om the _human_ hive, he is at once
denounced as an Anarchist and an "undesirable citizen."

It is all very well for bees to insist that there must be no idle
parasites, that the drones must go, but for human beings such a policy
won't do! It savors too much of Socialism, my friend, and is
unpleasantly like Paul's foolish saying that "If any man among you
will not work, neither shall he eat." That is a text which is out of
date and unsuited to the twentieth century!

"Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger,
"Wondrous sights the traveller sees;
But the greatest is the latest,
Where the drones control the bees!"

Every modern civilized nation rewards its drones better than it
rewards its bees, and in every land the drones control the bees.

I want you to consider, friend Jonathan, the lives of the people. How
the workers live and how the shirkers live; now the bees live and how
the drones live, if you like that better. You can study the matter for
yourself, right in Pittsburg, much better than you can from books, for
God knows that in Pittsburg there are the extremes of wealth and
poverty, just as there are in New York, Chicago, St. Louis or San
Francisco. There are gilded hells where rich drones live and squalid
hells where poor bees live, and the number of truly happy people is
sadly, terribly, small.

_Ten millions in poverty!_ Don't you think that is a cry so terrible
that it ought to shame a great nation like this, a nation more
bounteously endowed by Nature than any other nation in the world's
history? Men, women and children, poor and miserable, with not enough
to eat, nor clothes to keep them warm in the cold winter nights; with
places for homes that are unfit for dogs, and these not their own;
knowing not if to-morrow may bring upon them the last crushing blow.
All these conditions, and conditions infinitely worse than these, are
contained in the poverty of those millions, Jonathan.

If people were poor because the land was poor, because the country was
barren, because Nature dealt with us in niggardly fashion, so that all
men had to struggle against famine; if, in a word, there was democracy
in our poverty, so that none were idle and rich while the rest toiled
in poverty, it would be our supreme glory to bear it with cheerful
courage. But that is not the case. While babies perish for want of
food and care in dank and unhealthy hovels, there are pampered poodles
in palaces, bejeweled and cared f