"Oh, devil!" Benson snapped. "Would you rather see one of these cadet politicians in office than an honest working man? I don’t know who this man Lipsky is, like as not a fool who sees visions. But the Socialists never nominate crooks. What we want is an honest man."
Maynard, however, did not believe in community of wives, felt it necessary to protect the sanctity of the home—even at the cost of prostitution. And so he left us.
I wish I could remember half the things Benson said about Maynard after he had deserted us. I have seldom seen anything more invigorating than Benson mad. But he did not let his indignation interfere with business. It was far along towards morning, but he set to work at once. He wrote to Lipsky promising to support him, and then began sketching cartoons and posters.
One was a picture of Root selling a girl in "parlor clothes" to "The Old Man." Another read:
If you vote Democratic, you Vote for the RED LIGHTS!
If you vote Republican, you Vote for the CADETS!
VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET, and you VOTE FOR DECENCY!"
"ASK ROOT where he was on the evening of September Third?"
"ASK ROOT what business he had with the Old Man?"
Having mailed the letter to Lipsky and sent off the copy to the printer, we turned in just at sun-up.
We were awakened a few hours later by the arrival of a socialist committee. There was Dowd, a Scotch carpenter; Kaufmann, a brewery driver, and Lipsky, the candidate. He was a Russian Jew, and had been a professor in the old country. He could speak very little English, but he had served a long term of exile in the Siberian prison mines.
The socialists had no idea of winning the election. The campaign was for them only a demonstration, a couple of months when they had larger audiences at their soap-box meetings. They were suspicious of us.
That consultation is one of the most ludicrous of my memories. Benson, sitting in an arm-chair, in blue silk pajamas, smoking cigarettes, outlined the plan in his fervent, profane, pyrotechnic way—much of which was beyond their comprehension. Kaufmann had to translate it into German for Lipsky. And when we talked German, Dowd could not understand.
"But," said Herr Lipsky, when the posters had been translated to him, "there is nothing there about our principles. There is no word about surplus value. It is not the red lantern we are fighting—but the Kapitalismus."