She spoke impetuously, with the inspired exaltation of a prophet delivering a message to the people.  Ryder listened, concealing his impatience with uneasy little coughs.

“Yes,” she went on, “I am a socialist and I am proud of it.  The whole world is slowly drifting toward socialism as the only remedy for the actual intolerable conditions.  It may not come in our time, but it will come as surely as the sun will rise and set tomorrow.  Has not the flag of socialism waved recently from the White House?  Has not a President of the United States declared that the State must eventually curb the great fortunes?  What is that but socialism?”

“True,” retorted Ryder grimly, “and that little speech intended for the benefit of the gallery will cost him the nomination at the next Presidential election.  We don’t want in the White House a President who stirs up class hatred.  Our rich men have a right to what is their own; that is guaranteed them by the Constitution.”

“Is it their own?” interrupted Shirley.

Ryder ignored the insinuation and proceeded: 

“What of our boasted free institutions if a man is to be restricted in what he may and may not do?  If I am clever enough to accumulate millions who can stop me?”

“The people will stop you,” said Shirley calmly.  “It is only a question of time.  Their patience is about exhausted.  Put your ear to the ground and listen to the distant rumbling of the tempest which, sooner or later, will be unchained in this land, provoked by the iniquitous practices of organized capital.  The people have had enough of the extortions of the Trusts.  One day they will rise in their wrath and seize by the throat this knavish plutocracy which, confident in the power of its wealth to procure legal immunity and reckless of its danger, persists in robbing the public daily.  But retribution is at hand.  The growing discontent of the proletariat, the ever-increasing strikes and labour disputes of all kinds, the clamour against the Railroads and the Trusts, the evidence of collusion between both—­all this is the writing on the wall.  The capitalistic system is doomed; socialism will succeed it.”

“What is socialism?” he demanded scornfully.  “What will it give the public that it has not got already?”

Shirley, who never neglected an opportunity to make a convert, no matter how hardened he might be, picked up a little pamphlet printed for propaganda purposes which she had that morning received by mail.

“Here,” she said, “is one of the best and clearest definitions of socialism I have ever read: