One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to
go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet
him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, "I've
got work now, and so you can leave here."

But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to
do, she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a
secret--girls had tried it, and they were always found out. There were
thousands of men who came to this place, and sooner or later she would
meet one of them. "And besides," Marija added, "I can't do anything. I'm
no good--I take dope. What could you do with me?"

"Can't you stop?" Jurgis cried.

"No," she answered, "I'll never stop. What's the use of talking about
it--I'll stay here till I die, I guess. It's all I'm fit for." And that
was all that he could get her to say--there was no use trying. When
he told her he would not let Elzbieta take her money, she answered
indifferently: "Then it'll be wasted here--that's all." Her eyelids
looked heavy and her face was red and swollen; he saw that he was
annoying her, that she only wanted him to go away. So he went,
disappointed and sad.

Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta was sick a
good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very much the
worse for their life upon the streets. But he stuck by the family
nevertheless, for they reminded him of his old happiness; and when
things went wrong he could solace himself with a plunge into the
Socialist movement. Since his life had been caught up into the current
of this great stream, things which had before been the whole of life
to him came to seem of relatively slight importance; his interests were
elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and
uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one
while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a
perpetual adventure. There was so much to know--so many wonders to
be discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgis forget the day before
election, when there came a telephone message from a friend of Harry
Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis to see him that night; and Jurgis
went, and met one of the minds of the movement.

The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire who
had given up his life to settlement work, and had a little home in the
heart of the city's slums. He did not belong to the party, but he was
in sympathy with it; and he said that he was to have as his guest that
night the editor of a big Eastern magazine, who wrote against Socialism,
but really did not know what it was. The millionaire suggested that
Adams bring Jurgis along, and then start up the subject of "pure food,"
in which the editor was interested.

Young Fisher's home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and
weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw
was half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly
visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a
log fire was crackling in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were
gathered about it when Adams and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to
his dismay that three of them were ladies. He had never talked to people
of this sort before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment. He
stood in the doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and made a
deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, when he was
asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner, and sat down
upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with
his sleeve. He was terrified lest they should expect him to talk.

There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in evening
dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking gentleman named
Maynard. There was the former's frail young wife, and also an elderly
lady, who taught kindergarten in the settlement, and a young college
student, a beautiful girl with an intense and earnest face. She only
spoke once or twice while Jurgis was there--the rest of the time she sat
by the table in the center of the room, resting her chin in her hands
and drinking in the conversation. There were two other men, whom young
Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr. Schliemann; he
heard them address Adams as "Comrade," and so he knew that they were
Socialists.

The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman of
clerical aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, it transpired,
and had seen the light and become a prophet of the new dispensation.
He traveled all over the country, living like the apostles of old, upon
hospitality, and preaching upon street-corners when there was no hall.
The other man had been in the midst of a discussion with the editor when
Adams and Jurgis came in; and at the suggestion of the host they resumed
it after the interruption. Jurgis was soon sitting spellbound, thinking
that here was surely the strangest man that had ever lived in the world.

Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairy hands
and bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, and had been a
professor of philosophy--until, as he said, he had found that he was
selling his character as well as his time. Instead he had come to
America, where he lived in a garret room in this slum district, and made
volcanic energy take the place of fire. He studied the composition of
food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his
body needed; and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the value
of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the first
of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when he
struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars and a
half a day, and come home when he had another year's supply--a hundred
and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to independence
a man could make "under capitalism," he explained; he would never marry,
for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the
revolution.

He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head so far in
the shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflected from the fire
on the hearth. He spoke simply, and utterly without emotion; with the
manner of a teacher setting forth to a group of scholars an axiom in
geometry, he would enunciate such propositions as made the hair of
an ordinary person rise on end. And when the auditor had asserted
his non-comprehension, he would proceed to elucidate by some new
proposition, yet more appalling. To Jurgis the Herr Dr. Schliemann
assumed the proportions of a thunderstorm or an earthquake. And yet,
strange as it might seem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he
could follow the argument nearly all the time. He was carried over the
difficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away in mad
career--a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse Speculation.

Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and with man
as a small part of it. He understood human institutions, and blew them
about like soap bubbles. It was surprising that so much destructiveness
could be contained in one human mind. Was it government? The purpose
of government was the guarding of property-rights, the perpetuation
of ancient force and modern fraud. Or was it marriage? Marriage
and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man's
exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a
difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own
terms: equality, a life contract, and the legitimacy--that is, the
property-rights--of her children. If she had no money, she was a
proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. And then the subject
became Religion, which was the Archfiend's deadliest weapon. Government
oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind,
and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The working-man was
to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in
this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience--in short
to all the pseudo-virtues of capitalism. The destiny of civilization
would be decided in one final death struggle between the Red
International and the Black, between Socialism and the Roman Catholic
Church; while here at home, "the stygian midnight of American
evangelicalism--"

And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was a lively
tussle. "Comrade" Lucas was not what is called an educated man; he knew
only the Bible, but it was the Bible interpreted by real experience. And
what was the use, he asked, of confusing Religion with men's perversions
of it? That the church was in the hands of the merchants at the moment
was obvious enough; but already there were signs of rebellion, and if
Comrade Schliemann could come back a few years from now--

"Ah, yes," said the other, "of course, I have no doubt that in a hundred
years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed Socialism, just
as at present it denies that it ever tortured Galileo."

"I am not defending the Vatican," exclaimed Lucas, vehemently. "I am
defending the word of God--which is one long cry of the human spirit for
deliverance from the sway of oppression. Take the twenty-fourth chapter
of the Book of Job, which I am accustomed to quote in my addresses as
'the Bible upon the Beef Trust'; or take the words of Isaiah--or of the
Master himself! Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious art,
not the jeweled idol of our society churches--but the Jesus of the awful
reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of the world,
who had nowhere to lay his head--"

"I will grant you Jesus," interrupted the other.

"Well, then," cried Lucas, "and why should Jesus have nothing to do with
his church--why should his words and his life be of no authority among
those who profess to adore him? Here is a man who was the world's first
revolutionist, the true founder of the Socialist movement; a man whose
whole being was one flame of hatred for wealth, and all that wealth
stands for,--for the pride of wealth, and the luxury of wealth, and the
tyranny of wealth; who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man of the
people, an associate of saloon-keepers and women of the town; who again
and again, in the most explicit language, denounced wealth and
the holding of wealth: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth!'--'Sell that ye have and give alms!'--'Blessed are ye poor, for
yours is the kingdom of Heaven!'--'Woe unto you that are rich, for ye
have received your consolation!'--'Verily, I say unto you, that a rich
man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven!' Who denounced in
unmeasured terms the exploiters of his own time: 'Woe unto you, scribes
and pharisees, hypocrites!'--'Woe unto you also, you lawyers!'--'Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell?' Who drove out the business men and brokers from the temple with a
whip! Who was crucified--think of it--for an incendiary and a disturber
of the social order! And this man they have made into the high priest of
property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors
and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jeweled images are
made of him, sensual priests burn incense to him, and modern pirates of
industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women
and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats and
listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of dusty divinity--"

"Bravo!" cried Schliemann, laughing. But the other was in full
career--he had talked this subject every day for five years, and had
never yet let himself be stopped. "This Jesus of Nazareth!" he cried.
"This class-conscious working-man! This union carpenter! This agitator,
law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist! He, the sovereign lord and master
of a world which grinds the bodies and souls of human beings into
dollars--if he could come into the world this day and see the things
that men have made in his name, would it not blast his soul with horror?
Would he not go mad at the sight of it, he the Prince of Mercy and Love!
That dreadful night when he lay in the Garden of Gethsemane and writhed
in agony until he sweat blood--do you think that he saw anything worse
than he might see tonight upon the plains of Manchuria, where men march
out with a jeweled image of him before them, to do wholesale murder for
the benefit of foul monsters of sensuality and cruelty? Do you not know
that if he were in St. Petersburg now, he would take the whip with which
he drove out the bankers from his temple--"

Here the speaker paused an instant for breath. "No, comrade," said the
other, dryly, "for he was a practical man. He would take pretty little
imitation lemons, such as are now being shipped into Russia, handy for
carrying in the pockets, and strong enough to blow a whole temple out of
sight."

Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this; then
he began again: "But look at it from the point of view of practical
politics, comrade. Here is an historical figure whom all men reverence
and love, whom some regard as divine; and who was one of us--who lived
our life, and taught our doctrine. And now shall we leave him in the
hands of his enemies--shall we allow them to stifle and stultify his
example? We have his words, which no one can deny; and shall we not
quote them to the people, and prove to them what he was, and what he
taught, and what he did? No, no, a thousand times no!--we shall use his
authority to turn out the knaves and sluggards from his ministry, and we
shall yet rouse the people to action!--"

Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to a paper on
the table. "Here, comrade," he said, with a laugh, "here is a place for
you to begin. A bishop whose wife has just been robbed of fifty thousand
dollars' worth of diamonds! And a most unctuous and oily of bishops!
An eminent and scholarly bishop! A philanthropist and friend of labor
bishop--a Civic Federation decoy duck for the chloroforming of the
wage-working-man!"

To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat as
spectators. But now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion to remark,
somewhat naively, that he had always understood that Socialists had a
cut-and-dried program for the future of civilization; whereas here were
two active members of the party, who, from what he could make out, were
agreed about nothing at all. Would the two, for his enlightenment, try
to ascertain just what they had in common, and why they belonged to the
same party? This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of
two carefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist believes in
the common ownership and democratic management of the means of producing
the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialist believes that
the means by which this is to be brought about is the class conscious
political organization of the wage-earners. Thus far they were at
one; but no farther. To Lucas, the religious zealot, the co-operative
commonwealth was the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, which is
"within you." To the other, Socialism was simply a necessary step toward
a far-distant goal, a step to be tolerated with impatience. Schliemann
called himself a "philosophic anarchist"; and he explained that an
anarchist was one who believed that the end of human existence was the
free development of every personality, unrestricted by laws save those
of its own being. Since the same kind of match would light every one's
fire and the same-shaped loaf of bread would fill every one's stomach,
it would be perfectly feasible to submit industry to the control of a
majority vote. There was only one earth, and the quantity of material
things was limited. Of intellectual and moral things, on the other hand,
there was no limit, and one could have more without another's
having less; hence "Communism in material production, anarchism in
intellectual," was the formula of modern proletarian thought. As soon
as the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society had been healed,
there would be established a simple system whereby each man was credited
with his labor and debited with his purchases; and after that the
processes of production, exchange, and consumption would go on
automatically, and without our being conscious of them, any more than
a man is conscious of the beating of his heart. And then, explained
Schliemann, society would break up into independent, self-governing
communities of mutually congenial persons; examples of which at present
were clubs, churches, and political parties. After the revolution, all
the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of men would be
cared for by such "free associations"; romantic novelists would be
supported by those who liked to read romantic novels, and impressionist
painters would be supported by those who liked to look at impressionist
pictures--and the same with preachers and scientists, editors and actors
and musicians. If any one wanted to work or paint or pray, and could
find no one to maintain him, he could support himself by working part of
the time. That was the case at present, the only difference being that
the competitive wage system compelled a man to work all the time to
live, while, after the abolition of privilege and exploitation, any
one would be able to support himself by an hour's work a day. Also the
artist's audience of the present was a small minority of people, all
debased and vulgarized by the effort it had cost them to win in the
commercial battle, of the intellectual and artistic activities which
would result when the whole of mankind was set free from the nightmare
of competition, we could at present form no conception whatever.

And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr. Schliemann
asserted that it might be possible for a society to exist upon an hour's
toil by each of its members. "Just what," answered the other, "would be
the productive capacity of society if the present resources of science
were utilized, we have no means of ascertaining; but we may be sure it
would exceed anything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to
the ferocious barbarities of capitalism. After the triumph of the
international proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable; and
who can figure the cost of war to humanity--not merely the value of the
lives and the material that it destroys, not merely the cost of keeping
millions of men in idleness, of arming and equipping them for battle
and parade, but the drain upon the vital energies of society by the
war attitude and the war terror, the brutality and ignorance, the
drunkenness, prostitution, and crime it entails, the industrial
impotence and the moral deadness? Do you think that it would be too much
to say that two hours of the working time of every efficient member of a
community goes to feed the red fiend of war?"

And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of
competition: the losses of industrial warfare; the ceaseless worry and
friction; the vices--such as drink, for instance, the use of which had
nearly doubled in twenty years, as a consequence of the intensification
of the economic struggle; the idle and unproductive members of the
community, the frivolous rich and the pauperized poor; the law and the
whole machinery of repression; the wastes of social ostentation, the
milliners and tailors, the hairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and
lackeys. "You understand," he said, "that in a society dominated by
the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of
prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So we have,
at the present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the
population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per cent
occupied in destroying them. And this is not all; for the servants
and panders of the parasites are also parasites, the milliners and the
jewelers and the lackeys have also to be supported by the useful members
of the community. And bear in mind also that this monstrous disease
affects not merely the idlers and their menials, its poison penetrates
the whole social body. Beneath the hundred thousand women of the elite
are a million middle-class women, miserable because they are not of the
elite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath them, in turn,
are five million farmers' wives reading 'fashion papers' and trimming
bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids selling themselves into
brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-skin robes. And then
consider that, added to this competition in display, you have, like
oil on the flames, a whole system of competition in selling! You have
manufacturers contriving tens of thousands of catchpenny devices,
storekeepers displaying them, and newspapers and magazines filled up
with advertisements of them!"

"And don't forget the wastes of fraud," put in young Fisher.

"When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,"
responded Schliemann--"the science of persuading people to buy what they
do not want--he is in the very center of the ghastly charnel house
of capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely knows which of a dozen
horrors to point out first. But consider the waste in time and energy
incidental to making ten thousand varieties of a thing for purposes
of ostentation and snobbishness, where one variety would do for use!
Consider all the waste incidental to the manufacture of cheap qualities
of goods, of goods made to sell and deceive the ignorant; consider the
wastes of adulteration,--the shoddy clothing, the cotton blankets, the
unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the adulterated
milk, the aniline soda water, the potato-flour sausages--"

"And consider the moral aspects of the thing," put in the ex-preacher.

