"Outrage--what do you mean,
outrage?"
"I was thinking of the innocent people who were killed or injured,"
returned the Interpreter, calmly. "I believe you were also prominent in
those western strikes where so many women and children suffered, were
you not?"
The labor agitator replied with the exact manner of a scientific
lecturer. "It is unfortunate that innocent persons must sometimes be
hurt in these affairs. But that is one of the penalties that society
must pay for tolerating the conditions that make these industrial wars
necessary."
"If I remember correctly, you were in the South, too, at the time that
mill was destroyed."
"Oh, yes, they had me in jail there. But that was nothing. I have many
such experiences. They are to me very commonplace. Wherever there are
the poor laboring men who must fight for their rights, I go. The mines,
shops, mills, factories--it is all the same to me. I go wherever I can
serve the Cause. I have been in America now ten years, nearly eleven."
"You are not, then, a citizen of this country?"
Jake Vodell laughed contemptuously. "Oh, sure I am a citizen of this
country--this great America of fools and cowards that talk all the time
so big about freedom and equality, while the capitalist money hogs hold
them in slavery and rob them of the property they create.
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