In his youth Ralph Williams had spent fifteen years in public speaking. Times were bad then and he had gone about the country as a tramp, penniless, riding boxcars, giving speeches on Socialism in parks and along railroad sidings. He wrote many of these speeches himself. They were made up of statistics he had found in pamphlets and library books, vivid anecdotes he had collected in his travels or filched from other speakers. It was during this public activity that he perfected certain theatrical devices for holding the interest of his audience. For example: at a moment of flagging attention he might lower his head to one side, cock an eyebrow and stand for a long moment utterly motionless and silent; soon the crowd was under this hushed spell, and when next Ralph spoke it would be in a quiet and simple fashion that brought cheers to almost anything he chose to say. Ralph never abandoned these devices. In his routine daily encounters with people, even his own family, he still employed these old charms and tricks, left over from the days of his public life, used them with all the pride and assurance of an aged belle who continues to show her ankles and her shoulders, as if by habit, long after they have ceased to be objects of beauty.

Ralph Williams believed if he had not let himself get soft, he could have survived that life forever because of his sense of humor: this was his ace in the hole. He could always laugh in hot weather or cold, feast or famine, and make a joke of whatever bad straits he happened to be in. If he now questioned the absolute validity of certain doctrines he had preached, they still seemed to him a part of the grand humor of his life on the bum. He had entertained thousands of jobless people in those days, people gathered together in public places sharing their idleness with others.

When times improved, he went to work at the Ford plant in Detroit and saved every penny he could. After two years he took his savings and moved to Cleveland where he set himself up as a real estate dealer. He did so well in real estate that it began to bother his conscience; because, even in those days, he could see no humor in a man’s loss of his ideals. One day he mentioned these misgivings to the girl who worked in his office. He told her what his ideals were and asked her if she believed his success in business made him technically a capitalist. After all, if a man bought a loaf of bread for a nickel and sold it for a dime, that margin of profit was pure theft: so he had always preached. But the girl reassured him that he was still a liberal, though perhaps not a Socialist. She told him of a movement called Munocracy—a contraction of municipal (or munificent? He couldn’t remember) and democracy—that was gathering momentum right there in Cleveland, a movement founded on the belief that a good liberal could also be a shrewd and successful businessman.