es of labor parties, and the
wild threats of the anarchists.

"By the way," said I, as the doctor read aloud to us some of these
items, "what part did the followers of the red flag take in the
establishment of the new order of things? They were making considerable
noise the last thing that I knew."

"They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,"
replied Dr. Leete. "They did that very effectually while they lasted,
for their talk so disgusted people as to deprive the best considered
projects for social reform of a hearing. The subsidizing of those
fellows was one of the shrewdest moves of the opponents of reform."

"Subsidizing them!" I exclaimed in astonishment.

"Certainly," replied Dr. Leete. "No historical authority nowadays
doubts that they were paid by the great monopolies to wave the red flag
and talk about burning, sacking, and blowing people up, in order, by
alarming the timid, to head off any real reforms. What astonishes me
most is that you should have fallen into the trap so unsuspectingly."

"What are your grounds for believing that the red flag party was
subsidized?" I inquired.

"Why simply because they must have seen that their course made a
thousand enemies of their professed cause to one friend. Not to suppose
that they were hired for the work is to credit them with an
inconceivable folly.[1] In the United States, of all countries, no
party could intelligently expect to carry its point without first
winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the national
party eventually did."

"The national party!" I exclaimed. "That must have arisen after my day.
I suppose it was one of the labor parties."

"Oh no!" replied the doctor. "The labor parties, as such, never could
have accomplished anything on a large or permanent scale. For purposes
of national scope, their basis as merely class organizations was too
narrow. It was not till a rearrangement of the industrial and social
system on a higher ethical basis, and for the more efficient production
of wealth, was recognized as the interest, not of one class, but
equally of all classes, of rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, old
and young, weak and strong, men and women, that there was any prospect
that it would be achieved. Then the national party arose to carry it
out by political methods. It probably took that name because its aim
was to nationalize the functions of production and distribution.
Indeed, it could not well h