et out
of sight in the water, because I'm all skin and bones. My arms and legs
are the size of broomsticks."

"Oh, well," I said, "you're just as well off without the Hercules shape.
You are always healthy."

"Healthy? What I call health, you fellows would regard as the last
stages of decrepitude. A little beer and tobacco knocks me over. If I
drank coffee and ate pie the way you do, I'd have to take morphine to
get a night's sleep. You fellows need never envy us intellectuals. You
can drink and smoke and eat anything, and all the poisons you take in
are sweated out of your pores in this terrific labor, so that every
night you come out as clean and lusty as a new-born child. I'd swap all
my education in a minute for the mighty body and the healthy and lusty
living that you enjoy. If you knew how much I envy you, you would never
think of envying me."

He had blurted out the truth. It wasn't love of comrades that gave a
motive to his life. It was envy that turned him inside out. Envy was the
whole story, and he admitted it.

CHAPTER XXXVI. GROWLING FOR THE BOSSES' BLOOD

I thought I made a number of enemies among the men while I was head of
the mill committee. When a man dissipated and afterward came back to
work, trembling and weak, the boss would refuse to let him take up his
tools, but would lay the man off for a few days. The man usually thought
this a useless and cruel punishment; and to lose a few days' wages would
make him all the poorer.

The man thus laid off would come to me and ask that I get him
reinstated.

"Tell 'em you'll call a strike," the man would say. "Tell 'em that if
they don't let me work, nobody will work."

I always refused to take such complaints to the office. I never
approached the boss with a demand that I did not think was right. Some
of the men thought we ought to be vindictive and take every opportunity
to put a crimp in the business for the owners. I envied the owners
(we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich
and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling
fussy little strikes often enough I could have kept the profits close
to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business
and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions
be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid covetousness. The
Golden Rule also forbade my practicing sabotage. And I have never tried
to find a better