Janet longed to know what he was saying. His
phrases, like music, played on her emotions, and at last, when his voice
rose in crescendo at the climax of his speech, she felt like weeping.

"Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed.

"Who is he?" Janet asked.

"Rolfe," said the woman.

"But he's an Italian?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know."
He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation,
a distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in
America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to
Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words.
"Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth
belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the
creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you
shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and
produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what
is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family
alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your
labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and
women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves,"
he cried, "because you submit like slaves."

He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I
have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others
of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to
gain your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why?
Because the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you
will be content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your
wages, the state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents,
they say--only fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What
is fifty cents to them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know
that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the
neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will
help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was
interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have
they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why--because they are the
servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has
rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be only one bargain,
comp