In every movement in this country wherein the wage-earners have sought for separate political action in their own interests, they have invariably found the farming classes in opposition to them and supporters of conservatism. But there are marked indications of a change, he went on. The farming classes are no longer economically independent, in the sense of owning their land and capital, but are tenants of the capitalists who hold their mortgages. And, with this change in economic standing, they have begun to find that their interests lie, not in maintaining rights of private property, which have robbed them of their own, but in joining forces with all wage-earners to bring about a state of things wherein property shall be a monopoly of all. And having touched once more in prophetic spirit the beatific vision of the Socialist, he waxed eloquent in high praise of it, and then turned to me with an impatient: “Can’t you see it, Comrade Vikoff--can’t you see it?” He sympathized with me as one of the countless seekers for employment in the city, and he had cultivated me because of my interest in the meetings. Really admirable in their sincerity were his patient efforts to convert me to Socialism; and when, at last, he gave me up, I am sure that it was from the conviction that he was dealing with a mind hopelessly Philistine, whose constant appeal to dry facts marked it as wholly incapable of appreciation of the charming theory of human perfectability. We turned now and passed down a flight of wooden steps to the basement of a small, brick building. I knew that we were going into a sweater’s den, for I had visited many of them under the lead of the Unionist, and many of them on my own account in futile search for work. There was nothing exceptional in this one beyond the fact that, more commonly than in the cellar, I had found the shops on the ground floor, and oftener still in the upper stories of tenements. As we neared the door, there was the usual sound of the clattering rush of sewing-machines going at high speed--starting and stopping abruptly, at uneven intervals, and giving you the impression, in the meantime, of racing furiously with one another.