He had surprised all his listeners and many were full of enthusiasm before the future he indicated; but some were angry; some went in doubt. The younger men were with him and the older could not deny that there was reason and pitiless justice behind his demands. The women who heard him wondered at the ease with which he had spoken and held his audience. They were impressed with the applause that had greeted his sentiments and judged that he must have right on his side to have won a reception so enthusiastic. Henry Barefoot, the boilerman, walked by Ernest Trood, while Harold Spry and Daisy Finch listened to them. “It’s got to come,” declared Barefoot. “We used to talk of these problems in the merchant marine twenty-five years ago, and we knew then that things weren’t right; but our generation was dumb, because our brains weren’t educated to pull together. We ate our mouldy biscuits and rancid salt pork and shivered in a gale of wind, because we knew the ship’s bottom was rotten; and we cussed the owners out of their snug beds ashore to hell; but we was driven cattle, you may say—had to go on with it—because there was nothing else for sailor men to do. But our children have gone to school. That’s the difference.” “And the rich men sent ’em there, Henry,” said Mr. Trood. “They did, because they hadn’t any choice, Ernest. If they’d known what would come of it, they’d have kept ’em out of school and left the poor man’s children to fill the rich men’s pockets, instead of giving them their birthright of education. ’Twasn’t squire and parson sent ’em to school, but those who had a fairer sense of justice; and long-headed chaps like Kellock are the result.” “He’s got a lot to learn, however. There’s no such things as equality and never can be. Because men ain’t born equal, Henry.” “He don’t argue that, Mr. Trood,” explained Spry. “He argues that we are handicapped out of the hunt from the start. He says, ‘let all start fair’; he don’t say all can win.” “Yes, he does,” returned Trood. “He says all should win. He tells us that a man’s intellect is an accident, and that, in justice, them with big brains should give their superfluity to the fools, so as all should share and share alike. And that’s not human nature. Am I, that have worked like a slave to win my position and put all my heart and soul into paper-making from my youth up, to go and seek that lazy dog I sacked last week and say: ‘You’re a damned, worthless waster, but here’s half my wages’?” “I grant he was out there,” admitted Barefoot. “‘The race is to the strong,’ but socialism don’t seem to see that. Given a fair start for all and food and clothes and education, then the good boy gets his chance; but even if that was so, as things are he’d never be allowed to compete with the gentleman’s son.”