Quotation from: War of the Classes

Written by: Jack London


And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,--still a
vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable.
Romance, to the bourgeois mind, was respectable because it was not
dangerous. As a "red-shirt," with bombs in all his pockets, I was
dangerous. As a youth with nothing more menacing than a few
philosophical ideas, Germanic in their origin, I was an interesting
and pleasing personality.


Through all this experience I noted one thing. It was not I that
changed, but the community. In fact, my socialistic views grew
solider and more pronounced. I repeat, it was the community that
changed, and to my chagrin I discovered that the community changed
to such purpose that it was not above stealing my thunder. The
community branded me a "red-shirt" because I stood for municipal
ownership; a little later it applauded its mayor when he proclaimed
municipal ownership to be a fixed American policy. He stole my
thunder, and the community applauded the theft. And today the
community is able to come around and give me points on municipal
ownership.

PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT
Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~
Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.