the paper I had brought in. There was in it, as in all the newspapers of that
date, a great deal about the labor troubles, strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, the
programmes of labor parties, and the wild threats of the anarchists.
    »By the way,« said I, as the doctor read aloud to us some of these items,
»what part did the followers of the red flag take in the establishment of the
new order of things? They were making considerable noise the last thing that I
knew.«
    »They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,« replied Dr.
Leete. »They did that very effectually while they lasted, for their talk so
disgusted people as to deprive the best considered projects for social reform of
a hearing. The subsidizing of those fellows was one of the shrewdest moves of
the opponents of reform.«
    »Subsidizing them!« I exclaimed in astonishment.
    »Certainly,« replied Dr. Leete. »No historical authority nowadays doubts
that they were paid by the great monopolies to wave the red flag and talk about
burning, sacking, and blowing people up, in order, by alarming the timid, to
head off any real reforms. What astonishes me most is that you should have
fallen into the trap so unsuspectingly.«
    »What are your grounds for believing that the red flag party was
subsidized?« I inquired.
    »Why simply because they must have seen that their course made a thousand
enemies of their professed cause to one friend. Not to suppose that they were
hired for the work is to credit them with an inconceivable folly.4 In the United
States, of all countries, no party could intelligently expect to carry its point
without first winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the
national party eventually did.«
    »The national party!« I exclaimed. »That must have arisen after my day. I
suppose it was one of the labor parties.«
    »Oh no!« replied the doctor. »The labor parties, as such, never could have
accomplished anything on a large or permanent scale. For purposes of national
scope, their basis as merely class organizations was too narrow. It was not till
a rearrangement of the industrial and social system on a higher ethical basis,
and for the more efficient production of wealth, was recognised as the interest,
not of one class, but equally of all classes, of rich and poor, cultured and
ignorant, old and young, weak and strong, men and women, that there