Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/111

Rh offense be condoned, his occupation presented, in itself, little future to a man without money or powerful connections. Money! He had spurned the thought of it in choosing his work, yet he now saw that, without its aid, he was powerless to accomplish the object to which his personal desires had been sacriﬁced. His love of his craft had gradually been merged in the larger love for his fellow-workers, and in the resulting desire to lift and widen their lot. He had once fancied that this end might be attained by an internal revolution in the management of the Westmore mills; that he might succeed in creating an industrial object—lesson conspicuous enough to point the way to wiser law-making and juster relations between the classes. But the last hours’ experiences had shown him how vain it was to assault single-handed the strong barrier between money and labour, and how his own dash at the breach had only thrust him farther back into the obscure ranks of the strugglers. It was, after all, only through politics that he could return successfully to the attack; and ﬁnancial independence was the needful preliminary to a political career. If he had stuck to the law he might, by this time, have been nearer his goal; but then the goal might not have mattered, since it was only by living among the workers that he had learned to care for their fate. And rather than have forfeited that poignant yet mighty vision of the onward groping of [ 97 ]