y, and family trouble, the care and drudgery and
mortal burden we grown people ourselves not seldom
find too hard. I have learned of a world gone wrong;
I have learned of a new slavery on earth; and I as a
member of the master class share the general guilt for
the suffering of the poor...I must help to free
them from the very conditions that killed the sixty
girls...

And when I think of those girls and their families
(some of them were the sole support of their mothers
and sisters and brothers) the least I can do is to render
up my life for the, lives that were lost--the least I can
do is to fill myself with the spirit of the dead and
go forth, not to avenge them, but to help build a
world where the living will not be sacrificed as they
were.

This country is facing a great crisis; civilization is
facing a great crisis. Shall we go forward or be drawn
backward? There is a call to arms and every man must
offer his life in the great fight--that fight for democracy,
that fight for lifting up the millions to new levels of
life, that fight for a better earth and a superber race
of human beings; and in that fight I am with the
pioneers, heart and soul; I am ringing with the joy
and struggle of it; I am for it, with all my strength and
all my power. It demands everything; its old cry,
"Arise, arise, and follow me;" means giving up possessions,
giving away all, making every sacrifice. Before
this issue our little lives shrink into nothingness,
and we must sink our happiness into the future of the
world.

How can I ask you to go into the peril, the dirt, and
disease of this struggle? And how can I refrain from
going in myself? Let me see you once more. Do not
deny me that. And understand that through life my
love will follow you ... a love greatened, I trust, by
what little I do in the great cause....

Ever yours, JOE

He waited for an answer and none came, and he felt during those days
that the life was being dragged out of him. Feverishly then he buried
himself in his tasks and his books, he went on cramming himself with
theories until he reached the bursting-point and wanted to go out on
fire with mission, almost a fanatic, an Isaiah to shake the city with
invective and prophesy change. What could he do to spread the tidings,
the news? The time had come to find an outlet for the overbearing flood
within him. And then one evening in the