term, he and his socialist following are thrown out by the help of the Catholic Church and by the rapturous union of the two old parties which had fought each other for spoils since the Civil War. Socialism compels this fusion of frightened property interests into one grim phalanx bent upon its own safety. At the first threat of a common peril, the old banners—Republican or Democratic are forgotten. It is now property and privilege—the real forces underlying so much of our pretty political vaporing, that stand there like armored colleagues against the new enemy. Socialists are put to rout by this coalition though the socialist cause meantime has grown apace. The chuckling which echoed far and near over this "Milwaukee defeat" may later excite its own soberer reflections.
With wonted good nature, the public, unalarmed and unrebuked, accepts all these results. In accounting for the socialist capture of so large a city, the press insists that the revolt was not after all very "socialistic." It was mainly "only a protest," gathering to itself all manner of critical ill-humors that have little or nothing to do with the thing called socialism.
There is much truth in this, but also some dangerous reserves of error. In a visit to these "socially captured cities" I found not only in centers like Milwaukee and Butte, but in country towns, of which some of us never heard, that hundreds of the more thoughtful citizens had voted the socialist ticket. Many reasons were given me for this, but two of them have special interest. First, because the cynical corruption and decay of our party politics had reached
