"Comrade Hinds." "Tommy" Hinds, as he was known to
his intimates, was a squat little man, with broad shoulders
and a florid face, decorated with gray side-whiskers. He
was the kindest-hearted man that ever lived, and the
liveliest -- inexhaustible in his enthusiasm, and talking
Socialism all day and all night. He was a great fellow to
jolly along a crowd, and would keep a meeting in an
uproar; when once he got really waked up, the torrent
of his eloquence could be compared with nothing save
Niagara.

Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith's helper,
and had run away to join the Union army, where he had
made his first acquaintance with "graft," in the shape of
rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a musket that
broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only
brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the
agonies of his own old age. Whenever it rained, the
rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he would
screw up his face and mutter: "Capitalism, my boy, Capi~
talism! _'Ecrasez_l'infame!'"_ He had one unfailing
remedy for all the evils of this world, and he preached it
to everyone; no matter whether the person's trouble was
failure in business, or dyspepsia, or a quarrelsome mother-
in-law, a twinkle would come into his eyes and he would
say, "You know what to do about it -- vote the Socialist
ticket!"

Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus
as soon as the war was over. He had gone into business,
and found himself in competition with the fortunes of those
who had been stealing while he had been fighting. The
city government was in their hands and the railroads were
in league with them, and honest business was driven to the
wall; and so Hinds had put all his savings into Chicago
real estate, and set out single-handed to dam the river of
graft. He had been a reform member of the city council,
he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor Unionist, a Populist,
a Bryanite -- and after thirty years of fighting, the year
1896 had served to convince him that the power of concen~
trated wealth could never be controlled, but could only be

[[381]]

p380 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p381w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p382

v?