as you, used
as figureheads."

"But I want to build up a new party--a party of honest men, honestly
led," said Davy.

"Led by your sort of young men? I mean young men of your class. Led by
young lawyers and merchants and young fellows living on inherited
incomes? Don't you see that's impossible," cried Selma. "They are all
living off the labor of others. Their whole idea of life is exploiting
the masses--is reaping where they have not sown or reaping not only
what they've sown but also what others have sown--for they couldn't buy
luxury and all the so-called refinements of life for themselves and
their idle families merely with what they themselves could earn. How
can you build up a really HONEST party with such men? They may mean
well. They no doubt are honest, up to a certain point. But they will
side with their class, in every crisis. And their class is the
exploiting class."

"I don't agree with you," said Davy. "You are not fair to us."

"How!" demanded Selma.

"I couldn't argue with you," replied Hull. "All I'll say is that
you've seen only the one side--only the side of the working class."

"That toils without ceasing--its men, its women, its children--" said
the girl with heaving bosom and flashing eyes--"only to have most of
what it earns filched away from it by your class to waste in foolish
luxury!"

"And whose fault is that?" pleaded Hull.

"The fault of my class," replied she. "Their ignorance, their
stupidity--yes, and their foolish cunning that overreaches itself. For
they tolerate the abuses of the present system because each man--at
least, each man of the ones who think themselves 'smart'--imagines that
the day is coming when he can escape from the working class and gain
the ranks of the despoilers."

"And you ask ME to come into the party of those people!" scoffed Davy.

"Yes, Mr. Hull," said she--and until then he had not appreciated how
lovely her voice was. "Yes--that is the party for you--for all honest,
sincere men who want to have their own respect through and through. To
teach those people--to lead them right--to be truthful and just with
them--that is the life worth while."

"But they won't learn. They won't be led right. They are as
ungrateful as they are foolish. If they weren't, men like me trying to
make a decent career wouldn't have to compromise with the Kellys and
the Houses and their masters. What are Kelly and House but leaders of
your class? And they