Chapter 1

Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Jack
London

_Completed by Robert L. Fish from notes by Jack London_

The
Assassination
Bureau,
Ltd.

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
New York Toronto London

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-20448

First Edition

38655

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

_Chapter I_

He was a handsome man, with large liquid-black eyes, an olive
complexion that was laid upon a skin clear, clean, and of surpassing
smoothness of texture, and with a mop of curly black hair that invited
fondling--in short, the kind of a man that women like to look upon,
and also, the kind of a man who is quite thoroughly aware of this
insinuative quality of his looks. He was lean-waisted, muscular, and
broad-shouldered, and about him was a certain bold, masculine swagger
that was belied by the apprehensiveness in the glance he cast around
the room and at the retreating servant who had shown him in. The fellow
was a deaf mute--this he would have guessed, had he not been already
aware of the fact, thanks to Lanigan’s description of an earlier visit
to this same apartment.

Once the door had closed on the servant’s back, the visitor could
scarcely refrain from shivering. Yet there was nothing in the place
itself to excite such a feeling. It was a quiet, dignified room, lined
with crowded bookshelves, with here and there an etching, and, in one
place, a map-rack. Also against the wall was a big rack filled with
railway timetables and steamship folders. Between the windows was a
large, flattop desk, on which stood a telephone, and from which, on an
extension, swung a typewriter. Everything was in scrupulous order and
advertised a presiding genius that was the soul of system.

The books attracted the waiting man, and he ranged along the shelves,
with a practiced eye skimming titles by whole rows at a time. Nor was
there anything shivery in these solid-backed books. He noted especially
Ibsen’s Prose Dramas and Shaw’s various plays and novels; editions de
luxe of Wilde, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and the _Arabian Nights_;
La Fargue’s _Evolution of Property_, _The Students’ Marx_, _Fabian
Essays_, Brooks’ _Economic Supremacy_, Dawson’s _Bismarck and State
Socialism_, Engels’ _Origin of the Family_, Conant’s _The United States
in the Orient_, and John Mitchell’s _Organized Labor_. Apart, and in
the original Russian, were the works of Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev,
Andreyev, Goncharov, and Dostoyevski.

The man strayed on to a library table, heaped with orderly piles of
the current reviews and quarterlies, where, at one corner, were a
dozen of the late novels. He pulled up an easy chair, stretched out
his legs, lighted a cigarette, and glanced over these books. One, a
slender, red-bound volume, caught his eyes. On the front cover a gaudy
female rioted. He selected it, and read the title: _Four Weeks: A Loud
Book_. As he opened it, a slight but sharp explosion occurred within
its papers, accompanied by a flash of light and a puff of smoke. On
the instant he was convulsed with terror. He fell back in the chair
and sank down, arms and legs in the air, the book flying from his
hands in about the same fashion a man would dispense with a snake he
had unwittingly picked up. The visitor was badly shaken. His beautiful
olive skin had turned a ghastly green, while his liquid-black eyes
bulged with horror.

Then it was that the door to an inner apartment opened, and the
presiding genius entered. A cold mirth was frosted on his countenance
as he surveyed the abject fright of the other. Stooping, he picked up
the book, spread it open, and exposed the toy-work mechanism that had
exploded the paper cap.

“No wonder creatures like you are compelled to come to me,” he sneered.
“You terrorists are always a puzzle to me. Why is it that you are most
fascinated by the very thing of which you are most afraid?” He was
now gravely scornful. “Powder--that’s it. If you had exploded that
toy-pistol cap on your naked tongue it would have caused no more than a
temporary inconvenience to your facilities of speaking and eating. Whom
do you want to kill now?”

The speaker was a striking contrast to his visitor. So blond was he
that it might well be described as washed-out blond. His eyes, veiled
by the finest and most silken of lashes that were almost like an
albino’s, were the palest of pale blue. His head, partly bald, was
thinly covered by a similar growth of fine and silky hair, almost
snow-white so fairly white it was, yet untinctured by time. The mouth
was firm and considerative, though not harsh, and the dome of forehead,
broad and lofty, spoke eloquently of the brain behind. His English was
painfully correct, the total and colorless absence of any accent almost
constituting an accent in itself. Despite the crude practical joke
he had just perpetrated, there was little humor in him. A grave and
somber dignity, that hinted of scholarship, characterized him; while he
emanated an atmosphere of complacency of power and seemed to suggest an
altitude of philosophic calm far beyond fake books and toy-pistol caps.
So elusive was his personality, his colorless coloring, and his almost
lineless face, that there was no clew to his age, which might have been
anywhere between thirty and fifty--or sixty. One felt that he was older
than he looked.

