookedness. But that is impossi- 
 ble. You can't eliminate graft without ideas, 
 without emotions, and there are no more emo- 
 tions in strictly trade-union politics than there 
 are in politics in general. There are no ideas 
 in the democratic party or in the republican 
 party, and there are no ideas among the prac- 
 tical men of the trade-unions movement, un- 
 less those ideas are put into it by the emo- 
 tional theorists, as they are called, by the so- 
 cialists and the anarchists." 
 
 I don't think this quite applies to the news- 
 paper man referred to, but it serves to indi- 
 cate Anton's point of view. That newspaper 
 writer does indeed believe in the need of prin- 
 ciple, but he thinks it possible that merely 
 moral principle is sufficient to hold men along 
 the line of ideal action. In connection with 
 the fight in the Federation between the old 
 "graft" element and the so-called "reform" 
 element, the newspaper man wrote me, as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "I thought of you last Sunday and wished 
 you had been at the Federation meeting when 
 the election of officers was stopped by rowdy- 
 ism for the second time. It was a sight that 
 you would never forget. Another effort will 
 [295]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 be made to-morrow to elect officers; whether 
 it will be successful remains to be seen. In 
 any event, it is a hopeful sign that we are able 
 to make such fights for what we conceive to 
 be honest and right. As long as men are 
 ready and willing to put up a fight against 
 wrong and injustice, I say it is a hopeful sign 
 whether successful or not. That seems to be 
 the situation in the Federation. Personally 
 I like Madden (the machine politician who 
 has dictated officers to the Federation for 
 years) better than Dold, but as I told Madden 
 yesterday, I am looking to underlying prin- 
 ciples, not to the individuals. I wish the so- 
 called reform element had a stronger man to 
 lead than Dold, for the meeting last Sunday 
 was the best illustration I ever saw that men 
 want to be led. It was really a sight to see 
 a big crowd of men racked and torn with pas- 
 sion becoming calm the moment Madden 
 lifted his finger, and again when he gave the 
 signal, they simply raised hell. Much as I 
 disagree with Madden's methods, I could not 
 help admiring the man during the fight. 
 Cool and smiling he simply swayed his crowd 
 as he pleased, while Dold was hesitating and 
 trembling from physical fear." 
 [296]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 Sentiments such as these this reporter put 
 in his paper and probably in consequence of 
 this general attitude, he was at a considerably- 
 later time slugged. It was during these po- 
 litical fights, when Madden took around with 
 him his ruffians prepared to use physical vio- 
 lence, that Michael Donnelly, the leader in 
 the great stock-yards strike, was beaten for 
 the second time, and almost killed. His first 
 slugging was due, it is believed, to his attitude 
 of hostility towards the DriscoU-Young ma- 
 chine which controlled the teamsters for so 
 long, and was finally condemned by the re- 
 formers in the Labor Federation. Don- 
 nelly brought in a resolution severely con- 
 demning Driscoll, and it was soon after this 
 that he was slugged and nearly killed. And 
 the second time, it happened probably for very 
 much the same general reasons a simple- 
 hearted and courageous opposition to the cor- 
 rupt but powerful labor machine. This was 
 also why the high-minded reporter I have re- 
 ferred to, Luke Grant, "got his medicine." 
 
 Grant is a shrewd Scotchman, honest and 
 
 clear, whose heart is thoroughly with the 
 
 labor movement, but who puts the usual 
 
 amount of respectable emphasis on the unde- 
 
 [297]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 sirability of violence and "graft." During 
 one of the teamsters' riots, the extent of which 
 was grossly exaggerated, I was with Grant 
 and another Chicago newspaper man; when 
 Grant admitted that he had a strong desire to 
 throw rocks at the "scab" drivers. "I don't be- 
 lieve in doing it," he said, "and think it is all 
 wrong, but yet instinctively I would like to." 
 The other reporter remarked that Grant's 
 words were an expression of the "neighbor- 
 hood morality," the behests of which were 
 often stronger than law. 
 
 And yet Grant, in spite of his strong sym- 
 pathy with the cause, is deeply affected by the 
 opinion of the settlement workers and of the 
 better element" such as Grahame Taylor 
 and other good men which lays stress upon 
 the undesirability of violence and graft 
 which maintains vehemently that bad is bad 
 and good is good. It is partly this kind of 
 emphasis which gives rise to a misapprehen- 
 sion of the relative values of the whole situa- 
 tion. The wave of "reform" which has swept 
 America for the last few years has no doubt 
 done lasting good, but it has undoubtedly in 
 many cases turned one's eyes away from the 
 forest and riveted them on the trees. And 
 [298]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 this is particularly true of the labor situation, 
 especially of the distressing events connected 
 with the great teamsters' strike in Chicago 
 which aroused and excited the whole country. 
 The eddies on the surface "graft" and vio- 
 lence have been magnified into waves of 
 greater volume than the mass, while the big, 
 underlying and significant facts of the human 
 situation have not always been present in 
 the critical consciousness. Grant was near 
 enough the particular situation to see points 
 of corruption among the labor leaders as well 
 as among the employers, and, naturally 
 enough, on account of his proximity, he some- 
 times was in a mood to exaggerate the im- 
 portance of these unpleasant facts. Journal- 
 ism is more insistent than literature. It deals 
 with the temporary, salient accidents, and 
 neglects the big underlying volume of life ; so 
 in the contemporary treatment, in newspapers 
 and books, even when they are honest and un- 
 prejudiced, of the labor situation, there has 
 been a harping on the exceptional situation 
 upon the dishonest labor official, the unjust 
 strike, the walking delegate's arrogance, the 
 "educational committee" and its violence. 
 All these things, to be sure, are undesirable, 
 [299]
 
 The Spirit of Labor* 
 
 but it is still more undesirable to allow one's 
 sympathy, because of these things, to fall away 
 from a movement which contains more eth- 
 ics, humanity and justice than^any other move- 
 ment of our day. 
 
 When I first went to Chicago and was 
 slugged in a saloon because I called Sam 
 Parks a thief, I was in a state of mind in 
 which I too believed financial dishonesty 
 and ethical bad taste generally were matters 
 of the very greatest human importance. I 
 still think it is bad to steal, but I now believe 
 that a man who steals may still be of human 
 importance, and that the bulk of his activity 
 may be for good. I have heard many very 
 fine laboring men, who would not steal a 
 penny, defend Sam Parks and men like him, 
 on the ground that these men were really de- 
 voted to the cause and had done good work 
 and were full of the milk of human kindness ; 
 better men than many of "our best citizens" 
 who obey the law but who are humanly un- 
 just. 
 
 The workingmen believe, of course that 
 much of present day law, as it concerns prop- 
 erty, is meant for one class only, and they 
 naturally do not feel the same hatred for an 
 [300]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 ordinary thief as they do for a sheltered or 
 extraordinary one. 
 
 It was a feeling very similar to that I have 
 expressed which determined Anton's general 
 feeling towards the grafting machine on the 
 one hand, and the reformers in the Federa- 
 tion, on the other. 
 
 "At one stage of the fight against the Mad- 
 den machine," he said, "the reformers invited 
 me to attend their caucus. They knew that I 
 had always been against the machine, and that 
 I had a strong following among the wood- 
 workers. These so-called purifiers were out 
 to defeat the Madden slate, but had not rec- 
 ommended anybody for President as against 
 Madden's man, Schardt. I suggested the 
 name of a revolutionary Socialist who was 
 Madden's chief opponent. They rejected 
 him as their candidate partly on the ground 
 that if he were elected, it would go out that 
 it was a Socialist election. This seemed to me 
 an unjust and nonsensical reason, although I 
 was not a Socialist, but when they went further 
 and said that if he were elected, they would 
 not be recognized on the committees, they 
 seemed to me to be quite as small as the so- 
 
 [301]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 called grafters, and I told them to go to hell, 
 as quietly as I could. 
 
 "I consented, however, to watch for them 
 when the ballots were counted. When the 
 polls opened, the judges and clerks, who were 
 Madden men, ruled that we had no right to 
 have watchers, but about 10:30 Schardt, Mad- 
 den's candidate, came around, and admitted 
 the watchers. By that time, the ballots could 
 easily have been fixed. One of the judges 
 was a prize-fighter, one a bar-tender, two 
 were sluggers, and all were Madden men. But 
 I took a chance, and decided to watch. I was 
 told that the ballots could not all be counted 
 till four or five o'clock in the morning. I 
 thought this was intended to discourage me, 
 and I was more determined than ever. If I 
 had known what I know now, I wouldn't have 
 taken such an awful risk. When I entered, 
 I made a statement to the judges and clerks, 
 for I realized that these men hated the two 
 men who had asked me to watch for these 
 two men had been the most stubborn oppo- 
 nents of ring rule. 
 
 " The fact that I am a watcher,' I said, 
 'need not be taken necessarily as an indica- 
 tion that I suspect the honesty of the judges 
 [302]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 and clerks. I disagree with both of these re- 
 formers in many respects, but in view of the 
 rumors that have been circulated in trade- 
 union circles that there is no such thing as an 
 honest election in the Chicago Federation of 
 Labor, I want to learn for myself as well as 
 for the men I represent, to what extent this 
 is true or false.' I took a position behind the 
 man who read off the ballot to be sure 
 that the names he read had a cross before 
 them. 
 
 I had had no food since breakfast, but the 
 judges and clerks had all kinds of lunch and 
 drinks ordered at the expense of the Federa- 
 tion, which was illegal. They asked me to 
 join with them, but I drank very little, as I 
 was very suspicious of their motives. After 
 the lunch, one of the judges pulled out a big 
 pistol and asked me to hold it for him while 
 he went down stairs. Another judge laid his 
 revolver on the table where I could see it. I 
 thought all this play was meant for me, and 
 I felt I was up against it. Skinny Madden 
 came in just then. Everybody knows him as 
 the Lorimer of the Federation. I quietly but 
 persistently asked the judges if Skinny had 
 credentials admitting him to the counting. 
 [ 303 ]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 He overheard me, replied that he had no cre- 
 dentials, and left. 
 
 "They went on counting the votes. I no- 
 ticed that the first five names of the candi- 
 dates for the executive board received two or 
 three hundred ballots all marked alike. It 
 was a cunning scheme, as it meant, 'Vote for 
 the first five,' and would avoid the possibility 
 of confusing names, and would make stuffing 
 ballots easy. About 2 a. m. six hundred and 
 fifty ballots had been counted, and the entire 
 machine had been elected. There was no 
 longer any need for me to stay; the judges 
 and clerks wanted to know what my attitude 
 would be in the Federation. I replied that 
 I would stand by the facts whatever they 
 were. 
 
 "At the next meeting of the Federation, the 
 report of the election was given, and no pro- 
 test was made by anybody. The men for 
 whom I had watched, did not ask me to re- 
 port, but one of them got up and read a letter 
 from his union charging dishonesty and cor- 
 ruption in the election but not giving an 
 iota of evidence.. I deemed it an insult to 
 me that, after watching all day and all night, 
 my opinion had not been asked, so I took the 
 [304]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 floor and roasted the union for making an un- 
 substantiated charge, and the ^purifiers' for 
 their cowardice. 'I have no doubt,' I said, 
 'that Madden is the Lorimer of the Federa- 
 tion, but my observation has taught me that 
 the main reason the reformers are dissatisfied 
 is that they themselves are not the Lorimers 
 of the Federation. I personally and also as 
 a member of my union am opposed to gang 
 rule wherever I see it, no matter what flag 
 it flies under in the Federation, but I am not 
 willing to make a serious charge without some 
 definite evidence. I am opposed to many of 
 those who have been elected, and especially to 
 the President, but although I watched all 
 day and all night, I saw nothing that I 
 could advance as evidence of corruption. It 
 looks to me as if the man for whom I watched 
 suspected my honesty, as he did not ask me 
 my opinion, but preferred to present unsub- 
 stantiated charges. I voted for him, but if 
 he has no better judgment than to appoint a 
 man whom he immediately afterwards sus- 
 pects of dishonesty, I am glad he is defeated.' 
 "This speech created a sensation in the 
 Federation meeting. Some of the Socialists 
 thought I did not stand by them, right or 
 [305]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 wrong, but I am not a 'class-conscious' man, 
 and don't care for that kind of sentiment. 
 They hinted I had not done right. I told 
 them that if the facts would hurt the reform 
 movement, the reform movement ought to be 
 reformed. v 
 
 "Madden's man, Schardt, when elected Pres- 
 ident, came to me and asked me to serve on 
 the resolutions committee. He said I was a 
 fair-fighter, but began to tell me what to do 
 when I was on the committee. I checked him 
 and told him I had a mind of my own, and, 
 if on the committee, I would act as I pleased, 
 r would work only as a free lance, I said. 
 He seemed to think that because I had not 
 charged his gang with dishonesty I couldn't 
 prove that I was for them. Needless to say, 
 I was not appointed to the committee. 
 
 "These little oppositions of mine did not 
 amount to much, but I kept them all worried. 
 They did not know where I stood. They did 
 not seem to grasp the idea of being independ- 
 ent even from reform. My popularity among 
 the rank and file increased. At every elec- 
 tion several would nominate me for some 
 office in the Federation, but I always de- 
 clined ; because, working at my trade, I could 
 [306]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 not attend the committees regularly, and so 
 would not be in so good a position to criticize. 
 Then, too, a free lance is always in a good 
 position to talk, for men know he is not trying 
 to get anything. As it was, I was the only 
 man in the Federation who was always on the 
 floor to fight anything that came from the ad- 
 ministration that seemed to me wrong. The 
 terrible fear of advocating a measure which 
 was likely to be defeated keeps many men in 
 their seats, but I like nothing better than to 
 be in the minority. When you are right, it is 
 very exciting. I dislike those 'reformers' who 
 sit by and see a tyrannical thing done, by the 
 gavel or otherwise, without protesting. 
 
 "As time went on, the reformers found it 
 more and more difficult to understand my at- 
 titude. When the fight came up between 
 Madden and Dold and the former's bullies 
 made their raids on the ballots, men like 
 Quinn and Fitzpatrick did not understand 
 my lukewarm stand, unless I had gone over 
 to the Madden camp. As I had always 
 fought the Madden machine this looked to 
 them like treachery. I could not be enthusi- 
 astic for a man like Dold, and I didn't like 
 the cowardly and tyrannical attitude of the 
 [307]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 reform machine ; and I didn't like their tend- 
 ency to put their friends in office. If, being 
 against a machine makes a purifier, I am the 
 only purifier in the Federation." 
 
 Charles Dold was originally put in office by 
 the Madden machine ; and I have it from no 
 less an authority than Samuel Gompers that 
 Dold made Madden a promise not to put a 
 certain vigorous revolutionary Socialist, a "re- 
 former," on any committee. But Dold fell 
 into the hands of the "better element" in and 
 out of labor circles and the result was that he 
 put this man, obnoxious to Madden, on sev- 
 eral important committees. Madden, there- 
 fore, got out his knife and determined by all 
 legal and illegal methods to defeat Dold at 
 the next election. 
 
 "When," continued Anton, "this election 
 was to be held, the Federation was divided 
 into two camps, the Dold faction and the 
 Madden faction. The slugging of Donnelly 
 drew the lines all the sharper, and naturally 
 everybody would be against Madden. But 
 the Woodworkers' delegates had reason to 
 oppose Dold. He had been fighting our or- 
 ganization for a long time, and was in addi- 
 tion a disagreeable side-stepper who liked to 
 [308]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 avoid responsibility and had no personal cour- 
 age. Knowing that he would not go very far 
 in defending principle, when by so doing he 
 might be violently dealt with, neither I nor 
 any other woodworker was willing to make a 
 strong fight for him. In addition, the wood- 
 workers were on strike at the time, and needed 
 the support of all the Unions regardless of 
 political factions. So we did not hump our- 
 selves for the "reform" candidate. 
 
 "The element of so-called purifiers who had 
 suddenly waked up to the necessity of fighting 
 the machine, took for granted, as I have said, 
 that I was a Madden man looking for favors. 
 They lost sight of the fact that neither I nor 
 any other woodworker had ever occupied any 
 conspicuous official position in the Federation, 
 with the exception of Dick Braunsweig, who 
 some years ago was a member of the executive 
 board, and was a most vigorous fighter against 
 gang rule. Dold at that time was recognized 
 as the most valuable supporter of machine 
 rule ; and is quite generally regarded in labor 
 circles as a man not to be relied on too 
 strongly. 
 
