above the battlement of the mill, the bells shattered
the early morning air, the remnant of the workers hastened across the
canal and through the guarded gates, which were instantly closed. Ditmar
was left alone among the strikers. As he moved toward the bridge they
made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust out of his way. But
there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he heard a man curse him.

Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is
subject to the operation of cause and effect. It was not what an
ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from
which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton,
although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her
pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit
social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to
certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have.
The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea
to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever
industrial strife has made congenial soil. In four and twenty hours
Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true nature
of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged and
appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes. Property, that
sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law had
been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American tradition,
was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of mass
meetings. All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar with
American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations that
dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national
propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech,
sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly
cadenced and intoned. From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd,
matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers
of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son
of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt
hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their
conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the
inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands long
steeped in bloo