to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The
fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less
eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. In order to
keep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for
him, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness
follows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a
martyr. Deep down in his heart perhaps--but who knows what may be deep
down in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for
an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her
earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family.
The charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the
other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further
knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful.
She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce
him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain
intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other
workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many
more hours in the public library reading good books than the average
workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has yielded only
to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the
intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would induce his
union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant
speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the
questions discussed there. He contributes a certain intellectuality to
his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The neighboring women
confide to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because
she has to work so hard, and because her husband does not "provide."
Their remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment toward the
superiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. The charity
visitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is