ocal politics did not continue
throughout all these years. His belief in candidates and parties as
instruments to be relied on for social purification received a final
blow very early--possibly before he was entitled to cast a vote. The
Workingmen had made a strong ticket one year, and there seemed every
probability of their carrying it. But on the eve of the election half
of their candidates sold out to one of the opposing parties. What
other results this treachery may have had is a question which,
fortunately, does not concern us, but it dispelled one of the
strongest of Isaac Hecker's youthful illusions. He continued,
nevertheless, to prove the sincerity with which his views on social
questions were held, by doing all that lay in his power to better the
condition of the men in the employment of his brothers and himself.
After he passed his majority his interest in the business declined
rapidly, and it is impossible to doubt that one of the chief reasons
why it did so is to be sought in his changing convictions as to the
manner in which business in general should be carried on.

Although in accepting Christ as his master and model he had as yet no
belief in Him as more than the most perfect of human beings, yet,
even so, Isaac Hecker's sincerity and simplicity were too great to
permit him to follow his leader at a purely conventional distance.
"Do you know," he said long afterwards, "the thought that first
loosened me from the life I led? How can I love my fellow-men and yet
get rich by the sweat of their brows? I couldn't do it. You are not a
Christian, and can't call yourself one, I said to myself, if you do
that. The heathenish selfishness of business competition started me
away from the world."

If he had received a Catholic training, Isaac Hecker would soon have
recognized that he was being drawn toward the practice of that
counsel of perfection which St. Paul embodies to St. Timothy in the
words: "Having food and wherewith to be covered, with these we are
content."* Could he have sought at this time the advice of one
familiar with internal ways, he must have been cautioned against that
first error to which those so drawn are liable, of supposing that
this call is common and imperative, and can never fail to be heard
without some more or less wilful closing of the ears. Though the
Hecker brothers were, and ever continued to be, men of the highest
business integrity, and though there existed between them a cordi