It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis! It was so in~
comprehensible how a man could fail to see it! Here were
all the opportunities of the country, the land, and the build~
ings upon the land, the railroads, the mines, the factories,
and the stores, all in the hands of a few private individuals,
called capitalists, for whom the people were obliged to
work for wages. The whole balance of what the people
produced went to heap up the fortunes of these capitalists,
to heap, and heap again, and yet again -- and that in spite of
the fact that they, and everyone about them, lived in un~
thinkable luxury! And was it not plain that if the people
cut off the share of those who merely "owned," the share of
those who worked would be much greater? That was as
plain as two and two makes four; and it was the whole of it,
absolutely the whole of it; and yet there were people who
could not see it, who would argue about everything else in
the world. They would tell you that governments could
not manage things as economically as private individuals;
they would repeat and repeat that, and think they were
saying something! They could not see that "economical"
management by masters meant simply that they, the people,
were worked harder and ground closer and paid less!
They were wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of ex~
ploiters whose one thought was to get as much out of them
as possible; and they were taking an interest in the process,
were anxious lest it should not be done thoroughly enough!
Was it not honestly a trial to listen to an argument such
as that?

And yet there were things even worse. You would
begin talking to some poor devil who had worked in one
shop for the last thirty years, and had never been able to
save a penny; who left home every morning at six o'clock,
to go and tend a machine, and come back at night too tired
to take his clothes off; who had never had a week's vaca~
tion in his life, had never traveled, never had an adventure,
never learned anything, never hoped anything -- and when
you started to tell him about Socialism he would sniff and
say, "I'm not interested in that -- I'm an individualist!"
And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was

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v?