I wished to show that I was a practical man, too,
and so I made answer: "What is the cause of the working-man's discontent?
It is very simple: the walking delegate."
IV
I suppose I could not have fairly claimed any great originality for my
notion that the walking delegate was the cause of the labor troubles: he
is regularly assigned as the reason of a strike in the newspapers, and is
reprobated for his evil agency by the editors, who do not fail to read the
working-men many solemn lessons and fervently warn them against him, as
soon as the strike begins to go wrong--as it nearly always does. I
understand from them that the walking delegate is an irresponsible tyrant,
who emerges from the mystery that habitually hides him and from time to
time orders a strike in mere rancor of spirit and plenitude of power, and
then leaves the working-men and their families to suffer the consequences,
while he goes off somewhere and rolls in the lap of luxury, careless of
the misery he has created. Between his debauches of vicious idleness and
his accesses of baleful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind of
the working-men against his real interests and real friends.
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