Wages were being "liquidated," as the phrase had it; and
there was an endless succession of futile strikes, all pitiful
failures. You must understand that Western City is the home of the
"open shop;" the poor devils who went on strike were locked out of
the factories, and slugged off the streets; their organizations were
betrayed by spies, and their policies dedeviled by provocateurs. And
all the mass of misery resulting seemed to have crowded into one
building this bright November morning; pitiful figures, men and
women and even a few children--for some had been turned out of their
homes, and had no place to go; ragged, haggard, and underfed;
weeping, some of them, with pain, or lifting their clenched hands in
a passion of impotent fury. My friend T-S, the king of the movies,
with all his resources, could not have made a more complete picture
of human misery--nor one more fitted to work on the sensitive soul
of a prophet, and persuade him that capitalist America was worse
than imperial Rome.
The arrival of Carpenter attracted no particular attention.
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