 "Experience taught me that, if I wanted 
 to be a factor for good in the Woodworkers' 
 [309]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 organization and the labor movement in gen- 
 eral, I must be careful not to recommend a 
 man who I felt would disappoint the ex- 
 pectations of the men behind him, no matter 
 what principle he named as a party measure. 
 I questioned the wisdom of stating with 
 fevered enthusiasm that the election of any 
 man to any office would assure any particu- 
 lar relief to the rank and file. I feared that 
 to be very enthusiastic about the greatness or 
 goodness of any man would divert the at- 
 tention of the rank and file from the necessity 
 of looking after themselves and of being 
 active from time to time. These were my 
 reasons for not coming out strongly for 
 Dold. 
 
 "On the other hand, I knew that the Mad- 
 den element was certainly not what was 
 wanted in the labor movement. So I was 
 forced to take a neutral position. My an- 
 archism, or in other words my tolerance and 
 the many-sided influence of my radical 
 friends, made it easier for me to take such a 
 position, for I had no great confidence that 
 anything very good could come out of politi- 
 cal fights where the factions were looking for 
 advantage; or out of machinery in general. 
 [310]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 Great good only comes in my opinion from 
 the educations of life. 
 
 "A little while before the slugging of Don- 
 nelly and the election I had made up my mind 
 that I wanted to be Chicago delegate to the 
 International Labor Congress which was to 
 meet at Pittsburg in November of last year. 
 I could get off three weeks from my job in the 
 factory, and representing the big labor body 
 in Chicago I would have a chance to express 
 my views on the larger issues of labor and 
 meet men prominent in the movement all over 
 the world. It had been the custom for the 
 President of the Chicago Federation to be the 
 delegate to the National and International 
 Congresses, if he desired to be. I had, pre- 
 vious to the local election, approached the 
 Secretary of the Federation and ascertained 
 that there would be no opposition to my can- 
 didacy either from him or from President 
 Dold, who did not desire to be the Chicago 
 delegate. 
 
 "When the time for the election of the dele- 
 gate approached, I found, on account of my 
 luke-warm support of Dold in the local elec- 
 tions, that the 'reformers' were against me, sus- 
 pecting me to be a Madden man, as I have 
 [311]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 explained. They all got busy in an effort to 
 defeat me. They knew that I was better 
 cjualified than the man who ran against me, 
 but I would not work in favor of their hob- 
 bies. That shows the paradox of their posi- 
 tion as reformers. The Secretary of the Fed- 
 eration came to me, through their influence, 
 and asked me to withdraw. 'I'm afraid they 
 have got you beat,' he said. 'You can go and 
 tell the caucus of reformers to go to hell,' I 
 said, *I am in this fight to stay.' 
 
 "I determined to beat this gang, if I could, 
 and for the first time I decided to hustle 
 for my election, and play a few cards. The 
 next Monday a convention of street car work- 
 ers opened, and I as President of the Wood- 
 workers had received an invitation to present 
 to this convention a gavel bearing a Union 
 label. The street-car men have the largest 
 delegation to the Chicago Federation of La- 
 bor, and all their strong men were at this con- 
 vention. That gave me an opportunity to tell 
 them where I stood. I explained to them the 
 situation, and they promised to stand by me 
 in the election. That same night I told my 
 story before my own Union. I had been in- 
 strumental in obtaining $2,000 from the Fed- 
 [312J
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 eration for the Woodworkers while on strike, 
 and was generally popular in my Union, and 
 they elected four additional delegates. An- 
 other Woodworkers' Union, No. 67, elected 
 five additional delegates and No. 17 six. 
 Every Union instructed their delegates to be 
 present at the Federation meeting when the 
 delegate for the Pittsburg Convention was to 
 be elected. There never was a time when any 
 one organization was so united and deter- 
 mined in any particular purpose, as they were 
 on electing me. 
 
 "Every Woodworker delegate showed up at 
 the election. The opposition got very uneasy 
 when they saw how strong I was in my own 
 Union; and adopted the old machine tyrant 
 rule of electing the delegate by motion. It 
 was moved that, since the President was not 
 present, that the Vice-President of the Federa- 
 tion be appointed delegate to the Pittsburg 
 Convention. I immediately jumped to my 
 feet and protested against the autocratic man- 
 ner of selecting the delegate. Others rose to 
 their feet and joined in my protest, moving 
 that the proper way to elect the delegate was 
 by secret ballot. The purifiers could not ob- 
 ject to this, and nominations were made. An 
 [313]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 old carpenter arose and nominated Steve Sum- 
 ner, a teamster, a lily-white reformer, on the 
 water wagon and very religious, but only a 
 two-year-old trade-unionist. The financial 
 secretary Hopp then put me in nomination. 
 Tim Quinn and John Fitzpatrick, two stellar 
 lights in the reforming caucus, had been nomi- 
 nated. They got up and declined in favor 
 of Sumner. It was, of course, a put-up game 
 to defeat me. Quinn spoke of the courage 
 and honesty of one of the men already nomi- 
 nated, and heartily recommended Sumner to 
 the Federation. Fitzpatrick in his speech of 
 declination, emphasized the fact that Sumner 
 was on the water wagon and therefore should 
 be elected. A Socialist who had been put in 
 nomination also declined in favor of Sum- 
 ner 'who was a pure and simple trades- 
 unionist.' 
 
 "I got up and demanded that my gray- 
 haired friend inform the Federation whether 
 any one of the candidates was not a trades- 
 unionist, and if so, to point him out. Pre- 
 viously to the balloting, there was much talk 
 among the delegates, and the sentiment against 
 the caucus methods was strong. 'Vote against 
 the caucus,' I heard said everywhere among 
 [314]
 
 Politics in the Federation, 
 
 the men. The woodworkers and the street- 
 car men were with me ; but they were less than 
 half of my supporters. All the ladies were 
 for me; those representing the Teachers' 
 Union and the Waitresses, whom I used to 
 escort home. Many teamsters voted for me 
 because the other fellow was on the water 
 wagon. The vote was taken, and I was 
 elected, 90 to 67. There was great applause, 
 and I was called on for a speech. That was 
 my opportunity, and I said, *I am extremely 
 pleased that the chairman possesses the won- 
 derful courage to abide by the decision of the 
 majority. I am sure he would have liked to 
 do otherwise, and if my sympathy was of any 
 use to him, he might have it and I would be 
 satisfied with the votes. As for those who 
 have strenuously defended the slate and done 
 all they could to prevent it breaking, I can 
 assure them that it is sometimes quite as neces- 
 sary to break a slate that comes from the Ma- 
 sonic Temple as to break a slate that comes 
 from the back-room of a saloon. I trust that 
 no one will misunderstand the utterances of 
 that ungodly man when he resigned in favor 
 of our Christian friend, for I am sure it was 
 not inspired by personal selfishness but merely 
 [315]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 by the passion he had to submit to the ty- 
 ranny of a caucus. While I sympathize with 
 the error of their ways, I cannot accept their 
 philosophy, and for those who may have mis- 
 understood the reformer when he spoke of 
 the water wagon, I wish to inform the Fed- 
 eration that it is true I have never been on 
 the water wagon, but I think that may be be- 
 cause I have never been on the whiskey wagon. 
 As for those men who have spoken so feelingly 
 about purity and simplicity, I assure the Fed- 
 eration that I can see the simplicity of their 
 motives, but I'll be damned if I can see the 
 purity. 
 
 " *I can assure the Federation,' I concluded, 
 'that my attitude in the International Labor 
 Convention will be just as conscientious as it 
 has always been in the Chicago Federation of 
 Labor. I remember a year ago that the dele- 
 gate representing the Federation was allowed 
 $500 to attend the Convention. I hope in 
 my case $7 a day and car fare will be suffi- 
 cient to cover the expenses and permit me to 
 be a gentleman. I am at a loss to understand 
 why $500 can make a gentleman out of a man 
 any more easily than $150, but perhaps the 
 caucus people who kept silent a year ago can 
 [316]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 explain this point to the satisfaction of the 
 Federation.' 
 
 "After I had finished, the applause came 
 like thunder, very much to the disheartening 
 of the caucus people. After all their efforts 
 I had defeated them by a large majority. 
 They came around and were very mild and 
 apologetic. I told Fitzpatrick I was sorry 
 he was the caucus candidate for President, 
 but, although he had behind closed doors in 
 the caucus conspired to defeat me as delegate 
 and had shown his willingness to eulogize a 
 two-year-old, yet I was not too small to over- 
 look that weakness and vote for him as Presi- 
 dent. *I don't want you to think, however,' 
 I said, 'that I believe in caucuses to elect offi- 
 cers. I have no objection to their being 
 called for the purpose of solidifying the 
 ranks in a common attitude against the com- 
 mon enemy, but when it comes to elect officers, 
 I think a man's character should be suffi- 
 ciently open for us to judge as to his fitness, 
 without a caucus. I don't want you to feel 
 that I am pledging you my vote, as I can't 
 tell but what a better man may come up be- 
 fore the election, for instance, myself.' He 
 laughed at that, and we were friendly." 
 [317]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 In connection with the general subject of 
 politics within the body of organized labor, 
 the attitude of Samuel Gompers, President of 
 the American Federation of Labor, towards 
 this Dold-Madden fight, is interesting. 
 When the fight had become acute, Dold, Fitz- 
 patrick and others of the reformers appealed 
 to Gompers to use his good offices to try to 
 bring about peace between the warring fac- 
 tions. Gompers characteristically delegated 
 the power which he had by reason of the in- 
 vitation to Thomas I. Kidd, an executive offi- 
 cer of the American Federation of Labor, the 
 most prominent woodworker, and a man 
 whose high character is recognized by every- 
 body. Mr. Kidd heard both sides; in the 
 caucus of Dold's friends it was agreed that 
 Mr. Kidd should preside in the Federation 
 and his decision be accepted as final. Anton, 
 telling the story, said : 
 
 "When B (the anarchist woodworker 
 
 agitator who has been referred to earlier in 
 Anton's story) heard of this, he threw up his 
 hands, and said to me and Tom Kidd: 'O, 
 Jesus, I knew dot when Foxy Sam Gompers, 
 when he got invitation to come to give one 
 advice in fight of labor against capital, he 
 [318]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 come right away, but wen he be asked to 
 come to settle a fight between one man and 
 anodder in a Union den he can't come, den 
 he got no time. Gompers ain't no damn fool 
 like you, Dom Kidd. No matter how you de- 
 cide, no matter how fair you be one way or 
 de odder, dey won't like 'em. You got no 
 right as executive officer of the Amalgamated 
 Woodworkers to act in dat capacity. You 
 make enemies when de woodworkers have to 
 make good. Denn, too, you won't get no 
 hearing. Do you dink dot Skinny Madden 
 allow you to be umpire wen he don't know you 
 are wid him? Not on your life! And Skin- 
 ny Madden knows, and Charley Dold knows 
 dat Dom Kidd has no use for Charley Dold, 
 and has no right to have any use for Charley 
 Dold, but don't need to make any publicity 
 of it. But you accept and you must do it, 
 but we go and see Skinny Madden.' 
 
 "So B , Kidd and another man went to 
 
 Skinny's saloon. Madden greeted them cor- 
 dially and taking B 's hand said: *I am 
 
 glad to see you.' 
 
 " 'You be glad to see me,' said B *pe- 
 
 cause you tink I have no use for Charley 
 
 Dold. I remember de time wen you and 
 
 [319]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 your friends were subborting Charley Dold; 
 I know you be pretty foxy, but Jesus! Charley 
 Dold fool you, but he deceive everybody else, 
 too. He no draw the line on you. I know 
 dat you be crooked, Skinny Madden, and I 
 know dat Charley Dold be bigger crooked. I 
 know dat you put up a fight. I know dat 
 you stick by your friends and I know dat 
 Charley Dold never puts up a fight, but gets 
 his friends into de fight and den he gets a 
 telegram: he has to go away wen tings come 
 to crisis. I know him in Detroit, in New Or- 
 leans, in Philadelphia, everywhere : he always 
 gets a telegram. So I call him Telegram 
 
 Charley/ This was the report v\^hich B 
 
 gave me of the meeting. 
 
 "Previous to the meeting of the Federation 
 at which Kidd was to umpire, Tim Quinn and 
 one or two others called together in caucus 
 the true and faithful of the reforming flock. 
 It was called out of respect to Madden's cun- 
 ning and power. The members of the caucus 
 were pledged to secrecy, so that Madden 
 would not learn until too late to act. He 
 had accepted in good faith the proposition 
 that Kidd should preside at the meeting, and 
 therefore made no preparations and did not 
 [320]
 
 Politics in the Federation. 
 
 get out his friends in force. So when the 
 day came, the reformers were all present and 
 twenty or thirty policemen, but not many 
 of Madden's men. Kidd was there, but the 
 reformers did not want him to take the chair, 
 as they felt they did not need him and could 
 railroad through the thing as they pleased. 
 Madden insisted on Kidd's presiding, and 
 Dold was at first against it. But he came 
 around, and if it had not been for Quinn, per- 
 haps Kidd would have taken the chair. But 
 he saw that there was no united wish for 
 him to act, so he withdrew. The report of 
 the clerks was therefore easily endorsed, and 
 
 Dold was declared legally elected. B 
 
 was delighted at the truth of his prediction, 
 and Sam Gompers, the old side-stepper, got 
 no blame, but it made Tom Kidd look like 
 thirty cents." 
 
 Anton's election as delegate came during 
 the time that I was with him in Chicago. It 
 gave him an enormous amount of satisfaction. 
 He had "played politics" for the first time, 
 and had won. He had beaten an organiza- 
 tion which he deemed hypocritical, and that, 
 without allying himself with the grafters. 
 He had made no promises to anybody, and 
 [321]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 had no debts to pay. He now had an oppor- 
 tunity to satisfy his temperament by a change. 
 Held down as he had been for several years 
 closely to his work, the prospect of a trip to 
 Pittsburg under interesting circumstances was 
 like "hearing the whistles blow in the spring." 
 What was left of the hobo in him contributed 
 to his general joy. 
 
 Soon after his election, his Union gave him 
 "a blow-out" and $50 toward his expenses. 
 "Maggie was tickled to death," he said. 
 "She could not sleep for joy. Now that I 
 am going to the Convention, I want her to 
 have a vacation, too. If she didn't, it would 
 spoil my pleasure." So Maggie went with 
 the children to the old home in Clinton, and 
 had a good time "disturbing," as she put it, 
 her old friends, with her "radical" ideas. 
 "Before I had been there a week," she said, 
 "I had three mothers deserting their children 
 at night, to go out and have a good time at 
 some social. And I put a lot of other ideas 
 into their heads, so that before I left they had 
 begun to think some." 
 
 [322]
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 While Anton was in Pittsburg, I saw a 
 great deal of the "radicals." I came to pre- 
 fer sitting with Marie and Terry in their 
 simple salon and marveling at their sophis- 
 tication and expressiveness, or talking with 
 the large-passioned Esther or the good, calm 
 and clear-sighted Jay to prefer this to any 
 of what might be called my more normal oc- 
 cupations. Of Clarence Darrow, too, I saw 
 a great deal at this time. More gifted, more 
 clever, and more able than any other Chicago 
 "radical," he is not as consistent or logical as 
 many of them. He is a friend of the prole- 
 tariat, a philosopher, a literary man and a 
 dreamer, but he is also a lawyer, a politician, 
 and a money-maker. He has a marvelous in- 
 consistency of mind, but a rich temperament 
 and many "parts." Connected as he is, of 
 course, with the "successful" people, and the 
 bourgeoisie, he is not as clear a case as the 
 [323]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 rank and file of the radicals. He is a friend 
 of the laboring man, not a laboring man either 
 in fact or by instinct. 
 
 But it is this being the real thing, or based 
 upon the real proletariat, as Terry and Marie 
 and Anton and Maggie and Jay and Esther, 
 and many of the others are, which gives them 
 their consistency, their meaning and their elo- 
 quence. It is they who get radical ideas, in- 
 stincts and hopes first hand, and have conse- 
 quently that freshness of mind and of expres- 
 sion which springs from coming actually in 
 contact with the material of their emotion and 
 their thought. A thousand times I felt my- 
 self to be in the midst of a kind of renaissance 
 of labor. 
 
