It was not that the red-haired man had sold him
out, it was not the beating given him by Ed's sullen-faced son or the
blows across the face at the hands of his vigorous wife--it was just that
at bottom he did not believe the people wanted reform; they wanted a ten
per cent raise in wages. The public mind was a thing too big, too
complicated and inert for a vision or an ideal to get at and move deeply.
And then, walking on the road and struggling to find truth even within
himself, Sam had to come to something else. At bottom he was no leader, no
reformer. He had not wanted the free city for a free people, but as a work
to be done by his own hand. He was McPherson, the money maker, the man who
loved himself. The fact, not the sight of Jake hobnobbing with Bill or the
timidity of the socialist, had blocked his way to work as a political
reformer and builder.
Tramping south between the rows of shocked corn he laughed at himself.
"The experience with Ed and Jake has done something for me," he thought.
"They bullied me. I have been a kind of bully myself and what has happened
has been good medicine for me."
Sam walked the roads of Illinois, Ohio, New York, and other states,
through hill country and flat country, in the snow drifts of winter and
through the storms of spring, talking to people, asking their way of life
and the end toward which they worked.
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