Martin Eden

the talker of platitudes was concerned.
    “Yes,” he had said, “Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young man—somebody told me as much. And it is true. He’ll make the Governor’s Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States Senate.”
    “What makes you think so?” Mrs. Morse had inquired.
    “I’ve heard him make a campaign speech. It was so cleverly stupid and unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the platitudes of the average voter that—oh, well, you know you flatter any man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him.”
    “I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood,” Ruth had chimed in.
    “Heaven forbid!”
    The look of horror on Martin’s face stirred Mrs. Morse to belligerence.
    “You surely don’t mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?” she demanded icily.
    “No more than the average Republican,” was the retort, “or average Democrat, either. They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires and their conscious henchmen. They know which side their bread is buttered on, and they know why.”
    “I am a Republican,” Mr. Morse put in lightly. “Pray, how do you classify me?”
    “Oh, you are an unconscious henchman.”
    “Henchman?”
    “Why, yes. You do corporation work. You have no working-class nor criminal practice. You don’t depend upon wife-beaters and pickpockets for your income. You get your livelihood from the masters of society, and whoever feeds a man is that man’s master. Yes, you are a henchman. You are interested in advancing the interests of the aggregations of capital you serve.”
    Mr. Morse’s face was a trifle red.
    “I confess, sir,” he said, “that you talk like a scoundrelly socialist.”
    Then it was that Martin made his remark:
    “You hate and fear the socialists; but why? You know neither them nor their doctrines.”
    “Your doctrine certainly sounds like socialism,” Mr. Morse replied, while Ruth gazed anxiously from one to the other, and Mrs. Morse beamed happily at the opportunity afforded of rousing her liege lord’s antagonism.
    “Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty, equality, and fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me a socialist,” Martin said with a smile. “Because I question Jefferson and the unscientific Frenchmen who informed his mind, does not make me a socialist. Believe me, Mr. Morse, you are far nearer socialism than I who am its avowed enemy.”
    “Now you please to be facetious,” was all the other could say.
    “Not at all. I speak in all seriousness. You still believe in equality, and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from day to day, are busily engaged in burying equality. And you call me a socialist because I deny equality, because I affirm just what you live up to. The Republicans are foes to equality, though most of them fight the battle against equality with the very word itself the slogan on their lips. In the name of equality they destroy equality. That was why I called them stupid. As for myself, I am an individualist. I believe the race is to the swift, the battle to the strong. Such is the lesson I have learned from biology, or at least think I have learned. As I said, I am an individualist, and individualism is the hereditary and eternal foe of socialism.”
    “But you frequent socialist meetings,” Mr. Morse challenged.
    “Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps. How else are you to learn about the enemy? Besides, I enjoy myself at their meetings. They are good fighters, and, right or wrong, they have read the books. Any one of them knows far more about sociology and all the other ologies than the average captain of industry. Yes, I have been to half a dozen of their meetings, but that doesn’t make me a socialist any more than hearing Charley Hapgood orate made me a Republican.”
    “I can’t help it,” Mr. Morse said feebly, “but I still believe you incline that way.”
    Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn’t know what I was talking about. He hasn’t understood a word of it. What did he do with his education, anyway?
    Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face with economic morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became to him a grisly monster. Personally, he was an