So here was Bunny, in his old tormenting position, watching a fight which he was powerless to stop, or even to mitigate! Ben Riley managed to get work on a ranch; he had to put in twelve hours a day, but all the same, he would come onto the tract at night and distribute his Socialist literature—and of course with a burning sense of bitterness, shared by his friends. Tom Axton was back in the field, at his organizing job, and he and Paul and Bunny had long discussions. Here in the oil workers’ union, just as in the labor college, there was the problem of what to do about the “reds.” You could never have any big group of workers without Socialists and Communists and I. W. W. among them—and all busily “boring.” Paul was endorsing the position of Axton, that the one thing in the oil industry was to save the union; all the workers must concentrate on that, and avoid every cause of division. To this the Socialists and the Communists made answer, all right, they would help; but as the struggle developed, the bosses would call in the police and the courts, and the oil workers, like all other workers, would find they could not stay out of politics, they would have to master the capitalist state. So far the Socialists and Communists would agree; but then would come the question, how was this mastering to be accomplished—and at once the two groups would be imitating the Menzies family! The “Industrial Workers of the World,” as they called themselves, were a separate group, men who had been revolted by the corruption and lack of vision in the old-line unions, and had formed a rival organization, the “One Big Union,” that was some day to take in all the workers. They were hated by the regular labor leaders, and the newspapers represented them as criminals and thugs. When Bunny met one, he found a young fellow clinging to an ideal in the spirit of the early Christian martyrs. These “wobblies” were now being hunted like wild beasts under the “criminal syndicalism act” of California; every one who came into a labor camp or industrial plant was liable to be picked up by a constable or company “bull,” and the mere possession of a red card meant fourteen years in state’s prison. Nevertheless, here they were in Paradise; half a dozen of them had a “jungle” or camping place out in the hills, and they would lure workingmen out to their meetings, and you would see the glare of a camp-fire, and hear the faint echo of the songs they sang out of their “little red song book.” To Bunny this was romantic and mysterious; while to Dad and Mr. Roscoe and the managers of Ross Consolidated, it was as if the “jungle” had been located in the province of Bengal, and the sounds brought in by the night wind had been the screams of man-eating tigers! III