You
know well enough how much I have lost already."
Samuel listened in breathless excitement to this discussion. Here were
poor people, people with no more resources than he, and at the mercy
of the same forces which had been crushing him. Here was one man who
had lost an eye in the glass works, and another, a railroad brakeman,
who was just out of the hospital after losing a leg. Here were men
pale and haggard from hunger, men with wives and children dependent
upon them; yet they were giving their time and their money--risking
their very existence--in the cause of human freedom! Had he ever met a
group of men like this before? Had he ever dreamed that such men were
living?
He had thought that he was alone, that he had all the burdens of
humanity upon his own shoulders! And now here were people who were
ready to hold up his hands; and from the discussion he gathered that
they were part of a vast organization, that there existed such
"locals" in every city and town in the country. They made their own
nominations and voted for their own candidates at every election; they
published many newspapers and magazines and books. And they were part
of an army of men who were banded together in every civilized nation.
Wherever Capitalism had come, there men were uniting against it; and
every day their power grew--there was nothing that could stop them.
These men had seen the vision of the new time that was coming, and
there burned in them a fire of conviction.
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