It shames me to think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities.  It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for “The Masses” could have done.  And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame.  For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—­where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood—­what has Wallace Morgan seen?

A steel-plant in operation.  A company steel-plant!  A corporation steel-plant!  A TRUST steel-plant.

Yet never so much as a starving cat or a pile of garbage in the foreground!

CHAPTER XL

THE ROAD TO ARCADY

Before we saw the train which was to take us from Birmingham to Columbus, Mississippi, we began to sense its quality.  When we attempted to purchase parlor car seats of the ticket agent at the Union Station and were informed by him that our train carried no parlor car, it seemed to us that his manner was touched with cynicism, and this impression was confirmed by his reply to our further timid inquiry as to a dining car: 

“Where do you gentlemen reckon you’re a-goin’ to, anyhow?”

Presently we passed through the gate and better understood the nature of the ticket agent’s thoughts.  The train consisted of several untidy day coaches, the first a Jim Crow car, the others for white people.  The negro car was already so full that many of its occupants had to stand in the aisle, but this did not seem to trouble them, for all were gabbling happily, and the impression one got, in glancing through the door, was of many sets of handsome white teeth displayed in as many dark grinning faces.  There are innumerable things for which we cannot envy the negro, but neither his teeth nor his good nature are among them.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the two or three other cars, though not overcrowded, were well filled with people from the neighboring mining towns who were going home after having spent the morning shopping in the city.  Almost all our fellow passengers carried packages, many had infants with them, and we were struck with the fact that the complexions of these people suggested a diet of pie—­fried pie, if there be such a thing—­that a peculiarly high percentage of them suffered from diseases of the eye, and that the pervading smell of the car in which we sat was of oranges, bananas, babies, and overheated adults.

A young mother in the seat in front of us had with her three small children, the youngest an infant in arms.  She was feeding a banana to the second child, who looked about two years old.  Behind us a clean, capable-looking woman talked in a broad Scottish dialect with another housewife whose jargon was that of the mountaineers.