“Say, who pays you to come here and hand out that Wall Street stuff?”
“Nobody pays me,” she replied patiently.
“All right, then, if that’s true why don’t you tell us something about the interests and the profiteers and all them dirty games the capitalists is rigging up? Tell us about the guy who wants us to pay eight cents to ride on his damned cars! Tell us about the geezers who soak us for food and coal and clothes and rent!
“You stand there chirping to us about Love and Service and how we oughta give. Give! Jesus!––we ain’t got anything left to give. They ain’t anything to give our wives or our children,––no, nor there ain’t enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants! Give? Hell! The interests took it. And you stand there twittering about Love and Service! We oughta serve ’em a brick on the neck and love ’em with a black-jack!”
“How far would that get you?” asked Palla gently.
“As far as their pants-pockets anyway!”
“And when you empty those, who is to employ and pay you?”
“Don’t worry,” he sneered, “we’ll do the employing after that.”
“And will your employees do to you some day what you did to your employers with a black-jack?”