Jr. Thomas Dixon

“ Will you come? I offer you stones for bread, the sky for your canopy, the earth for your bed, and for your wages death! None may enter but the brave. Will you come——?"
The last words of her appeal rang through [27] Norman's heart with resistless power. Her round, soft arms seemed about his neck and his soul went out to her in passionate yearning. He gripped the chair to hold himself back from shouting:
"Yes! I'm coming!"
She sank to her seat before the crowd realized that she had stopped. A shout of triumph shook the building—wave after wave, rising and falling in ever-increasing intensity. ”

“ I'm not following just now, Governor—I'm trying to direct this tremendous impulse, this enthusiasm for humanity, called Socialism, into a practical experiment that will demonstrate the truths of their faith, and from this white city of a glorified human life send out our missionaries to conquer the world. Give me ten thousand earnest men and women on the island of Ventura, isolated from contact with the corruption of the outside, and I'll show you a miracle more wonderful than if they had risen from the dead. ”

“ When this decision was announced, Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, once more lifted his voice in solemn protest:
"I denounce this act in the name of every principle which has brought us together," he cried, with solemn warning. "You have established a system far more infamous than the unequal wages of the old society where the law of the survival of the fittest is the court of last resort. You have opened the door of fathomless corruption by substituting the whim of an executive council for the law of nature. It is the beginning of jealousy, strife, favouritism, jobbery, and injustice." ”

“ I know I could never marry. The domestic instinct seems utterly missing in my nature. I love man in the abstract, but I can never surrender to any particular man. It seems like suicide. I want to be myself. I hate the idea of losing myself in another's being—I can't endure it, and if you make love to me any more I shall be very unhappy—and—I'll have to keep out of your way. You won't do this any more will you? Promise me, and we will be our old selves again—just comrades."
Norman bowed with a smile. ”

“ On a beautiful Sunday morning in May, 1899, the steamship Comrade slowly swept through the Golden Gate with two thousand enthusiastic Socialists crowding her decks, shouting, cheering, laughing, crying, singing their joy and faith in the new world of human brotherhood for which they had set sail.
The flag of the republic flew from her stern because the law of the port of entry required it. But from her huge prow rose a slender steel staff, above the tips of her funnels and masts, on which flew the blood-red ensign of Socialism, while from every masthead huge red steamers fluttered in the sky. ”

“ The older I've grown and the more I've seen of my fellow man, the wider I've travelled in foreign lands, the deeper has become my conviction that our flag symbolizes the noblest, freest ideal ever born in the soul of man; that we have but to live up to its standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the kingdom of human brotherhood is already here. ”

“ He winced at the thought of that grim relic of barbarism, the whipping-post, which they had found necessary to temporarily revive. The jail, guard-house, and penal colony were thorns in his flesh which he would remove at the earliest possible moment. The one excuse for their existence was the inheritance of evil in man's nature due to his wrongs and suffering under the system of capitalism. They would outgrow them.
Again and again he encountered Wolf and Catherine in the highest spirits, laughing, joking, chatting, shaking hands with each one they met. ”

“ The social system worked now with deadly precision and ceaseless regularity. No citizen dared to speak against the man in authority over him or complain to the regent, for they were his trusted henchmen. Men and women huddled in groups and asked in whispers the news.
Disarmed and at the mercy of his brutal guard, cut off from the world as effectually as if they lived on another planet, despair began to sicken the strongest hearts, and suicide to be more common than in the darkest days of panic and hunger in the old world. ”

“ The day after its capture Wolf put the men who had helped Norman build it to work operating the big machine, and its huge pumps began to throb in perfect time, piling ton on ton of gold-bearing sand and gravel into the flumes, as faithful to the touch of the thief who had stolen it as to the hand of the man of genius who invented it. ”

“ As her last words sank into his heart: "From to-day let each of us swear allegiance to but one flag, the deep-red emblem of human blood, God's sign of universal brotherhood!" Norman leaped to his feet, sprang on the platform, and while the crowd swayed in a frenzy of applause, hauled down the Stars and Stripes and quickly raised the big red standard of Socialism which was thrown across the speaker's table. ”

“ Is it worth the while of those who have to fret and fuss and fume trying to make something out of nothing?"
Barbara turned suddenly, looked into Norman's eyes, and asked in anxious tones:
"What do you mean?"
"That I'm thinking of giving up this experiment."
"Now that you are just making it a marvellous success?"
"But is it a success? What is the good of achievement for any community if that achievement springs from the will of one man? If their souls are in subjection to his, has he not degraded them? Is life inside or outside? Are we Socialists not struggling merely with what is outside? ”

“ Elena's laughter suddenly echoed through his memory. He recalled his father's questions. A frown slowly settled on his brow, and a firm resolution took shape in his mind.
"No woman's spell to blind your senses! Clear thinking, my boy! You're on trial before the man who gave you life. You're on trial before the men whose faith gave you a million dollars to put you to the test. Success first, and then, perhaps, the joy of living!"
Barbara felt the chill of a sudden barrier between them, and looked at him with a little touch of wounded pride. ”

