CHAPTER XXI. ENVY IS THE SULPHUR IN HUMAN PIG-IRON

While I was feasting on the watermelons and feeling at peace with all

the world, a long passenger train pulled into the junction. The train

was made up of Pullmans and each car was covered with flags, streamers

and lodge insignia. On the heels of this train came another and then

another. These gay cars were filled with members of the Knights of

Pythias going to their convention in Denver.

At the sight of these men in their Pullmans, my friend the communist

first turned pale, then green, then red. His eyes narrowed and blazed

like those of a madman. He stood up on his porch, clenched his fists and

launched into the most violent fit of cursing I ever heard. The sight of

those holiday-makers had turned him into a demon. He thought they were

capitalists. Here was the hated tribe of rich men, the idle classes, all

dressed up with flags flying, riding across the country on a jamboree.

“The blood-sucking parasites! The bleareyed barnacles!” yelled Comrade

Bannerman. He shook his fists at the plutocrats and cursed until he made

me sick. He was a tank-town nut who didn't like to work; had built up a

theory that work was a curse and that the “idle classes” had forced

this curse on the masses, of which he was one. He believed that all the

classes had to do was to clip coupons, cash them and ride around the

country in Pullman palace cars. Here was the whole bunch of them in

seven “specials” rolling right by his front door. He cursed them again

and prayed that the train might be wrecked and that every one of

the blinkety blinkety scoundrels might be killed. If all these idle

plutocrats could be destroyed in a heap they would be lifted from the

backs of the masses, and the masses would not have to work any more.

Bannerman was a fool, and I could even then see just what made him

foolish. He was full of the brimstone of envy. The sight of those

well-dressed travelers eating in the dining cars drove him wild. He

wanted to be in their places, but he was too lazy to work and earn the

money that would put him there. I knew that they were not rich men;

they were school-teachers, doctors, butchers and bakers, machinists and

puddlers. They had saved their money for a year in order to have the

price of this convention trip to Denver. Comrade Bannerman was pig-iron,

and envy made him brittle. He should have been melted down and had the

sulphur boiled out of him. Then he would have been wrought iron; as were

the men he was so envious of.

He was not envious of me, of course, because he thought I was a tramp.

Indeed he thought I was as envious as he, and so he classed the two of

us as “intellectuals.” From this I learned that “Intellectuals” is a

name that weak men, crazed with envy, give to themselves. They believe

the successful men lack intellect; are all luck. This thought soothes

their envy and keeps it from driving them mad.

I thanked Comrade Bannerman for his pamphlets and threw him a few coins

to pay for the melons he had given me. But my peep into his soul had

taught me more than his propaganda could teach me. Later I read all

the pamphlets because I had promised I would. They told of the labor

movement and the theories at work in Germany. One of them was called

Merrie England and declared that England had once been merry, but

capitalism had crushed all joy and turned the island into a living hell.

I remembered my mother in Wales rocking her baby's cradle and singing

all day long with a voice vibrant with joy. If capitalism had crushed

her heart she hadn't heard about it.

When the lodge excursion train had passed on toward the convention city,

I hopped a freight and bade Comrade Bannerman goodby. Had I told him

that from my earnings I had salted away enough money to buy his little

shack he would have hated me as he hated the lodge members in the

Pullmans. I did not hate those men. They were doing me a service by

traveling across the country. For they belonged to the fare-paying

classes; their money kept the railroads going so they could carry

politicians and some of us working men free.