Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/280

274 with which your experience has filled them. For a time, the shell of the old Accumulation remained for our social habitation, and we dwelt in the old competitive and monopolistic forms after the life had gone out of them. That is, we continued to live in populous cities, and we toiled to heap up riches for the moth to corrupt, and we slaved on in making utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit of making them to sell. For a while we made the old sham things, which pretended to be useful things and were worse than the confessedly useless things. I will give you an illustration from the trades, which you will all understand. The proletariat, in the competitive and monopolistic time, used to make a kind of shoes for the proletariat, or the women of the proletariat, which looked like fine shoes of the best quality. It took just as much work to make these shoes as to make the best fine shoes; but they were shams through and through. They wore out in a week, and the people called them, because they were bought fresh for every Sunday"—

"Sat'd'y night shoes," screamed the old farmer. "I know 'em. My gals buy 'em. Half dolla' a pai', and not wo'th the money."