War of the Classes

A young agitator narrates his early confrontations with a town that labels him a “red‑shirt” and a dangerous radical for demanding municipal ownership of utilities. Through a series of vivid anecdotes, he shows how the same community that shuns him later adopts his ideas as respectable policy, leaving him to watch his thunder stolen by politicians and the press.

The memoir then expands to the broader American socialist movement, tracing its shift from a feared disease to a fashionable, though still limited, political force. As the 1904 presidential election awakens a surge of socialist votes, the author confronts a revived hostility from the capitalist press and a society eager to contain the growing class consciousness. Listeners will hear a candid, sharply observed portrait of a reformer caught between personal idealism and the ever‑changing tides of public opinion.