"Precisely," said Schliemann; "the low knavery and the ferocious cruelty
incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and the bribing, the
blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, the hurrying and
worrying. Of course, imitation and adulteration are the essence of
competition--they are but another form of the phrase 'to buy in the
cheapest market and sell in the dearest.' A government official has
stated that the nation suffers a loss of a billion and a quarter dollars
a year through adulterated foods; which means, of course, not only
materials wasted that might have been useful outside of the human
stomach, but doctors and nurses for people who would otherwise have
been well, and undertakers for the whole human race ten or twenty years
before the proper time. Then again, consider the waste of time and
energy required to sell these things in a dozen stores, where one would
do. There are a million or two of business firms in the country,
and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and
rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and worrying,
the balancing of petty profit and loss. Consider the whole machinery
of the civil law made necessary by these processes; the libraries of
ponderous tomes, the courts and juries to interpret them, the lawyers
studying to circumvent them, the pettifogging and chicanery, the hatreds
and lies! Consider the wastes incidental to the blind and haphazard
production of commodities--the factories closed, the workers idle,
the goods spoiling in storage; consider the activities of the stock
manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, the overstimulation of
others, for speculative purposes; the assignments and bank failures,
the crises and panics, the deserted towns and the starving populations!
Consider the energies wasted in the seeking of markets, the sterile
trades, such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster, advertising agent.
Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into cities, made
necessary by competition and by monopoly railroad rates; consider
the slums, the bad air, the disease and the waste of vital energies;
consider the office buildings, the waste of time and material in the
piling of story upon story, and the burrowing underground! Then take
the whole business of insurance, the enormous mass of administrative and
clerical labor it involves, and all utter waste--"

"I do not follow that," said the editor. "The Cooperative Commonwealth
is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its
members. Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared
by all and made up by all. The bank is the universal government
credit-account, the ledger in which every individual's earnings and
spendings are balanced. There is also a universal government bulletin,
in which are listed and precisely described everything which the
commonwealth has for sale. As no one makes any profit by the sale, there
is no longer any stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation; no
cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery or 'grafting.'"

"How is the price of an article determined?"

"The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is
determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers in
the nation's wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total
product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of
wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary
symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of
a bushel of wheat is fifty cents."

"You say 'for farm work,'" said Mr. Maynard. "Then labor is not to be
paid alike?"

"Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should
have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. Of course the
wages may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will
have to be varied continually, according as a greater or less number of
workers is needed in any particular industry. That is precisely what is
done at present, except that the transfer of the workers is accomplished
blindly and imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of
instantly and completely, by a universal government bulletin."

"How about those occupations in which time is difficult to calculate?
What is the labor cost of a book?"

"Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and binding of
it--about a fifth of its present cost."

"And the author?"

"I have already said that the state could not control intellectual
production. The state might say that it had taken a year to write the
book, and the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that
every bon mot of his had cost a purse of gold. What I outline here is
a national, or rather international, system for the providing of the
material needs of men. Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will
work longer, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and in his
own way. I live on the same earth as the majority, I wear the same kind
of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but I do not think the same
kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such thinkers as the
majority selects. I wish such things to be left to free effort, as
at present. If people want to listen to a certain preacher, they get
together and contribute what they please, and pay for a church and
support the preacher, and then listen to him; I, who do not want to
listen to him, stay away, and it costs me nothing. In the same way there
are magazines about Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and flying
machines, and athletic records, and I know nothing about any of them.
On the other hand, if wage slavery were abolished, and I could earn some
spare money without paying tribute to an exploiting capitalist,
then there would be a magazine for the purpose of interpreting
and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche, the prophet of
Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, the inventor of the noble
science of clean eating; and incidentally, perhaps, for the discouraging
of long skirts, and the scientific breeding of men and women, and the
establishing of divorce by mutual consent."

Dr. Schliemann paused for a moment. "That was a lecture," he said with a
laugh, "and yet I am only begun!"

"What else is there?" asked Maynard.

"I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,"
answered the other. "I have hardly mentioned the positive economies
of co-operation. Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million
families in this country; and at least ten million of these live
separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave.
Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the
economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the
washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing
for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day's
work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons--mostly
women to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most
filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia,
nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and
insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children--for all of which
things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each
of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash
and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch,
but scientifically--sterilizing them--and do it at a saving of all the
drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may
find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take Kropotkin's Fields,
Factories, and Workshops, and read about the new science of agriculture,
which has been built up in the last ten years; by which, with made soils
and intensive culture, a gardener can raise ten or twelve crops in a
season, and two hundred tons of vegetables upon a single acre; by which
the population of the whole globe could be supported on the soil now
cultivated in the United States alone! It is impossible to apply such
methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of our scattered farming
population; but imagine the problem of providing the food supply of our
nation once taken in hand systematically and rationally, by scientists!
All the poor and rocky land set apart for a national timber reserve, in
which our children play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell!
The most favorable climate and soil for each product selected; the
exact requirements of the community known, and the acreage figured
accordingly; the most improved machinery employed, under the direction
of expert agricultural chemists! I was brought up on a farm, and I know
the awful deadliness of farm work; and I like to picture it all as
it will be after the revolution. To picture the great potato-planting
machine, drawn by four horses, or an electric motor, ploughing the
furrow, cutting and dropping and covering the potatoes, and planting a
score of acres a day! To picture the great potato-digging machine,
run by electricity, perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field,
scooping up earth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks! To
every other kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way--apples
and oranges picked by machinery, cows milked by electricity--things
which are already done, as you may know. To picture the harvest fields
of the future, to which millions of happy men and women come for a
summer holiday, brought by special trains, the exactly needful number to
each place! And to contrast all this with our present agonizing system
of independent small farming,--a stunted, haggard, ignorant man, mated
with a yellow, lean, and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling from four o'clock
in the morning until nine at night, working the children as soon as they
are able to walk, scratching the soil with its primitive tools, and shut
out from all knowledge and hope, from all their benefits of science and
invention, and all the joys of the spirit--held to a bare existence
by competition in labor, and boasting of his freedom because he is too
blind to see his chains!"

Dr. Schliemann paused a moment. "And then," he continued, "place
beside this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newest discovery of
physiologists, that most of the ills of the human system are due to
overfeeding! And then again, it has been proven that meat is unnecessary
as a food; and meat is obviously more difficult to produce than
vegetable food, less pleasant to prepare and handle, and more likely
to be unclean. But what of that, so long as it tickles the palate more
strongly?"

"How would Socialism change that?" asked the girl-student, quickly. It
was the first time she had spoken.

"So long as we have wage slavery," answered Schliemann, "it matters not
in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may be, it is easy to
find people to perform it. But just as soon as labor is set free, then
the price of such work will begin to rise. So one by one the old, dingy,
and unsanitary factories will come down--it will be cheaper to build
new; and so the steamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and
so the dangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found
for their products. In exactly the same way, as the citizens of
our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost of
slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those who want
to eat meat will have to do their own killing--and how long do you think
the custom would survive then?--To go on to another item--one of the
necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political
corruption; and one of the consequences of civic administration by
ignorant and vicious politicians, is that preventable diseases kill off
half our population. And even if science were allowed to try, it could
do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human beings
at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They
are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and
the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors
in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers
of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness
impossible for even the most selfish. For this reason I would seriously
maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can
make in the future will be of less importance than the application of
the knowledge we already possess, when the disinherited of the earth
have established their right to a human existence."

