“Shut up, you crazy socialist!” exclaimed the I. W. W. “You fellows won’t do anything but vote. You leave it to us. We’re the boys who’ll fix the machines, all right, all right. Yes, and the plutes, too.” I remembered the many I. W. W. signs and notices that were posted along the way; the groups of men beneath the water tanks who listened eagerly to the harangues of such as he. Some even had told me that they had given up liquor because it blunted their faculties at a time when brains were needed in the workers’ fight against the capitalists. I seemed to hear a muttering as of a gathering storm; perhaps in the days preceding the French Revolution a similar murmuring rose. There are so many like my dark-eyed acquaintance. He lost touch with his sweetheart, lost hope, lost ambition and now drifts aimlessly about the country in search of a bare subsistence. It is he and the millions of his class who quarry the stone and hew the timber for our cities; they build the roadbed and lay the tracks for swiftly turning Pullman wheels; they mine the coal that warms our dwellings; they harvest the wheat that nourishes our bodies; without their labour industry would cease. Yet life to them holds out no hope, no promise; their meagre earnings forbid the thought of marriage; their only home is some saloon; their final rest the potter’s field. About ten o’clock a trainman poked his head inside the door. “Hey, clear out, you fellows. This is no place for you when we enter the yard. Better beat it.” The hoboes bade us adieu and sprang from the car. The brakeman leaped in beside us. “We finish our run at the next stop,” he said. “The engineer will slow down at the outskirts of town and you jump off and hike out. You’ll find the main road over to the north.” We thanked him warmly for his kindness and made ready to follow his advice. Soon the train slowed to a mere crawl. Dan leaped down and ran alongside, I swung out the wheel, which he seized, and in an instant I was standing beside him. Waving farewell to the train crew, who had all turned out to see us off, we struck out for the main road. The straggling outskirts of a good-sized town lay before us. “Tell you what,” I remarked after we had traversed some distance. “Suppose we stop in the residence section and look for work. I’ll offer to do washing or cleaning by the day, and you can cut the lawn, wash the automobile or something.” Dan replied with a snort of righteous indignation. “Ever since you were bit by the crazy bug and started out to be a lady hobo you have lost all your natural pride, Ethel. It was bad enough for me, a high-class electrical engineer with a paid-up union card in my pocket, to stoop to the job of a common labourer as I did last week for your sake. Now I’ll be damned if I become a dirty roustabout and have some old hen ordering me around while I sweep off the front porch.”