of the unpaid or poorly paid service which this cause now inspires in the world.
One would think that devotions like these might give some seriousness even to the jauntiest critic. It is not for nothing that great multitudes in twenty different countries work like that. They do not upon principle hold out year after year in spite of perpetual defeats and at such direct and heavy costs except for something believed to be of life and death importance. Many of them pay this price for what they know never can be theirs. On a bench by the Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, I sat one night after a socialist meeting with an old man who had seen about all one could see of service in the Confederate cause. He had for years given himself to build up a socialist sentiment in that community. "I shall not live," he said, "to see even the beginning of it. But it is a great cause." He was one of an army, far greater than the South sent to the field, who know that no extra penny can come to them, but they bring their offerings just the same.
This inner spirit and soul of a great movement is what my business friend did not see. Not seeing it, there was only an occasion for mockery.
It was only an absurdity to this critic that men and women who could give so much money for their cause should claim to have a serious grievance. "What do they want?" he asked. "Their reckless giving is proof enough that they are getting on; otherwise they couldn't give it." He was irritated by the aggressions of discontent which seemed to him stupidly unjustified. "The more they get on," he argued, "the worse they behave."
