SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (softly motioning The Devil to wait) Didn’t you say once, Judge, that to properly punish anarchists they should not be hanged but burned?
JUDGE CRITTY (with swelling dignity, thinking that Magnus is recalling the incident favorably) I certainly did, Mr. Magnus.
SCHWARTZENHOPFEL
You didn’t say anything about the causes that make them anarchists, though—did you? (Catching The Devil’s eye) But how about a six-months’strike prolonged because millionaires wouldn’t pay fifty cents more a day to men who work with hot rivets two hundred feet in the air—twenty-five per cent of them killed every year? How about the wives of those strikers who died of overwork and little food trying to support homes and husbands until employers gave in? How about their children who died unborn—eh? Who was it murdered wives and children? And who, after six months, still refused even to compromise? Was it any wonder that men went crazy? Murder for murder—they said—murder for murder. Schwartzenhopfel had such a wife, such children, all dead now, and he shouted: Dynamite, the worker’s friend! (Fiercely to the Judge) And so it isn’t enough to hang him? You’ve got to burn him, have you? Well, what about the men who took an honest workman and made him what he is today?
JUDGE CRITTY (frantically)
Mr. Magnus—
[The Devil goes to the garden door, opens it and points the way out.
JUDGE CRITTY (nervously, suddenly changing his attitude) Mr. Magnus, your admission delights me—for the first time in my relations with you, I—I find it—possible—to—to—be—to be—perfectly natural with you. You cannot blame me for being a hypocrite. If you will pardon me, sir: who made me a hypocrite?—
SCHWARTZENHOPFEL (disgruntled)
I didn’t tell you to burn anarchists, did I?