d devoted men and
about the same number of women--a solid phalanx of great might, of
might far beyond its numbers. Finally, it had Victor Dorn. He had no
mean opinion of his value to the movement; but he far and most modestly
underestimated it. The human way of rallying to an abstract principle
is by way of a standard bearer--a man--personality--a real or fancied
incarnation of the ideal to be struggled for. And to the Workingmen's
League, to the movement for conquering Remsen City for the mass of its
citizens, Victor Dorn was that incarnation.

Kelly could use violence--violence disguised as law, violence candidly
and brutally lawless. Victor Dorn could only use lawful means--clearly
and cautiously lawful means. He must at all costs prevent the use of
force against him and his party--must give Kelly no pretext for using
the law lawlessly. If Kelly used force against him, whether the
perverted law of the courts or open lawlessness, he must meet it with
peace. If Kelly smote him on the right cheek he must give him the left
to be smitten.

When the League could outvote Kelly, then--another policy, still of
calmness and peace and civilization, but not so meek. But until the
League could outvote Kelly, nothing but patient endurance.

Every man in the League had been drilled in this strategy. Every man
understood--and to be a member of the League meant that one was
politically educated. Victor believed in his associates as he believed
in himself. Still, human nature was human nature. If Kelly should
suddenly offer some adroit outrageous provocation--would the League be
able to resist?

Victor, on guard, studied the crowd spreading out from the platform in
a gigantic fan. Nothing there to arouse suspicion; ten or twelve
thousand of working class men and women. His glance pushed on out
toward the edges of the crowd--toward the saloons and alleys of the
disreputable south side of Market Square. His glance traveled slowly
along, pausing upon each place where these loungers, too far away to
hear, were gathered into larger groups. Why he did not know, but
suddenly his glance wheeled to the right, and then as suddenly to the
left--the west and the east ends of the square. There, on either side
he recognized, in the farthest rim of the crowd, several of the men who
did Kelly's lowest kinds of dirty work--the brawlers, the repeaters,
the leaders of gangs, the false witnesses for petty corporation damage
cases. A