 This I felt whether I was in a group of ac- 
 tive, hard-working, hard-drinking, practical- 
 ly-minded labor leaders, with their vast phys- 
 ical joy in life and their belligerent hopes 
 of the future, their longing for "velvet," and 
 consequent occasional corruption, their pas- 
 sionate, unconventional habits, rough-house 
 methods and rough capacity for stating their 
 meaning in their own way; or whether I was 
 with the gentle, anaemic commentators on life, 
 those who had been workers and had become 
 [324]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 agitators or merely contemplative reflectors 
 people like Terry and Marie and Jay and Es- 
 ther. What makes Anton so peculiarly inter- 
 esting to me is that he is both these things 
 he is the rough, practical belligerent, ideal- 
 istic laboring man in the movement, on the 
 one hand, and on the other he is the reflective 
 anarchistic, gentle, poetic commentator on the 
 facts of the labor which he has experienced 
 so typically. I have often been at a loss to 
 know whether he is primarily a practical man, 
 and a liver, or a philosopher, and an expresser. 
 What he is without doubt is Ein Gemuth a 
 temperament for that accounts both for 
 practical, rich activity; and for emotional and 
 full-blooded love for ideas. 
 
 I have almost never seen Anton depressed; 
 but, one night, while he was at the Pittsburg 
 Convention, I had an opportunity to see how 
 very far in the moral depths Terry and Marie, 
 the aristocrats of the slums, the Platonic ex- 
 pressers of the proletariat, the reflective an- 
 archists, were liable to fall. I had been at the 
 salon, had sat for hours over the cigarette and 
 the can of beer. Terry had talked about some 
 of the anarchists in Chicago and other cities, 
 their weaknesses, their personal traits, with a 
 [325]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 fine psychological touch and with an almost 
 never-failing delicacy and originality of ex- 
 pression. He was happy at it, and so were 
 we. But very late in the night we went out 
 and took a walk in the early dawn of a Chi- 
 cago day, winding up in the back room of a 
 saloon. Terry drank several glasses of whis- 
 key, and Marie, too; that, and the fatigue of 
 the late hour and their accumulated anaemia 
 resulting from bad food, put them in a mood 
 of extreme, though expressive despondency. 
 It was impossible to get cigarettes in that 
 neighborhood, and that, too, was an added 
 burden. 
 
 Terry then burst out into a talk of extreme 
 anarchy; said he desired to prey on society, 
 to make himself a complete burden. He re- 
 jected the elementary basis of morality, and 
 said that the only reason he did not steal was 
 that he had never seen a really good oppor- 
 tunity. He had known thieves and prosti- 
 tutes well, and now he spoke of their qualities 
 with affection and seemed perversely to love 
 whatever was rejected by organized society. 
 
 Marie referred to one of my books, "The 
 Autobiography of a Thief," and asked me 
 why I had attempted to get the man to "re- 
 [326]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 form." I replied that, aside from conven- 
 tional morality, this man was a "dead" thief, 
 and had no chance except through reform. 
 Terry then spoke of the advantages of prison 
 life, the opportunity for terrific thought. I 
 objected on the social ground for a sensitive, 
 developed man, with social instinct and love 
 of woman, life in prison is hell and an in- 
 evitable step to the mad-house. "You, Ter- 
 ry," I said, "are too old and too sensitive to 
 be a good criminal." 
 
 Then I protested against the cutting off of 
 all morality. Why live among men at all if 
 we are to strip ourselves of everything? The 
 impossibility of his attitude came home some- 
 what to Terry when I spoke of the depriva- 
 tions of Marie, of her not having a nice place 
 to live, insufficient food, etc. That night I 
 pointed out to him, she did not even have a 
 cigarette, and there were large holes in her 
 shoes. Marie, who was very tired and a lit- 
 tle intoxicated, had been complaining about 
 the lack of the necessary cigarette. 
 
 "You don't like me," she said, complaining- 
 ly, to Terry. "You won't do a thing for me. 
 You even steal my cigarette tobacco." 
 
 Terry felt this reproach, and admitted to 
 [327]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 me that, if he were in a different mood, he 
 might tell a different story. "But it seldom 
 pays," he said, "to tell one's real mood." Fi- 
 nally, we went sadly to bed. 
 
 But it was not always thus, not even gen- 
 erally. I usually found these two people ex- 
 cited, interested and pleased with ideas or 
 with the beauty they were able to find in 
 books. I shall quote here a few of the things 
 they said only a few was I able to record 
 at the time or shortly after. All records are 
 insufficient: lag behind the reality. The in- 
 evitableness of this will easily be recognized 
 by anybody who has ever attempted to record 
 a conversation. Fortunately, Marie has writ- 
 ten me some excellent letters, in which she 
 expresses herself characteristically. Some of 
 the ideas no doubt originate with the more 
 philosophic Terry, but the phrase is given its 
 turn by her more artistic personality. 
 
 "My ancestral blood has flowed through 
 scoundrels since the flood," is a quotation of 
 which Terry is peculiarly fond. 
 
 "It is only in voluntary association that man 
 is fine," is another statement, by an unfortu- 
 nate man, often appreciatively quoted by the 
 tenement philosopher. William Morris' dic- 
 [328]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 turn, *'Art was not born in a palace. She was 
 taken sick there" this is much loved in the 
 salon. 
 
 From Marie's letters I glean the following: 
 
 "I love children, they are such true and 
 
 fearless rebels. I can't imagine how people, 
 
 able to take care of them, could ever be blue 
 
 with such optimistic and anarchistic little ones 
 
 around them." 
 
 Here are some of her literary appreciations : 
 
 "Tolstoi has truly a contempt for art, and 
 
 also a contempt for some of the finest things 
 
 in life, love, for instance. His ideals of love 
 
 are all very well for septuagenarians, but 
 
 won't do at all for us young folks." 
 
 "What delightful liberties Keats takes with 
 his rhymings, and his quaint expressions, al- 
 most cockney, some of them. I noticed one 
 little word he must have been fond of using, 
 which gives a sort of brisky air to his verse. 
 " 'He was a poet, sure a lover too.' 
 "Perhaps this fondness of mine for these 
 quaint expressions in poetry is because I can't 
 appreciate too much pure poetry. I never 
 could read Milton, and still I can't mush 
 over Whitman. Talking of mushing, I really 
 must get more acquainted with little Sadie. 
 [329]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 There is a little girl that likes mushing over 
 poetry all right. I have a complete edition 
 of Swinburne, which I must study some more 
 and then capture little Sadie and see if we 
 both can't have poetic delirium. She has 
 been pensive and interesting, of late, for since 
 the Poet left, she has had 'no one to worry 
 about' " 
 
 Sadie is one of the little "anarchistic" Jew- 
 esses of whom there are many in the "move- 
 ment." She is intelligent and cultivates care- 
 fully an air of mystery and the quality of the 
 "baleful." She told Marie that she wanted 
 to be a beautiful woman, merely to be able to 
 make men unhappy, for in that way only can 
 men amount to anything! 
 
 "My excuse for not writing before," wrote 
 Marie, "is that I had been reading *Inten- 
 tions,' and it has had an irritating effect on 
 me. This would not be so, perhaps, had Ter- 
 ry not been discussing it nearly every day, and 
 brought home the truth to me that I myself 
 was deriving all my emotions from art. And 
 it is true to a great extent. I realize myself 
 that I do not come in contact with life enough 
 to satisfy my emotional nature. Therefore I 
 turn to literature. I've been reading Ibsen's 
 [330]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 dramas, the more mystical ones such as 'The 
 Lady from the Sea,' 'Rosmersholm,' etc. It 
 seems to me these are almost overwhelming 
 with their moral atmosphere, as you would 
 call it. I sat up last night and read 'Little 
 Eyolf,' and I truly passed through terrible 
 joys and sorrows which were not my own. 
 But after all I believe I would rather satisfy 
 my emotions from life itself, even if I should 
 have to pay a dear price for the joys I might 
 find. But it seems that some of us cannot 
 come in contact with life unless some one else 
 fosters in us the 'life illusion,' to make us 
 believe that we may do something in the world 
 for our good or for the good of others. This 
 life illusion was lacking in me, and conse- 
 quently I did not participate in the game. 
 But you came along and made me think for a 
 while that I, too, might do something for my- 
 self. Terry is so critical of everything that 
 he enjoys nothing. And it is sometimes most 
 depressing to be with him, especially now 
 when he is in a supercritical mood. 'Inten- 
 tions' is the first book he has seemed to enjoy 
 for a long time, and that book is so much in 
 accord with his own mood at present, and Ter- 
 ry's personality is so strong that it predomi- 
 [331]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 nates over everyone and everything. Thanks 
 to the gods, Terry is not always as he now is. 
 His moods vary as much as anyone's, only not 
 quite so often. I sincerely hope I shall never 
 become as critical and sceptical as Terry! 
 Just think of losing the faculty of enjoying 
 life and of having to receive only sterile emo- 
 tions from art!" 
 
 "I am often amazed," she wrote, in another 
 letter, "at the density of man, who dreams that 
 he can interpret all our actions and thoughts. 
 It is said that actions speak louder than words, 
 but I believe that silence speaks better than 
 either. If we could only judge others by 
 their thoughts, but alas! how very seldom does 
 it happen that one can express these, or even 
 make any impression on others of having an 
 inner life, which I believe most of us try pain- 
 fully to conceal. Have you ever noticed how 
 feverishly and restlessly we talk and talk try- 
 ing to avoid the least approach of silence lest 
 we should therefore reveal our inner life? I 
 believe that more of our real selves could be 
 shown by our silences and not by our words 
 or actions. Whenever a great joy or sorrow 
 touches us deeply we are silent." 
 
 Here is a specimen of her humor. I had 
 [332]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 written her that I had taken a villa in Italy 
 and told her something of its beauty. She 
 replied: "Terry and I are having quite a 
 strenuous time these last few days fixing up 
 our new home, for we, too, have discovered a 
 little villa of which we occupy three rooms 
 on the top floor rear. We have a small grove 
 of fine willow trees on our right and a lovely 
 view of back-yards and chimneys on our left. 
 Unfortunately, we have no windows, front or 
 rear, which cuts out the view of the railroad 
 track on one side and the street on the other. 
 We have no modern improvements, I am sor- 
 ry to say, but then we don't care. As it is, a 
 bath-room would be superfluous here, because 
 all we need to do is to wait for a rainy day 
 and then stand or sit at our ease in our own 
 kitchen, parlor or dining-room, to be cleaned 
 by a most excellent shower bath. The roof of 
 our villa is arranged very conveniently for 
 that purpose. 
 
 "As for light, have I not always Terry be- 
 fore me? And indeed the light of his genius 
 or personality is almost blinding at times. 
 If we feel a little chilly, why we get into a 
 hot argument with Kate, for instance. I 
 think if we stay in this villa very long, we 
 [333]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 shall develop a whole lot, certainly we have a 
 good chance to study certain phases of natural 
 history. We shall also be quite proficient in 
 some kinds of athletics, as our floors all slant 
 towards the centre. It is really quite a climb 
 from the middle of our drawing-room to the 
 west window. It's good exercise, and if we 
 stay here a while I am sure I shall be able to 
 climb up Mount Shasta without an effort. 
 
 "Three other families occupy our villa, or, 
 rather, three old women. Their families sink 
 into insignificance when one beholds these 
 three ancients. I am so afraid of them, when- 
 ever I have occasion to leave my portion of the 
 villa, I sneak stealthily by their windows lest 
 they see and curse me. They were born old 
 and lived here always, and will continue to 
 forever and ever." 
 
 In a less cheerful mood, she wrote: "I 
 used to think that all mothers and fathers 
 whipped their children and were mean to 
 them. But now I think the parents cannot be 
 otherwise. Some things are so terribly true 
 and common and trite that they are not inter- 
 esting. I know of hundreds of fathers and 
 mothers who hammered and beat their chil- 
 dren into nonentities. ^ And they are living 
 [334]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 to-day what they call happy married lives and 
 have children of their own, which they in turn 
 hammer and beat into submission, just as they 
 themselves were. I don't like the atmosphere 
 of a saloon, [at this time Marie was living 
 above a saloon] and I don't like the dirty, 
 common work that I would have to do here. 
 And yet I'm sorry we are going, in a way. 
 There is a beautiful grove back of the house, 
 all full of great big trees. I love trees. 
 They were all stripped of their leaves, and 
 as I walked on the ground which was all cov- 
 ered with these poor leaves, I thought of 
 Keat'spoem: 
 
 *' * Too happy, happy tree 
 
 Thy branches ne'er remember 
 Their green felicity,' 
 
 So for that reason I would like to live there. 
 It must be beautiful in that grove in the sum- 
 mer time. But I would have to work so hard, 
 I might not appreciate the beauties of nature 
 at all. So I think I am more glad than sorry. 
 I spent nearly all day Sunday exploring this 
 grove, and all evening I sat in the saloon 
 drinking a lot of whiskey without getting 
 [335]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 drunk, played several games of pool and had 
 to listen to a graphophone playing rag-time 
 until my nerves were all on edge. I have had 
 a black mood ever since. All the sympathy 
 in the world does not help. At moments like 
 these we feel that terrible sadness which 
 comes from the knowledge that each one of 
 us is a separate soul. Though we may love 
 each other, yet there is something in each of 
 us that another cannot know, something that 
 keeps us everlastingly apart." 
 
 This expressiveness of Marie is not shared 
 by the remarkable man with whom she lives 
 not when it comes to the pen. In speech he 
 is subtle of the subtle, but when he writes he 
 attempts the same quality and his manner is 
 labored. He has not the ease and spontaneity 
 which this factory girl of twenty- three shows 
 in a remarkable degree. The only thing of 
 his put on paper that I possess is the follow- 
 ing. He wrote, in a note to one of Marie's 
 letters, sent to me to Italy: 
 
 "He who finds permanent ground for mel- 
 ancholia, may not be troubled by the shifting 
 scenes of mankind. This nostalgia of the soul 
 is the last resort and retreat of incurables who 
 take their last stand; the forlorn brigade of 
 
 [336]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 the Milky Way. You seem to be about that 
 distance from us now, so you give us one more 
 reason for feeling as lonesome as we do. 
 There are so few, I wonder if it would do 
 any good if there were more of us." Then he 
 added, as a matter of "labor" news, in which 
 he knew I was especially interested; "The 
 latest from the coal fields : the stock market is 
 ready for slaughter. Ten thousand troops in 
 the anthracite region await the behest of the 
 BuUionaire, ^On with the dance.* Let 
 'stock' be unconfined." 
 
 This is rather forced; the literary attempt 
 is too obvious. Yet when Terry talks, the ef- 
 fect is just the opposite. Everything he says 
 seems to spring profoundly from his own ex- 
 perience, even when he talks about "litera- 
 ture." His words are generally very sad in 
 their suggestion, far more so than those of 
 Marie, who is younger and more buoyant, has 
 much more of the "illusion of life." Terry 
 is the absolutely self-conscious proletarian: 
 with the utmost logic and consistency he ex- 
 presses the philosophy of the man who has 
 nothing. There is consequently a most pa- 
 thetic melancholy in his manner and expres- 
 sion. Intimate as he has deliberately made 
 [337]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 himself at times with the most absolute 
 "scum" of society, his manner is one of great 
 gentleness and wistfulness. 
 
 I have told, in another place, of how, after 
 working steadily for many years at his trade 
 as a tanner, he revolted, because he saw that 
 society was "exploiting" him. The precipi- 
 tating reason was this. A rich man wanted 
 to start a new business, and, knowing of Ter- 
 ry's skill and practical imagination in the 
 trade, he asked him to get the shop under way 
 for him. Terry, without making a contract 
 he is by nature singularly confiding and un- 
 practical, as all these anarchists are set to 
 work and organized the shop, did the whole 
 thing, got the business going, and then was of- 
 fered by his employer money aggregating 
 what the ordinary wages of a mechanic would 
 have been for the few months' time. He did 
 not accept a cent of this money, but took his 
 coat and left, and has never worked a day 
 since; has rejected the whole system of or- 
 ganized society; has gone so far that, if his 
 ideas were held by any considerable number 
 of men, life in communities would be impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Anton is often impatient at the fact that 
 [338]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 Terry and Marie "do" nothing; and yet he 
 impulsively sympathizes with some of Terry's 
 ideas particularly the impatience at work 
 that is not interesting. Terry has often said: 
 "If society would give me work that inter- 
 ested my mind, I would work harder than 
 anybody." Anton, himself, hates routine. 
 He gets no satisfaction out of his mechanical 
 labor for the reason that the modern differ- 
 entiation of function and development of ma- 
 chinery has taken all that is individual, all 
 that is truly artistic out of the mechanic's 
 work. The large art of an earlier time was 
 founded largely upon the detailed art, the per- 
 sonal expressiveness of every little object 
 made by the mechanic. But now there is no 
 personal variety, no opportunity for the me- 
 chanic to express himself in his work. For 
 this reason the taste of the community in art 
 has been lowered, and the interest of the ex- 
 cellent workman in his work has been taken 
 away. Now he works only because he must. 
 Terry does not see the necessity; the more 
 moral and responsible Anton does. That is 
 the difference between these two men. Neither, 
 however, has any love for labor. And be- 
 cause society and the Church tell them they 
 [339]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 should love labor, they rebel against society 
 and the Church with all the passion of strong 
 personalities. 
 