And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis had noticed
that the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-table was listening
with something of the same look that he himself had worn, the time when
he had first discovered Socialism. Jurgis would have liked to talk to
her, he felt sure that she would have understood him. Later on in the
evening, when the group broke up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in
a low voice, "I wonder if Mr. Maynard will still write the same things
about Socialism"; to which she answered, "I don't know--but if he does
we shall know that he is a knave!"

And only a few hours after this came election day--when the long
campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold
its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of
Hinds's Hotel could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they
hurried off to the big hall which the party had hired for that evening.

But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph
instrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns. When the
final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to be over four
hundred thousand--an increase of something like three hundred and fifty
per cent in four years. And that was doing well; but the party was
dependent for its early returns upon messages from the locals, and
naturally those locals which had been most successful were the ones
which felt most like reporting; and so that night every one in the hall
believed that the vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight
hundred thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually been
made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been 6,700
in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been 9,600, and
now it was 69,000! So, as the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in, the
meeting was a sight to be seen. Bulletins would be read, and the people
would shout themselves hoarse--and then some one would make a speech,
and there would be more shouting; and then a brief silence, and more
bulletins. There would come messages from the secretaries of neighboring
states, reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from
2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from 4,800
to 36,000! There were telegrams to the national office from enthusiastic
individuals in little towns which had made amazing and unprecedented
increases in a single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26 to 260; Henderson,
Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208; Cleo,
Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many
more of the same kind. There were literally hundreds of such towns;
there would be reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch of
telegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to the audience were
old campaigners, who had been to the places and helped to make the
vote, and could make appropriate comments: Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to
831--that was where the mayor had arrested a Socialist speaker! Crawford
County, Kansas, from 285 to 1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal
to Reason"! Battle Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the
answer of labor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!

And then there were official returns from the various precincts and
wards of the city itself! Whether it was a factory district or one of
the "silk-stocking" wards seemed to make no particular difference in the
increase; but one of the things which surprised the party leaders
most was the tremendous vote that came rolling in from the stockyards.
Packingtown comprised three wards of the city, and the vote in the
spring of 1903 had been 500, and in the fall of the same year, 1,600.
Now, only one year later, it was over 6,300--and the Democratic vote
only 8,800! There were other wards in which the Democratic vote had
been actually surpassed, and in two districts, members of the state
legislature had been elected. Thus Chicago now led the country; it had
set a new standard for the party, it had shown the workingmen the way!

--So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs of eyes
were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheering his every
sentence. The orator had been the head of the city's relief bureau in
the stockyards, until the sight of misery and corruption had made him
sick. He was young, hungry-looking, full of fire; and as he swung his
long arms and beat up the crowd, to Jurgis he seemed the very spirit of
the revolution. "Organize! Organize! Organize!"--that was his cry. He
was afraid of this tremendous vote, which his party had not expected,
and which it had not earned. "These men are not Socialists!" he cried.
"This election will pass, and the excitement will die, and people will
forget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink back and
rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that we have polled to-day,
and our enemies will laugh us to scorn! It rests with you to take your
resolution--now, in the flush of victory, to find these men who have
voted for us, and bring them to our meetings, and organize them and bind
them to us! We shall not find all our campaigns as easy as this one.
Everywhere in the country tonight the old party politicians are studying
this vote, and setting their sails by it; and nowhere will they be
quicker or more cunning than here in our own city. Fifty thousand
Socialist votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownership Democracy in the
spring! And then they will fool the voters once more, and all the powers
of plunder and corruption will be swept into office again! But whatever
they may do when they get in, there is one thing they will not do, and
that will be the thing for which they were elected! They will not give
the people of our city municipal ownership--they will not mean to do it,
they will not try to do it; all that they will do is give our party
in Chicago the greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialism
in America! We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified and
self-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy left without a lie
with which to cover its nakedness! And then will begin the rush that
will never be checked, the tide that will never turn till it has reached
its flood--that will be irresistible, overwhelming--the rallying of the
outraged workingmen of Chicago to our standard! And we shall organize
them, we shall drill them, we shall marshal them for the victory! We
shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep if before us--and Chicago
will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!"

After getting his job, Jurgis goes once again to see Marija. He tells her that since he has work, she can leave the brothel. She tells him, however, that she will never leave. She is addicted to morphine and cannot find another job in the city because she will be found out to be a whore. Jurgis sees that she wants him to leave, so he does. Jurgis immerses himself in "the world of ideas. Though he is only a hotel porter, he spends his interests and energy on learning about the socialist cause. One night, he is specifically invited to attend a dinner at the home of a man named Fisher, a man who had become a millionaire but gave it up to live in the heart of the city's slums. Fisher is "one of the minds of the movement. Jurgis feels out of place at the dinner since he is just a common worker, and everyone else is a gentleman or lady. He takes a seat in the corner and listens to the conversations. The first debate of the evening begins between two of the Socialist Party members, a former professor named Nicholas Schliemann and a former itinerant preacher named Lucas. Schliemann comments that the final great battle of the socialist movement will be between the Socialist Party and the Catholic Church. Religion, he says, is an opiate of the masses and has no place in the future socialist world. He tells the group that religion is a fraud that perpetrates the imbalance of power. Lucas, a former evangelical preacher, attempts to defend the word of God, "which is one long cry of the human spirit for deliverance from the sway of oppression. Lucas goes down a list of passages from the Bible and stories of Biblical figures that represent the tenets of socialism. His most ardent argument is for Jesus Christ whom he says "denounced in unmeasured terms the exploiters of his own time" and was crucified for upsetting the social order. He gives a long speech on the merits of Christianity as being harmonious with Socialism, and in the end, Schliemann accepts his proposal. A man named Maynard, an editor of an East Coast newspaper that denounced socialism, takes the chance to note how the two socialists cannot even agree on the meaning of the movement. The men then agree on a definition of the basics: "that a socialist believes in the common ownership and democratic management of the means of producing the necessities of life; and, second, that a socialist believes that the means by which this is to be brought about is the class-conscious political organization of the wage-earners. This definition gives Schliemann the opportunity to begin a long speech in defense of socialism. He tells Maynard of how the socialist society would organize labor; a job for everyone with no desire for profit so that each man earned a wage commensurate with his work. He details how competition in society is a wasteful process that creates innumerable jobs and positions that do nothing but waste money and labor. Advertising is simply a "science of persuading people to buy what they do not want. However, by those with the means of production take advantage of those that actually produce useful things. Schliemann details the advances of science, such as farming machines and dishwashing machines that make some menial labor unnecessary. This will free up labor to produce more meaningful products for society. In terms of creative capital, Schliemann details how each person with a creative impulse will be able to support himself through wages given by those that sought to reward his work. Socialism will rid the world of the negative waste of competition and give the world a positive moral stance on which to produce meaningful goods and services, he argues. Election Day comes a few hours after the dinner. Jurgis goes to the meeting hall with other Socialist Party members to hear the election results. The Socialist Party makes great gains all over the Midwest. In Chicago, the Socialist vote increases from 6700 to 47,000. All across the Midwest in towns large and small, there is a great numerical increase in the number of Socialist votes counted. In the end, the Socialist vote ends up as over four hundred thousand, "an increase of something like three hundred and fifty per cent in four years. The Socialists rejoice at these numbers, but a speaker comes before the hall and warns the crowd against losing the momentum. He tells them that future elections will be difficult but that with perseverance they will overcome the Beef Trust and "Chicago will be ours

