might be wrecked and that every one of
the blinkety blinkety scoundrels might be killed. If all these idle
plutocrats could be destroyed in a heap they would be lifted from the
backs of the masses, and the masses would not have to work any more.

Bannerman was a fool, and I could even then see just what made him
foolish. He was full of the brimstone of envy. The sight of those
well-dressed travelers eating in the dining cars drove him wild. He
wanted to be in their places, but he was too lazy to work and earn the
money that would put him there. I knew that they were not rich men;
they were school-teachers, doctors, butchers and bakers, machinists and
puddlers. They had saved their money for a year in order to have the
price of this convention trip to Denver. Comrade Bannerman was pig-iron,
and envy made him brittle. He should have been melted down and had the
sulphur boiled out of him. Then he would have been wrought iron; as were
the men he was so envious of.

He was not envious of me, of course, because he thought I was a tramp.
Indeed he thought I was as envious as he, and so he classed the two of
us as "intellectuals." From this I learned that "Intellectuals" is a
name that weak men, crazed with envy, give to themselves. They believe
the successful men lack intellect; are all luck. This thought soothes
their envy and keeps it from driving them mad.

I thanked Comrade Bannerman for his pamphlets and threw him a few coins
to pay for the melons he had given me. But my peep into his soul had
taught me more than his propaganda could teach me. Later I read all
the pamphlets because I had promised I would. They told of the labor
movement and the theories at work in Germany. One of them was called
Merrie England and declared that England had once been merry, but
capitalism had crushed all joy and turned the island into a living hell.
I remembered my mother in Wales rocking her baby's cradle and singing
all day long with a voice vibrant with joy. If capitalism had crushed
her heart she hadn't heard about it.

When the lodge excursion train had passed on toward the convention city,
I hopped a freight and bade Comrade Bannerman goodby. Had I told him
that from my earnings I had salted away enough money to buy his little
shack he would have hated me as he hated the lodge members in the
Pullmans. I did not hate those men. They were doing me a service by
traveling across the country. For they belonged to the fare-paying
clas