 While Anton was in Pittsburg, I saw not 
 only a great deal of the "radicals," but also 
 of the more or less hostile critics of organized 
 labor. They, of course, see in these "rad- 
 icals" only a lot of "cranks." And, indeed, 
 there is no doubt of the absurd character of 
 much of the "radical" body of men and 
 women. Thus far I have given most stress 
 to that side which to me is interesting and 
 sympathetic and based upon real feeling and 
 experience. But that there is much that is 
 half-baked about it all, there is, of course, no 
 doubt. 
 
 One sees a great deal of this half-done qual- 
 ity of thought at meetings such as those of the 
 Anthropological Society and the Social Sci- 
 ence League, meeting Sunday afternoon and 
 evening at the Masonic Temple. A number 
 of extreme pseudo-scientific thinkers, emotion- 
 ally free-love females, mushroom commentat- 
 ors, Robert IngersoUian critics of religion, 
 hold forth at these places. . Their prophets 
 are men like Pentecost, who announces that 
 Christ was a great fool and that the prosti- 
 [340]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 tutes are rapidly freeing society; men who 
 have a little more general education than the 
 mechanics, but not nearly enough, get up and 
 say emotional absurdities, and women from 
 the shops lay bare their extreme crudity of 
 thought in hysterical forms. It is no wonder 
 that Anton cannot resist, in such gatherings, 
 his satirical mood, and as for Terry, he gen- 
 erally "stays away," as Marie puts it. She, 
 however, goes mainly for the sake of meet- 
 ing a "comrade" or a new and sympathetic 
 man. 
 
 In the West Side salon or in the domestic 
 tenement one finds the reality, the genuinely 
 intellectual proletariat, but in their crowded 
 meetings is the same banal spirit, in a different 
 form, that one finds in crowds everywhere. 
 It is after these meetings that the elite gather 
 in some saloon, and there men and women 
 talk freely and often gaily, and the basic ideas 
 of the proletariat are expressed often in form 
 and with considerable beauty. And, in sub- 
 stance, it is never frivolous to the philosopher, 
 for underneath it all is the serious, unsmiling 
 Spirit of Labor; and the great warm feeling 
 of Solidarity, of human love. And it is that 
 which gives even to the absurd meeting its 
 [341]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 pathos and its significance, and even a kind of 
 sad beauty. 
 
 When I first became interested in the labor 
 situation, and began to meet the men, I found 
 very little that interested me. They were 
 lacking in grace, not expressive, not peculiar, 
 not picturesque. It was, at first, only the rec- 
 ognition of the importance of the subject that 
 held me to it. Finally, of course, I became 
 fascinated, as I got beneath the surface and 
 came in contact with some excellent person- 
 alities. 
 
 After I had once seen the "eloquence" of 
 the thing, I found myself continually sur- 
 prised and displeased by the hostile critic of 
 organized labor. There are so many men, of 
 good intelligence, who, because of their lack 
 of feeling for humanity or because of the 
 moral astigmatism induced by their personal 
 or class interests, find it very consoling to 
 harp on the crudity and roughness and occa- 
 sional "grafting" propensities of labor and 
 make of their bad taste a substitute for justice. 
 
 I met on one occasion one of the big men 
 
 in the "beef trust." He is a good citizen, or 
 
 is so regarded by the world. But as he sat 
 
 complacently in his ofRce and told of how un- 
 
 [342]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 just the strikers had been, as he spoke of his 
 employees in a tone that indicated his belief 
 in their general bestiality, he seemed to me an 
 object totally lacking in attractiveness. "No 
 man," he said, "can stem the striker's unrea- 
 son." He spoke of the "small margin of 
 profit" in the great beef business, but said that 
 the business, being in a way a public neces- 
 sity, must be carried on, even at a loss. He 
 made it appear almost a charitable undertak- 
 ing. One reason the men had given for walk- 
 ing out the second time was that the girls had 
 been insulted by some of the foremen. The 
 trust magnate laughed as he said this. This 
 seemed to him to be the height, or the depth, 
 of sentimentality. 
 
 He did not tell me what I knew from an- 
 other source, and not a labor source, but from 
 an independent investigator, a woman of truly 
 wonderful and penetrating character who had 
 more to do with the final settlement of the 
 great strike than anyone else; facts known to 
 the newspaper men, but never published, be- 
 cause they would have been too shocking to 
 society. The condition of the yards when the 
 negro strike-breakers were there, and the girls 
 from the Tenderloin had been imported in 
 [343]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 large numbers as a bait to keep the strike- 
 breakers at their work, this cannot be de- 
 scribed. I, knowing these facts at the time 
 the comfortable boss was talking morality to 
 me, did not feel deeply impressed with his 
 virtue. I knew the essential moral sweetness 
 of many a rough laboring man; Anton is 
 quite incapable of a cynical attitude towards 
 women free as he is; in every way he is 
 the moral superior of the big trust magnate 
 whom I met the man who sneered at the 
 strikers and at the common working girl, who 
 was willing to make an indescribable place of 
 his workshop and at the same time was "one 
 of the boys about town," might as well leave 
 morality out of his talk. 
 
 "Criminals and thieves are preferable to 
 workingmen," said an experienced man of the 
 world to me, who had associated with big rail- 
 road men all his adult life. "They are more 
 educated by life, are entertaining talkers and 
 have a kind of cultivation. Laborers when 
 honest are raw, and when clever are dishonest 
 and rawly so. They are in a terrible hurry 
 to get things, and they hate the men who have 
 things. The painter in my hotel room said 
 the other day, at the mere mention of L 's 
 [344]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 name (a rich railroad man) : 'The 
 
 . He gets $100,000 a year.' As 
 
 he spoke, wolf-like hatred gleamed in his 
 eyes." 
 
 As to unreason, I find it pretty equally dis- 
 tributed between the "classes." The laborers 
 are often extreme and unfair about their em- 
 ployers ; but no more so than is the other side ; 
 while theirs is certainly the balance of moral- 
 ity. Most of the "radicals" are fanatics, to 
 a more or less degree, but the injustice based 
 upon fanatical feeling has at least an element 
 of sympathetic human nature, while that 
 based upon privilege does not seem to recom- 
 mend itself to any disinterested contemplator. 
 
 In the great teamsters' strike, which took 
 place while I was in Chicago, there is no 
 doubt that there was money used dishonestly 
 on both sides; it is likely that in the imme- 
 diate situation, the men were more at fault 
 than their employers. But the possibility of 
 such a situation had largely grown out of the 
 previous commercial immorality of the em- 
 ployer. Shea, the leader of the strikers, was 
 a rough "grafter," in the sense that he deemed 
 it fair to "get" what he could from the other 
 side. The revelations about his expenditures, 
 [345]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the "Kentucky Home" episode, and the gen- 
 eral ugliness of his moral character, were es- 
 sentially true; but the newspapers laid bare 
 all these things with a view to turning public 
 sentiment against the men. It was in striking 
 contrast to the way these same newspapers 
 covered up the stock-yards horrors. If the 
 private life of a labor leader is a legitimate 
 thing to expose in reference to his public mo- 
 rality, so is the private life of an employer. 
 But the newspapers of Chicago did not see it 
 that way for commercial reasons. 
 
 I met Shea on several occasions. He sat, 
 more or less like a poisonous toad, in his room 
 at the Briggs House. He seemed a fitting 
 companion to men like Young and Driscoll, 
 whom he was supposed to meet at places like 
 "The Kentucky Home," and settle, over bot- 
 tles of champagne, the affairs of the city. He 
 was certainly a low representative of the 
 roughest element of labor; but yet there was 
 a certain honesty about him. Though he had 
 every reason to be a hypocrite to me he took 
 me for a newspaper man he occupied on one 
 occasion nearly half an hour in defending 
 Sam Parks. He indicated, in a rough way, 
 that everything had not been said when it 
 [346]
 
 The Intellectual Proletariat. 
 
 was admitted that Parks had stolen money. 
 
 "If," he said, in substance, "you want to 
 write something truthful about the labor sit- 
 uatfon, take the life of a man like Parks. 
 Don't exaggerate one side or the other. Of 
 course, if you want to howl about dishonesty 
 and graft and all that you may please the cap- 
 italists, who want to hang on to what they 
 have stolen, but you won't get all the truth 
 about a man like Parks. If you get all the 
 facts, I think Parks won't seem like such a 
 bad fellow, when all is said." 
 
 Shea did not seem to me like the ideal man 
 far from it. But I liked him better than 
 the hypocritical, sensual and respectable mem- 
 ber of the Beef Trust whom I had inter- 
 viewed. 
 
 [347]
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 Anton came back from Pittsburg full of 
 the eloquence of "wife, home and family." 
 Maggie was a day late, and during those 
 twenty- four hours Anton was miserable. "I 
 tell you what, Hapgood," he said, "there is 
 nothing like being away from your wife for 
 a couple of weeks. It makes you appreciate 
 her for fair. And I am eager to get back to 
 the shop, too. I think, after all, a mechanic 
 who gets good wages, has eight hours' work 
 and a good home is pretty well off. Satur- 
 ^ day night is enough for bumming around. I 
 am sure I don't know what would become 
 of me if I didn't have a regular occupation. 
 If I had your job, for instance, I think I 
 would be a worse fellow than I am." 
 
 This speech showed an extraordinary 
 change from the character of Tony, the Hobo, 
 who so often heard the whistles blow and 
 [348]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 boarded the box-car. I remarked as much, 
 and he answered: 
 
 "Well, if I had been a scab I'd never have 
 got to this. Somehow, working for the rank 
 and file and fighting with your fellow men 
 make you steadier. It makes it seem like 
 good fun to be responsible. That's why it 
 is right almost to force the non-Union men 
 into line. Life, when taken right, forces a 
 man to be a good husband. Why not force a 
 scab to be a good citizen, a good member of 
 his class? It is all a matter of fear, with these 
 fellows. They can't see their own interests. 
 You must make them fear something more 
 than they fear going hungry, and then you can 
 keep them in line." 
 
 At the Pittsburg Convention Anton had still 
 further opportunity to meet some of the "big" 
 men in the labor movement. I have often 
 heard him on the floor of the Chicago Fed- 
 eration meeting, and I know him to be a vig- 
 orous, forcible and sometimes witty speaker, 
 full of ideas which are sometimes too subtle 
 for the rank and file of his audience; some- 
 times too radical for them, and frequently too 
 playful. They were evidently too radical for 
 Samuel Gompers, for at the Convention, after 
 [349]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 one of Anton's speeches, he turned to Tom 
 Kidd, and said: 
 
 "I thought you said the Chicago delegate 
 was a sensible fellow. Why, he is a gatling 
 gun. He goes off in every direction." An- 
 ton could not resist the opportunity to ex- 
 pound some of the shifting ideas of the prac- 
 tical anarchist, and hence Gompers' remark. 
 After one of the meetings one of the most 
 conservative leaders in the American Federa- 
 tion made to Anton, protesting against some 
 of his speeches, the remark already quoted. 
 
 "We are all anarchists, but what's the use 
 of shouting about it?" 
 
 "Duncan's remark," said Anton, "is true of 
 the leaders; and it is more true of the rank 
 and file than most people think. The men 
 don't know it themselves, and are frightened 
 at the word anarchist. But they sympathize 
 with a lot of things that conservative people 
 call anarchistic, and if one man is a little more 
 radical than the others he can have anything 
 he wants in the way of an office. That shows 
 what direction they are going in. 
 
 "It is hard to say what men like Gompers 
 and Mitchell really think, because they are 
 diplomatists and side-steppers. Gompers is a 
 [350]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 much abler man than Mitchell, who has a 
 reputation all out of proportion to his ability. 
 There are many men in his Union stronger 
 than Mitchell, who was made by the news- 
 papers. The miners are mainly an ignorant 
 lot. They have all heard Mitchell's name, 
 and they don't know, as a body, any other 
 leader. So Mitchell is bound to be at the 
 head, as long as he wants to be." 
 
 I myself have met both Gompers and 
 Mitchell. The former I found very willing 
 to talk facts, but he shied off from opinions 
 with the astuteness of a fox. Mitchell I met 
 over the bar of the Briggs House. The place 
 was full of labor leaders, and they all talked 
 freely, except Mitchell. If he had an idea, 
 he kept it to himself. He is a handsome man, 
 with a pathetic, romantic look, as if he had a 
 mission in life, but didn't want to give it 
 away. 
 
 Gompers has a sense of dignity, and the 
 song which the anarchist organizer, several 
 times referred to, sang and was overheard by 
 the President, did not please him : 
 
 " Everybody works but Gompers 
 And my old man." 
 
 [351]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 A story told me by Anton still further il- 
 lustrates the character of the President of the 
 American Federation of Labor, whom, by the 
 way, everybody respects, and justly, for he has 
 held his position for many years, and no one 
 who knows him can doubt either his ability 
 or his honesty. The Anarchist Poet desired 
 at one time to write for The Federationist, 
 of which Mr. Gompers is editor. Terry, An- 
 ton, the Poet and one or two others went to 
 Thomas I. Kidd's office to try to induce that 
 influential man to speak to Gompers about 
 the matter. Among them was the anarchist 
 organizer, who called Anton one side and 
 said to him: 
 
 "Anton, I am surprised at you. Do you 
 tink Sam Gompers will allow an anarchist to 
 fight against de Socialists? Wen Sam Gomp- 
 ers can't any longer have de Socialists as his 
 enemies he will lose his popularity and be- 
 come useless. He wants to do all de fighting 
 against de Socialists himself and don't want 
 no anarchist to help him. Neder Dom Kidd 
 nor all de Kidds can influence Sam Gompers 
 to hang himself. De strength of de anarchist 
 lies in de weakness of de Socialists, and Sam 
 Gompers knows dat and wants to keep dat 
 [352]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 weakness all to himself so he can show it up in 
 de Federationist." 
 
 The Anarchist Poet did not get the job. 
 This trait of Gompers is shown by his general 
 sensitiveness to newspaper opinion. When 
 there was an attempt made to get Gompers to 
 help settle the teamsters' strike by publishing 
 the truth, his question was, "What will the 
 newspapers say?" 
 
 Anton was struck with the tendency of the 
 Convention to stick to "details," instead of 
 considering general principles or matters of 
 broad policy. "Everybody was there," he 
 said, "to look after his little interests, the in- 
 terests of his local union, of his city or his 
 trade. No one dared to say anything about 
 bigger things for fear that his little thing 
 would be spoiled. It was mainly about or- 
 ganization matters, questions of jurisdiction, 
 etc., things which are as dry as dust. I 
 wanted to have these matters cleared up quick- 
 ly, so I recommended that the executive com- 
 mittee be instructd to put through these juris- 
 diction matters in a certain time. There was, 
 of course, great opposition from the commit- 
 tee, and Vice-President Duncan retorted that 
 the committee ought not to be subjected to 
 [353]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 force. Why not admit, then,' said I, 4f you 
 object to force, that you are an anarchist?' 
 It was this question of mine that led to Gom- 
 pers' remark about the gatling gun, and to 
 Duncan's private statement about the preva- 
 lence of anarchism among the leaders." 
 
 Shea was at the Convention, and Anton 
 said of him: "He is a good representative 
 of the teamsters. He walked into the Con- 
 vention as he would into a saloon, with his hat 
 on, and spitting to the right and to the left." 
 
