The crowd laughed, but her heckler shook his fist at her and yelled:
“Ain’t I telling you that we’ll be sitting in these damn gold-plated houses and payin’ wages to these here fat millionaires for blackin’ our shoes?”
“You mean that when Bolshevism rules there are to be rich and poor just the same as at present?”
Again the crowd laughed.
“All right!” bawled the man, waving both arms above his head, “––yes, I do mean it! It will be our turn then. Why not? What do we want to split fifty-fifty with them soft, fat millionaires for? Nix on that stuff! It will be hog-killing time, and you can bet your thousand-dollar wrist watch, Miss, that there’ll be some killin’ in little old New York!”
He had backed out of the circle and disappeared in the crowd before Palla could attempt further reasoning with him. So she merely shook her head in gentle disapproval and dissent:
“What is the use,” she said, “of exchanging one form of tyranny for another? Why destroy the autocracy of the capitalist and erect on its ruins the autocracy of the worker?
“How can class distinctions be eradicated by fanning class-hatred? In a battle against all dictators, why proclaim dictatorship––even of the proletariat?
“All oppression is hateful, whether exercised by God or man––whether the oppressor be that murderous, 303 stupid, treacherous, tyrannical bully in the Old Testament, miscalled God, or whether the oppressor be the proletariat which screamed for the blood of Jesus Christ and got it!
“Free heart, free mind, free soul!––anything less means servitude, not service––hatred, not love!”