solider and more pronounced. I repeat, it was the community that
changed, and to my chagrin I discovered that the community changed
to such purpose that it was not above stealing my thunder. The
community branded me a "red-shirt" because I stood for municipal
ownership; a little later it applauded its mayor when he proclaimed
municipal ownership to be a fixed American policy. He stole my
thunder, and the community applauded the theft. And today the
community is able to come around and give me points on municipal
ownership.

What happened to me has been in no wise different from what has
happened to the socialist movement as a whole in the United States.
In the bourgeois mind socialism has changed from a terrible disease
to a youthful vagary, and later on had its thunder stolen by the two
old parties,--socialism, like a meek and thrifty workingman, being
exploited became respectable.

Only dangerous things are abhorrent. The thing that is not
dangerous is always respectable. And so with socialism in the
United States. For several years it has been very respectable,--a
sweet and beautiful Utopian dream, in the bourgeois mind, yet a
dream, only a dream. During this period, which has just ended,
socialism was tolerated because it was impossible and non-menacing.
Much of its thunder had been stolen, and the workingmen had been
made happy with full dinner-pails. There was nothing to fear. The
kind old world spun on, coupons were clipped, and larger profits
than ever were extracted from the toilers. Coupon-clipping and
profit-extracting would continue to the end of time. These were
functions divine in origin and held by divine right. The
newspapers, the preachers, and the college presidents said so, and