A tired Thomas whose wife supported him
by running a rooming house once asked me:
t "How many do you 'spose there are in the
United States that don't have to work?";^

"None," I replied, "except invalids and
cripples. Every healthy man in this country
has to work just the same as he has to
breathe. If you don't want to work it is be-
cause you're sick. I'm a well man, and I've
got to be working all the time or I'd go crazy.
I have no more desire to be idle like you than
I have a desire to wear women's clothes. It
is contrary to normal nature, and that's why
I say that any man that gets that way is a
sick man."

The fellow was a "free thinker," as he
called himself. 1 He was too lazy to shave and
88



SCENE IN A ROLLING MILL

his beard was always about two weeks ahead
of him?J He was working out a plan for com-
munism in the United States. He believed
that enough work had now been done to
supply the race forever. It was just a ques-
tion of so evenly dividing the goods that all
men instead of a few could loaf the rest of
their years.
iLHe had such a tired feeling that he didn't
have the ambition of an oyster. He didn't
have enough energy to realize he was all in.
He took it for granted that the whole race
was as tired as he was.^

He thought he needed one of the Utopias
they talk so much about. What he needed
was a dose of castor-oil. I never knew a com-
munist in my life that was a well man.