After Jurgis gets his job, he goes to find Marija Berczynskas. He wants to tell her that she can quit being a prostitute. Jurgis will support the family. Marija says she can't. She's no good - she takes morphine, and she can't stop. Back at home, Teta Elzbieta is sick often, and the kids are wild and don't obey Jurgis. Still, Jurgis stands by them as best he can. The night before the election, Jurgis is invited to meet a bunch of Socialist Party leaders. Jurgis goes with the assistant clerk at Hinds's hotel, Harry Adams. There is an editor at the gathering. This man is Mr. Maynard, and he does not approve of socialism. Yet he also doesn't really understand what it is. The host of the party is Fisher, a Chicago millionaire who gave up all of his money to help improve the lives of the poor. Jurgis is embarrassed once he arrives, because he doesn't know how to talk to such educated people. Mr. Lucas is a preacher and evangelist, and Nicholas Schliemann is a former philosophy professor and nutritionist. Schliemann is originally from Switzerland. He has his own system for living under capitalism: he earns money working the fields over the summer and uses that money to buy a precise, scientific amount of food to keep him going the rest of the year. Jurgis walks in on an argument between Lucas and Schliemann on the value of religion to the socialist cause. Lucas believes wholeheartedly in using the Bible to preach about the redistribution of wealth. He points out that Jesus stood against the pride, greed, and luxury that wealth brings. Was it not Jesus who said, in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven" ? Lucas keeps going on and on about Jesus as the first truly class-conscious man. Schliemann asks how they can feel free to use the Bible to preach this message when, right now, Christian bishops are accumulating huge wealth on the backs of the working man. Mr. Maynard, the east cost magazine editor, asks how it can be that two socialists disagree so actively about what direction to take the party? Lucas believes that socialism is a tool to creating a new promised land on Earth, New Jerusalem. Schliemann wants to see the centralization of all factories and private property, along with absolute freedom in thought and artistic production. Schliemann thinks this would lead to the natural development of communities based on like-minded people who choose to live and associate with one another. They would have so much more leisure time if they didn't have to compete with one another for work and there would be real time to devote to art and writing. Mr. Maynard wants to know how a society could possibly get by while demanding so little work from its members. Schliemann points out that capitalism wastes a lot of work on competition and strife between companies. If there was no concern about improving your standard of living, if everyone had enough to get by all right, the average worker would be much less stressed out and overwhelmed. After all, look how much each company spends on advertising! Without competition, there would be no need for marketing or for lying about the value of goods. Under this system, prices could be a lot lower because there would be no profit attached - a book would cost as much as necessary to cover production and no more. Schliemann doesn't mean that everyone will get exactly the same things - some people will work harder than others, and some will work less. Thus, some will get more than others. Still, everyone will be rewarded according to his efforts, and no one will be left behind. After the revolution, all of the social ills of ignorance, malnourishment of children, prostitution, and homelessness will be totally eliminated. Once labor is no longer figured into the cost of production, people won't have an incentive to do unpleasant work. In other words, let's say you were looking at two jobs, and one involved slaughtering cows and one involved growing vegetables. You would probably pick the second one unless there you got paid a lot more for the first one. But if all labor costs exactly the same thing - if you are paid according to how much you work, no matter what you are making - then there would be no reason ever to pursue a job you really, truly hated. This is why Schliemann feels that socialism will mean the end to unsafe labor practices: because factories will have to attract people to work for them. The power will all be on the side of the worker, not the factory owner. Schliemann predicts that this shift of power will also mean the end to the meatpacking industry as a whole. No one is going to choose to be surrounded by many, many slaughtered animals. In Schliemann's vision of a future world, we'll all be vegetarians. Jurgis overhears two women comment that Schliemann's speech must have converted Mr. Maynard to their cause. If not, then they'll know Mr. Maynard is a fool. The next day is Election Day. Jurgis hurries to a Socialist Party gathering to hear the results. The returns show that, across the board, there are more and more people turning out to vote for a socialist ticket. No city in the country is more actively socialist than Chicago. A speaker addresses the crowd: they must continue to organize! This is their opportunity! They must keep up their momentum! Chicago will be socialist!

Soon after getting his job, Jurgis returns to Marija, imploring her to leave the brothel, but she refuses. She is addicted to morphine and cannot find work anywhere else. Jurgis reluctantly departs, returning home to a sick Elzbieta and her unruly sons, but this time, instead of leaving, Jurgis turns to socialism for support. Members of the Socialist Party in Chicago are preparing for the election. On the night before the vote, a millionaire sympathetic to the socialist movement invites Jurgis to dinner. Here Jurgis encounters Lucas, an evangelist, and Nicholas Schliemann, a former philosophy professor, who debate the nature of socialism while answering questions for a skeptical magazine editor. Jurgis attends a party gathering the next day to watch election returns. The Socialist Party makes substantial gains across the country, especially in Packingtown. One socialist leader interprets the results as a call for further organization by party members, for the voters may not really be socialists, but rather just disgruntled democrats. The Jungle closes with the orator inciting the crowd with chants of "Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!"

Marija cannot leave her new life. This harsh reality is evident, and for her to do so would undermine everything else in the text. Although socialism is the only hope for the working person, Marija does not see this. She has reluctantly accepted the way of a capitalistic society and has become both unwilling and unable to change. New characters discuss the two major aspects of socialism -- its religious and scientific implications. Some embrace socialism as a new religion, replacing Christianity, while others favor the efficiency, rationality, and order of the new system, believing it superior to all other forms of government. The dialogue between Schliemann and Lucas does nothing to further the plot and does not include Jurgis at all; rather, they voice Sinclair's opinions, becoming a sounding board for the pro-socialist movement. The statistics at the end of the novel mirror actual results of the presidential election of 1904. Although the socialists view the number of votes they received as a significant increase from the past election, the actual number of votes was statistically quite low. In the original serial form of The Jungle, Jurgis is arrested on election night; however, this ending does not emphasize a socialist triumph, and Sinclair changed the ending when The Jungle was published in book form. Glossary itinerant traveling from place to place or on a circuit. stygian dark or gloomy. chloroform to kill with chloroform, a toxic, cancer-causing, colorless, volatile liquid that has a sweet taste. zealot a person who is ardently devoted to a purpose; fanatic. anarchist a person who promotes anarchy, or political disorder, as by flouting or ignoring rules, duties, or accepted standards of conduct. catchpenny made merely to sell; cheap and flashy. pettifogger a lawyer who handles petty cases, especially one who uses unethical methods in conducting trumped-up cases. chicanery the use of clever but tricky talk or action to deceive or evade, as in legal dealings.

