heavy laden and long enduring mass of common toilers. Alike to our peril and to our loss, shall we ignore this fact. Steadily to see it and keep it in remembrance is the beginning of such practical wisdom as we may show toward it.
In large numbers, especially in the rank and file, are those who, through some experience, have really wakened to the tragic ugliness of poverty and insecurity.
In the actual facts of working Syndicalism in our very midst, the idea as motive may be seen in any overwrought community where the I. W. W. holds sway. Deeply to convince any ardent and generous nature that our own capitalistic "law and order" is desperately and hopelessly corrupt: that it condemns day by day multitudes of guiltless workers to a life degrading to the individual and perilous to the family, and that their condition steadily grows worse, is in itself an appeal to heroic virtues. What is one utterly gone over to this belief to do? What steps are wise advisers to take with such as these? Several times personally, I have had to face this: once with a lad of twenty who had given himself with complete and tremulous devotion to a cause that seemed to him more sacred than any religion of which he knew. He was moved by an emotion so clean and intense that death on a barricade would have frightened him as little as a girl's smile. Awkwardly, and with stuttering apologies, I could only try to prove how and why I thought he was mistaken. It was easy to see while I talked, that he was listening to other voices that he respected more, and more gladly heard. It was like