 Anton's tendency to criticize everything ex- 
 tends quite as thoroughly to the anarchists as 
 to anything else. What he loves most about 
 the theory of anarchy is its individualism : he 
 is consequently dead against the Socialists. 
 And yet he is often exasperated at the lack in 
 the anarchists of practical sense. The Con- 
 vention passed a resolution combating the 
 alien laws and approving of the admission into 
 the country of all political exiles from Europe. 
 "This resolution," he said, "ought to have been 
 noticed by the anarchists and their newspa- 
 pers, and ought to have been approved by 
 them. But there was not a word said or writ- 
 ten about it. The anarchists lack blood, and 
 in this country are dead. They don't know or 
 [354]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 care what is going on. It is only the opposi- 
 tion of the police that keeps them alive. If 
 they were let alone and allowed to spout, as 
 they are in England, they would all have died 
 of emotional starvation long ago. The execu- 
 tion of the Chicago anarchists in 1886 has 
 been the main-stay of the movement ever 
 since. 
 
 "The best thing about the anarchist who 
 calls himself an anarchist not the practical 
 men with anarchistic tendencies such as I am 
 or other labor leaders is his emotion. He 
 is a fanatic and thrives when he is oppressed. 
 It would be well for the labor movement if 
 there were more emotion in the American 
 Federation of Labor affairs. Sentiment 
 ought to have some sway in this great move- 
 ment, but I found no sentiment at the Con- 
 vention all dry routine and wire-pulling. 
 All is based on cold, calm reason, but that is 
 not enough. All is based on selfishness, or 
 nearly all. It is the class struggle much more 
 than it ought to be. 
 
 "It would be well if there were some men 
 high up in Federation affairs who had senti- 
 ment, even sentimentality. A man like Eu- 
 gene Debs, the famous Socialist, would be 
 [355]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 very useful in that way. His career has been 
 an interesting one. Nearly all labor leaders 
 spring into prominence at a time when it re- 
 quires courage, determination and more or 
 less extreme radical attitude, but soon after 
 they assume the position of responsibility, they 
 become more conservative, with but few ex- 
 ceptions. Debs was one of those exceptions. 
 In the great railroad trouble of '94, Debs 
 called a general strike. Public opinion was 
 so strong that he showed his hand before he 
 was ready. So that the organization was 
 mainly acting on impulse and enthusiasm. It 
 was only two years old, and was inexperi- 
 enced and undisciplined, and expected too 
 much from the particular individuals chosen 
 to lead the strike. The result of such hasty 
 action is usually defeat. In this case, it was 
 complete annihilation of the organization ; but 
 the strike made Debs so prominent that he be- 
 came candidate for President of the United 
 States on the Socialist-Democratic ticket. 
 He is a wonderful orator and a splendid or- 
 ganizer, but, lacking in executive ability, is a 
 bad leader in a strike, not because he fears to 
 take an unpopular position, but because his 
 character is emotional and sentimental. He 
 [356]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 has never been a strong power in organized 
 labor, except among the Socialist enemies of 
 the Federation. If, however, a man of his 
 character were as active in the Federation as 
 he is among the Socialists, it would be of great 
 value in introducing sentiment into the ac- 
 tions of that too practical body of men." 
 
 It seems difficult, indeed, for a practical la- 
 bor leader, engaged actively in the special 
 question of raising wages and shortening 
 hours, to retain the general emotion and im- 
 aginative interest in what is called the larger 
 issues. The anarchist organizer seems to be 
 one of the few men who have been able to re- 
 tain his original enthusiasm. Another man 
 who is as enthusiastic as he was in the flush 
 of his experience in the movement is the 
 President of the Woodworkers* Union, a 
 friend of Anton's, whom I have met and heard 
 speak. He does not appeal to sentiment, is 
 very clear and practical in his talk and in his 
 measures. But away back in his heart lives 
 his one strong interest: the labor movement. 
 He has a strong intelligence, and is singularly 
 simple in his interests. He has never mar- 
 ried; he does not believe that a man can do 
 justice to both a wife and the labor move- 
 [357]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ment. Although he has been practically ac- 
 tive among men for many years, he is as sensi- 
 tive as a young girl and far more scrupulous. 
 One day he was with Anton and Tom Kidd, 
 when the latter, who is very fond of a joke, 
 said: "Dinnie is going to see his sister at the 
 expense of the organization." "Dinnie was 
 horribly hurt," said Anton. "He flushed up, 
 and later, when I was alone with him at din- 
 ner, he said things which made me see clearly 
 all the tenderness of his nature. Yet Kidd 
 meant it as a joke." 
 
 Kidd is another man whom Anton deeply 
 admires perhaps more than any other man 
 in the labor movement. He is a strong, jolly 
 man a "good fellow," a capable drinker and 
 a man who even those most unsympathetic to 
 organized labor admit, is thoroughly honest. 
 He did more than any other one man to build 
 up the Woodworkers' Union. "For many 
 years," said Anton, "Kidd worked as general 
 secretary, with responsibility, but no power, 
 a very trying position. There were many 
 calls for assistance, but no financial resources. 
 He is absolutely relentless in character, and 
 pushed along until he built up the organiza- 
 tion. For several years, as secretary, he 
 [358]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 worked at a salary of $15 a month, and also 
 worked at his trade. Then the organization 
 took all his time and gave him a salary of $50 
 a month. On this he was married. In 1898 
 came the big woodworkers' strike in Oshkosh, 
 Wisconsin, as a result of which Kidd became 
 famous throughout the country. The men 
 proposed 5 per cent increase of wages, a week- 
 ly pay-day, and the taking of women away 
 from the machines. This demand the bosses 
 rejected without even a conference and locked 
 the men out. Kidd was called to Oshkosh 
 to conduct the strike. He took with him the 
 anarchist organizer to furnish the enthusiasm, 
 while he took care of the diplomatic end. 
 There was a street riot, and a little boy was 
 killed. Kidd spoke at the grave of the child, 
 and laid the responsibility of his death at the 
 door of the millionaire employer. The an- 
 archist agitator had spoken a night or two 
 before, and gave a description of what they 
 did to scabs in Chicago. This was credited 
 to Kidd, and he was arrested on a charge of 
 conspiracy. It was conceded that the power 
 of the corporations was not easy to defeat, and 
 so the woodworkers engaged Clarence Dar- 
 row to defend Kidd. Darrow's appeal to the 
 [359]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 jury went throughout the country, and as a 
 consequence Kidd sprang into prominence as 
 a fearless and radical labor leader. Darrow, 
 in the address to the jury, compared Kidd to 
 Christ, and his speech at the boy's grave to 
 the Sermon on the Mount. It did not take 
 the jury long to acquit. After that, Kidd be- 
 came a prominent man in the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor, and a high officer. Before 
 his election as Vice-President he used to write 
 in his woodworkers' journal serious reflections 
 against Sam Gompers, but after working with 
 the President in the executive council, Kidd 
 became gradually more conservative. This 
 seems the way of the world. But he never 
 lost his individuality, and is still a strong 
 and emphatic speaker, but more cautious in 
 his writings." 
 
 I met Kidd a number of times, usually at 
 the bar of the Briggs House. I was always 
 interested in his versatile and witty talk, in 
 his robust temperament and pleasure in vigor- 
 ous social life. In his way of meeting peo- 
 ple he is the man of the world does not sug- 
 gest at all the reformer or the emotionalist 
 seems primarily an active liver; perhaps more 
 so now than formerly. He is incapable of 
 [360]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 saying a sentimental thing, and regards the 
 trades-unionist in America as at present in 
 some respects well ofiF. Of the "boss" he can 
 say some sympathetic things. One day he 
 said to me that some of the small employers 
 excited his sympathy. "They work hard, and 
 for themselves and their families only; don't 
 have as good a time as the mechanic, and are 
 not interested in any cause. Sometimes they 
 don't even make money. I was a small em- 
 ployer once, and after every pay-day I discov- 
 ered that my men had more money than I. 
 So I went back to work." 
 
 Kidd is an opportunist in life; though he 
 believes that anarchism is the highest ideal. 
 "Men are not good enough to be anarchists," 
 he said. With Socialism he does not seem to 
 have much sympathy: he is too much of an in- 
 dividualist. "The worst things about Social- 
 ism," he remarked, "are the Socialists. They 
 are all autocrats in temperament. Their des- 
 potism would be worse than what we have." 
 
 When I was slugged in the saloon, I 
 thought the episode might prejudice the men 
 against me, and I went to Kidd for advice. 
 That was before I knew Anton or many of the 
 men. I had heard Kidd spoken of by settle- 
 [361]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ment workers, employers, everybody as the 
 wise and good man par excellence in the 
 Chicago Labor World. He laughed when 
 I told him of my trouble, and told me to 
 forget it. *'It will make no difference to 
 anybody," he said. "That was just a man- 
 to-man affair, easily settled and easily for- 
 gotten." Kid has never told me so, but 
 I yet believe that even a man who is as con- 
 servative and good as he is, dare not regard 
 occasional union violence as altogether a bad 
 thing, certainly not a very immoral thing. It 
 is a war measure mistaken, perhaps, but in 
 the absence of any great human morality on 
 the other side, it does not seem like a great 
 sin. The worst enemy in Chicago of the La- 
 bor movement admitted Kidd was personally 
 honest. "But even Kidd," he said, "lets 
 vouchers pass for pay for violent work done." 
 If this were true, it would not surprise me, 
 and yet I have a great respect for Kidd. 
 
 Michael Donnelly, the man who was twice 
 slugged, the leader of the great stock-yards 
 strike, is in manner a great contrast to Kidd, 
 with whom I have seen him at the Briggs 
 House. Donnelly has a quiet, sweet way 
 with him, a good deal of gentle humor and the 
 [362]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 reputation of being an eloquent speaker. He 
 is another leader generally conceded by every- 
 body as being personally honest; his being 
 slugged probably helps to prove it. His call- 
 ing of the second strike, against his judgment, 
 is often cited against him by labor men and 
 others as a proof of weakness. And yet it is 
 probable that if he had not called it, the men 
 would have struck anjrway. This is what he 
 says, and in view of an exceedingly unreason- 
 able element among the butchers, it is quite 
 likely the truth. If he had been a very strong 
 man, he might have controlled the situation, 
 but some of the unreasonable ones were of very 
 vigorous character. 
 
 John Joyce, in particular, is as belligerent 
 a human being as I have ever met. He is a 
 splendid, powerful fellow, and as he paced 
 up and down his parlor and fiercely talked to 
 me, I felt that if there were many men like 
 this strong, aggressive, unreasonable fellow 
 in the organization, the leader had indeed a 
 task before him to hold them in line. He 
 has a natural hatred of authority, and in espe- 
 cial of the authority of the foremen. Don- 
 nelly said Joyce is admittedly as good a work- 
 man as there was in the yards, but his quarrel- 
 [363]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 someness always got him in trouble. He used 
 to insist while at work that every grievance 
 be settled as the aggrieved person wanted. If 
 a boy who was holding gullets saw he would 
 have to hold two more than those prescribed 
 within the hour he would kick, and would al- 
 ways be supported by Joyce and others of the 
 "inflammables." It was no hardship for the 
 boy to hold any number of gullets prepared 
 for him, but when the men got strong, as they 
 were before the strike, they, as often happens 
 on both sides, abused their power. One thing 
 they insisted on was to have twenty minutes 
 twice a day to go to the toilet. This to the 
 calm Donnelly seemed unreasonable. 
 
 Before the second strike, when Donnelly 
 and the committee had agreed to a settlement 
 with the packers, Joyce, although he was not 
 on the committee, came into the room and said 
 the men would never agree to the terms. He 
 was a self-constituted boss and had great in- 
 fluence over the foreigners. He is sober and 
 industrious, and has an interesting family, but 
 his spirit is the most untamed and aggressive 
 I have met. 
 
 Talking of the superintendent, who it seems 
 had threatened to discharge him, Jovce said: 
 [364]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 "He was not sufficiently developed physically 
 to put me out." To this man Joyce always re- 
 ferred among the men and foremen as "Mr. 
 Doughbelly." 
 
 Joyce is great at figures: he has spent his 
 leisure time for years in making out lists of 
 the various packing-houses, number of men 
 employed, wages, etc., "so that he can use it 
 as a club over the packers," he said, "if they 
 lie or do wrong." 
 
 He denounces with the utmost energy su- 
 perintendents and scabs, but women are quite 
 as bad. 
 
 "A few hen-pecked husbands," he said, "are 
 worse than all the scabs in America. They 
 are chewed up by their wives if they don't 
 come home with money, and if they come 
 home with money, they are chewed up because 
 they don't come home with more. 'What's 
 the use of giving the Union 50 cents?' they 
 say. We are between the devil and the deep 
 blue sea, and the woman is the devil. 
 
 "Times are getting worse," he continued. 
 "The employers are getting tired of educated, 
 self-respecting men. They generally want 
 niggers, foreigners and scabs. During the 
 strike they had a prize-fight in the yards 
 [365]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 every night, and the things that went on there 
 between the nigger strike-breakers and the 
 girls imported to take the places of the girls 
 who had struck is something I am not going 
 to tell you about." 
 
 After the strike was over, Joyce was one of 
 the skilled workmen not taken back. "There 
 is no money in the house," he said, "and my 
 son is on strike, too, and he did right. I 
 sleep well, you bet. I'm all right, as long as 
 my family have food. When they don't have 
 it, I'll go out and get it!" 
 
 Two or three lion-like strides across the 
 room gave me a vivid impression of how he 
 would "get it." 
 
 Our interview closed with his words: 
 "Cowardice is the principal thing in most 
 men." 
 
 With many men like this in a union, one 
 can easily see some of the difficulties with 
 which the leader has to contend. The butch- 
 ers are a more ignorant lot of men, as a rule, 
 than the workmen in older organizations and 
 of more skilled trades. But one of the most 
 inflammable and fire-eating men in the whole 
 Chicago world of labor and it is not an 
 anaemic, lying-down world is at present 
 [366]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 high up in the affairs of the Federation Tom 
 Quinn, with whom Anton had difficulties 
 when he ran for delegate. 
 
 Quinn is an Irishman, of the dynamiter 
 variety, and loves, of course, the opposition. 
 "The movement began with force," he said, 
 "and it will continue with force. At the first 
 great street-car strike in New York, the police 
 interfered with the German strikers who were 
 marching peacefully through the streets. I 
 was one of the Irish boys of the streets, and 
 how we did stone the police! It was that 
 strike and the police interference that started 
 the Knights of Labor an organization that 
 lasted until it was disrupted by 'conservative' 
 graft. All graft, by the way, is conservative, 
 in or out of the organization." 
 
 Quinn is a vigorous fighter and believes in 
 physical force with the same passion as in 
 honesty and love and human solidarity. His 
 love of honesty led him, as a boy, to throw 
 inkstands at the school-master, and to be a 
 leader among the violent street Arabs of New 
 York. "Teddy" Roosevelt was at that time a 
 leader of the rich boys, and he and Quinn, 
 who represented the proletariat, sometimes 
 came in personal contact in the free and open 
 [367]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 street. One day one of Tim's crowd hit 
 Teddy in the jaw but did no harm except to 
 break his own fist. 
 
 "For many years," said Quinn, "I did not 
 see Teddy. And when I presented to him, 
 as President of the United States, the other 
 day in Chicago, the strike petition, I saw that 
 everything was changed in him except that 
 jaw. It was the same old obstinate organ that 
 broke the East Side boy's fist." 
 
 Quinn is one of the most democratic people 
 in Chicago, but he believes in bringing about 
 universal justice by violence. He was emo- 
 tionally interested in the municipal ownership 
 movement, which has assumed almost the 
 character of a religion. Full of personal ego- 
 tism he did not understand the total lack of 
 personal egotism of a man like Mayor Dunne, 
 or the impossibility of a Mayor of Chicago 
 always acting in the way demanded by an 
 emotional enthusiast. So he was soon as vio- 
 lently opposed to the Mayor as he had for- 
 merly been violently in favor of him. Quinn's 
 general note, the underlying trait of his char- 
 acter, is violence. That explains his being. 
 
 But in Quinn, this all-pervading violence 
 assumes an attractive form; there is a fasci- 
 [368]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 nation about a man who is so manly. And 
 most people who meet Quinn have a great 
 respect for him. His brains, however, are 
 not as big as his spirit. He is not as percip- 
 ient of conditions and does not understand 
 human nature, is not nearly as much of a nat- 
 ural philosopher, as is our Anton ; that is the 
 reason he did not understand the latter's atti- 
 tude towards the Madden machine in the 
 Federation; and the reason why he remained 
 so narrowly by the conventional ideas about 
 the relative value of "graft" and "anti- 
 graft." 
 
