just as hard as I did and risked just
as much his life and liberty.

This one rung was the height I climbed up the business ladder. One night
I went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen. Ropes and nets were
worth dollars and cents. It was robbery, I grant, but it was precisely
the spirit of capitalism. The capitalist takes away the possessions of
his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, or
by the purchase of senators and supreme-court judges. I was merely
crude. That was the only difference. I used a gun.

But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom the
capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients
increase expenses and reduce dividends. My crew did both. What of his
carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally destroyed it.
There weren't any dividends that night, and the Chinese fishermen were
richer by the nets and ropes we did not get. I was bankrupt, unable just
then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new mainsail. I left my boat at
anchor and went off on a bay-pirate boat on a raid up the Sacramento
River. While away on this trip, another gang of bay pirates raided my
boat. They stole everything, even the anchors; and later on, when I
recovered the drifting hulk, I sold it for twenty dollars. I had slipped
back the one rung I had climbed, and never again did I attempt the
business ladder.

From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. I had the
muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very indifferent
living out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, a
roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and laundries; I mowed
lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows. And I never got the full
product of my toil. I looked at the daughter of the cannery owner, in
her carriage, and knew that it was my muscle, in part, that helped drag
along that carriage on its rubber tyres. I looked at the son of the
factory owner, going to college, and knew that it was my muscle that
helped, in part, to pay for the wine and good fellowship he enjoyed.

But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were the
strong. Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a place
amongst them and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was not
afraid of work. I loved hard work. I would pitch in and work harder
than ever and eventually become a pillar of society