Jurgis attempts to persuade Marija to leave prostitution, but she explains that she cannot because she is addicted to morphine. She plans to remain a prostitute for the rest of her life. Jurgis attends a meeting with a magazine editor who opposes socialism but has agreed to listen to some proponents of the movement. Jurgis's role is to detail the unsanitary conditions under which meat is packed and sold to the public. Nicholas Schliemann, a fierce socialist, explains that the movement wishes to enact public ownership of the means of production. Once the inefficiency of production is eliminated through science and eradication of graft, no worker will be obliged to labor for countless hours a day merely to survive. He can work as little as two hours a day and devote the rest of his time to his personal interests. The basic goals of socialism are "common ownership and democratic management of the means of producing the necessities of life. The means to bring about this revolution is to raise the class consciousness of the proletariat around the world through political organization. Later, the socialist party achieves phenomenal victories in the elections across the country. A spirited speaker at a political meeting urges socialists to continue fighting because the victory is not yet won, encouraging them with the words, "Chicago will be ours


Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his
friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive
till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.  A telegram from him
bespeaking a room "only if not noisy," reply paid, was produced for the
enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at
Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound.  The
same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not
absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led him
thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to
make him feel he could still wait without disappointment.  They would
dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old
Waymarsh--if not even, for that matter, to himself--there was little
fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other.  The
principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most
newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive--the fruit of a
sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking,
after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would
be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to
present itself to the nearing steamer as the first "note," of Europe.
Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's
part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in
quite a sufficient degree.

That note had been meanwhile--since the previous afternoon, thanks to
this happier device--such a consciousness of personal freedom as he
hadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above
all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already,
if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with
cool success.  There were people on the ship with whom he had easily
consorted--so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him--and who
for the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the
landing-stage to London; there were others who had invited him to a
tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a "look round" at the
beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had
kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently
aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in
being, unlike himself, "met," and had even independently, unsociably,
alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given
his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible.  They
formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on
the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least
undiluted.  He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh
might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to
describe himself there as having "got in" so early, it would be
difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like
a man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual,
handles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing
himself to the business of spending.  That he was prepared to be vague
to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship's touching, and that he both
wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of
delay--these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him
that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the
simplest.  He was burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed
at the outset--with the oddity of a double consciousness.  There was
detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.

After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her
counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend's name, which she
neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing
a lady who met his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and
whose features--not freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy
terms with each other--came back to him as from a recent vision.  For a
moment they stood confronted; then the moment placed her:  he had
noticed her the day before, noticed her at his previous inn,
where--again in the hall--she had been briefly engaged with some people
of his own ship's company.  Nothing had actually passed between them,
and he would as little have been able to say what had been the sign of
her face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his
present recognition. Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her
own side as well--which would only have added to the mystery.  All she
now began by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to
catch his enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were
possibly a question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut--Mr.
Waymarsh the American lawyer.

"Oh yes," he replied, "my very well-known friend.  He's to meet me
here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived.
But he doesn't come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him.
Do you know him?" Strether wound up.

It wasn't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much
there had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder,
as well as the play of something more in her face--something more, that
is, than its apparently usual restless light--seemed to notify him.
"I've met him at Milrose--where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to
stay; I had friends there who were friends of his, and I've been at his
house.  I won't answer for it that he would know me," Strether's new
acquaintance pursued; "but I should be delighted to see him.  Perhaps,"
she added, "I shall--for I'm staying over."  She paused while our
friend took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had
already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently
observed that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This,
however, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too
far.  She appeared to have no reserves about anything. "Oh," she said,
"he won't care!"--and she immediately thereupon remarked that she
believed Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the people he
had seen her with at Liverpool.

But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the
case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the
mere laid table of conversation.  Her qualification of the mentioned
connexion had rather removed than placed a dish, and there seemed
nothing else to serve.  Their attitude remained, none the less, that of
not forsaking the board; and the effect of this in turn was to give
them the appearance of having accepted each other with an absence of
preliminaries practically complete.  They moved along the hall
together, and Strether's companion threw off that the hotel had the
advantage of a garden.  He was aware by this time of his strange
inconsequence:  he had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had
muffled the shock of Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this
sudden case, both of avoidance and of caution.  He passed, under this
unsought protection and before he had so much as gone up to his room,
into the garden of the hotel, and at the end of ten minutes had agreed
to meet there again, as soon as he should have made himself tidy, the
dispenser of such good assurances.  He wanted to look at the town, and
they would forthwith look together.  It was almost as if she had been
in possession and received him as a guest.  Her acquaintance with the
place presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful
glance for the lady in the glass cage.  It was as if this personage had
seen herself instantly superseded.

When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what
she might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean,
the slightly loose figure of a man of the middle height and something
more perhaps than the middle age--a man of five-and-fifty, whose most
immediate signs were a marked bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark
moustache, of characteristically American cut, growing strong and
falling low, a head of hair still abundant but irregularly streaked
with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even line, the high
finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain effect of
mitigation.  A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge,
and a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time,
accompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did
something to complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer
would have seen catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other
party to Strether's appointment.  She waited for him in the garden, the
other party, drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic
light gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which,
as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the watery
English sunshine, he might, with his rougher preparation, have marked
as the model for such an occasion.  She had, this lady, a perfect plain
propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion was not
free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it
was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him.  Before reaching
her he stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for
something, possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his
arm; yet the essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain
time.  Nothing could have been odder than Strether's sense of himself
as at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be
quite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally
beginning there and then. It had begun in fact already upstairs and
before the dressing glass that struck him as blocking further, so
strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; begun with a
sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a long
time been moved to make.  He had during those moments felt these
elements to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and
then had fallen back on the thought that they were precisely a matter
as to which help was supposed to come from what he was about to do.  He
was about to go up to London, so that hat and necktie might wait.  What
had come as straight to him as a ball in a well-played game--and caught
moreover not less neatly--was just the air, in the person of his
friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of achieved possession of
those vague qualities and quantities that collectively figured to him
as the advantage snatched from lucky chances.  Without pomp or
circumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally with
his own response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his
impression of her as:  "Well, she's more thoroughly civilized--!" If
"More thoroughly than WHOM?" would not have been for him a sequel to
this remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the
bearing of his comparison.

The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was
what--familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the
compatriot and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear
dyspeptic Waymarsh--she appeared distinctly to promise.  His pause
while he felt in his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence,
and it enabled his eyes to make out as much of a case for her, in
proportion, as her own made out for himself.  She affected him as
almost insolently young; but an easily carried five-and-thirty could
still do that.  She was, however, like himself marked and wan; only it
naturally couldn't have been known to him how much a spectator looking
from one to the other might have discerned that they had in common.  It
wouldn't for such a spectator have been altogether insupposable that,
each so finely brown and so sharply spare, each confessing so to dents
of surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head
delicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and
sister.  On this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of
difference; such a sister having surely known in respect to such a
brother the extremity of separation, and such a brother now feeling in
respect to such a sister the extremity of surprise.  Surprise, it was
true, was not on the other hand what the eyes of Strether's friend most
showed him while she gave him, stroking her gloves smoother, the time
he appreciated.  They had taken hold of him straightway measuring him
up and down as if they knew how; as if he were human material they had
already in some sort handled.  Their possessor was in truth, it may be
communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories,
receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a
full experience, she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as
free as that of a compositor scattering type.  She was as equipped in
this particular as Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition
between them which he might well have shrunk from submitting to if he
had fully suspected it.  So far as he did suspect it he was on the
contrary, after a short shake of his consciousness, as pleasantly
passive as might be.  He really had a sort of sense of what she knew.
He had quite the sense that she knew things he didn't, and though this
was a concession that in general he found not easy to make to women, he
made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden.  His eyes were
so quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost have been
absent without changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and
not least its stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and
grain and form.  He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she
had profited still better than he by his having been for the moments
just mentioned, so at the disposal of her intelligence.  She knew even
intimate things about him that he hadn't yet told her and perhaps never
would.  He wasn't unaware that he had told her rather remarkably many
for the time, but these were not the real ones.  Some of the real ones,
however, precisely, were what she knew.