 I do not want to suggest in any way an 
 apology for graft. The reaction that fol- 
 lowed the great and beneficent exposures of 
 corruption in business, politics, insurance, 
 trusts, patent-medicine, etc., was based largely, 
 I believe, on the dislike of the grafters in be- 
 ing exposed. It was a natural, but an ego- 
 tistically motived reaction. We cannot have 
 too much exposure. But, certainly in the 
 labor movement, there is the possibility of a 
 state of mind where a man will on account 
 of his ingrained ideas of property morality, 
 or other current morality, neglect a larger, 
 less defined, less worked out morality. Hu- 
 [369]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 man good is what we all ought to aim at ; and 
 often a passionate insistence upon the degree 
 of value in current morality is an obstruction 
 to moral advance. No real reform is possi- 
 ble without a shaking-up of the current stand- 
 ards of morality and of law. 
 
 It is indeed simple and touching to see how 
 moral, in a child-like and unthinking way, 
 many of these laboring men are ; and how they 
 think morality is as much of a piece as pure 
 red or pure blue, without shadings. Their 
 enemies shout of "graft" in the movement, 
 but to my feeling, the dominant note is one 
 of almost pathetic morality. Soon after I 
 began my Chicago quest, I met a drunken 
 machinist in a saloon; and, being quite unac- 
 quainted at the time, I asked him for some 
 information about the local situation, infor- 
 mation which would not involve names or 
 "expcsure" of any kind. Misinterpreting his 
 hesitation, I offered him a little money, in 
 exchange for an eflfort at expression on his 
 part. To my surprise, he regarded it as an 
 insult. "No," he said, "I'm an honest man, 
 and won't touch your money. And I won't 
 talk to you any more until you can get The 
 American to recommend you." The Ameri- 
 [370]
 
 Some of the Big Men. 
 
 can is the local friend of the workingman. 
 Only that endorsement could allay this simple 
 man's vague supicions. 
 
 This simplicity of moral point of view ex- 
 tends from the rank and file to most of the 
 leaders. One of the prominent butchers, 
 speaking of a famous labor leader, said that 
 no man ever said anything against his money 
 morality. "Everybody thinks he is very hon- 
 est," he said, "but everybody knows he goes 
 *on a bat' now and then, and is loose with 
 women. I believe that any man who is un- 
 faithful to his wife, is unfaithful to the rest 
 of us and is not the right leader. It is im- 
 possible for a man to be honest in one way 
 and dishonest in another." 
 
 A prominent Chicago teamster expressed to 
 me another very simple view of morality. 
 I fancy he thinks money morality is not of 
 much consequence; due no doubt to his ex- 
 perience of injustice and hardship. "I was 
 a slave for five years," he said. "I worked 
 three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, 
 twelve to fourteen hours a day. For this I 
 was paid $9 to $i i a week. I started to work 
 at six in the morning, on Sunday at seven, 
 as a piece of generosity on the part of the 
 [371]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 employer. Things like that make me a little 
 unwilling to condemn a man like Parks. I 
 don't want to hear anything against him. 
 Nor shall I say anything against Shea, who 
 has three faults, which I shall not name, but 
 is as able a man as there is in trades-union- 
 ism. He is too frank and outspoken. It is 
 all right for a man to be frank, but if he is, 
 he ought to be honest." 
 
 This leader, acquainted with men, and the 
 ways of the world, wonders at the immorality 
 of the employers. "Every boss," he said, 
 "every man who has much money for a long 
 time, is immoral sexually, in my opinion. 
 And that is the great danger of the labor lead- 
 er. He starts out with enthusiasm for the 
 cause, and for virtue, but often when he be- 
 gins to have power with the men, the agents 
 of the employers come, give him a good din- 
 ner, here in the Bismarck, perhaps, and then 
 take him perhaps to the Everleigh Club, 
 where he comes in contact with a kind of 
 luxury he has never before experienced. 
 When he has acquired the vices of the em- 
 ployers he can no longer serve so well a cause 
 that is hostile to them. So one kind of im- 
 morality leads to another kind. Take Al 
 [372]
 
 Some of .the Big Men. 
 
 Young, for instance. I remember when he 
 was a real teamster in spirit. But now his 
 manner of life, even his looks have changed." 
 
 A little while after this talk, I was with 
 this leader and Shea in the Briggs House. 
 Said Shea, "Al Young could explain more of 
 the situation here for the last few years than 
 any other man." "But if he did," said the 
 other leader, "it would put him in jail." 
 
 It is natural enough that the simple work- 
 ingman, to whom black is black and white is 
 white, should, when once shaken in virtue, 
 cease to distinguish. But I think the men 
 who yield overtly to this kind of demoraliza- 
 tion are in the minority, that the labor leader 
 is in general on a much higher plane of moral- 
 ity than the average man of the well-to-do 
 classes. Many of the prominent leaders have 
 business and executive ability which would 
 have enabled them to make money in any 
 other line of activity. But they have re- 
 mained poor men, at a low salary, and this 
 shows clearly that the cause has, in part at 
 least, an emotional value to them. I know 
 men who have been offered large salaries by 
 employers and large bribes money which 
 they found no difficulty in rejecting, because 
 [373]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 of their temperamental interest in the work 
 they were doing. Anton himself was offered 
 the position of traveling salesman at a good 
 salary. "I didn^t want to leave Maggie for 
 any length of time," he said. "But anjrway, 
 I wouldn't have taken it. I feared I might 
 fly off the handle at the hypocrisy of society. 
 And, then, too, I thought I would be bored. 
 I wouldn't have anything to work for except 
 money. And I wouldn't have any men to 
 work with, except tradesmen." 
 
 C374]
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 Anton and I and Schmidtty a wood- 
 worker with a ready fist and an honest soul 
 were sitting in a down-town cafe, drinking 
 beer and talking philosophy and other things. 
 The talk turned on violence, its ethics, its dan- 
 gers and its possible excuse. 
 
 "Since," said Anton, "the unions have their 
 educational committees, I don't see that 
 Skinny Madden is such a bad one. Arrange- 
 ments for violence are never made in the com- 
 mittees or in the meetings, but only when two 
 or three gather together, and the rank and 
 file and the Lily Whites know nothing about 
 it. I have sometimes persuaded sluggers not 
 to slug, for I am a philosophical anarchist and 
 do not believe in violence on principle. But 
 people in general believe in force. If the 
 laborers controlled the government, they 
 would not employ slugging, which is now the 
 only force they have. They don't call the 
 [375]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 Boston Tea Party a strike, but it was violence 
 and against the law. There are only two 
 real things genuine humanity and virtue on 
 the one hand, and force on the other. All the 
 rest is hypocrisy and graft." 
 
 "Yes," said Schmidtty, who had just been 
 elected as walking delegate, "there is only one 
 thing worth being, and that's a man. I don't 
 feel so much of a man as I did before I was 
 a walking delegate. When you get mixed up 
 with men, its hard to be yourself." 
 
 "You are losing your individuality, 
 Schmidtty," laughed Anton. "If you hold 
 your job you won't have any left." 
 
 "You don't seem to lose yours," answered 
 Schmidtty. Then, turning to me, he said: 
 "You ought to have heard Anton the other 
 night in the meeting. Someone tried to in- 
 sult him, and he replied: 'You can't insult 
 me. You have no reputation. Yes, you have 
 a reputation, but it is in the wrong direction.' 
 In this same meeting Anton called another 
 man a liar. An apology was demanded, and 
 Anton said: *Yes, I apologize. I ought to 
 have been more exact. I called you a liar. 
 What I ought to have done, is to have called 
 you a damned liar?' 
 
 [376]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 "One needs," said Schmidtty, "to develop 
 one's vocabulary. I often advise scabs and I 
 find a good use of the English language is 
 handy. The other day I met a scab and I 
 said to him, 'Why do you attempt to interfere 
 with men who are trying to better their condi- 
 tion? I am willing to admit that you have 
 as much right to the pursuit of happiness as 
 I have. But I have never seen the fellow yet 
 who would ever refuse an increase in wages, 
 and when I and other Union men have taken 
 risks, paid money into the Union, and been 
 blacklisted by the employers, and have at last 
 raised the scale of wages which benefits the 
 non-Union men as well as us, then when we 
 see a man try to get our jobs, a man who has 
 risked nothing but has got a part of the pie, 
 why then I think it is time to argue with him. 
 How much money do you get?' 'Nine dol- 
 lars,' said the scab. 'I'll get a job for you at 
 $14,' said I. 'Meet me in front of the police 
 station, so you know I won't try to do you.' 
 The scab didn't turn up, but he didn't go back 
 to work." 
 
 "Sometimes, though, you meet a scab you 
 can't stand. A fellow that says: 'Sure, I 
 know it's a strike, and that's why I'm here. 
 [377]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 I don't give a damn for the Union.' That's 
 the bloke that I'd like to get at. He's the 
 kind that likes a row, always goes where there 
 is trouble, and after the strike's over, goes on 
 to the next place. He don't want a regular 
 job. It isn't exciting enough. He is a per- 
 petual hobo, or a nigger, or something that^ 
 doesn't want to work steady. The boss, of 
 course, wants as many of these things around 
 as he can get, for they help him to keep down 
 wages. If it wasn't for these immoral scabs, 
 it would all be much easier. But it is a good 
 thing, anjrway, to work for something that is 
 good for humanity." 
 
 "Schmidtty," said Anton, "is absolutely un- 
 selfish. He's a rude fellow that likes to use 
 his fists in the cause of humanity, but he's 
 good." 
 
 "Not so rude as you," said Schmidtty, "and 
 not so good." 
 
 "You are both rude," said I, "especially 
 Anton. But his rudeness is like a cock-tail. 
 It is a good appetizer." 
 
 "That's well put," said Schmidtty. 
 
 "I'd like to be an appetizer, as you call it, 
 for the whole labor world," said Anton. "If 
 I had an income of $50 a week, I'd make it the 
 [378]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 whole business of my life to break down the 
 howl of conservatism, to make the rank and 
 file acquire more initiative, to make the Union 
 so attractive that everybody would want to 
 join, to make it as disagreeable to a man to 
 quit the Union as it is to quit the Insurance 
 Company. To teach men these things, you 
 must be with them constantly. You must 
 teach them to think and talk. I don't think 
 it is necessary to read books. Most books are 
 harmful to the laboring man, for they teach 
 him to see things the way the employers see 
 them, for all books are written by the em- 
 ployers or the men they support. I at any 
 rate can find more satisfaction in talking to 
 men. They sometimes tell the truth. I can 
 talk about books I have not read. I hear So- 
 cialists, anarchists, single-taxers talk about the 
 same book, and from what they all say, I can 
 get the essence. I shall subscribe for The 
 Literary Digest. That will give me all the 
 reading I need." 
 
 Soon after this, I had an engagement with 
 Anton at the Briggs House. I found him 
 with a number of street-car Union men, and 
 a deputy sheriff of Chicago, a politician, who 
 had evidently been drinking too much. An- 
 [379]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ton had only a few cents in his pocket at the 
 time, and when I entered he was good-na- 
 turedly temporizing with a demand made by 
 the sheriff that he should "treat" the crowd. 
 
 "Don't apologize," I overheard the sheriff 
 shout. "But buy the booze." 
 
 "I never apologize," said Anton, "I ex- 
 plain." 
 
 "Don't explain," roared the sheriff, "just 
 go along and holler." 
 
 The official seemed to me extremely inso- 
 lent with pride of office and whiskey, and I 
 called him down as hard as I could ; told him 
 he ought to have more sense and decency than 
 to try to force a man to buy drinks. The 
 sheriff began to splutter, but when he found 
 the Union men were all against him, he sul- 
 lenly subsided ; and sat alone, deserted, in the 
 cafe. His late companions, although they 
 knew that this politician had been useful and 
 might be more so, to the organization, admin- 
 istered a series of rebukes to him by silently 
 departing. 
 
 Fearing that I might have "spoiled" some- 
 thing that was on foot, I indicated to Anton 
 some regret at my action. "I sometimes lose 
 my temper," I explained. 
 [380]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 "It is not a question of losing your tem- 
 per," he answered, heartily. "It is a question 
 of taste. He was acting in awful bad taste 
 and you wouldn't have lived up to your char- 
 acter, which is that of a critic, if you hadn't 
 noticed it. It was a good thing. Did you 
 see how the men, as soon as they got the cue, 
 turned the fellow down." 
 
 During my intimate association with this 
 workingman, I was frequently struck, not only 
 with the exterior roughness of his manners, 
 but, much more important, with the genuine- 
 ness and often extreme delicacy of his feel- 
 ings. He has an unerring way of putting his 
 finger on the weak spot in a man's act; and 
 when the inhumanity or unkindness of a thing 
 is felt, his resulting expression is clear and 
 spontaneous, though sometimes very rough, as 
 on the occasion of his father's funeral. He 
 refused to take his hat off at the services, be- 
 cause the minister had not said anything about 
 his father's personal character. 
 
 He told me about this incident the night of 
 my meeting with the sheriff; and also about 
 how on one occasion he treated a man who 
 was making "advances" to his wife. 
 
 "Maggie is a woman by instinct," he said, 
 [381]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 "and she sees everything that has anything to 
 do with the sex. She came to me the other 
 day and said: *C , was here, and ex- 
 plained what a pity it is that you are so busy 
 with your committees, that your work is so 
 hard it leaves no time or energy for your mari- 
 tal duties. He's always saying this to me, and 
 hanging round when you are not there.' 
 
 "Maggie likes to keep me guessing. She 
 is enough of an anarchist to know that I must 
 not be too sure of her, if she wants to keep 
 my love, but she didn't like this man and 
 wound up, in her story about him to me, by 
 calling him a few names. 
 
 "So the next Sunday I went around to his 
 house, and began to talk to his wife, when he 
 was in the room. I said to her just what he 
 had said to Maggie; told her it was a pity her 
 husband worked so hard he couldn't pay 
 enough attention to his wife, etc. I saw he 
 was uneasy, for he thought I must have been 
 tipped off by Maggie. So when he and I 
 went out together, he began to explain. After 
 he had got in deep, I told him that was the 
 first thing I had heard about it. He felt 
 cheap then for having given himself away un- 
 necessarily." 
 
 C382]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 Maggie and Anton, going as they often do to 
 the meetings of the Anthropological Society 
 and the Social Science League, where all kinds 
 of criticism of society are indulged in, and 
 to the various "socials" given by their anarch- 
 ist friends, are naturally interested to a con- 
 siderable degree in the doctrines of free-love. 
 When Anton talks of religion, when he makes 
 a violent anti-culture, or anti-Christian 
 speech, he seems often very crude, for of 
 course, he is not skilled in metaphysical and 
 theological distinctions. But when he talks 
 of love he is dealing with something he knows 
 as much about as he does about the labor 
 movement, and in the same way, from experi- 
 ence. His attitude, and that of Maggie, 
 toward the question of sex, is therefore one 
 curiously civilized, and yet abounding in 
 healthy instinct and common sense. 
 
 Maggie's friends, Marie, Esther and the 
 Poet's wife, have been trying to make her 
 what they call a "varietist," but Maggie, al- 
 though she likes the free talk and opportunity 
 to know men well, shies off from what she 
 feels is a one-sided and merely rebellious atti- 
 tude. Her "radicalism" in this matter, is of 
 that balanced kind which makes life for her 
 [383]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 more vivid, quickens her emotions and broad- 
 ens her sympathy, without detracting her too 
 much from the big stream of conventional 
 feeling in the matter. 
 
 When Maggie returned from Clinton, and 
 appeared with the young woodworker 
 Schmidtty, at the Social Science League, 
 Marie, Esther and the Poet's wife came up 
 and congratulated her. "Maggie is now a 
 varietist," they exclaimed, happily. "See 
 how happy she looks, and how bright her eyes 
 are! Maggie has a lover!" It was naive of 
 them, and incorrect, and incorrect because of 
 the fullness of Maggie's life, not because of 
 its poverty. Her anarchist lady friends do 
 not work, and, in comparison, are anaemic 
 physically and emotionally. 
 
 Anton encourages this attitude in his wife: 
 he wants her as alive as possible, but he also 
 wants her to be an artist in life, not a propa- 
 gandist in word or act. He wants her, as he 
 once said to me, to drive swift horses, but he 
 doesn't want the horses to run away with her. 
 
