influence, if we except his mother's, which Isaac Hecker ever knew.
And these two were on planes so different that it is hardly fair to
compare them with each other.

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CHAPTER III

THE TURNING-POINT

A BRIEF consideration at this point of a certain permanent tendency
of Father Hecker's mind will be of present and future value to the
student of his life. It has been said already that he never changed
the principles he had adopted as a lad among the apprentices and
journeymen of New York; principles which, for all social politics, he
summarized in the homely expression, "I am always for the under dog."
Thus, in the article quoted in the preceding chapter, he had the
right to say of himself and his associates:

"We were guileless men absorbed in seeking a solution for the
problems of life. Nor, as social reformers at least, were we given
over to theories altogether wrong. The constant recurrence of similar
epochs of social agitation since then, and the present enormous
development of the monopolies which we resisted in their very
infancy, show that our forecast of the future was not wholly
visionary. The ominous outlook of popular politics at the present
moment plainly shows that legislation such as we then proposed, and