“You are Ivan Dragomiloff?” the visitor asked.

“That is the name I am known by. It serves as well as any other--as
well as Will Hausmann serves you. That is the name you were admitted
under. I know you. You are secretary of the Caroline Warfield group. I
have had dealings with it before. Lanigan represented you, I believe.”

He paused, placed a black skullcap on his thin-thatched head, and sat
down.

“No complaints, I hope,” he added coldly.

“Oh, no, not at all,” Hausmann hastened to assure him. “That other
affair was entirely satisfactory. The only reason we had not been to
you again was that we could not afford it. But now we want McDuffy,
chief of police--”

“Yes, I know him,” the other interrupted.

“He has been a brute, a beast,” Hausmann hurried on with raising
indignation. “He has martyred our cause again and again, deflowered
our group of its choicest spirits. Despite the warnings we gave him,
he deported Tawney, Cicerole, and Gluck. He has broken up our meetings
repeatedly. His officers have clubbed and beaten us like cattle. It
is due to him that four of our martyred brothers and sisters are now
languishing in prison cells.”

While he went on with the recital of grievances, Dragomiloff nodded his
head gravely, as if keeping a running account.

“There is old Sanger, as pure and lofty a soul as ever breathed the
polluted air of civilization, seventy-two years old, a patriarch,
broken in health, dying inch by inch and serving out his ten years in
Sing Sing in this land of the free. And for what?” he cried excitedly.
Then his voice sank to hopeless emptiness as he feebly answered his own
question. “For nothing.”

“These hounds of the law must be taught the red lesson again. They
cannot continue always to ill-treat us with impunity. McDuffy’s
officers gave perjured testimony on the witness stand. This we know.
He has lived too long. The time has come. And he should have been dead
long ere this, only we could not raise the money. But when we decided
that assassination was cheaper than lawyer fees, we left our poor
comrades to go unattended to their prison cells and accumulated the
fund more quickly.”

“You know it is our rule never to fill an order until we are satisfied
that it is socially justifiable,” Dragomiloff observed quietly.

“Surely.” Hausmann attempted indignantly to interrupt.

“But in this case,” Dragomiloff went on calmly and judicially, “there
is little doubt but what your cause is just. The death of McDuffy would
appear socially expedient and right. I know him and his deeds. I can
assure you that on investigation I believe we are practically certain
so to conclude. And now, the money.”

“But if you do not find the death of McDuffy socially right?”

“The money will be returned to you, less ten percent to cover the cost
of investigation. It is our custom.”

Hausmann pulled a fat wallet from his pocket, and then hesitated.

“Is full payment necessary?”

“Surely you know our terms.” There was mild reproof in Dragomiloff’s
voice.

“But I thought, I hoped--you know yourself we anarchists are poor
people.”

“And that is why I make you so cheap a rate. Ten thousand dollars is
not too much for the killing of the chief of police of a great city.
Believe me, it barely pays expenses. Private persons are charged much
more, and merely for private persons at that. Were you a millionaire,
instead of a poor struggling group, I should charge you fifty thousand
at the very least for McDuffy. Besides, I am not entirely in this for
my health.”

“Heavens! What would you charge for a king!” the other cried.

“That depends. A king, say of England, would cost half a million.
Little second- and third-rate kings come anywhere between seventy-five
and a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I had no idea they came so high,” Hausmann muttered.

“That is why so few are killed. Then, too, you forget the heavy
expenses of so perfect an organization as I have built up. Our mere
traveling expenses are far larger than you imagine. My agents are
numerous, and you don’t think for a moment that they take their lives
in their hands and kill for a song. And remember, these things we
accomplish without any peril whatsoever to our clients. If you feel
that Chief McDuffy’s life is dear at ten thousand, let me ask if you
rate your own at any less. Besides, you anarchists are poor operators.
Whenever you try your hand you bungle it or get caught. Furthermore,
you always insist on dynamite or infernal machines, which are extremely
hazardous--”

“It is necessary that our executions be sensational and spectacular,”
Hausmann explained.

