terms of
apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow.
Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played
on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the
climax of his speech, she felt like weeping.

"Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed.

"Who is he?" Janet asked.

"Rolfe," said the woman.

"But he's an Italian?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know." He
had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a
distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in
America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to
Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words.
"Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth
belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the
creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you
shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and
produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what
is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family
alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your
labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and
women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves,"
he cried, "because you submit like slaves."

He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I
have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others
of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to gain
your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why? Because
the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you will be
content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your wages, the
state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents, they say--only
fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What is fifty cents to
them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know that fifty cents
will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the neck of pork, or six
quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will help pay the rent of the
rat-holes where you live." Once more he was interrupted by angry shouts
of approval. "And the labour unions, have they aided you? Why not? I will
tell you why--because they are the servile instruments of the masters.
The unions say that capit