From Those Who Knew Him Best 

 THE PRACTICAL IDEALIST 



BY BORIS D. BOGEN 



THE immigration wave from Russia in the eighties 

 included a more or less compact group of young idealists 

 who came not to make a comfortable nest for themselves 

 or to achieve higher standing in their careers, but who 

 dreamt of a better world to live in and dwelt within a 

 Utopia of their own imagining. As a rule, they were 

 wedded to some well-defined theory, and followed the 

 latter with the fervor of fanaticism. In the course of 

 their early experiences in America they encountered many 

 a stumbling block in the way of the realization of their 

 dreams and were, as time went on, shifted to other and 

 more prosaic pursuits. 



There were only a few who remained bound to their 

 ideals and although the workaday world found them 

 thrown upon their own resources, they gathered together 

 on the mutual ground of idealism. Their gathering place 

 would be one of the tea houses on the East Side, where 

 the bearers of "welt schmertz" nightly wended their way, 

 discussed over and over again their complex problems, 

 quarrelled over purpose, solution and method, and talked 

 and talked and talked. Among these young dreamers 

 were men of high intellect and strength of reasoning 

 power. One bore a different expression from his fellows 



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