However natural may have been the social order in some of its historic phases, they evidently regard it at the present as largely artificial. There is no real vitality, they contend, in the political issues upon which the great national parties are divided. The party cries of “free trade” and “protection” and the like, are manufactured by professional politicians who are in the employ of the capitalists. The purpose is to divert the minds of the working classes by these sham contentions and so keep them about evenly divided politically, and thus prevent their coalescing in overwhelming force in political action for their own interests. Nothing seems to anger a Socialist more than the spectacle of workingmen roused to enthusiasm by the crowds and speeches and processions and brass bands of the usual political campaign. They see in them then only the ridiculous dupes of the capitalists, who have contributed to the campaign funds for the very purpose of thus befooling their employees, and who look with about equal indifference upon the momentary triumph of one party or the other so long as no labor party is in the ascendant. However free in the past the play of purely natural evolutionary forces may have been in determining social development, and however free may be their course again in moulding a future state, their operation is checked for the present to the Socialists’ vision by the active intervention of the capitalists, who, in some way, have succeeded in effecting a social structure which is highly favorable to themselves, and for whose undisturbed continuance they unscrupulously employ all the resources of wealth and craft and dark conspiracy. The idea appeared at its plainest, perhaps, in their more vindictive speeches, where the strong undercurrent of feeling was--“There is cruel injustice and wrong in society as it is, and someone is to blame for it, and unhesitatingly we charge the blame against the capitalists.” It was with this interpretation in mind that I took Mr. Ford with me one afternoon to the meeting of the Central Labor Union. I was curious to see the effect of the gathering upon him. A child of another age in his experience of certain economic relations, he was an interesting phenomenon in the sudden contact with modern industrialism. When we reached the building, in the upper floor of which in a large hall are held the weekly meetings of the Central Labor Union, numbers of workingmen in their Sunday clothes were passing in and out of the neighboring saloons or loafing about the doors. The intersecting streets were strewn with small handbills, which we found covering the wide staircase leading to the hall and scattered over the seats and floor of the room itself. They were printed notices instructing the members to boycott the beer of certain breweries which were accused of employing non-union men, and also the products of this and that manufacturer, against whom similar charges were made.