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I come back to what the Cleveland man said. Why are people hungry in a land of surplus food? Why is labor idle? Labor applied to materials is the source of all wealth. There is no lack of materials. The desire for wealth is without limit. Why are men unemployed instead of acting on their unfinished environment to improve it?

And now, though I had thought my way around a circle, I began to glimpse some understanding of what was taking place in a manner nominally so preposterous. People had tormented themselves with these questions until they were weary, callous and bitterly ironic. The country was in the toils of an invisible monster that devoured its heart and wasted its substance. The name of this monster was Hard Times. The problem of unemployment was chronic, desperate and apparently hopeless. The cause of it was unknown. People were sick of thinking and talking about something for which there was no help. They had either to despair or laugh. Then came Coxey, fanatic, mountebank or rare comedian,—so solemn in his egregious pretensions that no one knew which,—and they laughed. It might become serious. Mass psychology was in a highly inflammable condition. There was always that thought in reserve to tinge the laughter with foreboding. But if there came a conflagration, then perhaps the questions would be unexpectedly answered; nobody cared much what else happened.