ting unless the
world were to become a great deal richer than it then was. Though they
knew something of what they wanted, they knew nothing of how to
accomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which they thronged about
any one who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lent
sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had little
enough light to give. However chimerical the aspirations of the
laboring classes might be deemed, the devotion with which they
supported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon,
and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no doubt
of their dead earnestness.

As to the final outcome of the labor troubles, which was the phrase by
which the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, the
opinions of the people of my class differed according to individual
temperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the very
nature of things impossible that the new hopes of the workingmen could
be satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal to
satisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and lived
on short commons that the race did not starve outright, and no
considerable improvement in their condition was possible while the
world, as a whole, remained so poor. It was not the capitalists whom
the laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but the
iron-bound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of the
thickness of their skulls when they would discover the fact and make up
their minds to endure what they could not cure.

The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's
aspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, but
there were grounds to fear that they would not discover this fact until
they had made a sad mess of society. They had the votes and the power
to do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should. Some of
these desponding observers went so far as to predict an impending
social cataclysm. Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the top
round of the ladder of civilization, was about to take a header into
chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round, and
begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in historic and
prehistoric times possibly accounted for the puzzling bumps on the
human cranium. Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical,
and returned to the point of begi