The Chief of the Assassination Bureau nodded his head.

“Yes, I understand. But that is not the point. It is such a stupid,
gross way of killing that it is, as I said, extremely hazardous for our
agents. Now, if your group will permit me to use, say, poison, I’ll
throw off ten percent; if an air-rifle, twenty-five percent.”

“Impossible!” cried the anarchist. “It will not serve our end. Our
killings must be red.”

“In which case I can grant you no reduction. You are an American, are
you not, Mr. Hausmann?”

“Yes; and American born--over in St. Joseph, Michigan.”

“Why don’t you kill McDuffy yourself and save your group the money?”

The anarchist blanched.

“No, no. Your service is too, too excellent, Mr. Dragomiloff. Also, I
have a--er--a temperamental diffidence about the taking of life or the
shedding of blood--that is, you know, personally. It is repulsive to
me. Theoretically I may know a killing to be just, but, actually, I
cannot bring myself to do it. I--I simply can’t, that is all. I can’t
help it. I could not with my own hand harm a fly.”

“Yet you belong to a violent group.”

“I know it. My reason compels me to belong. I could not be satisfied to
belong with the philosophic, non-resistant Tolstoians. I do not believe
in turning the other cheek, as do those in the Martha Brown group, for
instance. If I am struck, I must strike back--”

“Even if by proxy,” Dragomiloff interrupted dryly.

Hausmann bowed.

“By proxy. If the flesh is weak, there is no other way. Here is the
money.”

As Dragomiloff counted it, Hausmann made a final effort for a bargain.

“Ten thousand dollars. You will find it correct. Take it, and remember
that it represents devotion and sacrifice on the parts of many scores
of comrades who could ill afford the heavy contributions we demand.
Couldn’t you--er--couldn’t you throw in Inspector Morgan for full
measure? He is another foul-hearted beast.”

Dragomiloff shook his head.

“No; it can’t be done. Your group already enjoys the biggest cut-rate
we have ever accorded.”

“A bomb, you know,” the other urged. “You might get both of them with
the same bomb.”

“Which we shall be very careful not to do. Of course, we shall have
to investigate Chief McDuffy. We demand a moral sanction for all our
transactions. If we find that his death is not socially justifiable--”

“What becomes of the ten thousand?” Hausmann broke in anxiously.

“It is returned to you less ten percent for running expenses.”

“And if you fail to kill him?”

“If, at the end of a year, we have failed, the money is returned to
you, plus five percent interest on the same.”

Dragomiloff, indicating that the interview was at an end, pressed a
call-button and stood up. His example was followed by Hausmann, who
took advantage of the delay in the servant’s coming to ask him another
question.

“But suppose you should die?--an accident, sickness, anything. I have
no receipt for the money. It would be lost.”

“All that is arranged. The head of my Chicago branch would immediately
take charge, and would conduct everything until such time as the head
of the San Francisco branch could arrive. An instance of that occurred
only last year. You remember Burgess?”

“Which Burgess?”

“The railroad king. One of our men covered that, made the whole
transaction and received the payment in advance, as usual. Of course,
my sanction was obtained. And then two things happened. Burgess
was killed in a railroad accident, and our man died of pneumonia.
Nevertheless, the money was returned. I saw to it personally, though
it was not recoverable by law. Our long success shows our honorable
dealing with our clients. Believe me, operating as we do outside the
law, anything less than the strictest honesty would be fatal to us. Now
concerning McDuffy--”

At this moment the servant entered, and Hausmann made a warning gesture
for silence. Dragomiloff smiled.

“Can’t hear a word,” he said.

“But you rang for him just now. And, by Jove, he answered my ring at
the door.”

“A ring for him is a flash. Instead of a bell, an electric light is
turned on. He has never heard a sound in his life. As long as he does
not see your lips, he cannot understand what you say. And now, about
McDuffy. Have you thought well about removing him? Remember, with us,
an order once given is as good as accomplished. We cannot carry on our
business otherwise. We have our rules, you know. Once the order goes
forth it can never be withdrawn. Are you satisfied?”

