Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/553

 "What sort of woman was she?"

"Quiet," he said; "always still; silent-like; a worker. Kept the old man straight—some; and me too—'s well as she could. She's th' one that got him off th' wagon and started in th' liquor business."

"You were poor people?"

"Yes."

"And common?"

"Y-yes-s."

"A child of the people," I commented: "the common people."

He nodded, wondering.

"One of the great, friendless mass of helpless humanity?"

He nodded.

"That wasn't your fault, was it?" I said. "Not to blame for that? That's not your sin, is it?"

He shook his head, staring, and he was so mystified that I said that most people were "pretty terribly punished for being born poor and common." He nodded, but he wasn't interested or enlightened, apparently. "And you learned, somehow, that the thing to do was to get yourself on, get up out of it, make a success of your life?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "I don't know how, but I did get that, somehow."

"That was the ideal they taught you," I said. "Never heard of getting everybody on and making a success of society; of the city and State?"

But this line of questioning was beyond him. I changed my tack

"In that first interview we had," I said, "you insisted that, while the business boss was the real boss, the