They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the
street, and it was here she presently checked him with a question.
"Have you looked up my name?"

He could only stop with a laugh.  "Have you looked up mine?"

"Oh dear, yes--as soon as you left me.  I went to the office and asked.
Hadn't YOU better do the same?"

He wondered.  "Find out who you are?--after the uplifted young woman
there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!"

She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement.
"Isn't it a reason the more?  If what you're afraid of is the injury
for me--my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask who I
am--I assure you I don't in the least mind.  Here, however," she
continued, "is my card, and as I find there's something else again I
have to say at the office, you can just study it during the moment I
leave you."

She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had
extracted from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his
own, to exchange with it, before she came back.  He read thus the
simple designation "Maria Gostrey," to which was attached, in a corner
of the card, with a number, the name of a street, presumably in Paris,
without other appreciable identity than its foreignness.  He put the
card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence;
and as he leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a
straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view.
It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria
Gostrey, whoever she was--of which he hadn't really the least idea--in
a place of safe keeping.  He had somehow an assurance that he should
carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in.  He gazed
with unseeing lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of
his act, asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as
disloyal.  It was prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was
little doubt of the expression of face the sight of it would have
produced in a certain person.  But if it was "wrong"--why then he had
better not have come out at all.  At this, poor man, had he
already--and even before meeting Waymarsh--arrived.  He had believed he
had a limit, but the limit had been transcended within thirty-six
hours.  By how long a space on the plane of manners or even of morals,
moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back
to him and with a gay decisive "So now--!" led him forth into the
world. This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his
overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal
pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this
struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things.  It
hadn't been "Europe" at Liverpool no--not even in the dreadful
delightful impressive streets the night before--to the extent his
present companion made it so.  She hadn't yet done that so much as
when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to
wonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best
have put on gloves she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge.
"But why--fondly as it's so easy to imagine your clinging to it--don't
you put it away?  Or if it's an inconvenience to you to carry it, one's
often glad to have one's card back.  The fortune one spends in them!"

Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute
had affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn't
yet measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he
had received from her.  He accordingly handed her the card as if in
restitution, but as soon as she had it she felt the difference and,
with her eyes on it, stopped short for apology. "I like," she observed,
"your name."

"Oh," he answered, "you won't have heard of it!" Yet he had his reasons
for not being sure but that she perhaps might.

Ah it was but too visible!  She read it over again as one who had never
seen it.  "'Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether'"--she sounded it almost as
freely as for any stranger.  She repeated however that she liked
it--"particularly the Lewis Lambert.  It's the name of a novel of
Balzac's."

"Oh I know that!" said Strether.

"But the novel's an awfully bad one."

"I know that too," Strether smiled.  To which he added with an
irrelevance that was only superficial:  "I come from Woollett
Massachusetts."  It made her for some reason--the irrelevance or
whatever--laugh.  Balzac had described many cities, but hadn't
described Woollett Massachusetts.  "You say that," she returned, "as if
you wanted one immediately to know the worst."

"Oh I think it's a thing," he said, "that you must already have made
out.  I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and, as
people say there, 'act' it.  It sticks out of me, and you knew surely
for yourself as soon as you looked at me."

"The worst, you mean?"

"Well, the fact of where I come from.  There at any rate it IS; so that
you won't be able, if anything happens, to say I've not been straight
with you."

"I see"--and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the point he had
made.  "But what do you think of as happening?"

Though he wasn't shy--which was rather anomalous--Strether gazed about
without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in talk,
yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. "Why that
you should find me too hopeless."  With which they walked on again
together while she answered, as they went, that the most "hopeless" of
her countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best.  All
sorts of other pleasant small things-small things that were yet large
for him--flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the
occasion itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to
permit us to multiply our illustrations. Two or three, however, in
truth, we should perhaps regret to lose. The tortuous wall--girdle,
long since snapped, of the little swollen city, half held in place by
careful civic hands--wanders in narrow file between parapets smoothed
by peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a dismantled gate
or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps down, queer
twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the brows
of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled
English town and ordered English country.  Too deep almost for words
was the delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with
it were certain images of his inward picture.  He had trod this walks
in the far-off time, at twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it,
only enriched it for present feeling and marked his renewal as a thing
substantial enough to share.  It was with Waymarsh he should have
shared it, and he was now accordingly taking from him something that
was his due.  He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he had done
so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up.

"You're doing something that you think not right."

It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew
almost awkward.  "Am I enjoying it as much as THAT?"

"You're not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought."

"I see"--he appeared thoughtfully to agree.  "Great is my privilege."

"Oh it's not your privilege!  It has nothing to do with me.  It has to
do with yourself.  Your failure's general."

"Ah there you are!" he laughed.  "It's the failure of Woollett. THAT'S
general."

"The failure to enjoy," Miss Gostrey explained, "is what I mean."

"Precisely.  Woollett isn't sure it ought to enjoy.  If it were it
would.  But it hasn't, poor thing," Strether continued, "any one to
show it how.  It's not like me.  I have somebody."

They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine--constantly pausing, in
their stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw--and Strether
rested on one of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little
rampart.  He leaned back on this support with his face to the tower of
the cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station, the high
red-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and crocketed,
retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed eyes and with
the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.  Miss
Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more
justified her right, of understanding the effect of things.  She quite
concurred.  "You've indeed somebody." And she added:  "I wish you WOULD
let me show you how!"

"Oh I'm afraid of you!" he cheerfully pleaded.

She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a
certain pleasant pointedness.  "Ah no, you're not! You're not in the
least, thank goodness!  If you had been we shouldn't so soon have found
ourselves here together.  I think," she comfortably concluded, "you
trust me."

"I think I do!--but that's exactly what I'm afraid of.  I shouldn't
mind if I didn't.  It's falling thus in twenty minutes so utterly into
your hands.  I dare say," Strether continued, "it's a sort of thing
you're thoroughly familiar with; but nothing more extraordinary has
ever happened to me."

