"Are they not my brethren?" he said, half smiling. "Well, admit that they are--" (And I knew all along that this was the reason.) "There are other grades--brethren of nearer degree." "None," he ejaculated. "'I dwell among my own people'--I must live among them to understand them." "I should think them rather easy to understand." "I mean to be in sympathy with them," he said gently. "Besides, I am trying to teach them two or three things." "What?" For I confess that my soul had revolted at his surroundings. That surging, foreign-born, foreign-looking, foreign-spoken multitude who had filled the street as I came along through the vile reek of "Little Russia," as it was called, had smothered my charitable feelings. "Well, for one thing, to learn the use of freedom--for another, to learn the proper method and function of organization." "They certainly appear to me to have the latter already--simply by being what they are," I said lightly. "I mean of business organization," Wolffert explained. "I want to break up the sweat shop and the sweat system. We are already making some headway, and have thousands in various kinds of organized business which are quite successful." "I should not think they would need your assistance--from what I saw. They appear to me to have an instinct." "They have," said Wolffert, "but we are teaching them how to apply it. The difficulty is their ignorance and prejudice. You think that they hold you in some distrust and dislike, possibly?" As his tone implied a question, I nodded. "Well, that is nothing to the way in which they regard me. You they distrust as a gentile, but me they detest as a renegade." "Well, I must say that I think you deserve what you get for bringing in such a mass of ignorance. Now, you are an American, and a patriotic one. How do you reconcile it with your patriotism to introduce into the body politic such an element of ignorance, superstition, and unrest?" "Why," said Wolffert, "you don't know our people. The Jew is often an element of ignorance and superstition, though he is not alone in this, but he is never an element of unrest--when he is justly treated," he added after a pause. "But, whatever these people are in this generation, the next generation--the children of this generation--will be useful American citizens. All they require is a chance. Why, the children of these Russian Jews, baited from their own country, are winning all the prizes in the schools," he added, his pale face flushing faintly. "That lad who showed you in is the son of parents who sell second-hand shoes in the next street and cannot speak a word of English, and yet he stands at the head of his class." "No, second!" I said. "How do you know?" "He told me." "The little rascal! See how proud he is of it," said Wolffert triumphantly. "He tried to sell me a pair of shoes."