kept coming, to save him from settling down into a rut.
Just now Jurgis would have plenty of chance to vent his
excitement, for a presidential campaign was on, and every~
body was talking politics. Ostrinski would take him to
the next meeting of the branch-local, and introduce him,
and he might join the party. The dues were five cents a
week, but any one who could not afford this might be ex~
cused from paying. The Socialist party was a really demo~
cratic political organization -- it was controlled absolutely
by its own membership, and had no bosses. All of these
things Ostrinski explained, as also the principles of the
party. You might say that there was really but one
Socialist principle -- that of "no compromise," which was
the essence of the proletarian movement all over the
world. When a Socialist was elected to office he voted
with old party legislators for any measure that was likely
to be of help to the working-class, but he never forgot
that these concessions, whatever they might be, were
trifles compared with the great purpose, -- the organizing
of the working-class for the revolution. So far, the rule in
America had been that one Socialist made another Socialist
once every two years; and if they should maintain the
same rate they would carry the country in 1912 -- though
not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as that.

The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation;
it was an international political party, said Ostrinski, the
greatest the world had ever known. It numbered thirty
millions of adherents, and it cast eight million votes. It
had started its first newspaper in Japan, and elected its first
deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of cab~
inets, and in Italy and Australia it held the balance of
power and turned out ministries. In Germany, where its
vote was more than a third of the total vote of the empire,
all other parties and powers had united to fight it. It
would not do, Ostrinski explained, for the proletariat of
one nation to achieve the victory, for that nation would be
crushed by the military power of the others; and so the
Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization
of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity. It was

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