and a half of Socialist books and pamphlets
every year. All this was the growth of the last few years--there had
been almost nothing of it when Ostrinski first came to Chicago.

Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age. He had lived in Silesia,
a member of a despised and persecuted race, and had taken part in the
proletarian movement in the early seventies, when Bismarck, having
conquered France, had turned his policy of blood and iron upon the
"International." Ostrinski himself had twice been in jail, but he had
been young then, and had not cared. He had had more of his share of the
fight, though, for just when Socialism had broken all its barriers and
become the great political force of the empire, he had come to America,
and begun all over again. In America every one had laughed at the mere
idea of Socialism then--in America all men were free. As if political
liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! said Ostrinski.

The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair, with his
feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in low whispers,
so as not to waken those in the next room. To Jurgis he seemed a
scarcely less wonderful person than the speaker at the meeting; he was
poor, the lowest of the low, hunger-driven and miserable--and yet how
much he knew, how much he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had
been! There were others like him, too--thousands like him, and all of
them workingmen! That all this wonderful machinery of progress had been
created by his fellows--Jurgis could not believe it, it seemed too good
to be true.

That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first converted
to Socialism he was like a crazy person--he could not' understand how
others could fail to see it, and he expected to convert all the world
the first week. After a while he would realize how hard a task it was;
and then it would be fortunate that other new hands kept coming, to save
him from settling down into a rut. Just now Jurgis would have plenty of
chance to vent his excitement, for a presidential campaign was on, and
everybody was talking politics. Ostrinski would take him to the next
meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and he might join the
party. The dues were five cents a week, but any one who could not afford
this might be excused from paying. The Socialist party was a really
democratic political organization--it was controlled absolutely by
its own membership, an