She watched him with all her kindness.  "That means simply that you've
recognised me--which IS rather beautiful and rare.  You see what I am."
As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured headshake, a
resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation.  "If
you'll only come on further as you HAVE come you'll at any rate make
out.  My own fate has been too many for me, and I've succumbed to it.
I'm a general guide--to 'Europe,' don't you know?  I wait for people--I
put them through.  I pick them up--I set them down.  I'm a sort of
superior 'courier-maid.' I'm a companion at large.  I take people, as
I've told you, about.  I never sought it--it has come to me.  It has
been my fate, and one's fate one accepts.  It's a dreadful thing to
have to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as
you see me, there's nothing I don't know.  I know all the shops and the
prices--but I know worse things still.  I bear on my back the huge load
of our national consciousness, or, in other words--for it comes to
that--of our nation itself.  Of what is our nation composed but of the
men and women individually on my shoulders?  I don't do it, you know,
for any particular advantage.  I don't do it, for instance--some people
do, you know--for money."

Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance.  "And yet,
affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely
be said to do it for love."  He waited a moment.  "How do we reward
you?"

She had her own hesitation, but "You don't!" she finally returned,
setting him again in motion.  They went on, but in a few minutes,
though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took
out his watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by
the mere exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical
wit.  He looked at the hour without seeing it, and then, on something
again said by his companion, had another pause. "You're really in
terror of him."

He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly.  "Now you can see
why I'm afraid of you."

"Because I've such illuminations?  Why they're all for your help! It's
what I told you," she added, "just now.  You feel as if this were
wrong."

He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to
hear more about it.  "Then get me out!"

Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it
were a question of immediate action, she visibly considered.  "Out of
waiting for him?--of seeing him at all?"

"Oh no--not that," said poor Strether, looking grave.  "I've got to
wait for him--and I want very much to see him.  But out of the terror.
You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago.  It's general, but it
avails itself of particular occasions.  That's what it's doing for me
now.  I'm always considering something else; something else, I mean,
than the thing of the moment.  The obsession of the other thing is the
terror.  I'm considering at present for instance something else than
YOU."

She listened with charming earnestness.  "Oh you oughtn't to do that!"

"It's what I admit.  Make it then impossible."

She continued to think.  "Is it really an 'order' from you?--that I
shall take the job?  WILL you give yourself up?"

Poor Strether heaved his sigh.  "If I only could! But that's the deuce
of it--that I never can.  No--I can't."

She wasn't, however, discouraged.  "But you want to at least?"

"Oh unspeakably!"

"Ah then, if you'll try!"--and she took over the job, as she had called
it, on the spot.  "Trust me!" she exclaimed, and the action of this, as
they retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass his hand into
her arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person who
wishes to be "nice" to a younger one.  If he drew it out again indeed
as they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk
had passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of
experience--which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with
some freedom--affected him as incurring a readjustment.  It was at all
events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion
within range of the hotel-door.  The young lady they had left in the
glass cage watched as if she had come to await them on the threshold.
At her side stood a person equally interested, by his attitude, in
their return, and the effect of the sight of whom was instantly to
determine for Strether another of those responsive arrests that we have
had so repeatedly to note.  He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with
the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her "Mr. Waymarsh!"
what was to have been, what--he more than ever felt as his short stare
of suspended welcome took things in--would have been, but for herself,
his doom.  It was already upon him even at that distance--Mr. Waymarsh
was for HIS part joyless.

Things start off pretty straightforward: we're following a guy named Strether. So far the weirdest thing is his name. Our buddy Strether has just arrived at a hotel to meet his buddy Waymarsh, who hasn't arrived yet. Strether is guiltily happy about this. But hey, that guy was all the way in the marsh. More background: Strether is an American traveling alone in a foreign land , and he enjoys the taste of freedom in just walking around and being a stranger somewhere new. After inquiring about Waymarsh's arrival time at the hotel, Strether realizes that a woman has been staring at him. Being a middle-aged and unmarried man, Strether can't say he minds this one bit. The woman sidles on up to him and asks if he's looking for Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose, Connecticut. What a coincidence. Little lady claims to know Waymarsh, although she isn't sure if Waymarsh would know her. Anyone intrigued yet? To show her credibility, the woman starts naming a ton of families who are mutual acquaintances of her and Waymarsh's. Strether has heard zero of the names, but the woman's confidence makes her seem legit. The two agree to take a walk together so Strether pops up to his room to change. And when he comes back down, he notices that the woman has eyes like she can take one look at you and figure out what "type" of person you are. Strether is understandably creeped out, so he feels a bit exposed. Finally, as they walk out together, they learn each other's names. Yes, that took awhile. The woman suggests that Strether ask the hotel worker what her name is, but Strether doesn't like that plan. Basically, he'd be embarrassed to be caught walking out with a lady whose name he doesn't even know. Which is like a early-1900s propriety thing. Or in other words, he's worried the hotel worker will think he's some sort of creepy old man. Which is kind of eternal. So the woman just gives him her card , which tells him that her name is Maria Gostrey. He quickly puts the card into his pocket, feeling a strong urge to preserve the little card at any cost. Again, creepy, much? Strether has been in England fewer than 36 hours, and already he feels like he's crossing some sort of line by going for a walk with a woman he's just met. And the discomfort continues: Miss Gostrey remarks that she likes Strether's full name, Lewis Lambert Strether. She mentions that it's the name of a Balzac novel, but can't resist dropping that it's not that great a book. Strether says he's from a place called Woollett, Massachusetts. This is basically his excuse for why he's so boring. His description of the place makes it clear that Woollett is nowhere near as glamorous as England or France. It's just a sleepy little industrial town in New England. Why does Strether want to make sure Miss Gostrey knows this much about him? In case anything happens between them, he explains. In today-land, this would be obvious hitting-on deserving a roll of the eyes or possibly a slap . You can practically see him holding the red solo cup. In accordance with the times of yesteryear, Maria perfectly politely asks to know what he means, exactly, by something "happening" between them. Realizing he may have sounded like a frat boy of the future, Strether just clams up and won't answer. This is the first place when a character just shuts his mouth and doesn't say what he really means. And get ready, because you're in for a whole lot more of it. Strether starts looking at his watch a lot, but not out of impatience about the "stuff happening" thing. It's more complicated than that. Maria says out loud that he must think he's doing something he shouldn't be. He goes for the ole blame-the-hometown bit, since he comes from a place where people act very proper and it wouldn't be appropriate for a man and woman who didn't know one another to just take a walk together. Maria Gostrey doesn't seem to think it's a big deal. But hey, that's Europe for you. Maria says that Strether's main problem is that he won't let himself enjoy life. Strether realizes that Maria has learned everything about him within ten minutes, which is freaky. He feels comforted, though, by how she sees him for who he is and doesn't seem too judgey, even though he's pretty much asking for a fat slice o' judgement pie. Strether says that this walk is pretty much the most exciting, adventurous thing that's ever happened to him. Which is kind of sad, really. Maria Gostrey says he shouldn't feel singled out. She thinks of it as her job to take new travelers and to show them around Europe. It's like a public service she performs for people who need to learn to let loose just like Strether--who she refers to as a "client" right about now. At this point, you have to start wondering if this woman is actually a very clever prostitute. As they walk back to the hotel, Maria tells him to trust her and to do as she says so he'll have a good time. He tentatively agrees. They get back to the hotel and Waymarsh is a-waiting. Maria greets him enthusiastically. Strether, observing Waymarsh beside Maria, realizes that Waymarsh is, and always will be, a totally buzzkill. How's that for putting life in perspective? And the trip is only just beginning...