“ War is the searchlight of history, the great revealer of national life, of hidden strength and unexpected weakness. I saw it in the Civil conflict—I've seen it in this little struggle——"
"Then you do acknowledge it's not the greatest struggle in history—that's something to be thankful for in these days of patriotism," exclaimed Norman, rising and stretching himself before the open fire while he winked mischievously at Elena.
"It's big enough, my boy, to show us the truth [7] about our nation. Our old problems are no longer real. The Union our fathers dreamed has come at last. ”

“ Wolf hesitated a moment as if feeling his way.
"Something he should have said sooner," exclaimed Catherine.
"There's but one way, comrade. Kick these fools into the street!"
"But don't we begin to weaken the moment we do a thing like that? We accept the brotherhood of man——"
"Of man, yes," the old leader broke in, "but these are not men—they are what might have been had they lived in a sane world. They are the results of the nightmare we call civilization. The kindest thing you can do for a crank is to kill him. ”

“ Norman seized her arm and hurried through the swiftly moving throng of the under-world—gambling touts, thieves, cut-throats, pick-pockets, opium fiends, drunkards, thugs, carousing miners, and sailors—but above all, everywhere, omnipresent, the abandoned woman—painted, bedizened, lurching through the streets, hanging in doorways, clinging to men on the sidewalks, beckoning from windows, singing vulgar songs on crude platforms among throngs of half-drunken men, whirling past doors and windows in dance-halls, their cracked voices shrill and rasping above the din of cheap music. ”

“ I learned the brotherhood of man and the meaning of red blood in the big, tragic school of life, my son. Many a boy in gray, whom I had fought, died in my arms while my heart ached for his loved ones in some far-away Southern home.
[79] "But I knew the war had to be when once it was begun. I was fighting for the flag I loved—and I grew to love it better than life. To you it may be a bit of red, white, and blue bunting; to me it is the symbol of truth and right, liberty and human progress.
"My people in western North Carolina were all slave-holders and loyal to their state, except my father. ”

“ In like manner around the personality of each guard, overseer, secret-service man, superintendent, and governor of departments there grew a coterie of favoured ones whose position depended solely on the whim of the man in power.
The State only could manufacture arms. The State only could bear arms. And the system of law which Socialism developed was so full, so minute in its touch on every detail of human life, and so merciless in its system of espionage, the very idea of revolution was slowly dying in the despairing hearts of the colonists. ”

“ Cannot any group of shrewd men pretend to have invented a machine which will save over half the labour of the colony, and spend millions on this imaginary invention which proves useless? If such an abuse of power should be made, would not the effect be to end forever all experiments and stop the progress of the world? ”

“ In his work of charity and organization with Barbara he found everything to confirm and nothing to shake his faith in these theories. When once he caught the idea that all the ills of modern civilization were due directly to the fiendish system of "capitalism" and its "iron law of wages," it was the key which unlocked every mystery of Pain and every tragedy of the Soul. All sin and crime and shame and suffering became the incidents of a social system whose movements were as inexorable as Fate, as merciless as Death. ”

“ This is our demand!
"The end of the hell called war, of poverty [68] and shame, of cruelty and crime, the birth of freedom, the dawn of brotherhood, the beginning of man! These are our demands! This is Socialism! Is this an idle dream? Have you no faith in your fellow man?
"In the grim prison beyond the bay I found one day a woman convict who was little removed from a fiend. I got permission to hang a beautiful picture in her cell—a picture that set her soul to dreaming, that melted her at last to tears, and transformed the beast within her to a gentle, loving, beautiful, human character. ”

“ Barbara whispered.
"The farmers will run us through with their pitchforks if we don't," he laughed.
"Poisoning is the easier way," she sighed.
The leader of the brass band raised the biggest row of all. From the first these men had refused [232] to lift their hand to do a thing except to play at stated hours each day and furnish the music for the three evenings of social amusement.
"You place me on an equality with the lout who holds a calf or the clodhopper who holds a plough—I, who feed the soul with ravishing melody—I, who lift man from earth to heaven on the wings of angels!" ”

“ Remember in this supreme hour that capitalism has you and your loved ones by the throats, is stealing your substance, draining your veins, and reducing you inch by inch to the potter's field. Every sweating den cries out to you as from the depths of hell to gird up your loins and march forth in one solid phalanx to strike [97] the blow that shall sound the knell of capitalistic despotism, and set the star of hope in the skies of the despairing and dying thousands of your class who are at the mercy of the vampires of soulless wealth. ”

“ It is the essence of Socialism. In my next proclamation I shall declare for the freedom of love. Every great Socialist has preached this. Marriage and the family form the tap-root out of which the whole system of capitalism grew. The system can never be destroyed until the family is annihilated. ”

“ Again the orchestra played, the ushers passed the boxes, the vote was taken, and all for naught. Not a single hero of the hod appeared. Not a single heroine of the washtub, the scrubbing-brush, or the milk-pail.
The young chairman's face was very grave when Barbara handed him the results.
She bent and whispered:
"Away with frowns and doubts and fears! There's a better way. A leader must lead. Their business is to follow."
Norman's face brightened. He turned to the crowd, and in tones of clear, ringing command announced:
"Comrades, I had hoped you could choose your work of your own accord. ”