IV
THE PLAGUE OF MISCONCEPTIONS
(I)
With cynical hilarity a business friend has just read to me a proposal by Mr. Debs to raise at once "$500,000 for the approaching socialist campaign." "There you have it, like a staged farce. The starved millions, living on the margin of want, are to paint the country red with two million votes for Debs and Seidel. Not a nickel from the big interests, no blackmailing of corporations, but the whole half million subscribed by the starving, downtrodden working class." "And this," he adds, "is but an item. They pour thousands of dollars into Lawrence and a dozen other struck towns at the same time. They have just been buncoed out of a quarter of a million to free the McNamaras. They are paying for costly conventions, hundreds of lectures, and a very expensive press. Doesn't such penury wring the heart?"
In this sportive mood he filled in other features of the comedy, ending with that annihilating phrase—"They must be destitute of humor."
This gentleman had been telling a great deal of truth, but by no means all of it or the most important part of it. These objects of his lampooning are raising far larger funds than he knew. They are doing it all over the world, in countries where the purchasing
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