came to have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the
poverty in the midst of which I was living and which the
socialists constantly forced me to defend. My plight was not
unlike that which might have resulted in my old days of
skepticism regarding foreordination, had I then been compelled to
defend the confusion arising from the clashing of free wills as
an alternative to an acceptance of the doctrine. Another
difficulty in the way of accepting this economic determinism, so
baldly dependent upon the theory of class consciousness,
constantly arose when I lectured in country towns and there had
opportunities to read human documents of prosperous people as
well as those of my neighbors who were crowded into the city. The
former were stoutly unconscious of any classes in America, and
the class consciousness of the immigrants was fast being broken
into by the necessity for making new and unprecedented
connections in the industrial life all about them.

In the meantime, although many men of many minds met constantly
at our conferences, it was amazing to find the incorrigible good
nature which prevailed. Radicals are accustomed to hot
discussion and sharp differences of opinion and take it all in
the day's work. I recall that the secretary of the Hull-House
Social Science Club at the anniversary of the seventh year of its
existence read a report in which he stated that, so far as he
could remember, but twice during that time had a speaker lost his
temper, and in each case it had been a college professor who
"wasn't accustomed to being talked back to."

He also added that but once had all the club members united in
applauding the same speaker; only Samuel Jones, who afterwards