er
jobs these days. You can go down to the coast and get more than five
dollars a day at a shipyard.

PRAG. It is easy, yes, when you have a little home bought already, and
mortgaged, and childrens who go to school here, and a wife a long time
sick.

GEORGE. I'm sorry. But weren't you getting along all right here, except
your wife's illness? I don't want to be impertinent,--I recognize that
it's your affair, but I'd like to know why you joined the union.

PRAG. Why is it you join the army? To fight for somethings you would
give your life for--not so? Und you are a soldier,--would you run away
from your comrades to live safe and happy? No! That is like me. I lose
my job, I go away from my wife and childrens, but it is not for me, it is
for all, to get better things for all,--freedoms for all.

GEORGE. Then--you think this isn't a free country.

PRAG. When. I sail up the harbour at New York twenty years ago and see
that Liberty shining in the sun, I think so, yes. But now I know, for
the workmens, she is like the Iron Woman of Nuremberg, with her spikes
when she holds you in her arms. You call me a traitor, yes, when I say
that.

GEORGE. No--I want to understand.

PRAG. I am born in Bavaria, but I am as good an American as any,--better
than you, because I know what I fight for, what I suffer for. I am not
afraid of the Junkers here,--I have spirits,--but the Germans at home
have no spirits. You think you fight for freedoms, for democracy, but
you fight for this! (He waves his hand to indicate the room.) If I had a
million dollars, maybe I fight for it, too,--I don't know.

GEORGE. So you think I'm going to fight for this--for money?

PRAG. Are you going to fight for me, for the workmens and their
childrens? No, you want to keep your money, to make more of it from your
war contracts. It is for the capitalist system you fight.

GEORGE. Come, now, capital has some rights.

PRAG. I know this, that capital is power. What is the workmen's vote
against it? against your newspapers and your system? America, she will
not be free until your money power is broken. You don't like kings and
emperors, no,--you say to us workmens, you are not patriots, you are
traitors if you do not work and fight to win this war for democracy
against kings. Are we fools that we should worry about kings? Kings
will fall of themselves. Now you can put me in jail.

GEORGE. I don't want to put you in jail, God knows! How would you
manage it?