seized hold of her son-in-law was whether or not it had a tendency to make him sober and industrious; and when she found he intended to look for work and to contribute his share to the family fund, she gave him full rein to convince her of anything. A wonderfully wise little woman was Elzbieta; she could think as quickly as a hunted rabbit, and in half an hour she had chosen her life-attitude to the Socialist movement. She agreed in everything with Jurgis, except the need of his paying his dues; and she would even go to a meeting with him now and then, and sit and plan her next day's dinner amid the storm.
For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wander about all day, looking for work; until at last he met with a strange fortune. He was passing one of Chicago's innumerable small hotels, and after some hesitation he concluded to go in. A man he took for the proprietor was standing in the lobby, and he went up to him and tackled him for a job.
'What can you do?' the man asked.
'Anything, sir,' said Jurgis, and added quickly: 'I've been out of work for a long time, sir. I'm an honest man, and I'm strong and willing—'
The other was eying him narrowly. 'Do you drink?' he asked.
'No, sir,' said Jurgis.
'Well, I've been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks. I've discharged him seven times now, and I've about made up my mind that's enough. Would you be a porter?'
'Yes, sir.'
'It's hard work. You'll have to clean floors and wash spittoons and fill lamps and handle trunks—'
'I'm willing, sir.'
'All right. I'll pay you thirty a month and board, and you can begin now, if you feel like it. You can put on the other fellow's rig.'
And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night. Then he went and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paid a visit to Ostrinski to let him know of his good fortune. Here he received a great surprise, for when he was describing the location of the hotel Ostrinski interrupted suddenly, 'Not Hinds's!'
'Yes,' said Jurgis, 'that's the name.'
To which the other replied, 'Then you've got the best boss in Chicago—he's a state organizer of our party, and one of our best-known speakers!'
So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him; and the man seized him by the hand and shook it. 'By Jove!' he cried, 'that lets me out. I didn't sleep all last night because I had discharged a good Socialist!'
So, after that, Jurgis was known to his 'boss' as 'Comrade Jurgis,' and in return he was expected to call him 'Comrade Hinds.' 'Tommy' Hinds, as he was known to his intimates, was a squat little man, with broad shoulders and a florid face, decorated with gray side whiskers. He was the kindest-hearted man that ever lived, and the liveliest—inexhaustible in his enthusiasm, and talking Socialism all day and all night. He was a great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and would keep a meeting in an uproar; when once he got really waked up, the torrent of his eloquence could be compared with nothing save Niagara.
Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith's helper, and had run away to join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with 'graft,' in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he would screw up his face and mutter: 'Capitalism, my boy, capitalism! 'Ecrasez l'infame!'' He had one unfailing remedy for all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one; no matter whether the person's trouble was failure in business, or dyspepsia, or a quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle would come into his eyes and he would say, 'You know what to do about it—vote the Socialist ticket!'
Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon as the war was over. He had gone into business, and found himself in competition with the fortunes of those who had been stealing while he had been fighting. The city government was in their hands and the railroads were in league with them, and honest business was driven to the wall; and so Hinds had put all his savings into Chicago real estate, and set out singlehanded to dam the river of graft. He had been a reform member of the city council, he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor Unionist, a Populist, a Bryanite—and after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896 had served to convince him that the power of concentrated wealth could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He had published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his own, when a stray Socialist
