The Transgressors Part 10

It is not without a pang that he bids her farewell. She has come to be a source of great comfort to him since his enlistment in the ranks of the humble. The schoolday acquaintance has been renewed. He has learned to appreciate the fact that he was the cause of her having donned the dress of the sisterhood. His ambition to rise in the world made it impossible for him to yield to the dictates of his heart and the mental vista that opened before him at the close of his college course, did not have her in it. The woman he saw there must be the favorite of fortune. He had selfishly abandoned certain love for possible fortune and in the active life to which he was at once introduced, all thoughts of Martha had been driven from his mind.

But Martha had had no counteractant to soften or obliterate the thoughts of her blasted hopes. The refuge of the convent appealed to her as the one remaining avenue by which she might escape from her youth and its recollections.

It is impossible for Trueman and Martha Densmore to ever again be lovers; the inexorable ban of the church is between them. Yet they can be friends. And Trueman feels that in Martha he has found his firmest friend and advisor.

"You will hear from me from time to time," she says as they part. "I am confident that you will do your duty; that you will awaken the finer instincts in the delegates. With the scenes that have surrounded you in Wilkes-Barre, you cannot be an advocate of violence as a means of settling the struggle for the restoration of the rights of the people."

"It shall be my untiring labor to avert the adoption of any measure that entails an appeal to force," Trueman a.s.sures her.

On his arrival at Chicago he finds the convention already in session. An hour in the hall convinces him that the result will be nugatory. The radicals are in the majority and the proposals they make are temporary expedients that look only to appeasing the demand of the ma.s.ses for action against the usurpers of the public rights.

With a view to defeating the objects of the conference, the Magnates have contrived to send a number of their hirelings as delegates. These are among the loudest in demanding impossible remedies. It is not long before Trueman discovers who these spies are, and he loses no time in exposing them in open conference.

This action brings him into prominence.

"Who is this delegate from Pennsylvania?" asks Professor Talbot, a venerable scholar sent by the Governor of Missouri to represent that state, of Nevins, a neighboring delegate.

"He is a convert to the cause of the people," comes the quick reply.

"A tool of the Coal Barons, you mean," observes a New Yorker. "I knew him three years ago when he was the attorney for the Paradise Coal Company," he continues, "and a more relentless man to the miners never was known in Pennsylvania."

"Yes, I know. He was once a counsel for the Paradise Company," a.s.sents the champion of Trueman. "I know his record from A to Z. You can't find a straighter man in this conference. He has come out for the people and I believe he is sincere."

"Whoever he is, or whatever he has been," says the Professor, "it is evident that he has the power of reading character. He was not here two hours before he detected the presence of the goats in our fold."

"Would you like to meet him?" asks Nevins.

"Indeed, I should be pleased to do so."

Professor Talbot and the friendly delegate approach Trueman.

For an hour or more the three are engrossed in animated conversation.

Professor Talbot is delighted to find that Trueman is conversant with the most complex questions of the hour.

"I shall make it a point to have the chairman call upon you for an address," he a.s.sures Trueman at parting.

For three days the sessions of the conference are devoted to partisan discourses. There seems to be no hope of reaching middle ground. The newspapers ridicule the utterances of the speakers as the vaporings of demagogues. And they are little else.

On the fourth day, true to his promise, Professor Talbot gets the chairman to call upon Trueman for a fifteen-minute speech.

From his first words Trueman wins the attention of the audience. His voice is full and far-reaching; his language simple, and it is possible for every one to grasp his meaning instantly. He chooses to win the delegates to his way of reasoning by force of the truth he utters rather than by appealing to their senses by a display of forensic and oratorical ability.

In the few minutes allotted to him, he reviews the industrial conditions of a decade and shows where the insidious principle of cla.s.s legislation has undermined the prosperity of the people to bestow it upon the few.

In an unanswerable argument he pleads for the restoration of the rights of the majority; by a rapid review of the causes that have led to the downfall of the nations of the past, he shows that the unjust distribution of the fruits of labor must inevitably lead to the disintegration of the state.

His peroration is a fervent appeal to the delegates to reaffirm the equality of man; it calls upon them to adopt resolutions advocating the government control of all avenues of transportation and communication, and for the strict regulation of all industries that affect the common necessities of life.

"There is no law above that of the Creator. He did not fas.h.i.+on some of his children to be d.a.m.ned with the brand of perpetual servitude; He did not anoint some with omnipotence to place them as rulers over the many.

When He made mankind in His image, it was to have them live in fraternal relations.h.i.+p. There should be no compet.i.tion for the mere right to live.

Until G.o.d's design is declared to be wrong, I shall never cease to counsel my brothers to live true to the Divine principles of liberty, equality and fraternity."

With these words he closes his address.

There is no means for measuring the exact effect of his words. The plaudits of an audience are an uncertain criterion.

In the final vote that is taken, after three other delegates have spoken, a resolution is adopted calling for the appointment of a standing committee of three to continue the investigation of the Trust question until another year.

This result is not satisfactory to the radicals, yet they make no open objection. To Trueman it is a source of gratification to know that the heretical proposals of some of the delegates have been voted down.

The conference is on the point of closing when Delegate William Nevins moves that the chairman of the special committee be empowered to increase the number of the committee to forty at his own discretion.

This motion is adopted.

The conference ends. It has exemplified the old adage of the convention of the mice to discuss the advisability of putting a bell on the cat.

All agreed that it would be for the good of micedom; yet no mouse had a feasible method to advance for affixing the bell. The papers in every city tell of the failure of the Anti-Trust conference to agree upon a plan of action.

The millions of toilers bend lower under their burdens; the Magnates tighten their grasp on the throat of labor.

In all the United States there is but one man who holds a solution of the problem of emanc.i.p.ating mankind from commercial servitude. This man has been a delegate. He has spoken but a few words; he has been present as an auditor.

His hour for action is soon to come.

CHAPTER VIII.

A STARTLING PROPOSAL.

The special committee has been directed to hold meetings at intervals of a month and to have a report ready by the first of the following January. Thirty-seven of the most intelligent and earnest of the Anti-Trust members have been placed on this committee by its chairman.

The meetings are now secret.

The first meeting is held in the hall that had been used for the big meetings of the conference. After this the meetings are clandestine.

The comment that was provoked by the conference of the radical leaders of the Trust opposition died out in the usual way, and then the interest in the efforts of the special committee was confined to the few people who realized the earnestness of the men who had decided to take the Trust problem up and bring it to a speedy settlement.

Day by day the members of the committee met to discuss the phases of the all absorbing question.

The managers of some of the largest corporations are warned of these secret deliberations and inst.i.tute a vigorous investigation. The aid of the police is secured, and the officers of a dozen of the shrewdest private detective bureaus are put in possession of the few facts that have been ascertained. In a hundred directions public and private sleuths are set in motion. But their untiring efforts are unavailing.

They have to combat a more adroit, more nervy and more intelligent force than they have ever before been brought in contact with.

The Committee of Forty has its ever watchful sentinels on guard, and every move of the detectives is antic.i.p.ated and provided against.

Thus matters progress until on the night of June tenth a startling climax is brought about by the report of the secretary of the committee.

At this memorable meeting there is a full attendance. The chairman, in his call for the meeting, has intimated that very important business will be transacted. He has in mind the discussion of a plan for awakening the interest of the wage-earners in the effete Eastern States, and the reading of a report.

What actually transpires is a surprise to him, as it is to all but three of the committee.