workers, as well as clerks and teachers, and they were banded
together, not like Reds to overthrow the wage system, but to
teach themselves and their children how to make the wage system
shed its greatest blessings upon all. The city they were going to
was one they had built with their own hands. And in that city was
a school where every trade was taught to fatherless children, as
my father taught his trade to me. And with this trade each child
received the liberal education that the rich man gives his son
but which the poor man goes without. This was the wildest fancy I
had ever entertained. It was born of my own need of knowledge. It
was a dream I feared I could not hope to realize.



CHAPTER XXIV

JOE THE POOR BRAKEMAN


A brakeman stuck his head in the end window of the box car and
shouted at me:

"Where're you going?"

"Birmingham," I answered.

"What have you got to go on?"

I had some money in my belt, but I would need that for the
boarding-house keeper in the Alabama iron town. So I drew