“Quite.” Hausmann paused at the door. “When may we hear news of--of
activity?”

Dragomiloff considered a moment.

“Within a week. The investigation, in this case, is only formal. The
operation itself is very simple. I have my men on the spot. Good day.”

_Chapter II_

One afternoon, a week later, an electric cab waited in front of the
great Russian importing house of S. Constantine & Co. It was three
o’clock when Sergius Constantine himself emerged from the private
office and was accompanied to the cab by the manager, to whom he was
still giving instructions. Had Hausmann or Lanigan watched him enter
the cab they would have recognized him immediately, but not by the name
of Sergius Constantine. Had they been asked, and had they answered,
they would have named him Ivan Dragomiloff.

For Ivan Dragomiloff it was who drove the cab south and crossed over
into the teeming East Side. He stopped, once, to buy a paper from a
gamin who was screaming “Extra!” Nor did he start again until he had
read the headlines and brief text announcing another anarchist outrage
in a neighboring city and the death of Chief McDuffy. As he laid the
paper beside him and started on, there was an expression of calm pride
on Constantine’s face. The organization which he had built up worked,
and worked with its customary smoothness. The investigation--in this
case almost perfunctory--had been made, the order sent forth, and
McDuffy was dead. He smiled slightly as he drew up before a modern
apartment house which was placed on the edge of one of the most noisome
East Side slums. The smile was at thought of the rejoicing there would
be in the Caroline Warfield group--the terrorists who had not the
courage to slay.

An elevator took Constantine to the top floor, and a pushbutton caused
the door to be opened for him by a young woman who threw her arms
around his neck, kissed him, and showered him with Russian diminutives
of affection, and whom, in turn, he called Grunya.

They were very comfortable rooms into which he was taken--and
remarkably comfortable and tasteful, even for a model apartment house
in the East Side. Chastely simple, culture and wealth spoke in the
furnishing and decoration. There were many shelves of books, a table
littered with magazines, while a parlor grand filled the far end of the
room. Grunya was a robust Russian blonde, but with all the color that
her caller’s blondness lacked.

“You should have telephoned,” she chided, in English that was as
without accent as his own. “I might have been out. You are so irregular
I never know when to expect you.”

Dropping the afternoon paper beside him, he lolled back among the
cushions of the capacious window-seat.

“Now Grunya, dear, you mustn’t begin by scolding,” he said, looking
at her with beaming fondness. “I’m not one of your submerged-tenth
kindergarteners, nor am I going to let you order my actions, yea, even
to the extent of being told when to wash my face or blow my nose. I
came down on the chance of finding you in, but principally for the
purpose of trying out my new cab. Will you come for a little run
around?”

She shook her head.

“Not this afternoon. I expect a visitor at four.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” He looked at his watch. “Also, I came to
learn if you would come home the end of the week. Edge Moor is lonely
without either of us.”

“I was out three days ago,” she pouted. “Grosset said you hadn’t been
there for a month.”

“Too busy. But I’m going to loaf for a week now and read up. By the
way, why was it necessary for Grosset to tell you I hadn’t been there
in a month, unless for the fact that you hadn’t been there?”

“Busy, you inquisitor, busy, just like you.” She bubbled with laughter,
and, reaching over, caressed his hand.

“Will you come?”

“It’s only Monday, now,” she considered. “Yes; if--” She paused
roguishly. “If I can bring a friend for the week end. You’ll like him,
I know.”

“Oh, ho; it’s a _him_, is it? One of your long-haired socialists, I
suppose.”

“No; a short-haired one. But you ought to know better, Uncle, dear,
than to be repeating those comic-supplement jokes. I never saw a
long-haired socialist in my life. Did you?”

“No; but I’ve seen them drink beer,” he announced with conviction.

“Now you shall be punished.” She picked up a cushion and advanced upon
him menacingly. “As my kindergarteners say, ‘I’m going to knock your
block off.’--There! And there! And there!”

“Grunya! I protest!” he grunted and panted between blows. “It is
unbecoming. It is disrespectful, to treat your mother’s brother in such
fashion. I’m getting old--”

“Pouf!” the lively Grunya shut him off, discarding the cushion. She
picked up his hand and looked at the fingers. “To think I’ve seen those
fingers tear a pack of cards in two and bend silver coins.”

