d francs in a week's play at Monte
Carlo. He was a Jew, but he was a spender. In India I have worn jewels
that could have saved the lives of ten thousand families dying before my
eyes."

"You saw them die?... and did nothing?" Saxon asked aghast.

"I kept my jewels--la la, and was robbed of them by a brute of a Russian
officer within the year."

"And you let them die," Saxon reiterated.

"They were cheap spawn. They fester and multiply like maggots. They
meant nothing--nothing, my dear, nothing. No more than your work people
mean here, whose crowning stupidity is their continuing to beget more
stupid spawn for the slavery of the masters."

So it was that while Saxon could get little glimmering of common sense
from others, from the terrible old woman she got none at all. Nor could
Saxon bring herself to believe much of what she considered Mercedes'
romancing. As the weeks passed, the strike in the railroad shops grew
bitter and deadly. Billy shook his head and confessed his inability
to make head or tail of the troubles that were looming on the labor
horizon.

"I don't get the hang of it," he told Saxon. "It's a mix-up. It's like
a roughhouse with the lights out. Look at us teamsters. Here we are,
the talk just starting of going out on sympathetic strike for the
mill-workers. They've ben out a week, most of their places is filled,
an' if us teamsters keep on haulin' the mill-work the strike's lost."

"Yet you didn't consider striking for yourselves when your wages were
cut," Saxon said with a frown.

"Oh, we wasn't in position then. But now the Frisco teamsters and the
whole Frisco Water Front Confederation is liable to back us up. Anyway,
we're just talkin' about it, that's all. But if we do go out, we'll try
to get back that ten per cent cut."

"It's rotten politics," he said another time. "Everybody's rotten. If
we'd only wise up and agree to pick out honest men--"

"But if you, and Bert, and Tom can't agree, how do you expect all the
rest to agree?" Saxon asked.

"It gets me," he admitted. "It's enough to give a guy the willies
thinkin' about it. And yet it's plain as the nose on your face. Get
honest men for politics, an' the whole thing's straightened out. Honest
men'd make honest laws, an' then honest men'd get their dues. But Bert
wants to smash things, an' Tom smokes his pipe and dreams pipe dreams
about by an' by when everybody votes the way he thinks. But this by an'
by ain't the point. We want t