Colver laughed his merry laugh.  “We do it just as often as you act for the movies, Fellow-worker Carpenter!”

“I see,” said Carpenter.  “What do you really do?”

“What we really do is to organize the unskilled workers.”

“For what do you organize them?”

“So that they will be able to run the industries when the system of greed breaks down of its own rottenness.”

“I see,” said the prophet, and he thought for a moment.  “It is a slave revolt!”

“Exactly,” said the other.

“I know what they do to slave revolts, my brother.  You are fortunate if they only send you to prison.”

“They do plenty more than that,” said Colver.  “I will give you our pamphlet, ‘Drops of Blood,’ and you may read about some of the lynching and tarring and feathering and shooting of Mobland.”  His eyes twinkled.  “That’s a dandy name you’ve hit on!  I shall be surprised if it doesn’t stick.”

Carpenter went on questioning, bent upon knowing about this outlaw organization and its members.  It was clear before long that he had taken a fancy to young John Colver.  He made him sit beside him, and asked to hear some of his poetry, and when he found it really vivid and beautiful, he put his arm about the young poet’s shoulders.  Again I found memories of old childhood phrases stirring in my mind.  Had there not once been a disciple named John, who was especially beloved?

XLII

Presently the young agitator began telling about an investigation he had been making in the lumber country of the Northwest.  He was writing a pamphlet on the subject of a massacre which had occurred there.  A mob of ex-soldiers had stormed the headquarters of the “wobblies,” and the latter had defended themselves, and killed two or three of their assailants.  A news agency had sent out over the country a story to the effect that the “wobblies” had made an unprovoked assault upon the ex-soldiers.  “That’s what the papers do to us!” said John Colver.  “There have been scores of mobbings as a result, and just now it may be worth a man’s life to be caught carrying a red card in any of these Western states.”

So there was the subject of non-resistance, and I sat and listened with strangely mingled feelings of sympathy and repulsion, while this group of rebels of all shades and varieties argued whether it was really possible for the workers to get free without some kind of force.  Carpenter, it appeared, was the only one in the company who believed it possible.  The gentle Comrade Abell was obliged to admit that the Socialists, in using political action, were really resorting to force in a veiled form.  They sought to take possession of the state by voting; but the state was an instrument of force, and would use force to carry out its will.  “You are an anarchist!” said the Socialist lawyer, addressing Carpenter.

To my surprise Carpenter was not shocked by this.