And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialists had the only real remedy for such evils, how they alone “meant business” with the Beef Trust. And when, in answer to this, the victim would say that the whole country was getting stirred up, that the newspapers were full of denunciations of it, and the government taking action against it, Tommy Hinds had a knock-out blow all ready. “Yes,” he would say, “all that is true—but what do you suppose is the reason for it? Are you foolish enough to believe that it’s done for the public? There are other trusts in the country just as illegal and extortionate as the Beef Trust: there is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in winter—there is the Steel Trust, that doubles the price of every nail in your shoes—there is the Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading at night—and why do you suppose it is that all the fury of the press and the government is directed against the Beef Trust?” And when to this the victim would reply that there was clamor enough over the Oil Trust, the other would continue: “Ten years ago Henry D. Lloyd told all the truth about the Standard Oil Company in his Wealth versus Commonwealth; and the book was allowed to die, and you hardly ever hear of it. And now, at last, two magazines have the courage to tackle ‘Standard Oil’ again, and what happens? The newspapers ridicule the authors, the churches defend the criminals, and the government—does nothing. And now, why is it all so different with the Beef Trust?”

Here the other would generally admit that he was “stuck”; and Tommy Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyes open. “If you were a Socialist,” the hotelkeeper would say, “you would understand that the power which really governs the United States today is the Railroad Trust. It is the Railroad Trust that runs your state government, wherever you live, and that runs the United States Senate. And all of the trusts that I have named are railroad trusts—save only the Beef Trust! The Beef Trust has defied the railroads—it is plundering them day by day through the Private Car; and so the public is roused to fury, and the papers clamor for action, and the government goes on the war-path! And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, and think it’s all done for you, and never dream that it is really the grand climax of the century-long battle of commercial competition—the final death grapple between the chiefs of the Beef Trust and ‘Standard Oil,’ for the prize of the mastery and ownership of the United States of America!”

Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and in which his education was completed. Perhaps you would imagine that he did not do much work there, but that would be a great mistake. He would have cut off one hand for Tommy Hinds; and to keep Hinds’s hotel a thing of beauty was his joy in life. That he had a score of Socialist arguments chasing through his brain in the meantime did not interfere with this; on the contrary, Jurgis scrubbed the spittoons and polished the banisters all the more vehemently because at the same time he was wrestling inwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant. It would be pleasant to record that he swore off drinking