d had no bosses. All of these things Ostrinski
explained, as also the principles of the party. You might say that there
was really but one Socialist principle--that of "no compromise," which
was the essence of the proletarian movement all over the world. When a
Socialist was elected to office he voted with old party legislators for
any measure that was likely to be of help to the working class, but
he never forgot that these concessions, whatever they might be, were
trifles compared with the great purpose--the organizing of the working
class for the revolution. So far, the rule in America had been that
one Socialist made another Socialist once every two years; and if
they should maintain the same rate they would carry the country in
1912--though not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as that.

The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was an
international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest the world
had ever known. It numbered thirty million of adherents, and it cast
eight million votes. It had started its first newspaper in Japan, and
elected its first deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of
cabinets, and in Italy and Australia it held the balance of power and
turned out ministries. In Germany, where its vote was more than a third
of the total vote of the empire, all other parties and powers had united
to fight it. It would not do, Ostrinski explained, for the proletariat
of one nation to achieve the victory, for that nation would be crushed
by the military power of the others; and so the Socialist movement was a
world movement, an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and
fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity--or you might say it was
the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal
application of all the teachings of Christ.

Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his
new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to him--an almost
supernatural experience. It was like encountering an inhabitant of
the fourth dimension of space, a being who was free from all one's
own limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and
blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand
reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set him upon
a mountain-top, from which he could survey it all--could see the paths
from which he had wandered, the morasses into which he had