test care, He classes with thugs and crooks. Thriftiness has
become a crime, So spend everything you earn; We're living now in a
funny time, When money is made to burn."

Mary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable signals
of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying on an apron,
washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher of steaming beer
from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked and talked about the
coming strike.

"It oughta come years ago," was Bert's dictum. "It can't come any too
quick now to suit me, but it's too late. We're beaten thumbs donn.
Here's where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the neck,
ker-whop!"

"Oh, I don't know," Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely, began
to counsel. "Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day. Why, I
can remember when there wasn't any unions in California, Look at us
now--wages, an' hours, an' everything."

"You talk like an organizer," Bert sneered, "shovin' the bull con on the
boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won't buy as much
now as unorganized wages used to buy. They've got us whipsawed. Look at
Frisco, the labor leaders doin' dirtier polities than the old parties,
pawin' an' squabblin' over graft, an' goin' to San Quentin, while--what
are the Frisco carpenters doin'? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown,
if you listen to all you hear you'll hear that every Frisco carpenter is
union an' gettin' full union wages. Do you believe it? It's a damn lie.
There ain't a carpenter that don't rebate his wages Saturday night to
the contractor. An' that's your buildin' trades in San Francisco,
while the leaders are makin' trips to Europe on the earnings of the
tenderloin--when they ain't coughing it up to the lawyers to get out of
wearin' stripes."

"That's all right," Tom concurred. "Nobody's denyin' it. The trouble is
labor ain't quite got its eyes open. It ought to play politics, but the
politics ought to be the right kind."

"Socialism, eh?" Bert caught him up with scorn. "Wouldn't they sell us
out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?"

"Get men that are honest," Billy said. "That's the whole trouble. Not
that I stand for socialism. I don't. All our folks was a long time in
America, an' I for one won't stand for a lot of fat Germans an' greasy
Russian Jews tellin' me how to run my country when they can't speak
English yet."

"Your country!" Bert cried. "Why, you bonehead, you ain't got a count