thinks that—he's not going to help the other labourers to combine against capital, is he?"
I suppose my face showed that I did not regard this as a satisfactory explanation of the failure of American cilivisation to produce a Labour party. My friend went on to justify his general statement by quoting a particular case.
"I'm an engineer," he said, "and I'm in charge of a big job away out in what you'd call the wilds. That section isn't settled much—just a few farmers scattered about; and my crowd fixed up in a little wooden town the company built for them. There are a couple of thousand of them—and a pretty tough lot they are—Slavs mostly, with a sprinkling of Italians. Scum!"
He spoke the last word with venom that surprised me in a citizen of the land of human equality—the land that fought to secure the negro his rights as a man and a brother.
"Some time ago," he went on, "we had trouble with them—not a strike; it doesn't come to that—just trouble over some agreement the company made the men sign. I'm not saying it was quite a legal agreement, for it wasn't; but it was good enough and nobody lost by it. Well, the trouble wouldn't have amounted to much if it hadn't been for a big, husky Russian—a sulky devil of a man who started talking about knifing the company's officers, chiefly me.
"I knew what was going on, but I didn't see
