ere and hand out that Wall Street stuff?"

"Nobody pays me," she replied patiently.

"All right, then, if that's true why don't you tell us something about
the interests and the profiteers and all them dirty games the
capitalists is rigging up? Tell us about the guy who wants us to pay
eight cents to ride on his damned cars! Tell us about the geezers who
soak us for food and coal and clothes and rent!

"You stand there chirping to us about Love and Service and how we
oughta give. _Give!_ Jesus!--we ain't got anything left to give. They
ain't anything to give our wives or our children,--no, nor there ain't
enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants!
_Give?_ Hell! The interests _took_ it. And you stand there twittering
about Love and Service! We oughta serve 'em a brick on the neck and
love 'em with a black-jack!"

"How far would that get you?" asked Palla gently.

"As far as their pants-pockets anyway!"

"And when you empty those, who is to employ and pay you?"

"Don't worry," he sneered, "we'll do the employing after that."

"And will your employees do to you some day what you did to your
employers with a black-jack?"

The crowd laughed, but her heckler shook his fist at her and yelled:

"Ain't I telling you that we'll be sitting in these damn gold-plated
houses and payin' wages to these here fat millionaires for blackin'
our shoes?"

"You mean that when Bolshevism rules there are to be rich and poor
just the same as at present?"

Again the crowd laughed.

"All right!" bawled the man, waving both arms above his head,
"--yes, I do mean it! It will be our turn then. Why not? What do we
want to split fifty-fifty with them soft, fat millionaires for?
Nix on that stuff! It will be hog-killing time, and you can bet your
thousand-dollar wrist watch, Miss, that there'll be some killin' in
little old New York!"

He had backed out of the circle and disappeared in the crowd before
Palla could attempt further reasoning with him. So she merely shook
her head in gentle disapproval and dissent:

"What is the use," she said, "of exchanging one form of tyranny for
another? Why destroy the autocracy of the capitalist and erect on its
ruins the autocracy of the worker?

"How can class distinctions be eradicated by fanning class-hatred? In
a battle against all dictators, why proclaim dictatorship--even of the
proletariat?

"All oppression is hateful, whether exercised by God or man--whether
the