they were all to be solved by a formula so brief that it could be printed on a visiting card. The complaint these scientists made of our movement was that its ameliorations in city life were retarding that evolution of which they were the inspired custodians and conservators; some of them spoke of it as though it were but a darkling part of that vast conspiracy against mankind in which the capitalists were so shamelessly engaged. If we had only let things alone, it was urged, they might grow so desperate that no one but the Socialists would be capable of dealing with the appalling situation.
But this was the attitude only of that coterie which, unselfishly, no doubt, with the purest of motives, and only until the industrial democracy could be organized and rendered sufficiently class-conscious to take over the work, was directing the destinies of the Socialist party, very much to the fleshly eye in the same manner that the Republican machine controlled that party or the Democratic machine its party, or, before we were done, certain persons attempted to control the Independent movement. So far as I could discern, there was not much difference in them all; the Socialists seemed to rely on all the old weapons that had so long been employed in the world, and so long failed; they seemed to contemplate nothing more than replacement of old orthodoxies with new, old tyrannies with new tyrannies; in a word, to preserve the old vicious circle in which humanity has been revolving impotently and stupidly down all the grooves of time.
