hers
whether they work by hand or brain. That is the New Unionism and it is a
step forward. It is drill, organisation, drill, and we, need it. Men must
learn to move together, to discuss and to decide together. You can teach
them what political action will do when they know enough. And all the
time you can drive and hammer into them the socialistic ideas. Tell them
always, without mincing matters, that they are robbed as they would
probably rob others if they had a chance, and that there never can be
happiness until men live like mates and pay nothing to any man for leave
to work. Tell them what life might be if men would only love one another
and teach them to hate the system and not individual men in it. Some day
you will find other work opening out. Always do that which comes to your
hand."

"You think things will last a long time?" asked Ned, reverting to one of
Geisner's previous remarks.

"Who can tell? While Belshazzar feasted the Medes were inside the gate.
Civilisation is destroying itself. The socialistic idea is the only thing
that can save it. I look upon the future as a mere race between the
spread of Socialism as a religion and the spread of that unconditional
Discontent which will take revenge for all its wrongs by destroying
civilisation utterly, and with it much, probably most, that we have won
so slowly and painfully, of Art and Science."

"That would be a pity," said Ned. He would have spoken differently had he
not gone with Nellie last night, he thought while saying it.

"I think so. It means the whole work to be done over again. If Art and
Science were based on the degradation of men I would say 'away with
them.' But they are not. They elevate and ennoble men by bringing to them
the fruition of elevated and noble minds. They are expressions of high
thought and deep feeling; thought and feeling which can only do good, if
it is good to become more human. The artist is simply one who has a
little finer soul than others. Mrs. Stratton was saying last night before
you came that Nellie is an artist because she has a soul. But it's only
comparative. We've all got souls."

"Mrs. Stratton is a splendid woman," began Ned, after another pause.

"Very. Her father was a splendid man, too. He was a doctor, quite famed
in his profession. The misery and degradation he saw among the poor made
him a passionate Communist. Stratton's father was a Chartist, one of
those who maintained that it was a bread-and-butte