in the cities that the oligarchs built. It is true, we are
even now building still more wonderful wonder cities, but
the wonder cities of the oligarchs endure, and I write these
lines in Ardis, one of the most wonderful of them all.

"These things the oligarchs will do because they cannot help doing them.
These great works will be the form their expenditure of the surplus will
take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long ago
expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the building of
temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish, not a priest
class, but an artist class. And in place of the merchant class of
bourgeoisie will be the labor castes. And beneath will be the abyss,
wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself, the
common people, the great bulk of the population. And in the end, who
knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss; the
labor castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away; and then, at last,
after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the common
man. I had thought to see that day; but now I know that I shall never
see it."

He paused and looked at me, and added:

"Social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn't it, sweetheart?"

My arms were about him, and his head was on my breast.

"Sing me to sleep," he murmured whimsically. "I have had a visioning,
and I wish to forget."

CHAPTER XV

LAST DAYS

It was near the end of January, 1913, that the changed attitude of the
Oligarchy toward the favored unions was made public. The newspapers
published information of an unprecedented rise in wages and shortening
of hours for the railroad employees, the iron and steel workers, and
the engineers and machinists. But the whole truth was not told. The
oligarchs did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth. In
reality, the wages had been raised much higher, and the privileges were
correspondingly greater. All this was secret, but secrets will out.
Members of the favored unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped,
and soon all the labor world knew what had happened.

It was merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth century
had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time,
profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to
placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work.
But profit-sharing, as a system, was