 "There is danger in it, Hapgood," he said, 
 "but it's fun." 
 
 He has much the same attitude towards 
 Maggie as he has towards his work in the 
 [384]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 Unions and his efforts among men. It is in- 
 teresting and exciting for him to get as much 
 life as he can to play the game fully, hoping, 
 of course, to win, but risking loss at every 
 turn. He is certainly the man for her, for 
 she enjoys life, and makes others enjoy life. 
 I was at her house often for dinner, and it 
 seemed to me a full, rich place, this working- 
 man's house, with this good and cheerful and 
 active and free-minded woman, her healthy, 
 well-taken-care-of children, clean house, good 
 food and interesting guests, anarchists, So- 
 cialists, Conservatives, but always working 
 people. It seemed always so real to me, the 
 ideas so based upon facts, so instinctively in- 
 evitable. Even the thoughts that were crude 
 and violent pointed so forcibly to a social sit- 
 uation. And what optimism and energy and 
 temperament and humanity, what hope! 
 
 And yet I remember saying, a few months 
 earlier, "There is no charm about the work- 
 ingman. He lacks the interest of the thief, 
 the Ghetto Jew, or the strolling actress. 
 There is no picturesque quality, nothing in 
 the workingman but what suggests a hard, 
 passionate clash between the classes ; one feels 
 a coming revolution of the proletariat, but 
 [385]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 its expression lacks charm it is suffering, 
 hard, sullen, ugly." 
 
 But the time soon came when I could hard- 
 ly take myself away from Anton's house and 
 friends. Passion, poetry, warmth, reality, 
 intimacy; frankness a thorough acceptance 
 of human attributes, an instinctive way of 
 taking life, very similar to that of the great 
 Walt Whitman. Other people, of so-called 
 "culture," I felt were comparatively anaemic 
 and of a piece. The workingmen seemed 
 more intelligent to me about economic mat- 
 ters and social questions than university stu- 
 dents or even university professors. The 
 ideas I heard expressed by the professional 
 economists or sociologists, by the reforming 
 radical politicians or philanthropists, were 
 put with more convincingness if with less 
 rhetoric in the circle of the laboring class. It 
 became clearer and clearer to me that the 
 origin of social ideas was in the society I was 
 then frequenting. 
 
 Even superficial culture, many of these peo- 
 ple, particularly those who have become out 
 and out anti-social, and quitting work, have 
 been able to devote themselves to the phrase 
 people like Marie and Terry have in a 
 [386]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 marked degree. I shall try to record a more 
 or less typical conversation of the more or 
 less "cultured" kind which took place one day 
 at Anton's house, at dinner and after, when 
 there were as guests, besides myself, Marie 
 and Terry, Jay and Esther, the Poet's wife, 
 Schmidtty and his sister, a robust working 
 girl of the more or less conservative kind. 
 
 "Esther," I said, "you are a beautiful 
 woman." 
 
 These women do not understand or want 
 compliments which do not go to the soul. 
 Esther did not enjoy my remark, which was 
 sincere, and she said: 
 
 "I only care for feeling, for the inside." 
 Esther is so serious and sentimental that An- 
 ton, who always fights away from the expres- 
 sion of intense feeling, said, as a diversion : 
 
 "Here's to man's freedom and woman's 
 slavery. We were perhaps economically 
 wrong in making women slaves to begin with, 
 for that put them in a position where they 
 can deal men horrible blows. The man feels 
 the woman is his property, and so the woman, 
 if she wants, can injure him in his property 
 feeling and his sentimental feeling at the same 
 time. It is the punishment of the autocrat. 
 [387]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 But now we've got them there, we must keep 
 them there to a certain extent. For the most 
 destructive thing a man can do is to take a 
 woman seriously and put her on an equality. 
 She is not capable of it." 
 
 "You're talking through your hat, Anton," 
 said Maggie. "You know you don't believe 
 a word of all that. You bet you take me 
 seriously. If you didn't, I'd soon make you." 
 
 "I don't blame Esther," said Jay, "for hav- 
 ing such a high ideal. That is why I loved 
 her. To be happy we need an ideal. That 
 is why in some ways the laboring class to-day 
 is so unfortunate. Not only is the material 
 result of our labor taken away from us, but 
 also the ideal of work. We must seek our 
 ideal outside of our labor and that is why 
 some of us are anarchists and some trades- 
 unionists, some free-lovers and some Social- 
 ists. The employers have an ideal of work, 
 and that takes away from them the need of 
 other ideals. 
 
 "You anarchists make me sick," said Anton, 
 aggressively. He was sitting in his flannel 
 shirt, with his collar ofif, and shoving down 
 Maggie's well-cooked food with great speed. 
 "You are all fanatics, crazy about something. 
 [388]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 Esther and Marie are crazy about Variety,' 
 Terry is crazy about class-consciousness, and 
 about what he calls consistency; the Poet is 
 crazy with egotism, Hapgood is crazy to butt 
 into what doesn't concern him, and Maggie 
 is crazy about monogamy." 
 
 "Guess again," said Maggie. 
 
 "To show how crazy the anarchists are," 
 continued Anton, ignoring Maggie's remark, 
 "look how they criticize trades-unionism with- 
 out ever going to the meetings and not know- 
 ing or caring what's being done. They jump 
 on the movement as hard as they do on reli- 
 gion or capitalism." 
 
 "Well," said Terry, "at the best, trades- 
 unionism is only a makeshift, an amelioration 
 of conditions, and is not ideal. Besides, it 
 is bourgeois, middle-class. Take your worthy 
 President, Gompers, who could be more bour- 
 geois than Gompers?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Anton, "Gompers is a side- 
 stepper, I must admit. But it is better than 
 having always a panacea that doesn't work. 
 At the anti-trust meeting the other day, they 
 all had their panaceas, Jane Addams, George 
 Schilling, Tucker all but Gompers and he 
 in his speech again showed how clever he is 
 [389]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 in saying nothing, in stepping aside. But, 
 after all, we must compromise, to get any- 
 thing. If we all were as fanatical as the an- 
 archists, there would be nothing but hot air 
 in the world." 
 
 "You talk about stupid things," said Marie, 
 "just as if there were no women present. 
 Let's talk about love. By the way, I didn't 
 realize how interesting little Sadie is. But 
 the other night, when she kissed me good-bye 
 after the meeting, I saw there was something 
 in her. Her kiss filled me with surprise and 
 emotion." 
 
 "You are about the craziest in the whole 
 bunch," remonstrated Anton. 
 
 But Marie had determined the topic for* a 
 time, and they talked about love between the 
 sexes with a downrightness and a frankness 
 and at the same time a knowledge of the emo- 
 tional facts which made me feel that I was 
 associating with people who at least were civi- 
 lized, and not over-civilized. They had 
 sprung into emotional maturity without the 
 intermediate processes of physical degenera- 
 tion which are often an accompaniment. The 
 fact that they belonged to the working class 
 was a sweet preservative against the pale 
 [390]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 anaemia of emotional freedom which one is 
 likely to find in other sets. 
 
 Towards the end of the long dinner, Anton 
 addressed me, and said: 
 
 "You have been with us now a couple of 
 months. You butted in, but you have made 
 yourself welcome. We have all enjoyed your 
 intelligence, and I particularly have enjoyed 
 your way of putting things. You say rough 
 things so delicately that for working people 
 it is quite a treat. Let's have a speech. Tell 
 Ub what you think about the labor movement 
 and about anarchism. And don't imitate 
 Sam Gompers and side-step all over the room. 
 It's not a dance, but a talk we want." 
 
 It was a large order, but I knew that I was 
 among tolerant friends, so I said: , 
 
 "I can only repeat the things which you and 
 your friends have either thought or felt about 
 the movement and about society. Left to my- 
 self or to books I should never have had any 
 ideas on these subjects. Perhaps you won't 
 recognize yourselves or your ideas in my 
 words. If not, it is only because of my man- 
 ner of expression. What I say, merely inter- 
 prets, in my opinion, what you think, and, in 
 [391]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 an inadequate way, embodies the results of 
 your thought and feeling. 
 
 "As I have often told you, I have found 
 Chicago wonderfully interesting. Before I 
 became absorbed in you, I saw much of the 
 settlement workers, of the 'smart' people, the 
 young politicians and business men, the jour- 
 nalists and the university professors. And I 
 found them all very broad, for their situation, 
 very tolerant. There seemed to me a wonder- 
 ful feeling of democracy throughout the city, 
 a lack of snobbishness that I had never felt 
 elsewhere. 
 
 "This was interesting, inspiring, but until 
 I came in contact with you, I did not know 
 how interesting it all was. It is you who 
 have given me the key to all the rest. It is 
 the man-in-the-stFeet, the common man, the 
 working man, who is giving tone to all the 
 rest of society. It is your ideas that they are 
 expressing. It is your sentiment that is grad- 
 ually affecting all classes. It is your philos- 
 ophy that is affecting the old philosophy, 
 broadening it, giving it a larger human basis. 
 
 "Among the newer and better politicians 
 there has been a vital reaction against the 
 principle of special privileges so nicely 
 [392]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 worked out by the business class. The last 
 few years have been years of reform. Behind 
 this reform has been the working class. Pres- 
 sure from beneath has forced these social pal- 
 liatives, such as the insurance investigations, 
 trust legislation, etc., etc. The feeling for 
 municipal ownership has amounted almost to 
 a religion. The back-bone of that movement 
 has been the laboring class. The President 
 of the United States is accused by the reac- 
 tionaries of being a 'radical,' a Socialist. He 
 is a politician, and he would never have been 
 forced into a semi-radical attitude had it not 
 been for the pressure which h^d its original 
 impulse in the working class. 
 
 "It is natural that the source of radical 
 thought should be more radical than the re- 
 sults on the established machinery. The re- 
 mark of your labor leader, Anton, in the Pitts- 
 burg Convention, that you are all anarchists, 
 has some truth. There are very few anarch- 
 ists like Terry fortunately [Perhaps that's 
 true, interjected Terry, smilingly] but I find 
 in all of you the germs of a feeling against, 
 if I may so put it. You all distrust, more or 
 less, the present legal and judicial machinery, 
 the present law, the present morality. You 
 [393]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 all those who think believe there is a mo- 
 rality higher than the morality embodied 
 in law. For instance, the law 'thou shalt not 
 be a scab' is for you a higher morality than 
 the law against 'disorderly conduct' and riot 
 in the street. 
 
 "This element of anarchism, therefore, goes 
 deep. It is embodied in the very essence of 
 the economic and social situation. I believe, 
 personally, that while it has its abuses, it 
 makes for good. It puts into organized so- 
 ciety a distrust of itself, disturbs it, and leads 
 to reform, in self-defense. It can never be 
 realized, in any extreme form perhaps it 
 ought not to be realized but it is an excellent 
 tonic: it helps to keep society from being too 
 smug, too routine, too unjust, too uninterest- 
 ing. We must, in all advance, have a destruc- 
 tive element, and when the destructive ele- 
 ment is based upon something as positive, as 
 warm and as humane as the labor movement, 
 it deserves sympathetic attention. 
 
 "In the course of my life I have had one 
 deeply anarchical experience. As a student, 
 I thought I could arrive, by the study of 
 metaphysics, to a knowledge of the objects of 
 metaphysics God, immortality. Free Will, 
 [394]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 etc. But after reading the history of meta- 
 physics I found that no metaphysician ever ar- 
 rived at the specific thing he was aiming at 
 no one ever did or will discover the unknow- 
 able. At the same time that I arrived at this 
 negative conclusion, my human experience be-- 
 came richer. I realized the number of beau- 
 tiful and interesting concrete things and ex- 
 periences there are. This double situation re- 
 sulted in my becoming a metaphysical an- 
 archist. With it, came a deeper pleasure in 
 literature, in art, in people, in life. It seemed 
 as a cock-tail before dinner: it made things 
 more interesting. 
 
 "This desire for more abundant life, more 
 pleasure, more beauty, more understanding, 
 is at the basis of all sincere anarchical feel- 
 ing. The great poets and great artists and 
 great spiritual seers have been anarchical in 
 regard to old forms and ideas in their art; 
 that is, they have had an element of anarch- 
 ism; though at the same time they have felt 
 the beauty of the old. 
 
 "So, too, is love. Those anarchists who are 
 
 free-lovers sincerely so, for among those are 
 
 many fakers are partly right and partly 
 
 wrong, in my opinion. A husband and wife 
 
 [395]
 
 The Spirit of Labor, 
 
 get along best together when there is an ele- 
 ment of uncertainty, of possible change, of 
 growth ; when each is interested in some other 
 person or persons of the opposite sex. If 
 their relation is the best, this interest in others 
 helps them to be more interested in one an- 
 other, and their relation toge*^her. It makes 
 it more exciting, more rich. ,. 
 
 "Balance seems peculiarly necessary in this 
 relation. Those among you anarchists who 
 are not extremists in this matter seem to me 
 to get the most out of this side of life. There 
 is a monotony in too much freedom that is 
 worse than the monotony of too much con- 
 servatism. The ideal is to have one deep and 
 overpowering relation to which all others 
 serve as stimulants and emotional comments. 
 One of your anarchists admitted to me the 
 other day: 'Free-love women have no mys- 
 tery. The conservative women are the rich- 
 est. Sin is a luxury, and so it would be a 
 pity to abolish it.' 
 
 "That sentiment is really immoral, but there 
 is a moral truth at the bottom of it, more 
 ethically expressed by Balzac, than by your 
 anarchist. He says: 
 
 " *It is an immense proof of inferiority in a 
 [396]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 man not to be able to make of his wife his 
 mistress. Variety in love is a sign of impo- 
 tence. Constancy will always be the genius 
 of love, the proof of an immense force, which 
 constitutes the poet.' 
 
 "Anarchism in love should work against the 
 too stolid, and stupid and routine institutional 
 side, not against ideals. Then, indeed, an- 
 archy is bad. If it tends to destroy ideals, 
 away with it. But I feel that with you people 
 the true function of anarchism is to sustain 
 and keep alive the ideal. The life of a man 
 like Kropotkin almost a saint shows this to 
 be the case, for his life is like that of many 
 anarchists. It is typical. 
 
 "A pathetic and amusing and absurd thing 
 is the ordinary attitude of society, everywhere 
 except in England, towards the avowed an- 
 archists. In England, they are left alone, and 
 no harm is done. But they are persecuted 
 everjrwhere else, even in America, and yet, if 
 not disturbed, they are entirely harmless. 
 Anarchy, indeed, is a gentle idealism, though 
 that is not the general idea. The popular 
 conception of an anarchist is about as near the 
 truth as the popular conception of a Jew or 
 of a witch. But when I met the anarchists 
 [397]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 among the laboring men I found something 
 unusually gentle, unusually low-toned, and 
 with an avowed and actual hatred of force. 
 The Socialists are like bulls in comparison, 
 and the police and capitalists strong-arm men. 
 
 "Anarchism begins with a revolt against 
 economic injustice, but it ends as an aesthetic 
 ideal. It is the fine art of the proletariat. In 
 function, it is stimulating, an attitude of mind. 
 It has a practical side, as it allows a man to 
 be an opportunist in life, while having a high 
 ideal. Of this kind of anarchist, Clarence 
 Darrow is the most prominent among you. 
 It emphasizes individuality and the rights of 
 the soul, as against convention and law. In 
 marriage, it fosters insecurity and therefore 
 love and interest. It is a remedy against 
 snobbishness, as it renders social distinctions 
 insecure. Springing from the people, it finds 
 great things in the people. 
 
 "Anarchism is something like the Catholic 
 Church. It is tolerant and elastic, and in- 
 cludes everything except intolerance, and 
 sometimes even that, generally that with the 
 declared anarchists, who after all are not the 
 real anarchists, who have no culte. The most 
 perfect anarchist I know is one of the deans 
 [398]
 
 Their Points of View. 
 
 of a university. It is peculiarly human and 
 makes room even for graft, as part of an im- 
 perfect system. 
 
 "Although anarchism is an aesthetic ideal, 
 it tends to become fixed, and therefore unaes- 
 thetic. Its object is to get rid of prejudice 
 and the routine of institutions, but it often 
 wrongly tends to do away at the same time 
 with the beauty there is in institution, such 
 as marriage, forms of literature, history and 
 art. I find in many of you not indeed in the 
 most self-conscious a hatred of poetry, fairy 
 tales, history, a hatred of whatever conserva- 
 tive people like, irrespective of whether it is 
 good or evil. This is the point where anarch- 
 ism itself becomes routine, founded on narrow 
 laziness of mind, and needing itself to be re- 
 formed." 
 
