, because in those days great wealth was unknown, even in New York,
and the houses in Brooklyn were homes--not museums. Twenty thousand
dollars was a fortune. It was a precedent that established miserliness
as an actual sin, a dissipation just as deadly as that of the
spendthrift. It was a tragic scene from the drama of life, and its
surprise was avarice. The whole country read about Barbara Allen, and
wondered what new strange disease this was that could scourge a human
soul with a madness for accumulating money without spending it. The
people of the United States suffered from quite a different idea of
money. They were just beginning to feel the great American fever for
spending more of it than they could get. This was a serious phase of
social conditions then, and I remember how keenly I felt the menace of
it at the time. Those who couldn't get enough to spend became envious,
jealous, hateful of those who could and these envious ones were the
American masses.

In the spring of 1878, in May, there was a tiger sprang out of this
jungle of discontent, and, crouching, threatened to spring upon American
Society.

It was--Communism. Its theory was that what could not be obtained
lawfully, under the pressure of circumstances, you could take anyhow.
Communism meant no individual rights in property. If wages were not
adequate to the luxurious appetite, then the wage-earner claimed the
right to knock his employer down and take what he wanted. "Bread or
blood" was the motto. It all came from across the Atlantic, and it
spread rapidly. In Brooklyn, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, it was
evident that Communism was organising, that its executive desperadoes
met in rooms, formed lodges, invented grips and pass-words.

In the eighth ward of New York an organisation was unearthed at this
time, consisting of 800 men, all armed with muskets and revolvers. These
organisations described themselves as working-men's parties, and so
tried to ally themselves with the interests of trade unions.

Twenty American newspapers advocated this shocking creed. Tens of
thousands adopted this theory. I said then, in response to the opinion
that Communism was impossible in this country, that there were just as
many cut-throats along the East River and the Hudson as there were
along the Seine or the Thames. There was only one thing that prevented
revolution in our cities in this memorable spring of 1878, and that was
the police and the military guard.