In return for this the Republicans would agree to put up no candidate the following year, when Scully himself came up for reelection as the other alderman from the ward. To this the Republicans had assented at once: but the hell of it was⁠—so Harper explained⁠—that the Republicans were all of them fools⁠—a man had to be a fool to be a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was king. And they didn’t know how to work, and of course it would not do for the Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the War-Whoop League, to support the Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so great except for another fact⁠—there had been a curious development in stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped into being. They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess, said “Bush” Harper. The one image which the word “Socialist” brought to Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soapbox, and shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights.