“And not one of them was a free agent,” he said. “They were all tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and the tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their children—always the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My father! He lied, he stole, he did all sorts of dishonorable things to put bread into my mouth and into the mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine, and it stamped his life out, worked him to death.”
“But you,” I interjected. “You are surely a free agent.”
“Not wholly,” he replied. “I am not tied by my heartstrings. I am often thankful that I have no children, and I dearly love children. Yet if I married I should not dare to have any.”
“That surely is bad doctrine,” I cried.
“I know it is,” he said sadly. “But it is expedient doctrine. I am a revolutionist, and it is a perilous vocation.”
I laughed incredulously.
“If I tried to enter your father’s house at night to steal his dividends from the Sierra Mills, what would he do?”
“He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed,” I answered. “He would most probably shoot you.”
“And if I and a few others should lead a million and a half of men30 into the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great deal of shooting, wouldn’t there?”
“Yes, but you are not doing that,” I objected.
“It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the mere wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth, all the mines, and