"I fancy the chiefs of your party would demand a great deal more than a bare decent living. Mr. Bailey, the rights of property rest on just this fact in human nature: A man will work better for himself than he will for somebody else. And you can't get him to work unless he is guaranteed the fruits of his labor. Capital is brain, and Labor is muscle, but the brain has as much to do with the creation of wealth as muscle: more, for it can invent machines and do without muscle, while muscle cannot do without brain. You can't alter human nature, Mr. Bailey. If you had a Commune, every man would be for himself there as he is here: the weak would have less protection than even now, for all the restraints of morality, which are bound up inseparably with rights of property, would have been thrown aside. Marx and Lasallis and Bradlaugh, clever as they are, can't prevent the survival of the fittest. You knock your head against a stone wall, Mr. Bailey, when you fight society. You have been knocking it all your life, and now you are angry because your head is hurt. If you had never tried to strip other men of their earnings because you fancied you ought to have more, as skilful a blacksmith as you would have saved money and been a capitalist himself. Supposing you give it up? Our firm will give you a chance to make ploughshares and earn twenty dollars a week if you will only promise not to strike us in return the first chance you get." The workingman had listened with a curling lip. "Do you mean that for an offer?" he said in a smothered voice. "I mean it for an offer, certainly." "Oh, William!" cried his wife, turning appealing eyes up to his face. He grew suddenly white, and brought his clenched hand heavily down on the table. The dishes rattled with the jar, and the baby, scared at the noise, began to scream. "Then," said Bailey, "you may just understand that a man ain't always a sneak if he _is_ poor; and you can be glad you ain't a man that's tempting me to turn traitor." "I am sure my friend didn't mean to hurt your feelings," Mrs. Greymer explained quickly, giving the countess that expressive side-glance which much more plainly than words says, "Now you _have_ done it!" Mrs. Bailey was walking up and down soothing the baby: the little boy looked on open-eyed. "I am sorry if I have said anything which has seemed like an insult," said the countess: "I certainly didn't intend one. Perhaps after you have thought it all over you will feel differently. You know where to find me. Good-evening." She held out her hand, which Bailey did not seem to see, smiled on the little boy and went out, leaving Mrs. Greymer behind.