Children of the rich -- Fiction; Industrial relations -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
"It's a start--but all our work is only a start. It's preliminary," His
voice became oratorical. "First we must unionize the world. Now there
are strong unions and weak unions--both arrayed against a capital
better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history.
Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its
power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and
when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a
state, of a country, but the unions of the world...hundreds of millions
of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for
generations. Then we shall have such an overturning as shall make the
French Revolution look like child's play....A World's Republic--that's
our aim; a World's Republic ruled by labor!"
Her eyes glistened as he talked; she could visualize his vision, could
see a united world, cleansed of wars, of boundary lines; a world where
every man's chance of happiness was the equal of every other man's
chance; where wealth and poverty were abolished, from which slums,
degradation, starvation, the sordid wickednesses compelled by poverty,
should have vanished. She could see a world of peace, plenty, beauty.
It was for this high aim that Dulac worked. His stature increased. She
marveled that such a man could waste his thoughts upon her. She
idealized him; her soul prostrated itself before him.
So much of accomplishment lay behind him--and he not yet thirty years
old! The confidence reposed in him by labor was eloquently testified to
by the sending of him to this important post on the battle line.
Already he had justified that confidence. With years and experience
what heights might he not climb!...This was Ruth's thought. Beside
Dulac's belief in himself and his future it was colorless.
Dulac had been an inmate of the Frazer cottage two weeks. In that time
he had not once stepped out of his character. If his attitude toward
the world were a pose it had become so habitual as to require no
objective prompting or effort to maintain. This character was that of
the leader of men, the zealot for the cause of the under dog. It held
him aloof from personal concerns. Individual affairs did not touch him,
but functioned unnoticed on a plane below his clouds. Not for an
instant had he sought the friendship of Ruth and her mother, not to
establish relations of friendship with them. He was devoted to a cause,
and the cause left no room in his life for smaller matters. He was a
man apart.
Now he was awkwardly tugging something from his pocket. Almost
diffidently he offered it to Ruth. It was a small box of candy.
"Here..." he said, clumsily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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