Beginning nearly a century ago, these workmgmen had taken the spirit of Jesus and Isaiah and Milton and Shelley, and had worked out a scientific basis for it, and a method whereby it could be made to count in the world of affairs. They had analyzed all the evils of modern society--poverty and luxury, social and political corruption, prostitution, crime and war; they had not only discovered the causes of them, but had laid down with mathematical precision the remedies, and had gone on to carry the remedies into effect. In every civilized land upon the globe they were at work as a political party of protest; they were holding conventions and adopting programs; they had an enormous literature, they were publishing newspapers and magazines, many of them having circulations of hundreds of thousands of copies. The strangest thing of all was this. Thyrsis was an educated man--or was supposed to be. He had spent five years in schools, and nine years in colleges and universities; he had given the scholars of the world full opportunity to guide him to whatever was of importance. Also, he had been an omnivorous reader upon his own impulse; and here he was, at the end of it all--practically ignorant that this enormous movement existed! In economic classes in college there had, of course, been some mention of Socialism; but this had been of the utopian variety, the dreams of Plato and St. Simon and Fourier. There had been some account of the innumerable communities which had sprung up in America--with careful explanation, however, that they had all proven failures. Also one heard vaguely of Marx and Lassalle, two violent men, whose ideas were still popular among the ignorant masses of Europe, but could be of no concern to the fortunate inhabitants of a free Republic. And then, after this, to come upon some piece of writing--such as, for instance, the “Communist Manifesto”! To read this mile-stone in the progress of civilization, this marvellous exposition of the development of human societies, and of the forces which drive and control them; and to realize that two lonely students, who had cast in their lot with the exploited toilers, had been able to predict the whole course of political and industrial evolution for sixty years, and to foresee and expound with precision the ultimate outcome of the whole process--matters of which the orthodox economists were still as ignorant as babes unborn!