at workingmen
in their lodges will do. There, as a rule, the 'Walking delegate' and a
few agitators rule with despotic power. If a workman, whose large family
forces him to take conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest
peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation and demands
that traitors to the cause of labor be expelled. This throttles freedom
of action in many labor unions, so that often what appears on the surface
to be the unanimous action of the members of workingmen's leagues, is but
the exercise of despotic power by a few men who have nothing to lose, and
whose salary is paid from the slim purses of honest labor.

"Usually those who talk much and loudly think little and unwisely, and
the opposite to their advice is safest to follow. The greatest need
to-day in most of our labor organizations is wise leadership, and this
will result when the best element in the labor lodges asserts itself.

"The despotism of ill-advised labor is to be dreaded by civilization more
than the reign of intelligent capital. This is especially true in the
United States, where under wise laws, wealth cannot be entailed, and
where most large fortunes soon disappear among the heirs.

"A simple pair of shears illustrates perfectly the relationship that
capital and labor should sustain each to the other. Capital is one blade
of the shears, and labor is the other blade; either blade without the
other is useless, and the two blades are useless unless the rivet is in
place. Confidence is to capital and labor what the rivet is to the two
blades. The desideratum to-day in the business world is full and abiding
confidence between capital and labor." Thus speaking Colonel Harris and
his friends left the mayor and returned to their homes.

* * * * *

After a visit to Niagara Falls, Mr. Searles and his party went on to
Harrisville, where Mrs. Eastlake rejoined some friends and continued her
long journey to the Pacific Coast. Colonel Harris met his daughter and
Mr. Hugh Searles at the station, the latter, under the circumstances,
being the last person he cared to see. The carriage was driven at once to
Reuben Harris's beautiful home that overlooked Harrisville and blue Lake
Erie.

After dinner Colonel Harris explained to Mr. Searles all about the
inopportune strike; also that it was impossible to say when the steel
plant would be started again. Mr. Searles decided next morning that after
a s