Mr. Vedder threw up his hands.
"So you're a Socialist, too!"
"That," I said, "is another story."
"Well, supposing we did or could give him this equality you speak
of--what would become of us? What would we get out of it?"
"Why, equality, too!" I said.
Mr. Vedder threw up his hands up with a gesture of mock
resignation.
"Come," said he, "let's get down out of Utopia!"
We had some further good-humoured fencing and then returned to
the inevitable problem of the strike. While we were discussing
the meeting of the night before which, I learned, had been
luridly reported in the morning papers, Mr. Vedder suddenly
turned to me and asked earnestly:
"Are you really a Socialist?"
"Well," said I, "I'm sure of one thing. I'm not ALL Socialist,
Bill Hahn believes with his whole soul (and his faith has made
him a remarkable man) that if only another class of people--his
class--could come into the control of material property, that
all the ills that man is heir to would be speedily cured. But I
wonder if when men own property collectively--as they are going
to one of these days--they will quarrel and hate one another any
less than they do now. It is not the ownership of material
property that interests me so much as the independence of it.
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