“They are past all that now. They ... are quite feeble.”

He let the members in question rest limply and flaccidly in her hand,
and aroused her indignation again. She placed her hand on his biceps.

“Tense it,” she commanded.

“I--I can’t,” he faltered. “--Oh! Ouch! There, that’s the best I can
do.” A very weak effort indeed he made of it. “I’ve gone soft, you
see--the breakdown of tissue due to advancing senility--”

“Tense it!” she cried, this time with a stamp of her foot.

Constantine surrendered and obeyed, and as the biceps swelled under her
hand, a glow of admiration appeared in her face.

“Like iron,” she murmured, “only it is living iron. It is wonderful.
You are cruelly strong. I should die if you ever put the weight of your
strength on me.”

“You will remember,” he answered, “and place it to my credit, that
when you were a little thing, even when you were very naughty, I never
spanked you.”

“Ah, Uncle, but was not that because you had moral convictions against
spanking?”

“True; but if ever those convictions were shaken, it was by you, and
often enough when you were anywhere between three and six. Grunya,
dear, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but truth compels me to say
that at that period you were a barbarian, a savage, a cave-child, a
jungle beast, a--a regular little devil, a she-wolf of a cub without
morality or manners, a--”

But a cushion, raised and threatening, caused him to desist and to
throw up his arms in arches of protection to his head.

“’Ware!” he cried. “By your present actions the only difference I can
note is that you are a full-grown cub. Twenty-two, eh? And feeling your
strength--beginning to take it out on me. But it is not too late. The
next time you attempt to trounce me, I _will_ give you a spanking,
even if you are a young lady, a fat young lady.”

“Oh, you brute! I’m not!” She thrust out her arm. “Look at that. Feel
it. That’s muscle. I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight. Will you take
it back?”

Again the cushion rose and fell upon him, and it was in the midst
of struggling to defend himself, laughing and grunting, dodging and
guarding with his arms, that a maid entered with a samovar and Grunya
desisted in order to serve tea.

“One of your kindergarteners?” he queried, as the maid left the room.

Grunya nodded.

“She looks quite respectable,” he commented. “Her face is actually
clean.”

“I refuse to let you make me excited over my settlement work,” she
answered, with a smile and caress, as she passed him his tea. “I have
been working out my individual evolution, that is all. You don’t
believe now what you did at twenty.”

Constantine shook his head.

“Perhaps I am only a dreamer,” he added wistfully.

“You have read and studied, and yet you have done nothing for social
betterment. You have never raised your hand.”

“I have never raised my hand,” he echoed sadly, and, at the same
moment, his glance falling on the headlines of the newspaper announcing
McDuffy’s death, he found himself forced to suppress the grin that
writhed at his lips.

“It’s the Russian character,” Grunya cried. “--Study, microscopic
inspection and introspection, everything but deeds and action. But I--”
Her young voice lifted triumphantly. “I am of the new generation, the
first American generation--”

“You were Russian born,” he interpolated dryly.

“But American bred. I was only a babe. I have known no other land but
this land of action. And yet, Uncle Sergius, you could have been such a
power, if you’d only let business alone.”

“Look at all that you do down here,” he answered. “Don’t forget, it
is my business that enables you to perform your works. You see, I do
good by....” He hesitated, and remembered Hausmann, the gentle-spirited
terrorist. “I do good by proxy. That’s it. You are my proxy.”

“I know it, and it’s horrid of me to say such things,” she cried
generously. “You’ve spoiled me. I never knew my father, so it is no
treason for me to say I’m glad it was you that took my father’s place.
My father--no father--could have been so--so colossally kind.”

And, instead of cushions, it was kisses this time she lavished on the
colorless, thin-thatched blond gentleman with iron muscles who lolled
on the window-seat.

“What is becoming of your anarchism?” he queried slyly, chiefly for the
purpose of covering up the modest confusion and happiness her words had
caused. “It looked for a while, several years ago, as if you were going
to become a full-fledged Red, breathing death and destruction to all
upholders of the social order.”

“I--I did have leanings that way,” she confessed reluctantly.

