the State politically and the trust might be curbed;
not otherwise. In eternal vigilance and in union lay safety.

He sat down in silence more impressive than any applause. But after the
silence came a deluge of cheers, the thunder of them sweeping up and
down the long table like a summer storm across a lake.

Presently the flood-gates of talk were unloosed, and the conservatives
began to be heard. Opposition was futile because it was too late, they
claimed. A young Irishman, primed for the occasion, jumped to his feet
with an impassioned harangue that pedestaled Ridgway as the Washington
of the West. He showed how one man, in coalition with the labor-unions,
had succeeded in carrying the State against the big copper company; how
he had elected senators and governors, and legislators and judges. If
one man could so cripple the octopus, what could the best blood of the
State, standing together, not accomplish? He flung Patrick Henry and
Robert Emmet and Daniel Webster at their devoted heads, demanding
liberty or death with the bridled eloquence of his race.

But Ridgway was not such a tyro at the game of politics as to depend
upon speeches for results. His fine hand had been working quietly for
months to bring the malcontents into one camp, shaping every passion to
which men are heir to serve his purpose. As he looked down the table he
could read in the faces before him hatred, revenge, envy, fear, hope,
avarice, recklessness, and even love, as the motives which he must fuse
to one common end. His vanity stood on tiptoe at his superb skill in
playing on men's wills. He knew he could mold these men to work his
desire, and the sequel showed he was right.

When the votes were counted at the end of the bitter campaign that
followed, Simon Harley's candidates went down to disastrous defeat all
over the State, though he had spent money with a lavish hand. In Mesa
County, Ridgway had elected every one of his judges and retired to
private life those he could not influence.

Harley's grim lips tightened when the news reached him. "Very well," he
said to Mott "We'll see if these patriots can't be reached through
their stomachs better than their brains. Order every mill and mine and
smelter of the Consolidated closed to-night. Our employees have voted
for this man Ridgway. Let him feed them or let them starve."

"But the cost to you--won't it be enormous?" asked Mott, startled at
his chief's drastic decision.

Harley bared