In the meantime the Hull-House Social Science Club grew in
numbers and fervor as various distinguished people who were
visiting the World's Fair came to address it. I recall a
brilliant Frenchwoman who was filled with amazement because one
of the shabbiest men reflected a reading of Schopenhauer. She
considered the statement of another member most remarkable--that
when he saw a carriage driving through the streets occupied by a
capitalist who was no longer even an entrepreneur, he felt quite
as sure that his days were numbered and that his very lack of
function to society would speedily bring him to extinction, as he
did when he saw a drunkard reeling along the same street.

The club at any rate convinced the residents that no one so
poignantly realizes the failures in the social structure as the
man at the bottom, who has been most directly in contact with
those failures and has suffered most. I recall the shrewd
comments of a certain sailor who had known the disinherited in
every country; of a Russian who had served his term in Siberia;
of an old Irishman who called himself an atheist but who in
moments of excitement always blamed the good Lord for "setting
supinely" when the world was so horribly out of joint.

It was doubtless owing largely to this club that Hull-House
contracted its early reputation for radicalism. Visitors refused
to distinguish between the sentiments expressed by its members in
the heat of discussion and the opinions held by the residents
themselves. At that moment in Chicago the radical of every shade
of opinion was vigorous and dogmatic; of the sort that could not
resign himself to the slow march of human improvement; of the