 "You express pretty well," commented 
 Terry, "Kropotkin's idea of anarchism, a gen- 
 tle sweet sort. There is another kind, how- 
 ever, a more egotistic one, that is Tucker's 
 way, and mine. Anarchism is dangerous, 
 even when bombs don't come in. It does tend 
 to destroy the beautiful stability and tran- 
 quillity of the bourgeois citizen, and if real- 
 ized would do harm ; but the harm would be 
 [399]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 very slight in comparison with the harm of 
 the present state of things." 
 
 "AH this kind of talk," said Anton, "would 
 be tommyrot, if it were not for one thing. 
 The important feature of it all is, as Hapgood 
 says, that it is based on the Labor Movement. 
 It is a warning to the world that the condi- 
 tions under which workingmen live tend to 
 bring about certain ideas. And yet damn 
 fools like you, Terry, sneer at the labor move- 
 ment, when there wouldn't be any anarchists, 
 if it were not for the labor movement." 
 
 But Marie and Esther and Maggie were 
 getting nervous, so they brought the talk 
 around again to Subject Number One. 
 
 [400]
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A Ripe Letter. 
 
 The time for me to leave Chicago came 
 around, and it was with a heavy heart and a 
 feeling of moral wrong that I realized the 
 way things conflict in this world. My fare- 
 well evening at Anton's was as interesting as 
 ever, though the coming separation gave it 
 a touch of gloom. When I arrived that even- 
 ing, Anton was telling his son about some of 
 his hobo experiences how he swung along 
 the Grand Canon on the trucks of a passenger 
 train. Schmidtty was there, and noticed in 
 Anton a certain lack of mechanical observa- 
 tion, the thing that had made it so difficult 
 for Anton to learn his trade: he had done it 
 by sheer force of will and energy. Yet pri- 
 marily, he is a liver, an expresser, and a phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 He spoke, at this last meeting, more seri- 
 ously than usual, about things connected with 
 [401]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 the labor situation, marriage and work. "No 
 one can help the men," he said, "except they 
 themselves. It is hopeless from the outside, 
 and difficult from the inside. Education is 
 the great thing, not necessarily from books. 
 Tom Morgan, who for so long was prominent 
 in the movement and afterwards as a Socialist, 
 got his mental start from copying architec- 
 tural designs while working at his trade. 
 There are many roads, but few results. 
 
 "I have enjoyed you and your intelligence 
 and your way of saying things. You repre- 
 sent, in a way, another class, and that, too, I 
 feel, has broadened me." 
 
 I explained, with even more sincerity, how 
 he had pleased and influenced me. Maggie 
 said very little, but all these meetings in which 
 there had been so much free talk, so much en- 
 joyment and so much sympathy, had meant 
 much to her, as her tears showed. We talked 
 about marriage, and the great pleasure there 
 is in utter frankness and honesty in life. The 
 latter part of the evening, we three were alone 
 together: I, who had never worked with my 
 hands in my life, much universitied, much be- 
 cultured so to speak; he, a woodworker, a 
 former tramp and she a workingman's wife, 
 [402 ]
 
 A Ripe Letter. 
 
 who took in washing and was, as far as "class" 
 went, a most simple girl of German origin. I 
 am forced to remember these distinctions and 
 differences now, for the purpose of this social 
 study that I have made. But I felt no social 
 or intellectual difference between us, essen- 
 tially, at the time, or now. In them I knew 
 I had met my equals at least; in some ways 
 my superiors, people whom I could love, and 
 as I went away that evening I reflected sadly 
 on the baseless character of snobbishness and 
 the fundamental cruelty and meaninglessness 
 of class. 
 
 After I had been some weeks in New York, 
 I received from Anton a letter about Labor 
 politics and also some sentiments about min- 
 isters, interesting as showing greater tolerance 
 towards these persons than he was able to 
 show formerly. ~ 
 
 "I need not go into details in my excuse 
 for not writing, for you are onto my game. 
 Maggie is out to-night for a good time, so I 
 am alone with the little ones, and as I feel 
 at best, I thought I would drop you a few 
 lines. I had a good report to the Federation, 
 and they had it printed with my picture. We 
 had another election in the Federation Sun- 
 [403]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 day. I was one of the judges and Madden's 
 gang was put down and out. They had a 
 report around town that I was to be Mad- 
 den's candidate for President. You can bet 
 it made me hot under the collar. 
 
 "So on the day of nomination, my name was 
 presented as a candidate for President. John 
 Fitzpatrick and John Levine were also candi- 
 dates. I arose to the occasion and declared 
 in open meeting that the report of my being 
 Madden's candidate was a damned lie, that 
 I declined in favor of Fitzpatrick, and would 
 always remain a clean-cut trade-unionist with- 
 out any political intrigue. You can bet I was 
 cheered all over the hall. But I made the 
 Madden gang good and sore, as I gave them 
 hell right on the floor. At the election, about 
 1 20 policemen were present. I and many 
 others dislike very much to have the police 
 in our Union affairs, but we could not help 
 it, as we did not want a repetition of the Don- 
 nelly's slugging. 
 
 "You remember my telling you about Fitz- 
 patrick working against me when I was 
 elected delegate to Pittsburg. He got up in 
 the meeting, you remember, and made a 
 speech in favor of the other fellow. Well, 
 [404]
 
 'A Ripe Letter. 
 
 my time came, and I made a speech in his 
 favor and when the votes were counted, and 
 he was elected, I went to him, gave him my 
 hand, and told him I was ready to assist him 
 with all my power (if I had any) to conduct 
 a clean administration. I wish you could 
 have seen his face. It was a case of my being 
 a Christian and returning good for evil. And 
 while he is a strong, robust man, not very sen- 
 timental, the tears rolled down his face, and 
 he asked me to overlook his mistake, in his 
 misjudgment of me. I was pleasantly af- 
 fected and told him he could rest assured that 
 my love for this great labor movement was 
 strong enough to overcome the desire for re- 
 taliation, when such action would tend to 
 check the progress of our movement. *I trust 
 and hope,' I said, 'that your talent and ability 
 will at all times be used in the cause of the 
 proletariat' 
 
 "I expect that Madden will lie down now 
 and admit his defeat. Out of a total of 635 
 votes cast, Fitzpatrick received 396 and John 
 Levine, Madden's man, 196. This was in 
 spite of the fact that Madden had been able 
 to induce some unions, among them several 
 of the teamsters' unions, and all the unafEli- 
 [405]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ated bricklayers unions, to join the Federation 
 just before the election ; and besides had got- 
 ten out phony cards, which we did not dis- 
 cover at first. But as soon as we noticed the 
 illegal cards we put a damper on them. 
 Some men came to vote on bricklayers' cards, 
 but as they looked about as much like brick- 
 layers as the Anarchist Poet looks like a sewer 
 digger, they were challenged, and when it was 
 found they did not know the address of the 
 man whose name appeared on their card, they 
 were promptly denied the right to vote. In 
 one case, a teamster came up to vote with a 
 card which bore the name of a delegate from 
 the cement finishers' union. The tally 
 showed that the cement finisher had already 
 voted. 
 
 "We refused to let him vote. He left the 
 hall, but returned with Jerry McCarthy, Pres- 
 ident of the Truck Drivers' Union, who vigor- 
 ously protested. He made an attack upon 
 Nockels, and the police immediately threw 
 him out, and also the other teamster. Out- 
 side of this little fray there was no sign of 
 violence. 
 
 "I don't know if they will repeat these 
 methods six months hence, but the feeling is 
 [406]
 
 A Ripe Letter. 
 
 so strong against Madden that it is difficult 
 for one to conceive how they can be foolish 
 enough to continue in their bulldozing tac- 
 tics. Yet we must expect very strenuous ef- 
 forts on the part of the grafter to maintain 
 his power, when it is slowly waning. You 
 may expect sarcasm and criticism from him 
 in one direction and pleading with crocodile 
 tears in the direction where there appears to 
 be a faint hope of deception. But when his 
 power is lost, it makes very little difference 
 whether it be in the political arena, or on the 
 economic battle-field, there remains nothing 
 for him to do but to use bulldozing methods 
 in the hope that the honest man may fear him. 
 In the grafter's feelings there is not the slight- 
 est conception of morality. His first, last, 
 and only object, is to regain his lost power, 
 and in the action of the grafter, the old say- 
 ing, the end justifies the means, is typical in 
 its conception. 
 
 "I am pleased, however, that with the cen- 
 tralization of capital, the awakening of the 
 public conscience becomes greater and 
 greater. This is especially true in the organ- 
 ized Labor Movement, and I look forward 
 with more and more hope that the near fu- 
 [407]
 
 The Spirit of Labor. 
 
 ture will show clearly the necessity of remov- 
 ing a system that affords the opportunity for 
 the cunning-minded to accumulate not only 
 millions, but billions, on the one hand, and 
 that deprives honest efforts in millions of 
 cases from the just results, on the other hand. 
 
 "I feel extremely thankful that a man like 
 T. Lawson has revealed himself to the world 
 and has made the opportunity more favorable 
 for the little agitators like myself, and thou- 
 sands of others. To point out, and leave, a 
 lasting impression on the minds of the people 
 as to the sweeping injustice of this condition : 
 this is a great thing. I hope the political 
 arena will produce more Jeromes, and Folks 
 and Johnsons, who although their philosophy 
 seems to me superficial or nothing, and their 
 minds not very deep, yet are good men in ac- 
 tion, and the kind we need. They possess the 
 courage necessary to challenge the audacity 
 of the grafter and the ignorance of the parti- 
 san voter, in which ignorance rests the real 
 strength of the machine. If we could have 
 one thousand such men, there would be 'some- 
 thing doing.* 
 
 "You will perhaps be surprised when I tell 
 you that I was invited to speak at the Olivet 
 [408]
 
 ^A Ripe Letter. 
 
 Church. I accepted an invitation to dine 
 with the minister. I assure you that I had an 
 interesting talk with him. You may laugh, 
 but it is true. He is a communist, as far as 
 the ideal is concerned, and in practice an op- 
 portunist, but a man who is willing to work 
 for the great army of humanity who need all 
 the best things of life. I spoke on trades- 
 unionism. They appeared well satisfied with 
 my talk, and urged me to speak on the tramp, 
 at another occasion. I don't know what your 
 opinion will be of this incident (and to be 
 frank, I don't care), whether I am going to 
 the bad, or whether the ministers are im- 
 proving. 
 
 "This is all I have to describe, since you 
 went away. I might add that you have left 
 a good impression on our friends and that we 
 miss you very much. I am just at present 
 pacing the floor on Sunday morning (having 
 begun this letter last night) and my dear 
 monogamic wife is making this stenographic 
 report. Maggie says there isn't any use in 
 sending her love, as you have taken away 
 more already than you have kept, but I 
 know that you, having been in Japan and 
 many other places, have the capacity for con- 
 [409]
 
 A Ripe Letter. 
 
 serving good things. I remain, yours, for 
 Truth, Liberty and Justice, 
 
 "Anton." 
 
 On this note of good-citizenship and social 
 playfulness, I let my dear friend rest, and put 
 before the public his spirit the spirit of the 
 alive and progressive American workingman 
 of the present day. 
 
 [410]
 
 Th 
 
 e 
 
 Autobiography of a Thief 
 
 A true story of the life of a criminal 
 taken down and edited by Mr. Hapgood. 
 
 Cloth. 349 pp. $1.25 postpaid. 
 
 COMMENTS OF THE CRITICS 
 
 " The book as a whole impresses the reader as an accurate presenta- 
 tion of the thief's personal point of view, a vivid picture of the society 
 in which he lived and robbed and of the influences, moral and political, 
 by which he was surrounded. The story indeed has_ something^ of the 
 quality of Defoe's 'Colonel Jacque'; it is filled with convincing de- 
 tails." New York Evening Post. 
 
 " To one reader at least one weary reader of many books which 
 seem for the most part ' flat, stale and unprofitable ' this is a book 
 that seems eminently ' worth while.' Indeed, every word of the book, 
 from cover to cover, is supremely, vitally interesting. Most novels are 
 tame beside it, and few recent books or any kind are so rich in sug- 
 gestiveness." Interior. 
 
 " What is the value of such an autobiography of a thief as Mr. 
 Hapgood has given us? It is this. Professional crime is one of the 
 overprosperous branches of industry in our large cities. As a nation 
 we are casting around for means to check it, or, in other words, to 
 divert the activities of the professional criminals into some other in- 
 dustry in which these men can satisfy their peculiar talents and at 
 the same time ^et a living with less inconvenience to the mass of 
 citizens. The criminal, being as much a human being as the rest of 
 us, must be known as he is before we can either influence him per- 
 sonally or legislate for him effectually. If we treat him as we would 
 the little girl who stole her brother's candy mice or as the man who 
 under great stress of temptation yields to the impulse to steal against 
 his struggling will, we will fail, for we overlook the very essence of 
 the matter his professionalism. It is safe to say that perusal of 
 Mr. Hapgood's book will help many a student of criminology to find 
 his way through the current tangle of statistics, reform plans, analyses 
 of ' graft ' and what not, by the very light of humanity that is in 
 it." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " The manner and style of ' The Autobiography of a Thief ' is that 
 which attracts even the fastidious lovers of literature. It is the life- 
 story of a real thief unmistakably impressive in its force and truth. As 
 a matter of course, the book is on the hinge of a novel, but it contains 
 the gem and sparkle of genuineness and its complication has the flavor 
 of accuracy." New Orleans Item.
 
 " It is not only a powerful plea for the reform of abuses in our 
 penitentiaries, but it is an extraordinary revelation of the life of a 
 criminal from his birth up, and an explanation of the conditions which 
 impelled him first to crime and later to attempted reformation." 
 
 New York Herald. 
 
 " The truth found in ' The_ Autobiog^raphy of a Thief ' is not only 
 stranger but far more interesting than much of the present day fiction. 
 The autobiography of ' Light-fingered Jim ' is absorbing, in many pages 
 startling, in its graphicness. ... In spite of its naturalness, daring 
 and directness, the work has a marked literary style a finish that 
 could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. But this adds 
 to rather than detracts from the charm of the book." Philadelphia 
 Public Ledger. 
 
 " No more realistic book has been written for a long time than 
 Hutchins Hapgood's ' The Autobiography of _ a Thief.' No books on 
 criminology and no statistics regarding penal institutions can carry the 
 weight of truth and conviction which this autobiography conveys." 
 
 Chicago Chronicle. 
 
 " As a study in sociology it is splendid ; as a human story it will 
 hold attention, every page of it." Nashville American. 
 
 " It is a clear and g^raphic insight into the lives of the lower world 
 and is written with impressive force. It is a remarkable addition to 
 the literature of the season." Grand Rapids Herald, 
 
 " An illuminating and truly instructive book, and one of terrible 
 fascination." Christian Endeavor World. 
 
 " As a contribution to the study of sociology as illustrated from life 
 and not from mere text-books, the story recorded by Mr. Hapgood 
 will be welcomed by all philanthropic people." New York Observer. 
 
 " It is an absorbing story of the making of a criminal, and is rightly 
 classed by the publishers as a ' human document.' It is absorbing alike 
 to the reader who reads for the diversion of reading and to those who 
 are really thoughtful students of the forces which are working in the 
 life round about them." Brooklyn Life. 
 
 " Those in whom the sense of human oneness and social responsi- 
 bility is strong will be intensely interested in these genuine experiences 
 and in the naive, if perverted, viewpoint of a pick-pocket, thief and 
 burglar who has served three terms in State's prison." Booklovers' 
 Library. 
 
 " It may be that ' Jim ' puts things strongly sometimes, but the spirit 
 of truth at least is plain in every chapter of the book. That, in gen- 
 eral, it is the real thing is the feeling the reader has after he has 
 finished with ' The Autobiography of a Thief.' It is not a pleasant 
 book; it is anything but a book such as ' the young person should re- 
 ceive as a birthday gift. It w a book however which the man anxious 
 to keep track of life in this country should read and ponder over. 
 
 JosiAH Flynt. in the Bookman. 
 
 DUFFIELDraCOMBW 
 
 36EAST2PST.^K^NEW YORK
 
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