“Leanings!” he shouted. “You worried the life out of me trying to
persuade me to give up my business and devote myself to the cause
of humanity. And you spelled ‘cause’ all in capitals, if you will
remember. Then you came down to this slum work--making terms with
the enemy, in fact--patching up the poor wrecks of the system you
despised--”

She raised a hand in protest.

“What else would you call it?” he demanded. “Your boys’ clubs, your
girls’ clubs, your little mothers’ clubs. Why, that day nursery you
established for women workers! It only meant, by taking care of the
children during work hours, that you more thoroughly enabled the
employers to sweat the mothers.”

“But I’ve outgrown the day-nursery scheme, Uncle; you know that.”

Constantine nodded his head.

“And a few other things. You’re getting real conservative--er, sort of
socialistic. Not of such stuff are revolutionists made.”

“I’m not so revolutionary, Uncle, dear. I’m growing up. Social
development is slow and painful. There are no short cuts. Every step
must be worked out. Oh, I’m still a philosophic anarchist. Every
intelligent socialist is. But it seems more clear to me every day that
the ideal freedom of a state of anarchy can only be obtained by going
through the intervening stage of socialism.”

“What is his name?” Constantine asked abruptly.

“Who?--What?” A warm flush of maiden blood rose in her cheeks.

Constantine quietly sipped his tea and waited.

Grunya recovered herself and looked at him earnestly for a moment.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, “on Saturday night, at Edge Moor. He--he is
the short-haired one.”

“The guest you are to bring?”

She nodded.

“I’ll tell you no more till then.”

“Do you...?” he asked.

“I ... I think so,” she faltered.

“Has he spoken?”

“Yes ... and no. He has such a way of taking things for granted. You
wait until you meet him. You’ll love him, Uncle Sergius, I know you
will. And you’ll respect his mind, too. He’s ... he’s my visitor at
four. Wait and meet him now. There’s a dear, do, please.”

But Uncle Sergius Constantine, alias Ivan Dragomiloff, looked at his
watch and quickly stood up.

“No; bring him to Edge Moor Saturday, Grunya, and I’ll do my best to
like him. And I’ll have more opportunity then than now. I’m going to
loaf for a week. If it is as serious as it seems, have him stop the
week.”

“He’s so busy,” was her answer. “It was all I could do to persuade him
for the week end.”

“Business?”

“In a way. But not real business. He’s not in business. He’s rich, you
know. Social-betterment business would best describe what keeps him
busy. But you’ll admire his mind, Uncle, and respect it, too.”

“I hope so ... for your sake, dear,” were Constantine’s last words, as
they parted in an embrace at the door.

_Chapter III_

It was a very demure young woman who received Winter Hall a few minutes
after her uncle’s departure. Grunya was intensely serious as she served
him tea and chatted with him--if chat it can be called, when the
subject matter ranged from Gorky’s last book and the latest news of the
Russian Revolution to Hull House and the shirtwaist-makers’ strike.

Winter Hall shook his head forbiddingly at her reconstructed
ameliorative plans.

“Take Hull House,” he said. “It was a point of illumination in the slum
wilderness of Chicago. It is still a point of illumination and no more.
The slum wilderness has grown, vastly grown. There is a far greater
totality of vice and misery and degradation in Chicago today than was
there when Hull House was founded. Then Hull House has failed, as have
all the other ameliorative devices. You can’t save a leaky boat with a
bailer that throws out less water than rushes in.”

“I know, I know,” Grunya murmured sadly.

“Take the matter of inside rooms,” Hall went on. “In New York City, at
the close of the Civil War, there were sixty thousand inside rooms.
Since then inside rooms have been continually crusaded against.
Men, many of them, have devoted their lives to that very fight.
Public-spirited citizens by thousands and tens of thousands have
contributed their money and their approval. Whole blocks have been
torn down and replaced by parks and playgrounds. It has been a great
and terrible fight. And what is the result? Today, in the year 1911,
there are over three hundred thousand inside rooms in New York City.”

He shrugged his shoulders and sipped his tea.

“More and more do you make me see two things,” Grunya confessed.
“First, that liberty, unrestricted by man-made law, cannot be gained
except by evolution through a stage of excessive man-made law that
will well-nigh reduce us all to automatons--the socialistic stage,
of course.